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Comment by ThomPete | Hacker News Reader

The primary issue with everything in this category is that plenty of things are possible in the lab or in theory which just isn't possible when applied in reality and at scale.

Blame journalists for hyping this because of the climate change focus.

I am involved in actively looking for better materials and better sources of energy. The reality is that there are no fundamental breakthroughs since oil and nuclear.

No matter what you hear we just haven't had anything that fundamentally changes the game.

So instead of actual breakthroughs in the fundamentals, we get marketing, branding, and communication. But this is not something that can be fixed with that, it's physics, not product innovation

We will most likely get fusion (far out) fuel cells (even further out) before we get any fundamental breakthroughs here.

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Fuel cells have been commercially available since the 1960s, though they were mostly confined to space program applications then.

Automobile manufacturers have produced small numbers of fuel cell vehicles since the turn of the millennium:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_cell_vehicle#List_of_mode...

I'm not making claims about the actual merits of fuel cells, mind you. But claiming they're further out than fusion is bizarre. Some people are driving them around today. Nobody is generating net power from fusion today.

There are many types of fuel cells.

I am talking about the kind of fuel cells which can be used by wind and solar to store energy and distributed economically feasible.

We are not even close to that. If you know of anything, by all means, please let me know as the group I am part of would invest in it in a heart beat.

I am talking about the kind of fuel cells which can be used by wind and solar to store energy and distributed economically feasible.

I don't know of anything like that either. Small fuel cells rely on expensive precious metal catalysts and large ones have too much capacity to be a good match for the distributed generation sector.

A technology that is commercially available but too expensive at present for large scale adoption, like fuel cells, is more mature than a technology that hasn't been demonstrated even in a cost-is-no-object context. That's why it's strange to hear fuel cells described as even further out than fusion power.

Again no. Fuel cells that can be used for wind and solar to store their energy isn't close at all it's not just cost it's also the physics.

Why do you consider cheap solar not a breakthrough? If I 30-year mortgaged some solar cells, I could put them on my house right now and save $20 a month on net because of reduced electricity costs

Well, in the grand scheme of things, photovoltaic cells were developed back when nuclear reactors began to appear as well. They are not a new technology, just something that is getting optimized diligently now. In that regard, the parent post is technically correct. But that view is focused too much on big shifts in the market, if you ask me. Smaller, more incremental steps have added up to amazing things around wind and solar power.

Oh, it's definitely amazing relative to where it was, just not to where it needs to be to compete.

Solar and wind is less than 1% of world energy consumption and is not expected to be more than 3-4% in 2040.

Energy is not a product/market problem it's a physics problem and we haven't had any major breakthroughs in that space for a long long time.

https://www.iea.org/weo/?fbclid=IwAR3eH1AFcRSPSEit8JINLCMvE_...

This... doesn't have to be the case. Some markets already have way higher renewable penetration. Solar and wind represented about 20% of all generation in California in 2018 (https://ww2.energy.ca.gov/almanac/electricity_data/total_sys...). In the UK this year, solar and wind are almost 25% of generated electricity (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...)

Incremental improvement and economic forces do matter. Solar is now cheaper than coal in many climates, and we are seeing the effects.

Of course, there are still many problems to be solved. But we're also working on incrementally on solutions to those. For example, battery cost is falling precipitously. "grid scale battery" was not a thing a decade ago, now you see installations popping up regularly.

I'd like to see cold fusion as much as the next guy, but dismissing incremental progress is foolish.

Wind's about 20% in Texas, too, and growing.

http://www.ercot.com/content/wcm/lists/181766/IntGenbyFuel20...

The state produces by far the most electricity of any state, too. It's almost twice as much as Florida.

https://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=TX

Unfortunately it's also a huge petroleum and natural gas producer. About half of the energy used in the state is for industrial use, much of it for the oil and gas industries. On the bright side, natural gas is displacing coal in the meantime while solar and wind are not replacing it fast enough. It needs to get better, but things could be much worse.

You are talking about electricity, not energy.

Electricity is only ~20% of the entire energy usage as far as I remember.

That depends on where you are. I asked around a bit, and solar is a net negative for me (cost-wise). The only option one company gave me required converting the roof of my garage to a flat surface (from a standard peak), which is utterly impractical around here.

And you can use them to power your watch perfectly fine too.

That doesn't mean it will work at scale for society which is the primary issue.

The key thing to look for is energy density as that will be more likely to give society a bang for the buck.

Distributing solar cells out with the capacity factor of solar isn't economically feasible for society and neither possible as a main source of energy.

Nuclear and Hydro to some extent Thermal none of them are in vogue.

These are arbitrary metrics, why does energy density matter for anywhere which has the space? Even in Northern latitudes and high density countries you can generate a lot of electricity with a nominal amount of land. All the more if they can be fitted on rooftops. For sunny places near deserts it can absolutely provide a big percentage, even a dominant percentage of power. The main issue is matching demand to supply, production density is a distant concern.

Energy density isn't arbitrary. It normally means something can be used in compact form (batteries, oil, gasoline, coal, uranium) and deliver energy at will.

Look at the capacity factor of wind and solar, add to that the huge areas they need and the fact that they are intermittent and you start to get a glimpse of the problem.

This is neither economically nor technically feasible. You can't generate as much as you think and you can't do it at a cost that makes it feasible generally for society not even with lowered cost.

Currently, we are talking 1% of world energy consumption not expected to be much more than 3-4% in 2040 and that's despite huge investments and all the political goodwill you can ask for [1] Keep in mind that the numbers you normally see displayed is for electricity not for energy. Electricity is only a subset of energy.

Furthermore, investments in solar and wind is decreasing especially when you take china out of the equation. [2]

And again. Lab results or theoretically possible advantages most of the times aren't feasible in reality and at scale.

[1] https://www.iea.org/weo/?fbclid=IwAR3eH1AFcRSPSEit8JINLCMvE_...

[2] https://www.globalresearch.ca/growth-renewables-stalled-inve...

Those IEA renewable projections are comically wrong every year:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DsX2rpPW0AIVORG?format=jpg&name=...

Ate they wrong about the current situation?

Why is it not feasible? I run 32 panels on my roof, in the pacific northwest which is known for its rain, it covers 100% of my residential and electric car usage when considered on an annual basis. If roofs required solar panels we would have a large part of power generation done at a much lower intallation cost and could focus on large scale energy storage projects instead. My payoff period is 11-12 years, system is warranted to 20. No breakthrough required.

>I run 32 panels on my roof, in the pacific northwest which is known for its rain

Aren't you still connected to the traditional grid anyway?

That's right. All my neighbors use the excess solar power during the summer, and during the winter I use more grid power than I create. I get credits in the summer and use them up during the winter.

A giant leap in solar efficiency doesn't solve the storage problem, and the storage problem doesn't need a magic physics solution, just large scale heads down engineering. My point is: solar is efficient enough now, and a sound economic choice. I make enough power in a year just with my roof for my house and car. I do need a storage solution to do power leveling, which is what I use the grid for now.

It does need a magical physics solution unless you are fine with keep using coal, oil, gas and nuclear as backup.

When you factor in the infrastructure to support you when you don't have power yourself then it suddenly looks less economically sound.

That's the point.

That's where we disagree. You think power storage will take a magic physics solution, and I think it is normal engineering (pumped storage, rail/gravity potential generators, utility scale battery banks for leveling).

5000 classified patents per year in the US alone. No one else publishes a number.

Modest estimate would be 200 000 over the last 30-40 years.

Some of it must relate to energy.

Those patents aren't about fundamentals in physics. This is a physics problem not a product/market problem.

There are plenty of patents on energy just not many fundamental breakthroughs.

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