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Comment by jdwhit2 | Hacker News Reader

Solar power is a classic disruptive technology. It currently does not meet the mainstream market's needs in terms of:

  - availability
  - cost per MWh
  - suitable locations (close to established high voltage power lines)

Each of these factors is being steadily improved over time. And once solar technology meets the mainstream market's expectations for energy production, incumbent producers will need to retreat their offerings into a vanishingly small market for those needs not met by solar.

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I think we'll know its disruptive when it actually disrupts something. On its own, without subsidies and other crutches.

And that may have happened with special assistance, as many other disruptions have.

But its still not a sure thing. There may be other technologies that might have gotten there first. But since we've biased investment in solar so much, such alternatives may never develop.

We did something similar with the automobile in the US, giving it advantages and subsidies like free roads. Is it any wonder that more efficient ways of getting around withered?

What were the more efficient ways (of getting around)?

Mass transit is what I had in mind.

Personally, I prefer the car. But if I had to bear all of the costs of using a car directly, and urban sprawl were not so preferred by planners, mass transit would be my choice more often.

This is especially true at rush hour. Most highway construction happens just to serve rush hour traffic, a time when mass transit is at its most efficient.

If these subsidies did not exist, mass transit would be much more widely used. There'd be many more choices and there'd be no need to subsidize mass transit.

We actually have subsidies to counter the negative effects of other subsidies. Getting rid of all subsidies would be better and allow people to make the right choices for them with fewer negative side effects.

I remember reading an opinion here on Hacker News not long ago where it was suggested that in the future with self-driving cars we don't all need to own a car. Instead a car could come and pick us up and drop off at the destination. Do you think that this micro transportation (instead of mass transportation) option could be environmentally friendly?

Microtransport works against energy efficiency to the extent that empty vehicles are moving around unoccupied. On the other hand, if they achieve higher utilization, then that is offset to some degree by better utilization of the embodied energy required to manufacture the vehicle.

Further, if self driving vehicles are well coordinated, they could achieve higher utilization of roadways, which would require less land and less concrete and steel to carry the same volume of people. Also, they would potentially be able to operate with more optimal acceleration and breaking.

Before you can compare things on an environmental basis, you have to be comparing things that are equivalent.

I could compare rubbing a lamp to taking the subway in environmental terms and the lamp comes out way ahead. It just takes more walking to get places with the lamp method.

If you do wish to compare two things, you probably should include the cost of your time and the environmental impact you would have during that amount of time.

You also want to consider the actual impacts of building the transportation systems, whether its rail or road.

It would be infinitely easier for you if each process involved were taxed according to its impact. Then the costs would be included in the price you pay and you could decide according to what works best for you.

Oh right, but mass transit has hardly withered. There are probably similar numbers on the mass transit systems as there are in cars (in most cities).

You don't have to look far in the US to see that PV solar is winning against grid-connected power. I don't know the exact shape of the niche, but it seems to be a combination of relatively low power needs vs the cost of bringing grid power to the location. Safety lighting and monitoring or communications seem to be common applications.

And I'm talking about utilitarian applications, not places where the PR value of appearing "green" gets factored into the equation. One place I've seen things like this are is path lighting in parks or campuses that are run of batteries charged by a solar panel. In the past, they would have pulled power to the location, and the solar option wins out because of lower up-front costs.

In Japan, most of the country (well, mountain) roads are illuminated by street lights charged by a PV panel on top.

All 4-way stop intersections also have a blinking red light embedded in the road, once again charged by a PV cell.

> In Japan, most of the country (well, mountain) roads are illuminated by street lights charged by a PV panel on top.

That tells us that the cost of getting power to those locations dominates the cost of power used at those locations.

Other locations have different characteristics.

"Other locations have different characteristics."

That's rather obvious. I'm talking about places where it works well in Japan, along the same lines as the parent talking about places where it works well in parks.

Yes, and the point is that there are market niches that would either have gone unserved, or would have been served at greater expense because there was no suitable alternative that are now being served by PV solar. This what the start of disruption looks like (though by no means speaks to how far it ends up going)

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