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Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

Enough sunlight lands on the Earth every 2 minutes to power humanity for a year [1]. ~500-600GW of solar will be deployed in 2024 globally, and we are accelerating to 1TW deployed annually [2].

Commerical nuclear fission is unviable at this point [3], even at nimble startups [4] [5], but proponents are free to argue in support of it to anyone who will still listen. Renewables and batteries have reached an escape velocity trajectory [6].

This global energy system will eliminate energy poverty in our lifetime, and like bankruptcy, it'll happen slowly, and then all of a sudden.

[1] https://www.ku.ac.ae/two-minutes-of-sun-enough-to-power-a-ye...

[2] https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2023/12/25/all-i-want-for-christ...

[3] https://www.lazard.com/media/2ozoovyg/lazards-lcoeplus-april...

[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38894631

[5] https://neutronbytes.com/2023/01/24/nuscales-smr-costs-hit-h...

[6] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37502924

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> Enough sunlight lands on the Earth every 2 minutes to power humanity for a year [1]. ~500-600GW of solar will be deployed in 2024 globally, and we are accelerating to 1TW deployed annually [2].

Enough sunlights lands on earth every two minutes to power humanity if the whole surface of the planet including ocean was fully covered by 100% efficient solar panels. How is this even remotely relevant when we don't have close to the material needed to achieve that coverage and the efficiency of panels is famously extremely low.

The deployment in 2024 is - as usual - expressed in "theoretical max power". Which is nowhere near the actual throughput, and of course orders of magnitude higher than the "when I need it" actually delivery. Again; big numbers don't mean big results; real life scenario matter here, theoretical best is far less relevant.

Additionally, quoting "pv-magazine-usa.com" on this subject must be some kind of silly joke considering that it could as well be named "lobby-webiste-with-a-clear-political-agenda-to-push-for-photovoltaic-and-prove-it-also-cures-cancer.com" and no-one wold bat an eye. Similarly, other HN comment written by yourself usually don't count as "sources" for statements.

https://landartgenerator.org/blagi/archives/77565 is all the land that is needed to reach net zero. Certainly, we don’t need the entire earth covered. Replacing just the ~40 million acres of corn ag in the US used to produce ethanol for vehicles would provide 1.5x annual electrical needs of the country, including all light vehicles assuming they’re EVs (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38856518) (solar panels produce roughly 200 times more energy per acre than corn). The thought exercise is to demonstrate how cheap renewables are, their growth trajectory, and to guess how soon this impairs all other non renewable generation sources economically speaking. Clearly, the impairment is coming, as this post demonstrates. We’re simply arguing the time horizon.

The links to my other comments are comments that contain citations supporting the thesis, versus an unnecessary wall of text. No facts I put forth are uncited.

We have enough fissile material to support the planet for 10s of thousands of years, so the nuclear proponents can speak in theoretical maximums and still beat you. You don't have enough raw materials on planet earth to continue making solar panels for the next 10s of 1000s of years, given that you need to replace the panels every 10-20 years (optimistically).

Commercial nuclear fission is completely viable for anyone not allowing it to become unviable with lawsuits. See: China.

Downvote me all you want, but you'll live in poverty when there are no factories in your town because the lights turn off during a snowstorm.

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