DIY wind turbine....

[Dabop]

Retro fitting solar panels on small roofs is bound to be expensive. No economies of scale in the installation and less chance to fine tune the components.

It should get slightly better for residential when solar is fitted as buildings are built.

Actually, having experience with both 'solar farms' and residential rooftop in Australia, the solar farms (at least here) struggle against residential rooftop- they need large areas of land (not an issue here) BUT the places where large areas are cheap- isn't where the people are- and also doesn't have the large power infrastructure needed to handle the high outputs from them- meaning their costs initially and for maintenance go way up

Another factor in favour of residential rooftop is that it is a diffuse, non centralised source- spread out over towns hundreds of km apart, meaning that a localised event doesn't take out a chunk of your power generation- a thunderstorm over a solar farm can take out a large chunk of generation because it is all tightly clustered, where a thunderstorm over one town leaves others still in bright sunny weather and still generating power

Another advantage is that because it is decentralised, capacity upgrades don't need to happen as often- the town I used to live in back in the 1980's had its feeder and substation was near maxing out with the towns growth, and they were saying they were going to have to expand it by the mid 1990's- today that feeder is STILL at the same capacity, despite the towns population having grown by over four times- because of the mid 1990's growth in rooftop solar was assisting the feeder in supplying the towns needs... A feed that was nearing critical is still in use a quarter of a century later- because the decentralised nature of rooftop residential solar assisting in the load
Larger solar installation companies still mange to get bulk purchasing power in comparison to individuals, so the 'high costs' in relationship to solar farms tend to not be as much as many might think as well- back when I was doing gridties as well, the mob I was working for used to buy in bulk- a dozen container loads at a time- at a cost per panel far less than an individual could manage- and also driving down the installation prices dramatically....
Before covid, we were down to $2500 Au for a 6.6kw system, and occasionally you could even get one for under $2000 installed, they are slowly coming back down, but are still around the same price they were back in 2016 when we had ours installed, in the $3500 bracket a 6.6kw system here will generate around 30-35kwh a day and will cover most houses needs (in the UK, your insolation levels are a bit lower, but still high enough to generate a fair proportion in many cases)

 

[Terry - Somerset]

The popularity of roof mounted PVs in the UK may simply be a result of very small plot sizes which precludes ground level installation. On a roof it is far less vulnerable to general damage, theft and electrical safety risks.

In the US, outside of city centres, I would guess that a typical plot size is much larger than in the UK.

 

[Dabop]

The popularity of roof mounted PVs in the UK may simply be a result of very small plot sizes which precludes ground level installation. On a roof it is far less vulnerable to general damage, theft and electrical safety risks.

In the US, outside of city centres, I would guess that a typical plot size is much larger than in the UK.

Another factor for many here in Australia, is that most dust is carried within a metre or so of the ground, so ground based panels tend to get dirty faster- my own here (temporary ground based) require cleaning about once a month or so, where rooftop ones like I had at the old place we went four years with only one cleaning (after a bushfire covered them in ash, got to within a kilometre of the house...) and even then we just hosed them off from the ground...

 

[Fergie 307]

Nuclear - Fission not a popular choice - Agreed plus without nuclear fuel recycling there is just not enough Uranium. With recycling then lots of countries have the bomb or nuclear waste is being shipped around the world.

Nuclear - Fusion not sure why you like it with fission. The only problem with it is that it has not be made to work for more than a second or two. Maybe next decade or the one after.

Solar - But is it more environmentally sound to mine rare earths than minine coal and burning it..

Steam - Can be produced by solar, wind, hydro, anything that produces electricity. You might as well say electricity. Heating water to store the unwanted energy from solar then using that hot water later to heat buildings is a thing.

Wind is more economic now than coal in Europe. We just need to start storing the energy as hot water, hydrogen etc when more is produced than required.

Hydro - climate change does not mean lower rainfall, it means change. If the world is warmer there will be more evaporation. If there is more water in the air there will be more rain. Where it rains could change which could be a problem.

fusion could potentially answer all our problems, but as you say progress has been painfully slow. I recall Brian Cox stating that we spend more on mobile phone ring tones than on research into fusion, a damning indictment of our society. Surely just the sort of project that screams out for international co operation and funding.

 

[D_W]

fusion could potentially answer all our problems, but as you say progress has been painfully slow. I recall Brian Cox stating that we spend more on mobile phone ring tones than on research into fusion, a damning indictment of our society. Surely just the sort of project that screams out for international co operation and funding.

I've talked to a former fusion researcher (now retired, ended up bouncing out and going to private industry when the shine researching it wore off) and he said about 15 years ago that he though fusion was long off. And then about five years later, he wasn't so sure, but he did say that he felt like it would be Russia or China who made it viable.

 

[sploo]

I believe the standard answer to the question of "when will we have commercially viable fusion power?" is "twenty years after you fund it properly". That said, I've heard that answer for a long time now.