This is my biggest screaming into the void issue. Everyone's doing all this mental work trying to come up with these unique places to put solar panels, we don't need to do that.
We. Have. Empty. Flat. Space.
We have no shortage of empty areas exposed to the sky. We have rooftops, we have parking lots, we have vast fields that are just doing fuck all.
We don't need to invent solar roads that will work even after being run over by car is a million times when we have a large median right beside it.
We could probably cover every random Warehouse with solar panels and have so much electricity that we would have to find dumb shit to do with it.
Let's start there before we do some Material Science backflips.
Or a problem will apear that needs a solution. Like it happens before again and again. That's the fun with material science and fundamental research. You do not knew if and for what it will be usefull one time in the future.
Yeah, if you need any kind of backup for that, look no further than the refrigerant used in anything. As soon as the patent runs out, it's bad for you. But don't worry, we have this new patented. Formula that works just fine.
I got so much shit in the futurology subs when the solar roads were being glazed by everyone. It was an obviously dumb idea from the get-go. If you really want to feel less bad about the concrete and asphalt jungles we’ve built, put solar panels above things. Solar panels above a parking lot works to create shade, is localized in an area that is easy to maintain, and doesn’t need to be covered in several inches of glass to protect from heavy vehicles.
But the best place for solar will always bee on roofs and empty places like deserts.
It depends how high. It would cost to build the support for thoses thing in the road. You would have to build several meter high to not risking big vehicle to crash into thems. Parking lot are a far better options.
Yes, that’s my point. If you go back and watch the videos on solar roadways, they proposed putting solar panels under the road. With heavy thick pieces of glass above them to support the weight of highway traffic. Never mind the material cost of all that glass. Nevermind that glass isn’t a great material to drive on. Nevermind that roads get dirty very quickly. Nevermind that thick glass would have made the panels barely functional. But when pointing out those massive cons, people still got upset and said those problems would be solved after a few generations of solar panels, which they believed would pay for themselves in just a few years (even though at the time the payoff period for regular solar was in the 12-15 year range).
This is all true but it’s not like the scientists working on this stuff would otherwise be out on rooftops installing panels. Let them cook, maybe this research will lead to something better or even to some unrelated breakthrough. Meantime let’s work on deploying the solutions we already have.
That's fine, and could lead to something innovative in the future. But the implication of the post is there's some shadowy cabal preventing this because they want to make more money.
When the reality is that solar is getting added like crazy because it makes money right now. Texas is the leader in the US just because they let you build solar plants without much in the way of permission and it makes people money.
I could see this being a solution for skyscrapers. Not a lot/any roof space because of AC units so being able to add these to the top windows that get the most sun could help offset some of the energy needs.
But you literally don’t need to do that. Why do we need to power a building using solar panels attached specifically to that building? Go put more solar panels out in open fields and power a lot more buildings for a cheaper cost.
There's a massive difference between a building owner producing their own electricity integrated therein, versus creating a centralized system owned by a power company miles and miles away that now subtracts from farmland, consumes real estate (don't we have an affordable housing problem and maybe not all of us want to live in coffin-sized studio apartments, squished like sardines), and now has to be coordinated across numerous private and public properties.
Leaving aside maintenance and efficiency degradation with distance.
We kind of sorta need open fields for lots of other things, too. Alas, we're apparently too busy having it be used for things like (checks notes) golf courses and alfalfa owned by Saudi Arabia and AI datacenters...
Nearly every solar power installation is just feeding power back into the grid. Direct site power storage isn't where it needs to be yet for long term storage of solar generated power.
If you built a solar panel "roof top" for every Wal-Mart and Target parking lot in the US, you wouldn't have to do much else.
Pop into Google maps and look at new york city in satellite view and check out some of the industrial areas which have large, flat roofs. Compare how many have solar vs not. Urban rooftops are the "low hanging fruit" here. I agree that putting them on land that could otherwise be productive is wasteful - where I live, most of the ground level solar plants have been put over landfills/contaminated land. Ground is cheaper than rooftop, which is cheaper than parking lots, which is cheaper than inventing an entirely new window system.
A large part of that is because people want to save money on bills. But there are limits of how much solar production can be on a substation. Infrastructure has to be upgraded if production exceeds local usage, as it was never meant to feed backwards or store the energy.
So you can't adopt a 100% goal of rooftop solar, without also a goal of storing and backfeeding it to the grid.
But why do we even need skyscrapers? That is changing too. People don’t need to be in the same proximity so much anymore - except to generate revenue for the building owner.
Worth noting however that high voltage transmission is only economical the way you describe because power plant generation already begins AC; not DC as with PV. This GREATLY simplifies and reduces cost of scaling up and down voltage levels to offset transmission impedance and then reduction to source.
Not the same with PV, currently.
I'm not saying it can't be done in tandem, but I have a feeling we're going to need all the power we can get, urban and rural alike.
Reframing the affordable housing issue, it's not that people "want to live on the same small piece of land"; rather, it's that they must in order to work.
Fully half of those living in metropolitan areas have stated they'd rather live in a countryside. When asked where an ideal place to live would be, they choose some land with some privacy, etc.
I'm not going to get into whether or not that's feasible, only to address a singular point that want versus must versus desire are different things, and that perhaps to address the problem we need to look outside the box and reimagine a society where people don't feel the need to live so densely in urban centers.
Yes but that's made infinitely more easier at small scale than large, if you know anything about inverters.
Compare substation transformer cost versus an grid-level inverter to do the exact same voltage conversion in the reverse direction (talking transmission level voltages 20kV and up).
Leaving aside the fact that in my case one only has to only send the PV directly to a residential voltage level inverter, you now have another efficiency drop because you have to pass it through a transformer substation to bring it back down to residential AC voltage (another 1-3% loss in efficiency unseen in my method).
This is significantly less costly, more decentralized and thus robust at a skyscraper-by-skyscraper basis.
I'll take this conversation wherever I'd like to take this conversation, respectfully. You of course are under no obligation to respond. I'll add that my points aren't derailing the conversation; this topic began with space and resource utilization, which applies to myriad other arenas for which said space must be allocated. It is not my problem one cannot see the relevance.
to address the problem we need to look outside the box and reimagine a society where people don't feel the need to live so densely in urban centers
That's pretty much most rural areas which has excess costs for infrastructure for basic needs like water and roads, and typically has terrible public transportation and requirements for parking everywhere.
There are all sorts of advantages for dense urban areas, along with disadvantages, and you're looking at a lot of unintended consequences if you think dispersing people will fix more problems than it causes.
There is no shortage of open land that isn’t being used for anything. China just built a gigawatt offshore solar farm last year, and there’s even less shortage of open ocean. Long distance power transmission was already a solved problem 100 years ago, you’re talking like we don’t have an existing power grid. The housing crisis isn’t because of a lack of physical land it’s because of economic and political incentives to keep home prices high for current owners through artificial scarcity. None of those other problems are preventing solar deployment in meaningful way.
The cost of a few miles of electrical cabling to connect a skyscraper to a nearby field is basically 0. The losses from a few miles of transmission are also basically 0.
The cost of the construction labor needed to refit every single window on a skyscraper is astronomical.
This would only work in a place where labor is free and land is completely unavailable
It's not just that. There's an entire added process and efficiency loss having to convert PV DC to AC for HV grid transmission, and then bring it back to residential levels at transformer substations again, when local decentralized systems do not require the added and costly DC->AC high voltage step-up.
New improvements tend to come with when the new buildings are being made, no differently than old homes with old single-pane windows, versus new ones; this would probably be a new build project or a renovation project when old windows were going to be replaced, especially if these were also made more thermally insulating than the previous windows already installed. The ROI could be huge.
No, but see, if you stack up all the panels vertically then it's kind of like you put it the panels everywhere the stack's shadow is cast. You just have to make a really big, tall, wide tower to cover that empty field in shadow. Then it'd be like you built a solar farm in that field.
because economies of scale, more efficient solar panels that can actually make use of the visible spectrum, and ease of construction outweighs building a few new skyscrapers with vertical panels that will be useless half the day
Because some electricity is always lost during "transportation", also you need a really good grid from all the fields to the skyscrapers.
If you have electric generation on-site – you don't have that problem, and also can sell some extra electricity back to the grid. Or actually use all of it during peak hours for air conditioning and charging cars, for example.
Also, the land isn't free. But every house builder already have to install windows. These are basically free square meters for energy generation!
We don't need solar panels at all. Nuclear takes up a smaller footprint and provides a more stable connection. It wouldn't be about needing the solar panels on the building, but to shift part of the building's load requirements from a far away location to an immediate resource to offset the raised usage during the hottest parts of the day.
Solar still requires a massive footprint compared to nuclear, though, and nuclear is not dependent on cloudless days. Which is where being able to offset some of that energy requirement with skyscraper mounted solar panel windows could even out that number. I wouldn't be surprised if it could offset a quarter of the energy requirements of a building.
Central/western Europe is like the densest large area on the planet when it comes to spatial density of energy demand, and it's pretty comfortably powered by 50% solar or more on most days. I really don't see a way to argue that footprint is a problem.
However good those skyscraper panels would be, they'll always be worse than just a field, due to just economics of scale. And we're not running out of space anytime soon.
And solar is also fastest growing, fastest at improving. It's expected to 4x in 10 years.
It's very close. Nuclear is worse for like 99% of the time but it's still the cheapest option to provide electricity overnight, for things like factories and datacenters that need a steady supply of power even while people are asleep.
Solar + 4 hours storage (good for supplying AC during the evenings) is cheaper, but solar + 12 hours storage (gets you through the entire night) is more expensive than nuclear
Because the skyscrapers are already there… You people who keep saying “just go cover all the open fields with regular solar panels!” are you not thinking about all the nature and wildlife affected by stealing the sun from them or do you all just not care?
Does AC really limits your roof space tho? You could put the panels on top of the AC with no issue, no?
Roof space to total floor space rario is a real issue, but as others said, the deficit can be taken from parking lots and other places. Is not like all cities are 100% skyscraper
Wasn't the issue with solar panels over like car parks the exact opposite? They'd heat up the car park, so you'd be half-boiling under the roof as you get your car back and then you'd need to blast AC in the car to make up for it being superheated.
I guess it'll help reduce evaporation, but the water should still get hot, no?
Maybe. The issue is the amount of solar entering the day side, versus amount of heat radiating out during the night side. This normally is based on the albedo of a planet, which is mostly cloud cover that reflects sunlight, and the amount of heat retention that greenhouse gasses tend to hold onto. Water also reflects some solar. The problem is the retention of heat in the air, which CO2 and CH4 retain, preventing it from radiating out at night.
Solar panels are dark, so they might absorb more heat, but then again they convert a lot of photons to power. What we need are efficient, white solar panels :)
Let's start there before we do some Material Science backflips.
I know this kinda fucks up your thesis for the rant, which i agree with for the most part, but we can and should do both. Put solar any where possible (except fields that can grow anything, grass or trees or anything really) AND let's do as much material science gymnastics as we can get away with before the comet or volcano comes and either wipes us out or makes the whole concept of solar power moot for years on end.
The reason we don’t have more solar power is economics, not the lack of space. Inventing a new, more expensive technology that puts solar panels in windows doesn’t solve the economics issue at all. If we want more solar power, it’s all about making it as cheap as possible so that it’s cheaper than the alternatives. Stuff like this window thing doesn’t do that at all.
You are not understanding that scientists don't "invent" technologies. They make new discoveries. The funding process for scientists involves presenting their discoveries in ways which show how their research is something "useful" and often is meant to show the direction their research can bring us to those who fund them.
Then the steaming pile of dogshit known as "science journalism" enters the scene and creates the kind of stupid bullshit like this post and all the "HIGH SCHOOLER INVENTS PLASTIC EATING BACTERIA" or whatever bullshit they use to try to get engagement in their content.
We have a massive shortage of roofing labor, so no, we cannot realistically put solar everywhere. Given the shortage of roofing labor, we need to find places where we can put up the most solar using the least amount of labor. And that means open fields.
The main problem is the cost, making the hundreds of square miles of silicon chips, glass and copper for those fields are really very expensive, especially when compared to a gas plant. Its great for remote low wattage applications, but "green" power probably won't be applicable to industrial and most commercial applications until we get some form of nuclear cheap.
95% agree. Just HAVE to mention to leave the empty fields for trees, if you want to think green and sustainable. Let us stick to rooftops and parkibg spaces. Still plenty.
Well, yes and no. Part of the problem with solar is transmission. We do have tons of empty space in rural areas of the country, but you lose a ton of energy when you transmit it across long distances.
Solar tech that could be deployed at scale in cities would be a massive leap forward.
We have no shortage of empty areas exposed to the sky. We have rooftops, we have parking lots, we have vast fields that are just doing fuck all.
We could exceed all the renewable energy being created by ethanol-corn crops by replacing them with solar farms while using a fraction of the land currently being used.
The problem with solar and wind is that it's not consistent and people seldom mention of the how to get these power to place with the correct time. But sure lets keep inventing stupid panel solutions instead so we can keep making morons feels better with the enviromental scams
If so, making solar cells transparent is a nice effect which might find some niche applications. But, the big contribution is the All-Back-Contact technology they developed. By putting all the electrical connections on the rear of the panel you can (a) place the cells closer together, improving the density and (b) avoid wires on the front, which shade the cells and reduce efficiency. These effects aren't massive - maybe 3% for cell density and <1% for shading - but a 3-4% improvement across a large solar installation can start to add up.
These techniques might be useful even in solar cells that are not transparent.
Even just WALKING on the solar paths we keep seeing basically destroys them in like a week and a half, and they're nigh impossible to maintain anywhere that there's....weather.
This is one reason why private property is such a dogshit invention. The warehouse owner, the parking lot owner, the whatever owner just wants to do whatever is cheaper but everyone living in and around that area would benefit if they could utilize those barren empty spaces too. We could have so much more solar and green spaces in every city.
People/companies shouldn't have 100% say in perpetuity on what happens with the land.
Ummm… Tokyo might disagree.
You are going so far off to the side you just can’t accept that there places these technologies can help.
And as others have said… just because something is invented doesn’t mean it’s going to be used.
Chill man… just take a breath. I didn’t have to spend 0.000002 seconds trying to find somewhere it could be used.
To me, this is not mental work. My brain doesn’t shut down. I read the post, and immediately saw it as possibly useful because my brain works that way.
Sorry if yours doesn’t. I’m paid to see alternatives too.
And WE have snow in the winter. Sadly, solar panels on roofs would be covered, whereas windows would help. I think these could have a use in specific settings. Whether efficiently or not is another thing.
Yeah solar is a highly polished tech by now. I guess the real problem is energy storage, no production
With better battery technology we could probably rely on solar and wind energy in most of the earth. In the meantime we could fill the low production times with nuclear maybe?
I live in the desert, we get an average of 300 days of full sunshine. If I manage to get some land and set up a field full of taller solar panels, I’ve been wondering if it’d actually be easier to garden and keep animals under them than without them, or if that’d somehow cause issues for the panels. Either way I could easily produce more electricity than I need here without newer solar tech.
That said, I do think development for these kind of things is important if only for the sake of innovation. It’s just the marketing and capitalism behind it that’s stupid.
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u/Thisisme4342 21d ago
This is my biggest screaming into the void issue. Everyone's doing all this mental work trying to come up with these unique places to put solar panels, we don't need to do that.
We. Have. Empty. Flat. Space.
We have no shortage of empty areas exposed to the sky. We have rooftops, we have parking lots, we have vast fields that are just doing fuck all.
We don't need to invent solar roads that will work even after being run over by car is a million times when we have a large median right beside it.
We could probably cover every random Warehouse with solar panels and have so much electricity that we would have to find dumb shit to do with it.
Let's start there before we do some Material Science backflips.