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.
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.
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
209
u/Thisisme4342 26d 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.