That is one problem, yes, although people in tropical areas during summer would probably disagree about peak power consumption.
The keys to effective use of solar are
- High efficiency transmission lines
- Distributed production: using rooftops in addition to massive plants in the desert
- Battery storage
That’s where batteries or other forms of energy storage can come in. That and we might end up with custom infrastructure for moving heavy energy loads between storage facilities with minimal bleed.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranLarge wind farms can destroy stratocumulus clouds - evidence from large eddy simulations
- parking this here for reference.
"That’s where batteries or other forms of energy storage can come in."
Right now, batteries are too expensive to serve as a long distance transportation medium. I doubt they will ever rival gasoline. Solar alone is never going to be enough.
Which is a nice segue to:
"I think the best solution to nuclear waste is strap it to a rocket and shoot it into space. That way it'll be someone else's problem, at some future time and place.
But nuclear needs to be embraced."
Nuclear is key, but the waste problem is a chimera. No amount of nuclear waste (or leakage from accidents) could ever approach the level of danger and destructiveness that climate change is going to cause. Nuclear has to be part of the equation. So just bury it somewhere and move on.
I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.On the launching thing: rockets fail from time to time. If even one of those launches doesn't get to orbit, we are fucked.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Yeah, the "launching nuclear waste to space" thing is utter nonsense - too expensive and energy-consuming. Now the ESA is planning to use certain bits of nuclear waste (mainly radioactive americium) to power satellites and probes but that's a special case that can't be generalized to all waste.
Electricity transport by wires is a well established concept, I am not sure what batteries have to do with this.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanWould thorium based nuclear reactors, if and when developed on a commercial scale, reduce the nuclear waste problem as I am to understand the byproducts of a thorium reactor would be far less dangerous than the nuclear wastes of current nuclear reactors?
Edited by xyzt on Oct 16th 2021 at 6:22:05 PM
"Far less dangerous" is an exaggeration - the problem children [strontium-90, caesium-137] are the same for any kind of nuclear reactor. There would be some small shifts in how frequently certain fission products are formed, but it won't add up to much.
The main distinction is that on top of fission products, uranium-based chain reactions creates a cornucopia of actinides such as neptunium, plutonium, americium etc. which are long-lived, toxic and readily absorbed by the human body. Thorium fission creates only protactinium and some super-radioactive uranium species on top of the fission products.
Oh, and one of these "super-radioactive uranium species" is so radioactive that you can drop dead merely from standing next to it. That makes it very difficult to create nuclear weapons out of thorium, as the radioactivity [and heat production] kill workers and damage the ignition mechanisms.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman"Electricity transport by wires is a well established concept, I am not sure what batteries have to do with this."
The problem is that electricity passing through wires experiences a loss of energy per every mile traveled. It's large enough that using wires for the transfer of electricity over more than a couple of hundred miles or so isn't considered practical. There is also a seasonal variation problem. Therefore to get solar power from where it is most easily produced (equatorial regions in summer) to where it is most needed (developed nations in both summer and winter) is a challenge.
Shipping electricity in batteries is the obvious solution, but right now they cost too much to be economically viable for this purpose. So a lot of time and money is being invested in a search for a more cost effective battery.
Edited by DeMarquis on Oct 16th 2021 at 10:04:19 AM
I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.Isn’t that loss rate going to vary a lot depending on the quality of the transmission medium? Electricity is normally transmitted via open-air wiring drawn between towers. But we know that the transition of information can be improved dramatically by using better transition mediums, so why can’t it be done with raw electricity?
We’ve got huge undersea cables that are used for internet communication, why can’t similar bulk infrastructure be built to transmit raw electricity?
Edited by Silasw on Oct 16th 2021 at 3:20:52 PM
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranOkay, so we are conflating a lot of things now. Let's take a step back and look at the big picture.
- We don't want to gather all our electricity in the same place, for a variety of reasons. Distributed generation ensures that a single event can't wipe out all our power, it reduces transmission losses, it allows communities to be self-sufficient, and so on.
- Wind tends to be deployed in large, expensive installations. Solar can as well, but is extremely flexible and can scale down to individual homes. It makes sense to spread out our generation very widely.
- We do have technology to reduce transmission losses dramatically. It's just that it will take significant investments to upgrade all of the lines in our nations. Modern infrastructure can handle local generation, has low losses, and is resilient to outages.
- Renewable energy sources like solar and wind don't generate evenly across the day and do not sync up with peak demand. This means we need battery storage to soak up the excess and dole it out when needed. These batteries have higher density than generation facilities, so will take up correspondingly less land.
- The grid should be backstopped with nuclear, hydroelectric, geothermal, and other steady sources so that there's always at least some power being generated.
An example of a provider that claims that? Octopus Energy.
There's quite a few of these in the UK.

My understanding of the challenge facing solar power is that most of the generation potential is located in regions far from the centers of consumption.
I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.