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Jesse Peltan Profile
Jesse Peltan

@JessePeltan

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On a mission to build Type 1 Civilization and restore the biosphere

Joined May 2019
Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
6 months
I don't think people appreciate the dimensions solar is improving in. Conversion efficiency isn't the full story. Yes, conversion efficiency doubled (~10% -> 20%) in the last 20 years, but silicon use per watt fell by 87%! (16g/W -> 2g/W) Longi now has cells that use just half
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@SolarInMASS
Commercial Solar Guy
6 months
@solar_chase Did you see the super thin cell from @longi_solar - 57 μm. Think that type of product might scale? Last I heard, thin cells would break often with current machines.
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
5 months
If God wanted us to build Type 1 Civilization, he would have: 1. put a giant fusion reactor in the sky (emitting blackbody radiation around 5800 K) 2. made 28% of Earth's crust out of a semiconductor with a matching bandgap (~1.1 eV or so) 3. filled the oceans with an alkali
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
5 months
While you're arguing about: "The Sun doesn't shine at night" "Nuclear's too expensive" "We can't make that many batteries" China is: - building more solar than the rest of the world combined - building more nuclear than the rest of the world combined - building more batteries
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
3 years
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
5 months
Even the "experts" don't understand the implications of batteries this cheap. CATL has LFP cells for <$60/kWh now. You're already within a few feet of a battery at all times. Batteries will be ubiquitous.
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
7 months
@stan_okl Maybe even put commercial spaces on the first level so people can walk to work or the gym or to get food It could change everything
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
3 months
England has more than enough beds! There are >10 million beds occupied by a single person that could sleep 2 or even 3! And those beds are typically only used for 8 hours a day! If we sleep in shifts, we could triple capacity! (or we could just let people build houses)
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@AlecStapp
Alec Stapp
3 months
New degrowther idea just dropped in the UK: Instead of making it legal to build more housing, they're just gonna... checks notes... reallocate the spare bedrooms in "under-occupied" houses.
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
5 months
Solar panels got cheaper. Plastic fence didn't.
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
4 years
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
6 months
Lots of people know that batteries make solar more valuable, but most people don't know that batteries make solar cheaper. How is that possible? Don't batteries add costs? Batteries cost money, but so do transformers, inverters, power lines, etc. Batteries lower the costs of
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
5 months
@apurvawin To share the good news
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
6 months
If renewables are so cheap, why are electricity prices going up? As many (like @duncan__c ) have pointed out, electricity generation is actually getting cheaper but delivering that electricity is getting more expensive. Increased delivery costs are often attributed to
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
4 months
The world is greatly underestimating the impact solar will have in the next 20 years. Everybody got it wrong for the last 20 years, and current projections are just as off base. Solar is rapidly improving in every relevant metric. Complementary technologies (like batteries) are
@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
6 months
I don't think people appreciate the dimensions solar is improving in. Conversion efficiency isn't the full story. Yes, conversion efficiency doubled (~10% -> 20%) in the last 20 years, but silicon use per watt fell by 87%! (16g/W -> 2g/W) Longi now has cells that use just half
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
5 months
Solar has continuously fallen in price following scaling laws for half a century. I'm sorry. I just don't buy that anybody can look at the data and in good faith conclude "solar is all subsidies" Tell me. What has a bigger impact? - a 30% tax credit in one country - the 19
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
5 months
People are consistently underestimating growth in solar and batteries. 7.9 TWh is enough to store the full daily production of over 1 TW of solar. The world will soon be able to add multiple terawatts of solar + storage every year. Demand for batteries is extremely elastic. As
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@colinmckerrache
Colin Mckerracher
5 months
BNEF is tracking a combined 7.9 TWh of lithium-ion battery manufacturing capacity announced for the end of 2025. BNEF's expected demand in 2025: 1.6 TWh across all segments.
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
4 months
I think people fail to appreciate just how much stronger solar resources are in the U.S. vs Europe. The Northeast is like Italy. You have to go all the way to Alaska to get solar like Northern Europe. We have some of the best solar resources in the world. Just look at the
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
6 months
Solar panels may be flat, but their electricity production isn't.
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
4 months
It turns out that batteries actually contain a very high concentration of battery materials, about 100%
@tsrandall
Tom Randall
4 months
Redwood is currently recycling batteries at a rate of of 20 GWh/year. That's an extraordinary amount —more than some analysts thought would even be available in the US for a few more years. But it's just a shadow of what's to come 4/
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
3 months
"The age of electricity and of copper will be short. At the intense rate of production that must come, the copper supply of the world will last hardly a score of years ...Our civilization based on electrical power will dwindle and die." Ira Joralemon “copper mining expert”- 1924
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@JohnLeePettim13
John Lee Pettimore
3 months
A normal Honda Accord needs about 40 pounds of copper. The same battery electric Accord needs 200 pounds. Onshore wind turbines require about 10 tons of copper, and offshore approx. 20 tons. The world will need to mine 115% more copper than has been mined in all human history
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
5 months
“Batteries are bad” is not a good argument for nuclear. Batteries are cheap, getting cheaper, and scaling rapidly. The argument is wrong from fundamentals and it’s becoming increasingly absurd in the face of mounting empirical evidence. “A 1 GW nuclear reactor produces 2 GW of
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
4 months
The "recycling doesn't work" people really need to learn the difference between plastics recycling and metals recycling. We get half of our steel from recycled scrap in the U.S. It takes less energy to recycle metals than to refine new ore. That saves money. That's why we do
@tsrandall
Tom Randall
4 months
Redwood is currently recycling batteries at a rate of of 20 GWh/year. That's an extraordinary amount —more than some analysts thought would even be available in the US for a few more years. But it's just a shadow of what's to come 4/
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
3 months
The grid needs a lot of batteries, even if we never built a single wind turbine or solar panel. Batteries smooth out demand and improve utilization for generators and grid infrastructure. It's not solar and wind that's driving current battery deployments, it's falling battery
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
5 months
If you're confused about solar and don't see the value, I made this diagram. I hope it helps ❤️
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
4 months
The "renewables bad" crowd love to point to California's high electricity prices, but they never seem to mention Iowa, South Dakota, Kansas, Oklahoma, or New Mexico. That might be because the top 5 states for wind and solar all have electricity cheaper than the national average.
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
26 days
People have the wrong impression about virtual power plants (VPPs). VPPs don't just aggregate small resources to virtually recreate a power plant or make something that's "virtually" as good as a power plant. VPPs are way cooler than that. Centralized power plants rely on
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
6 months
If renewables are so cheap, why are electricity prices going up? As many (like @duncan__c ) have pointed out, electricity generation is actually getting cheaper but delivering that electricity is getting more expensive. Increased delivery costs are often attributed to
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
5 months
How to save energy: ⚡️ Take 1 less hot shower 🚿 - 2 kWh Take 1 less flight ✈️ - 200 kWh Harness 1% of Earth's solar resource ☀️ - 15,000,000,000,000,000 kWh/year Every little bit helps ❤️
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
27 days
By the end of the decade, "solar" is going to mean "solar + battery" by default. Batteries increase the value of electricity produced and improve utilization of other system components. The cheapest place to put a battery is where you're already installing solar (or vice versa).
@EIAgov
EIA
1 month
In April 2024, more than 50% of residential #solar PV installations were paired with #batterystorage . When we started collecting this data in Oct. 2023, the figure was just over 20%.
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
5 months
We should use more concrete - not less. Concrete is a foundational pillar of civilization. It's also an easy answer to "hard to abate" emissions. Concrete is about 8% of global emissions, but we could make it negative 4%. (or even more if we use more concrete) Concrete
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
3 months
If coal plants had to meet nuclear plant regulations, we would have exactly zero coal plants.
@AlecStapp
Alec Stapp
3 months
Fear of nuclear power has led to a lot of unnecessary deaths from air pollution.
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
4 months
I see a lot of posts about how hydrogen is "inefficient." It's important to specify what process we're talking about. Production of hydrogen through electrolysis has an energy efficiency of ~80-90%. If you burn that hydrogen in a gas turbine, that process is ~40-60% efficient.
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
5 months
@jamesgiammona Yeah that would be insane. If the supply chain we needed to harness the power of the Sun could also be used to augment human intelligence…
@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
7 months
Computing's silicon demand kickstarted the solar supply chain It's time to close the loop. - 173,000 terawatts of sunlight above - 5 kilometers of silicon below Solar powered silicon refining, manufacturing, and compute unlocks Type 1 Civilization
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
3 months
The only thing standing between humanity and abundant 24/7 fusion energy is building more of these things
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
4 months
The duck curve is a 2010’s problem. By 2030, all solar will be solar + battery. It’s time to start focusing more on seasonal supply/demand mismatches. Batteries have daily storage covered.
@grid_status
Grid Status
4 months
In 2024, natural gas generation on an average April day in California hit a 7-year low. This is a significant trend reversal from what we saw from 2021 to 2023 in CAISO.
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
3 months
Fusion powered SMRs are scaling faster than any other source of electricity in history. (Small Modular Receiver)
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@yo_ean
Jan E
7 months
Introducing the SMR: The Small Modular Receiver.
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
5 months
Have you ever considered that maybe.. just maybe... China covering entire mountains in solar panels has nothing to do with appeasing western environmentalists?
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
22 days
Please stop equating batteries with wind and solar. Batteries are just as useful for smoothing out variable demand as they are for variable supply. Colocating batteries with variable demands improves utilization for all generators, nuclear, gas, and coal included. Smoothing
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
4 months
Grid scale battery storage is not "battery backup." Batteries are active assets that improve the utilization of other parts of the grid. An hour of battery storage at the level of a few percent of peak demand can provide ancillary services that free up thermal generation to
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
5 months
A single factory will produce enough solar panels to meet peak electricity demand in Texas ... EVERY 18 MONTHS We cannot afford to put our hands over our eyes and pretend solar doesn't work. We need to be manufacturing and installing solar at scale - yesterday. Earth's solar
@pvmagazine
pv magazine
5 months
Chinese PV Industry Brief: JinkoSolar breaks ground on 56 GW solar factory: JinkoSolar has broken ground on a 56 GW PV panel factory in China's Shanxi province. It says the new facility will be… #Markets #ModulesUpstreamManufacturing #TechnologyandRD
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
4 months
~$2.40/sqft for solar panels in bulk Solar will be everywhere working in the background
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@DanielleFong
Danielle Fong 🏴‍☠️
4 months
can hardly believe how cheap the pricing is for solar panels. for like $80 (in bulk) you can get a 2.4m x 1.3m bifacial panel that's 665 W peak. solar walls / fences economical? 👀
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
5 months
So called "petroleum" or "rock oil" is a SCAM. Oil comes from WHALES. More whale oil is wasted in lamps by people writing letters about fantasy "rock oil" than will ever be produced from ROCKS. Rocks just don't have the OIL DENSITY. A whale is 50% OIL! Rocks are at most 1%!
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
1 month
The thing that is truly absurd is that we are having to scale solar using fossil fuels. >90% of the energy used to make solar panels is electricity. In a sane world, we would have continued to scale nuclear and would now be leveraging that energy to manufacture solar at massive
@LouisAnslow
Louis Anslow
1 month
This isn’t something to celebrate. Nuclear has energy density of 3,900,000 MJ/kg. It should be number 1. That it isn’t was a choice.
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
5 months
"oh no, China is DUMPING all these solar panels and batteries!" Like, you think China has all these secret hidden subsidies so that they're losing tons of money on every unit and your "solution" is that we should NOT buy them?
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
5 months
Guys. At this point it's completely absurd to predict that solar's growth is suddenly going to level off. You would need extraordinary evidence to justify an abrupt end to this half a century long trend. Every year forecasters use some completely solvable roadblock to justify
@AukeHoekstra
AukeHoekstra
11 months
Nice "new" visualization of solar growth versus predictions ;-) ht @baumanns
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
4 months
The world is just beginning to see solar’s potential. A lot of people didn’t see coal coming when it was mined by hand and carted by horses. The supply chain for solar is already mostly powered by electricity. That electricity is increasingly coming from solar. Cheap solar
@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
6 months
The turning point in the Industrial Revolution was not when we started mining coal. It's when we started mining coal - with coal. Carting coal with horses wasn't a huge leap forward from carting wood. Coal-powered railways and coal-powered mining created the feedback loop that
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
5 months
Who would win?
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
5 months
Solar panels got cheaper. Plastic fence didn't.
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
1 month
You can't solve power reliability with centralized generation. It doesn't matter how many gas fired turbines you have if they can't deliver power to homes. We have two options - underground power lines - distributed generation & storage Undergrounding lines is expensive, but
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@douglewinenergy
Doug Lewin
2 months
Over 5 million Texans are without power as #HurricaneBeryl moves through the Houston area. Restoration will take many days & high temperatures will be in the 90's throughout the week. Today's scheduled #txlege hearing on the progress of utility resiliency plans was canceled.
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
6 months
China doubles electricity generation every decade. We used to do this. We still can. It's high time to build.
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
5 months
@galu822 We are here to save the ants, squid, and all other life from the expansion of the Sun
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
4 months
"Electricity is only 13% of primary energy!" Okay, but 38% of primary energy goes to - making electricity. If you want to talk in terms of primary energy, you have to look at the energy that goes into generators. That's what primary energy means - energy before conversion
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
4 months
Primary energy is wrong, but not how you think. Primary energy gets criticized because it doesn’t take into account the losses that occur when converting and delivering energy. This makes fossil fuels look like they do more work than they really do because most of that energy
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
5 months
A 5% improvement in farm yields could spare 2x as much land as getting rid of every: - city - home - mine - factory - road ...combined To feed 8 billion people and restore the biosphere, we need to embrace modern science.
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@simonmaechling
Simon Maechling
5 months
Increased Yields = Efficient farmland use. Reduced need for deforestation and, conversion of natural habitats into agricultural land. ⬆ Efficiency. ⬆ Food security. ⬆ Economic development. ⬆ Environmental conservation. Which do you prefer?
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
5 months
@JomauxJulien Vertical south facing is especially helpful for winter Useful production even at northern latitudes
@HelmPeter
Peter Helm 🇺🇦🇮🇱
5 months
Der senkrechte Süd-Zaun bringt im Winter, bei tierstehender Sonne, besonders viel. Im Sommer bei senkrechter Sonne entsprechend weniger, daher die fast horizontale Ertragslinie, die meinem Bedarf entgegen kommt. Bei 45° Neigung der Süd-PV wäre der Januar 15% schwächer,
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
5 months
Everybody name your favorite rare earth element in silicon solar panels or lithium ion batteries. I'll go first. Oh wait... There aren't any.
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
5 months
I've suddenly become extremely concerned about pumping water around to make stuff
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
1 month
From: "we could never make that many solar panels" To: "how are we going to use all these solar panels??"
@MLiebreich
Michael Liebreich
1 month
By 2025 there will be 2TW of annual PV manufacturing capacity, 80% in China. That's enough panels to meet an additional 9% of global power demand. Will we see 1TWh of annual installations and shockwaves across the economy, or bankrupt PV manufacturers?
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
5 months
The age of "coal" is a fantasy! Coal is mined with pickaxes made from WOOD, in mines lit with wooden torches, transported on wooden wagons, to be burned in wooden homes. It takes 4 trees to mine just 1 pound of coal! They will tell you fairytales of "coal powered machinery"
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
4 months
"EVs are too heavy"
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
3 years
Methane from cows is not a problem. The US is missing 60 MILLION bison. The idea that a healthy ecosystem doesn’t have large ruminants (which produce methane) is clearly ecologically false. BRING BACK THE BISON 🦬
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
1 month
If you let people make money by installing batteries, they will install batteries. Real time markets are a great way to do that.
@scienceisstrat1
Science Is Strategic
1 month
Texas is also leading the U.S. in battery energy storage 🔋🔌
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
5 months
Guys. Batteries are <$60/kWh now. Why would anybody want a vehicle that you can’t fill up at home?
@Rainmaker1973
Massimo
5 months
The NAMX HUV is a hydrogen-powered SUV featuring a removable hydrogen capsule system. [📹 RoCars]
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
4 months
Primary energy is wrong, but not how you think. Primary energy gets criticized because it doesn’t take into account the losses that occur when converting and delivering energy. This makes fossil fuels look like they do more work than they really do because most of that energy
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
6 months
This is a big reason why EVs are more efficient than gas vehicles, but it's not even the full story. That 80% loss with a gasoline vehicle doesn't just disappear. You have to actively remove it. A gas vehicle delivering 100 kW (134 horsepower) to the wheels has to get rid of
@robinsonmeyer
Robinson Meyer
6 months
That’s fine in the short run, because even if you ran your car off a 100% natural gas grid, you’d still cut your carbon pollution roughly in half compared to a gasoline car. And in the long run the bulk of new electricity will come from lower carbon sources. Don’t worry about it
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
4 months
I see a lot of environmentalists arguing that we need to stop flying planes. That's throwing the baby out with the bathwater. If jet fuel were free, or twice as expensive, it really wouldn't make that much of an impact on the cost of flying. Synthetic fuels are expensive, but
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
4 months
We use less energy now to make a kilo of silicon. Each kilo of silicon makes more square meters of solar cells. Each square meter of cells makes more power. Each watt of power provides more energy. (panel longevity improvements) Solar has made massive strides across the
@wang_seaver
Seaver Wang
1 year
Mariutti challenges the idea that manufacturers could have managed to achieve far higher silicon purity while reducing energy demand, but this is indeed what has happened over the past two decades, helped by economies of vast scale (and material efficiency).
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
1 month
The reason to move beyond fossil fuels is so that energy can be more abundant, not less.
@elidourado
Eli Dourado
1 month
Sources that are orders of magnitude more abundant than fossil fuels: Fission Geothermal Fusion Solar (which is fusion with gravitational confinement and solid state conversion) Let’s perfect and scale these four and build a future that looks like the future.
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
4 months
A lot of people compare small modular reactors (SMRs) to solar and batteries. We made them cheap by producing them repeatedly at scale. But, solar panels didn't get cheap by chopping them up into smaller pieces to make the same total. We exponentially scaled module production.
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
4 months
China is building more nuclear than the rest of the world combined. China is building even more solar than nuclear. China is building coal capacity, but coal is declining as a percentage of total generation. These are all smart choices. We should be doing the same. (but with
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
5 months
While you're arguing about: "The Sun doesn't shine at night" "Nuclear's too expensive" "We can't make that many batteries" China is: - building more solar than the rest of the world combined - building more nuclear than the rest of the world combined - building more batteries
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
5 months
“A solar fence! Ridiculous! Solar panels need to be pointed at the Sun!” Solar haters seem to be acutely aware that the Sun goes down, but unaware that it moves as it does that. East/west bifacial captures the morning and evening Sun. North/south captures the winter Sun.
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
5 months
Solar panels got cheaper. Plastic fence didn't.
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
26 days
Is solar in the U.S. really "heavily subsidized" when the cost after subsidies is twice what it is in the rest of the "developed" world? Sure, we spend a lot on subsidies. Our 30% tax credit is more than the total cost in many other countries, but that tax credit comes after
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
4 months
@AlecStapp If we zoom out, all countries are low-energy. Let's change that.
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
4 months
We’re seeing a trend in solar fences because solar panels are as cheap as regular building materials now. Soon we’ll see the same trend in wall claddings. Solar will be ubiquitous. It won’t provide 100% of electricity in every region, but it will be passively working in the
@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
5 months
Who would win?
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
5 months
The idea that we would build more nuclear if only we didn't have all this solar is so out of touch with reality. Solar is not holding nuclear back. Solar helps nuclear. 1. Nuclear capacity leveled off in the 90's, decades before we had solar of any significance. 2. Nuclear
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
5 months
Please stop saying "we need more baseload" when you mean to say "we need more on-demand generation" No grid has a problem meeting base load. It's literally the minimum amount of load the grid experiences. Some grids have a problem meeting peak load. (the maximum about of load
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
4 months
Half the world’s energy use is for industry. Let’s put the most energy intensive industries where energy is most abundant - Texas.
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@clawrence
Craig Lawrence
4 months
Texas should just declare that it's mission is to have the lowest cost, cleanest, and most reliable electricity on the planet. Build the crap out of the grid - transmission and distribution. Stop pitting fossil fuels against renewables and nuclear against everyone. Just build
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
6 months
Lots of people are calling for homes with fewer windows to reduce energy use. They're wrong. Windows are solar panels! They're solar thermal, like solar hot water panels. Windows let sunlight inside where it heats up your home. You can selectively shade them to let the winter
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
27 days
When China started producing solar panels, coal supplied ~80% of nationwide generation. Now it's ~60% As more fossil-free generation gets installed, the carbon intensity of manufacturing falls. Every successive generation of panels has a lower emissions intensity than the
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
1 month
The thing that is truly absurd is that we are having to scale solar using fossil fuels. >90% of the energy used to make solar panels is electricity. In a sane world, we would have continued to scale nuclear and would now be leveraging that energy to manufacture solar at massive
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
5 months
To put this in context, it takes ~0.8 kWh to desalinate 100 gallons of water. It only takes 0.8 square meters of solar panels (~8.6 square feet) to generate that much electricity on a daily basis. We can have abundant clean drinking water for everybody. We just need to build.
@Sammy_Roth
Sammy Roth
5 months
Heart-wrenching @latimes reporting from the Navajo Nation, where many Indigenous families lack access to clean drinking water even as big-city houses and massive cattle farms suck the Colorado River dry. This graphic by @lamarr_lemee tells the story well.
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
5 months
(you can make batteries with both by the way)
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
5 months
Amazing how fast we went from: "We'll never make that many batteries!" to: "Where are we going to put all these batteries!?!?"
@AukeHoekstra
AukeHoekstra
5 months
OVERsupply for lithium batteries is looming! It will bring battery prices down, helping the transition to EVs and clean energy, but create headaches for the lithium industry Let me give some perspective, showing the long term trend is clear and e.g. @Toyota should be ashamed 🧵
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
3 months
The key to building a clean energy system is the part where you let people build a clean energy system.
@SteveRattner
Steven Rattner
3 months
"When the latest batch of solar plants come on line, Texas will have added more solar capacity per capita in a single year than any US state and any country in the world... Almost overnight, a state synonymous with dirty fuels has become America’s clean energy giant." cc: @FT
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
5 months
these wind turbines are taking up ALL of the land 😡 where are we going to find space for the cows? 🐄 😭
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
3 months
Pretty amazing how fast we went from “It’s not going to happen” to “It’s not happening yet” to “It’s not happing that fast” Guess what comes next.
@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
3 months
U.S. fossil generation is down 16% from its peak in 2007.
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
5 months
1,000 kWh ≈ $1,000 GDP Harnessing just 1% of the energy in Earth's sunlight will transform the world more dramatically than the Industrial Revolution. The original version of this chart from @OurWorldInData is a great illustration of the transformative power of energy. I've
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
5 months
If God wanted us to build Type 1 Civilization, he would have: 1. put a giant fusion reactor in the sky (emitting blackbody radiation around 5800 K) 2. made 28% of Earth's crust out of a semiconductor with a matching bandgap (~1.1 eV or so) 3. filled the oceans with an alkali
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
3 months
The world is building solar for energy abundance. Solving climate change will be a side effect.
@AukeHoekstra
AukeHoekstra
3 months
This is the kind of picture that gives me hope: Texas is a climate leader, even though its politicians denounce it. That's because it simply makes economic sense by now and will increasingly do so. Same reason Trump could not change the demise of coal.
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
3 years
I plugged in the AC but my house keeps getting hotter???? help
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@WashTimes
The Washington Times
3 years
White House pitches multitrillion-dollar budget as cure for inflation
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
3 months
Number go up
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
4 months
I don't think people realize that if Chinese solar manufacturers achieve even half these projections, by the end of the decade China will be able to add an entire United States worth of electricity generation from solar and batteries alone - EVERY YEAR.
@SolarInMASS
Commercial Solar Guy
8 months
@BloombergNEF @IEA @AukeHoekstra @fbirol @ChristianOnRE His team’s analysis outlines the expected yearly volumes based on 1.69 TW deployed in total at the end of 2023: ◦2024 – 0.6 TW ◦2025 – 0.83 TW ◦2026 – 1.12 TW ◦2027 – 1.53 TW ◦2028 – 2.08 TW ◦2029 – 2.82 TW ◦2030 – 3.84 TW What? 3.84 TW in a single year?
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
5 months
"they can’t point to any examples of any major mined mineral doubling that fast" ...no examples not a single mineral definitely not *the very first one referenced in the chart*
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@AlexEpstein
Alex Epstein
5 months
“‘Net zero’ plans to scale solar/wind involve more than doubling the supply of half a dozen major mined materials per decade—even though they can’t point to any examples of any major mined mineral doubling that fast, even with pro-development governments.”
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
5 months
Solar will never work! In this paper, I take the online price for a 2 hour Tesla Megapack and multiply it by 3 weeks of primary energy demand. The results show that this would be really really big super expensive. It would also take so much materials which makes it bad.
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
6 months
@_sn_n Square-cube law keeping the heating costs down
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
22 days
It is simply not true that renewables increase or decrease grid costs universally. If you are transmitting electricity from a wind farm 1,000 miles away, that will obviously require more grid infrastructure than our current system. If you have rooftop solar and home batteries
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
4 months
If electricity is cheap in the states with the most wind and solar, why is electricity expensive in places like Germany and California? Well, for one, Germany and California both shut down operating nuclear plants. Removing supply makes prices go up. There are a lot of other
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
4 months
The "renewables bad" crowd love to point to California's high electricity prices, but they never seem to mention Iowa, South Dakota, Kansas, Oklahoma, or New Mexico. That might be because the top 5 states for wind and solar all have electricity cheaper than the national average.
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
6 months
Jevon's paradox is so misunderstood An increase in efficiency does not imply an increase in demand, nor does it imply a decrease in demand Whether demand increases or decreases is a function of elasticity If better insulation makes heating cheaper, you might set your
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
3 months
Hmm... I wonder why China is investing so much in domestic energy production that doesn't rely on continuous fuel imports from foreign nations. Probably nothing.
@N_Schmid
N. Schmid ⚡️☀️💨💧🔋
3 months
China investiert 3.7 mal so viel in erneuerbare Energien wie fossile Energien. Der mittlere Osten investiert jedoch 5.4 mal mehr in fossile Energien als erneuerbare Energien. Je mehr eine Region in erneuerbare Energien investiert, desto weniger können fossile Staaten exportieren.
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
1 month
Where are we going to put solar? Everywhere.
@SolarInMASS
Commercial Solar Guy
1 month
Downtown Seattle with balcony and rooftop solar - beautiful!
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
4 months
“We can’t make enough batteries” is getting more absurd by the day
@jdeely
Joe Deely
4 months
Two things happened on the @California_ISO grid last night. 1) Battery storage discharge went over 6GW for the first time AND 2) Batteries were the largest source of supply.
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
6 months
Can stacking blocks solve our energy storage needs? Energy Vault aims to store energy by stacking big concrete blocks. When they're lowered back down, the energy can be recaptured and fed into the grid. How viable is stacking blocks for energy storage? Fortunately, this isn't
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
3 years
Bitcoin miners do not compete for electricity during scarcity events. When marginal cost exceeds revenue, they turn off. A miner’s load curve is the opposite of a residential consumer. The reason we have scarcity is because there’s not enough off-peak load to justify new gen.
@angela_walch
Angela Walch ☀️
3 years
Does anyone have stats on how much of the #TexasPowerGrid is devoted to Bitcoin mining? This is on my mind as my family and I are asked to reduce our air conditioning use, not run washing machines & dryers, etc.
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
5 months
Solar can be beautiful. Just add more panels.
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
6 months
Energy Twitter seems confused about heat pumps and cold weather. I hope this helps.
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@JessePeltan
Jesse Peltan
22 days
Most of the cost of fossil fueled generation is - fuel. You are not "building two systems" by adding wind or solar. Building wind or solar does not require building "backup generation." The amount of on-demand generation you need is driven by - demand. If wind and solar
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