When your nation falls apart and your city becomes an extensive warzone for years, the main power grid probably isn’t top notch. But the sun works just fine!
They can still go all out on solar, it’s not like they’re pumping all that oil for themselves only
there is the idea of exporting solar from Morocco to UK.
There’s others where it’s proposed to build a a high voltage line from Morocco to Spain, France, Germany. Eventually, they’ll upgrade the grid to be able to move power from one region to another.
Same thing in the states, southern states generate for the north in the winter and in the summer the north to the south to help with high demand from AC.
Before the Arab Spring there was even a more ambitious plan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec#/media/File:DESERTEC-Map_large.jpg
The western countries are just needlessly delaying energy independence. They are hostile to life itself.
We elect conservatives, they are afraid of change. It is as simple as that.
It’s more like elite psychology. Positions of power self-select for a very specific kind of bad person, who would rather die, than have peasants become any more free.
This effect exists, as well amongst left wing leaders, yet we do observe more diminishing inequalities in countries ruled by left-wing coalitions.
I do think that power-seeking individuals will tend to be anti-equality, yet to some extent, democracy works as the left-wing variety of these individuals have to conquer power by increasing redistribution.
Long distance power transmission also effectively makes the day length longer, lessening the need for storage.
If god would like us all to have unlimited free energy, wouldn’t he put a giant nuclear reactor in sky
Looks cool as hell
Plant some more trees and rooftop gardens and you’ve got an official Solarpunk setting
Quite frankly, trees inside cities are decorative. If you truly care about ecology and the ecosystem, you look at the forestry on a national or regional level. Theoretically, having the densest and hence the smallest cities possibles would be the best for the overall ecosystem. When I see a park in a city I am thinking “they force the city to grow its radius by that much”.
I’d rather have a very dense urban seed surrounded by natural reserves than a chill cityscape with a few scattered parks that are not big enough to sustain a full ecosystem.
First of all, “merely decorative” has a big impact on our physiological and psychological well-being; urban greening appears to be able to improve things from respiratory difficulties to stress, anxiety and depression .
Second, “merely decorative” isn’t even true. Trees lower both surface and air temperature in cities in a meaningful way (on the order of a couple of degrees on a well-treed street – that can be the difference between “ah, it’s a nice day for a walk” and “holy crap it’s hot out”.
all hail the sun 🖐️☀️🖐️
@ProdigalFrog wow #photovoltaik seems a Thing there
It’s probably driven by an unreliable power grid, but still great. A lot of solar should help getting a proper grid online anyways
as unreliable as ERCOT?
I wonder if the black panels increase the urban heat island effect.
Interesting question. From what I can gathered from this nature study on that, it seems that solar farms can increase ambient temperature compared to an area with some vegetation, which may be due to the panel preventing the ground from irradiating heat as effectively (by like, bouncing it off the back of the panel) and removing the vegetation that cools the area from evaporation.
But I think on a rooftop that may not have as much thermal mass as the ground, it may not have that effect, and overall should lessen the cooling needs of a building somewhat due to the shade the panels provide, and due to them not getting quite as hot as an shielded roof, since they do reflect some infrared energy despite their dark color.
tl:dr, probably not much or at all since they’re on a rooftop, and if it does, it could probably be mitigated by planting more trees and vegetation in the city. But that’s mostly an educated guess.
are they solar water heaters or electric panels?
They appear to all be PV (electric) panels. The best value for this time and area.
You can see both. Water heaters usually have a tank right behind or above them and it has a silvery tint to it. Blue hued ones are mostly electric panels
How similar most of the panels are makes me think someone there’s actually doing distributed infrastructure right :)
Yep, Bob is making a killing selling them out of his truck.
And STILL I hear dumb shits in the US say “solar isn’t feasible”
Motherfuckers then why does literally every other country have tons of solar plants, rooftop installations, balcony installations and some packed away they can pull out when the power cuts out? Why do major companies put massive solar farms next to their new factories? Why are people interested in fossil fuels spending so much goddamn money telling people solar sucks? If it sucked, people wouldn’t use it.
I just let them spout off for as long as they want. Then I calmly tell them I haven’t paid an electric bill for over five years. Whatever their argument was is moot.
2 years ago I installed 30 500watt panels on my roof. It’s been amazing!
I’m in Canada, so I can’t be off grid at all, but during the summer I generate way more than I use and in the winter I take essentially what I over produced in the summer, so I’m net zero usage from the grid in a year.
All my heat is electric and I drive an electric car.
My break even is 18 years, so it’s definitely not for everyone, but I can see a future where electricity is almost free and we burn zero fossil fuels. I doubt I’ll be alive for this, but if we all don’t do this, no one else will be alive either
I see solar panels pretty often in the US rural county I live in
I live in rural Ohio and actually live fairly close to a decent sized solar farm.
Over the last 2-3 years I’ve seen more household solar setups, and one person I’m super jealous of has a really nice wind turbine/solar hybrid system with a garage battery wall visible when they leave their garage door open.
We’re very slowly getting there, but it’s like running a race with a weight around your ankle and people swinging at you with bats.
Because oil people don’t make money from solar.
They do make money from solar. Just not enough to their liking.
Returns on investments in fossil fuels typically range between 10-20 percent, while for a renewables project, 5-8 percent is the norm, Reuters reported in June 2023. “It’s also about the volatility of profitability,” Christophers says. Meanwhile, if the price of the feedstock falls, that usually means fossil fuels are cheaper – and thus the level of profitability can still be maintained. Renewable energy projects in contrast must contend with costs which are largely upfront and have to be met regardless of fluctuations in electricity prices. That makes investment riskier – and therefore costlier, cutting profitability. (source)
People against rooftop are the craziest to me. Not only does it give you essentially free energy, it also shades the roof, cooling the building just by existing. Every factory on earth should cover their roofs with solar panels. It just makes too much sense not to. Even from a capitalist perspective, it’s stupid not to. And lost hours due to heat stress are common in manufacturing, throw up some solar panels and lower your indoor temps while shoving money in your pockets from energy savings. Heat stress injuries go down, OSHA rating goes up, insurance goes down. It just doesn’t make sense to fight solar.
Impressive, thank for sharing this amazing picture 😳👍
This will be a sort of “duh” moment in human history, won’t it.
Implements taxes on solar energy
Citizen, you have an outstanding debt for the 2 hours of sunlight you’ve enjoyed yesterday.
Offtopic:
An usually
This feels odd, it seems like proper English, with the An since the next word starts with a vowel, but something about it feels off and I might be too dumb to realize what it is.
I think it’s because “usually” starts with a Y consonant sound (yoo-sually), instead of a vowel sound
It’s because it’s a typo, and supposed to be “an UNusually…”
And the “a vs an” rule is more based on the sound that the word starts with, rather than just the actual letter.
So for “usually”, it’s a “You-” sound
But for “unusually” it’s an “Uh-” sound
That makes so much more sense, thanks!
🎉 Glad to be able to help 👍
Definitely was a typo on my part!
It’s odd because wide adoption of rooftop solar is still unusual, so I think the wrong word was used. It should read:
“An unusually wide adoption of rooftop solar…”
Because the u in usually is pronounced like the consonant y, like “yew”. We use “a” before consonant sounds.
The u in unusually is pronounced like the vowel sound u, like “uh”. We use “an” before vowel sounds.
This is because two vowel sounds in a row is somewhat awkward and doesn’t flow as easily with how you live your mouth to pronounce things. Using “an” puts an extra consonant sound in between the two vowel sounds.
because while “usually” starts with a ‘u’, we typically pronounce it as if it started with a ‘y’
You guys this makes Coalie cry 😩 🪨
At first I thought those were parking garages but then those look like balconies, but the one on the right has windows. Interesting buildings. I wonder what a unit looks like.
