The Growth of Solar Capacity In California, Capacity Utilization, and Solar Energy Production.

[NNadir]

This post, about solar energy in California, is rather similar to the one I wrote yesterday about Wind Energy in California, with some differences. The remarks on nuclear energy capacity utilization are repeated verbatim here, but as California is one of the rare places where solar energy produces more energy than wind energy, I will compare the total energy produced by solar means in California, with the total energy demand of the State, using the figures from 2019, since these are the most recent available.

Accessed today (7/28/21), the amount of energy consumed by California in 2019, for all purposes, was 7082 trillion BTU according to the EIA Web Page devoted to California. I will use SI units throughout the rest of this post. The SI unit of energy is the Joule (J), and the prefix "Peta" (P) refers to 10 raised to the 15th power, and "Exa" (E) to 10 raised to the 18th power.

A BTU = 1055 J. Thus California's Energy Consumption in 2019 was 7.472 EJ.

In 2019, total US energy consumption was 106 EJ

As of this writing, 17:02 (5:02) PDT 7/28/21, California is under an electrical energy alert:

CAISO Grid Restricted Maintenance Operations [202102558]

The California ISO is declaring CAISO Grid RESTRICTED MAINTENANCE OPERATION for the period
from 07/27/2021 12:00 through 07/28/2021 21:00.

Reason:
The ISO is anticipating high loads and temperatures across t|he CAISO Grid. Transmission Operators and Generation Operato|rs will be contacted if any currently scheduled outages need| to be cancelled or revised.

Refer to the ISO System Emergency Fact Sheet (http://www.caiso.com/Documents/SystemAlertsWarningsandEmergenciesFactSheet.pdf)
for additional detail.

Restricted Maintenance Operations, as detailed in ISO Operating Procedure
4420, will be in effect.

Market Participants are cautioned to avoid actions which may
jeopardize generator and/or transmission availability.

Monitor system conditions on Today's Outlook (http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx)
and check with local electric utilities for additional information.

Notice issued at: 07/23/2021 12:34

California's energy demand peak will occur just about at the time the sun is going down. At that time, solar energy will be essentially useless.

The data in the table in post comes from a web page of the California Energy Commission in table to which one can scroll down on this page: Solar PV and Solar Thermal Electricity Production (Annual Totals; Includes Imports)

I have imported the table into Excel, and then did some calculations using this data. Solar plant power ratings, which are often cited by advocates of this form of energy which has failed spectacularly to address climate change after half a century of cheering, are cited as peak power, which is the maximal power the turbine would manage under perfect windy conditions, which in practice are never observed.

It is dishonest - not that anyone cares anymore about dishonesty - to represent a solar plant, which is dependent on whims of weather as well as the time of day as a plant that can, in theory run continuously at full power, such as a gas plant or a coal plant, or even a plant of a type that has been observed to run at 100% (or better) of capacity, something observed only in nuclear plants.

For example, one can find the capacity utilization of all of the nuclear reactors operating in the United States as of 2020 here: EIA Nuclear Energy Page by clicking on the 2020P Excel File in the table on the right. Of 94 nuclear reactors operating the in the United States in 2020, 70 operated at 90% capacity utilization or better, and of these, 24 operated at 100% of capacity or more. Five operated at capacity utilization of less than 80%. One of these was Diablo Canyon reactor #2, which operated at 74.8% of capacity, apparently for refueling and maintenance. It produced 7,348,123 MWh of electricity, or 26.5 PetaJoules of electricity (0.0265 EJ) in one small building. Diablo Canyon #2 operated at 90.4% capacity utilization, producing 8,910,575 MWh of electricity, or 32.1 PetaJoules, or (0.0321 EJ).

In the table below, I have included a theoretical amount of energy that solar plants would produce if they operated at 100% of capacity utilization, using the SI unit of energy, the Joule. I have also converted the power actually produced from MWh to Joule in order to calculate the ratio of the latter to the former to give capacity utilization. I have then calculated the average continuous power of all the solar plants in California, by the number of seconds in a sidereal year, 86400 seconds/day*365.24 days/year = 31,556,736 seconds. This gives the average power in Watts, but the spreadsheet divides this number by 1,000,000 to give a MW. Theoretically, ignoring the inherent lumpiness in wind power which produces what it produces without respect to demand, this gives a feel for the capacity of a nuclear powerplant that could produce more energy than all the solar plants in California. The next two columns give the growth or decline in name plate capacity compared to the previous year, as well the growth or decline in actual energy produced by all the solar plants in California.

I have also included a column for the size of a putative plant, operating at 100% capacity utilization, that would represent the growth in solar energy output, which has increased monotonically since 2007. For example, building a small 100 MW power plant of any type, would match the increase in solar power output from 2019 to 2020. This too, is misleading, since solar plants do not produce energy - in fact the wires connected to them draw power out of the grid, at night. Thus solar plants always require a redundant system to back it up. The fantasy - and it is certainly not a clean fantasy since battery production is neither environmentally benign nor sustainable - is that batteries can deal with this issue. As a practical matter, however, it is dangerous natural gas combustion, with the waste dumped directly into the waste dump, the planetary atmosphere, that is the redundant system.

The table of California's Solar Energy performance in the 21st century:



Comparison of the total production of all of the solar installations in the State of California with the State's overall energy demand, as well as the sum of all solar energy produced in the 21st century by this popular form of energy:



In this entire century, from 2001 to 2020, all of the solar facilities in California, the state having the largest solar capacity in the United States, have not produced even one exajoule of energy, this on a planet where humanity is consuming each year about 600 exajoules of energy.

By the way, I moved to California three times in my life, the first being in 1974. I left the State for good in 1993. The whole time I lived there, everyone was cheering, myself included, for an expected solar energy nirvana. It's not like California was producing just 1.58% of its energy by solar means when people began cheering for it. On the contrary, it's after half a century of cheering.

Some people, myself included, think that the outbreak of massive fires on the West Coast of the United States, as well as in many other parts of the world, Siberia, Sardinia, Australia, etc...etc...etc... ad nauseum are related from climate change.

This should - although it won't - produce some dose of reality about how effective all this cheering, endless cheering, for a putative solar nirvana has been at addressing climate change.

The Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant, due to shut because of appeals to fear and ignorance, has been producing today, in California, between 2,262 and 2,267 MW of electricity reliably all day long in two small buildings, the footprint of which, including its parking lot, is about 12 acres of land, located on a 700 acre plot of land that is mostly undisturbed marine chaparral. In terms of average continuous power, two such plants could produce more energy, more reliably, and more predictably, than all of the solar energy facilities in the State of California as well as solar plants in neighboring states that export electricity to California.

The Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant is something of an antique, having been designed around 1970's technology. Its thermodynamic efficiency is around 33%.

I was telling my son, who visited briefly yesterday, about a path, via heat networks, by which the thermal efficiency of a nuclear plant with a slightly larger foot print, might achieve or approach efficiencies of approximately 80%, via a network of Brayton, reverse Allam, thermochemical hydrogen production, supercritical water, and rankine cycles, all run off the same heat stream, albeit not necessarily in this order. The little brat engineer found this argument credible.

By the way, if one spends a lot of time reading the primary scientific literature about displacing the chemicals obtained by using fossil fuels utilizing putative solar thermal plants, like the one at Ivanpah in California, which fries birds in flight, about 6,000 per year. There are thousands upon thousands of papers about solar furnace liquid fuel production published, too many in fact to count. The only chemical energy produced by Ivanpah is the chemical energy available from the combustion of charred birds.

The poor performance of the Ivanpah plant, which sometimes ends up burning dangerous natural gas to improve it's poor performance, may account for the years in which California's solar capacity utilization fell below 20%.

These papers are not, however, useless. They are probably structured the way they are to appeal to popular enthusiasm, insipid popular enthusiasm, but nonetheless real popular enthusiasm, for solar energy to get research grants. The heat source need not be solar however. Nuclear heat is more reliable, and more environmentally sustainable, since it is continuously and reliably available. Continuous processes are almost always economically and environmentally superior to batch or discontinuous processes.

I regard opposition to nuclear energy as morally and intellectually equivalent to opposition to Covid vaccines. Both kill people by appeal to popular ignorance.

Solar energy has not addressed or even slowed climate change; it is not addressing or slowing climate change; it will not address or slow climate change. It may be time to wake up.

The rate of climate change is climbing not falling. It is worse than ever. People are literally dying in the streets from excessive heat.

That's a fact. Facts matter.

Have a nice day tomorrow.

[jpak]

1. This isn't science

This is koo koo

Yup

[mopinko]

2. i believe you make a major error lumping large capacity renewable w distributed distribution systems

imho, the true promise of renewables lies in small scale projects, not massive installations.

i just got solar on my rooftop, and also just converted the heat and added air in the form of a heat pump to a 2 flat that i own. i intend to power this w solar.
i spent about $40k for 8.5 kws. i think. 27 panels on a 1000 sq ft roof.
i will get about half of that back in fed, state and com ed credits.

this is especially smart in my rental properties, as a heated/cooled unit goes for $5-700 a month more. so, i sink $20k in solar, and $15k in the new system, and the pay back is $5-700/mo. times 2, cuz it's a 2 flat.
i have a single family house that is all gas, but if i invested about $15k, i could provide elec for those tenant's personal use, and charge about $150/mo, but about $250 in summer months to run the air. the tenant pays now. all w com ed's meter.


tho on my house, i will generate more than i need now, it means i can expand my indoor growing for my farm.
i also intend to add elec on demand hot water, and if i generate enough, i might put a booster on my new high efficiency gas heat.

the panels have a 40 yr warranty. even if performance dips, they will pay for themselves sooooo easily.
and no need for storage, or worry if the sun doesnt shine. i'm on a smart grid.
i dont use a lot of juice at night. neither do most people.
com ed doesnt need to build new nukes if more people like me produce their own power.


and at no point will there be a release of toxic radiation. nor will lake michigan, water supply for millions, be polluted.
yes, there are byproducts that need to be dealt w, and mining that needs be done.
but compared to uranium mining, and disposing of decommissioned plants, not to mention the environmental costs of the concrete for a nuke plant, the math is plain.

i respect your opinion, i just think you are flat wrong, and behind the times.

[NNadir]

3. Thanks for the bean counting, but...

...the reality is that your unreliable systems are expensive for all future generations.

The main reason doesn't have to do whether you personally make money; rather it has to do with the entire damned planet, which, in case you haven't noticed, is on fire.

You may think I'm a naïve fool, who hasn't spent more than 4 decades hearing this nonsense, but I assure you I am not.

First of all, and most importantly, if your rental properties catch fire because the solar energy fantasy has failed, dramatically and obviously and spectacularly to address climate change, your 40 year warranty won't mean shit.

I spent part of my evening last night reading about stress fractures in silicon. You?

Try some of these papers:

Strain dependent effect on power degradation of CIGS thin film solar cell (Solar Energy 195 (2020) 121–128)

Corrosion growth of solar cells in modules after 15 years of operation (Solar Energy 205 (2020) 409–431)

Modelling and experimental investigations of microcracks in crystalline silicon photovoltaics: A review (Renewable Energy 145 (2020) 2387-2408)

There are thousands, upon thousands, upon thousands of such papers published every year, on the topic of LCA, "Life cycle analysis."

But one doesn't have to give a shit about the scientific literature to see where the solar fantasy has got us: I've been hearing this crap for half a century, and was once stupid enough to take it seriously. The fact is - and facts matter - that 50 years of people telling me about how much money they make with their trivial little future electronic waste on the roofs has still left us with a planet where the concentration of dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide hit 420 ppm, less than ten years after it first hit 400 ppm.

As for "juice at night," rather than wave your hands with wishful thinking, it might do to look at actual data which is available in real time here: The CAISO Demand Page. As of this writing, one can read that the electricity demand peak in California on July 28, 2021, was at 17:54 PDT (5:54 PM PDT), 41,280 MW, when the solar output of the entire state of California was producing 7,616 MW and falling by 100 MW every 5 minutes. At this minute, solar is producing 480 MW of power, while demand is 39,360 MW, more than 6000 MW higher than it was when solar peaked today at 11:25 at 12,163 MW.

Right now California is producing 24,335 MW of electricity by burning dangerous natural gas and dumping the waste directly into the planetary atmosphere, where is accumulating at rate that should disturb anyone who gives a rat's ass about humanity.

If one doesn't give a rat's ass, they can tell us all about their solar subsidies.

If electricity becomes worthless at noon during the summer solstice, this will impact the O&M costs of the necessary gas plants and reduce their economic viability. That cost won't fall on people collecting subsidies for rich people. It will be a subsidy paid by poor people, and maybe people who are tenants.

Unless you are aware of the energy to mass ratio of solar junk, you are merely assuming that it is non-toxic, which effectively is simply hand waving, and frankly, wrong.

Solar junk will all be electronic waste, already an intractable problem, involving not tens of thousands of tons, but millions upon millions of tons of distributed garbage, because the energy to mass ratio of electronic cells is extremely, extremely, extremely poor.

I am really, really, really, really tired of people complaining about uranium mining, since it is very clear to anyone paying attention, that the uranium already mined, plus the thorium dumped in lanthanide mines for so called "renewable energy" which despite half a century of cheering has failed to address climate change, is sufficient to power all of the world's energy demand for centuries, without a single fucking energy mine running anywhere. The energy density of plutonium is over 80 trillion joules per kg.

The failure of all this solar and wind junk to prevent the use of dangerous fossil fuels is responsible for about 6 to 7 million deaths per year:

Here is the most recent full report from the Global Burden of Disease Report, a survey of all causes of death and disability from environmental and lifestyle risks: Global, regional, and national comparative risk assessment of 79 behavioural, environmental and occupational, and metabolic risks or clusters of risks, 1990–2015: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2015 (Lancet 2016; 388: 1659–724) One can easily locate in this open sourced document compiled by an international consortium of medical and scientific professionals how many people die from causes related to air pollution, particulates, ozone, etc.

Why don't you look through this comprehensive document and tell me about all the people who died from uranium.

Anyone, and I do mean anyone who complains about mining while worshipping so called "renewable energy" is simply the equivalent of a Republican stating "blue lives matter" while beating the shit out of cops with a flagpole on the steps of the US Capitol.

The solar industry is not sustainable if for no other reason, it's dependence on vast amounts of metals and the requirement for redundancy, requiring two systems to do that one reliable system can do.

I find these little anecdotal bourgeois "my solar system is wonderful" accounts to be tiresome, and frankly rather oblivious. We have vast fires all around the planet, major bodies of water drying up, people dying in the streets from heat exhaustion, the collapse of major ecosystems, and you want to tell me about your solar cell warranty?

Thanks, but no thanks.

I'm paying attention, and have nothing more to say to anyone who isn't.

This is not about your bank account. It's about humanity.

[Scrivener7]

7. Are you ever civil? Just curious. If your vaunted expertise makes you unwilling to

converse with others, why post?

Why not seek a place where there are people who can talk to you at your esoteric level? If you can find one.

[mopinko]

8. thank you.

i alerted, but there is a lot to wade through before you get to the insults.
i dont know why i bother.

[Scrivener7]

9. This always seemed to me to be some kind of game.

[mopinko]

10. it's not rational conversation, that's for sure.

i give up. i figure he must know something that i would like to know. he might.
i'll never find out, tho.

[Scrivener7]

11. It is always aimed at nuclear being the only cat's pajamas. Which... no.

[mopinko]

12. as someone who lives about 40 miles from a closed, rotting nuke plant

which sits on the water supply of MILLIONS, lake michigan, yeah no more nukes.
it's not just the mining, tho that is the part nn hears.

i have a bigger peeve w all the concrete. i used to work construction. i know how thick those reactor walls are. concrete is one of the dirtiest things on the planet.
and you cant cry about steel for turbines, if you arent weighing all the steel in those walls. it's not insignificant.
i'm all for clear eyed, cradle to grave analysis of any energy source. yes, there is a lot of silicon on my roof. and aluminum rails. the magic power fairies did NOT drop in on my roof from heaven.

but i am very well aware of the fact that the planet is burning. it's why i run my farm to way i do, no matter how many people dont like this bit of wild in the middle of the block. (more do, just to be clear. but there's alway 1 or 2, ask any urban farmer.)
in fact, those rare detractors get just those word- i smell the planet burning, do you?
then i tell them how and why they should kill their lawns.

and com ed is chipping in on this. enough people who power their own shit, and they might not need the next nuke plant. they are pushing it fairly hard.
it's not like i even have the choice of doing nothing. comed is so hooked up, they get what they want. i have a chance to get away from those dirty bastards, and that's a plus, too.
i.just.cant.do.nothing. not when i have the resources to do otherwise.

comed's nuke plants will be on fire long before my stone house. that this is good for my bottom line matters, but it isnt why i did it. in fact, i did not even sit down and really demand all the numbers. whether i come out at the end of the life cycle, it doesnt matter. what matters is i could be a producer instead of a 'useless eater' on the gird.
i feel obliged to invest in that. i have kids. i have a huge family w little ones that get this place when we are all gone.
doing nothing is just not an option.

[John ONeill]

17. Why Nnadir is right

If you look at this site showing, as an example, the electricity production and associated greenhouse gas emissions of Kyushu island in Japan, as determined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, you will see that the CO2 emissions per kilowatt hour for solar are about four times higher than for nuclear ( 45 grams/kwh, versus 11 for nuclear.) If you scroll down a bit to the graph showing electricity consumption for the last 24 hours, though, you can see the real strike against solar. Kyushu gets 30 to 40 % of its power from nuclear ALL DAY, while solar has a bell-shaped curve, where it makes up to about 45 % at noon, declining steeply to zero a few hours later. '?' makes the rest, '?' being, of course, gas and coal. A modern society can no more function without 24 hour power than a mammal can live without breathing, and if the power sources promoted by solar fantasists only work 20% of the time, fossil fuels will pretty much everywhere make up the difference. https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/JP-KY?wind=false&solar=false

[mopinko]

18. i'm still on the grid, but

i have the most power at peak need. it is this peak need that drives both building new plants and pressing dirtier plants into production.
and there are these battery things. also far from perfect, but since i'm connected, i wont get one.

i'm under no illusions that solar can power the world. but i can be a producer instead of just a consumer.

but please explain how solar panels emit co2. i was not aware that was a thing.

[hunter]

19. There's some interesting work being done with concrete formulation.

Currently concrete is made by heating up certain rocks using fossil fuels, turning the carbonates in these rocks to carbon dioxide which is vented into the atmosphere along with the carbon dioxide from the burning fossil fuels. This rock is then crushed to a powder and mixed with fly ash from coal power plants.

That's a lot of carbon dioxide, from both the fossil fueled cement plants and the coal power plants.

As concrete sets it reabsorbs some carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but not near so much as was released manufacturing it.

Conceivably we could manufacture concrete, other structural materials, and transportation fuels using nuclear power. Rocks could be heated using nuclear power and the carbon dioxide captured. This captured carbon dioxide could be turned into various additional structural materials and fuel using additional nuclear energy.

The net result would be concrete and fuels with net zero carbon dioxide emissions.

The greatest problem with nuclear energy is that it works. We could use nuclear energy to increase the human population and turn all that's left of the natural environment into automobiles, roads, parking lots, and big box stores. For a time, even here on DU, I thought that was a fairly good reason to oppose nuclear power. I've also quipped here that if I knew the secret to cheap fusion energy I wouldn't tell anyone.

My greatest fear is that humans, given a safe nearly unlimited energy source, will eat the earth. We'll turn the entire biosphere into more humans.

With the human population approaching 8 billion people "renewable energy" can't sustain us all; humanity has become too dependent on highly concentrated energy sources.

If we don't quit fossil fuels billions of us are going to suffer, starve, and die as a consequence of global warming.

If we do quit fossil fuels without a roughly equivalent concentrated energy source then billions of us are going to suffer, starve, and die

Wind and solar can't entirely displace fossil fuels for the simple reason that the wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always shine. Generally natural gas is burned to fill in the gaps. Burning any amount of natural gas is bad.

We've worked ourselves into a corner. Nuclear energy is the only technology capable of displacing fossil fuels entirely.

Natural gas power systems, supplemented by solar and wind energy, are not going to save the world.

Personally, I don't have any antipathy to solar power on rooftops or over parking lots. My own neighborhood is possibly a net exporter of electricity whenever the sun is shining. Our schools have solar panels over their parking lots and shaded playground areas, I can park under solar panels as I do my grocery shopping, and at least a quarter of my neighbors have solar panels on their roofs. There are solar panels on the rooftops of the big box stores.

I dislike wind and solar developments on previously undisturbed land. It strikes me as a sort of "we had to destroy the village in order to save it" mentality.

For all that we worry about nuclear waste, there are far greater volumes of equally toxic industrial wastes that have a half-life of forever polluting our environment.

There have been plenty of industrial accidents worse than Chernobyl but nobody pays as much attention to them because they don't make a Geiger counter tick. At Fukushima the worst environmental toxins spread about by the tsunami had nothing to do with the nuclear power.

I was a radical anti-nuclear activist when I was young. At one point I met Helen Caldicott , I was there when Jerry Brown made his "No new nukes!" speech at a Diablo Canyon protest, and I was frequently hanging out with some prominent anti-nuclear activists that I won't name. I spent a lot of time on the road between San Onofre and Humboldt. (I was pretty good at minor trespasses and dumpster diving...)

I've changed my mind about nuclear power. Fossil fuels are the far greater threat.

This reply is a bit of a ramble, maybe because I'm a bit disturbed. I've been out in the Sierra foothills of California and the water situation isn't like anything I've ever seen. It's so dry! There are posters up at the grocery stores offering state assistance to low income people whose wells have gone dry. There's only a few inches of water in my favorite skinny-dipping spot. Usually at this time of year it's still deep enough to float in.

Driving across the Central Valley (Trump Land!) didn't improve my mood. The farmers there seem to think building more dams will make the water come. They only have to look at Lake Mead or Lake Powell, which capture all the water flowing down the Colorado River, to see how that turns out. Both lakes are about 1/3 capacity. This is almost certainly a symptom of global warming.

Yeah, I know I'm burning fossil fuels to travel. I am a hypocrite. I've burned more than my fair share of fossil fuels in my lifetime, not so much as some, but still quite a bit. I remember when I could fill the tank of my little Toyota for less than an hour's wages. Gas was almost free!

Now I've lived long enough to see the consequences of that.

[mopinko]

20. pretty much right there w ya. there is no single answer.

i was so heartened to see attenborough's 'a life on our planet'
it actually ends on a quite optimistic note.
i've done a lot of things in my life to tread lightly, but i guess i blew that having 5 kids. tho, they are aware. i dont think any of them will have more than 1, and 2 already cant.

but my farm alone has sequestered the carbon of 30 mature trees, and is a bit of wild in the city.
i'm a cheapskate who has never had a new car, and rarely new clothes.
sir david's note is that we now have a good handle on what sustainable means. it means give 1/3 to nature, and get out of the way. fisheries and wetland rehab has shown this ratio to work.

the language has changed a lot in the 9 yrs i've been doing this. it was permaculture, regenerative ag, and now- rewilding. this is what i did because it's how i roll.

i'm happy to hear that about concrete. coal ash is a pet peeve of mine, so happy to hear they can use it in concrete. but as someone who did ceramic art, i can tell you that it is useful shit left to pollute.

[NNadir]

13. Um, um, um...

...about as civil as I can be when 19,000 people die every day from air pollution because we don't use nuclear energy as a result of bourgeois misinformation.

19,000 people per day is more people than have died from Covid on its worst day.

I think I made it perfectly clear that I regard anti-vax and-anti-nukes with the same brush.

There are lots and lots of people who get it, even if people cowering in corners elevating a single death from radiation over seven million per year from air pollution don't.

I support what I say with references to the scientific literature. If it upsets anyone, well I can't help that. In this country hatred of science has yet to peak.

Ignorance kills people, something brutally clear in recent times, not just with Covid, but with energy as well.

If I offend you by stating facts, you are free to ignore me.

We have a swell "ignore" button at DU.

There is no reason to read what I say, if for instance you've made up your mind up that nuclear energy is "too dangerous" but "climate change isn't "too dangerous."

Over the decades, I've heard lots of this rhetoric and yes, it offends me powerfully.

There are of course people who swear that vaccines are "too dangerous" as well, and I certainly wouldn't expect them to enjoy my writings either.

Have a nice day.

[Scrivener7]

14. So I guess that's a "no."

[NNadir]

15. Take it as you wish.

I try my best to be civil to people I respect, and there are many such people at DU, but obviously have difficulties with, say, the type of person who complains to scientist about bringing scientific expertise to a science forum.

Again, if this approach to me being unable to appreciate the difficulty I confess to having in not being nice with respect to people who excuse 19,000 air pollution deaths per day because "Fukushima!!!" I would advise them that the "ignore" function is their friend.

All one needs to do is click on my name in this post, and click on "full ignore."

I use this button for the most oblivious people all the time. It works great, and helps me avoid spending too much time confronting the type of insistent ignorance we see on the far right, and regrettably - albeit more rarely - on our side of the political spectrum as well.

As I find myself wasting time now engaging in an exchange of no merit, I'll try that button myself to assure myself it still works well.

Have a happy life wallowing in graciousness.

[Scrivener7]

16. Buh bye.

[cstanleytech]

4. Seems like solar would be more useful for remote areas where running

electrical lines to the main grid would not be feasible.

[NNadir]

6. It's probably fine in esoteric settings, road signs, etc...

...but given its external costs, it's use should be minimized.

It is not a viable source of industrial energy, however, and has proved worse than useless in addressing climate change, since it has soaked up huge resources for no measurable result.