The transition

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Mr. Coffee said:
Oh, and I live in a snowy environment and snow falls off of a properly angled solar panel just peachy. It works even better if you angle it steeper for the winter months (as you should because the sun is lower in the sky in the winter).
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Perhaps you get snow, but you don't live in the mountains with tall old growth pine trees and mountain ridges. Literally no one in my community has solar panels on their roof.
 
An 800mw solar farm is being built in the UK, the website announces 120 thousand homes.
Its nonsense.
Its the plate rating, the actual dreadful reality is 15% generation factor further complicated by grid realities.

Those 'homes' are modelling ideals with impracticale heat management.

800mx is actually a 100 mw, which is about a 120 trucks worth of power over the year.
What am I supossed to do with reality
 
Mr. Coffee said:
I can buy this on alibaba, I can't buy an SMR online anywhere. Just saying:

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Solar Carports & Canopies: A Practical Solution

Solar carports and canopies turn parking areas into power generators. Independent Power designs and installs commercial solar structures.
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Those canopies would collapse under the snow load in a bad year where I live. Not that you could get a building permit to put it up in the first place. "structures must be engineered for snow loads that can exceed 150 pounds per square foot"
 
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RunForTheHills said:
That is all pie in the sky....
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such nonsense. it has literally been working on the ground in hundreds of places over the planet for decades now, and has accelerated sharply. california - the fourth largest economy in the world, GDP per capita over 100k, routinely produces more than half it's electricity from solar and of that, about HALF is from non-utility installations like residential roofs, commercial buildings, parking garages, and so on. 43 megawatts of total capacity, 20ish in a million (literally) small installations.

i believe texas is doing even better, but not sure what the breakdown is.

solar.JPG


california also has mountains (highest in the CONUS), wintery regions, deserts, cities with lots of AC, and lots and lots and lots of EVs.
 
RunForTheHills said:
Those canopies would collapse under the snow load in a bad year where I live. Not that you could get a building permit to put it up in the first place. "structures must be engineered for snow loads that can exceed 150 pounds per square foot"
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of course a structure needs to be designed for the site. go to switzerland, which is certainly a snowy, alpine place, where new roofs are required to have solar, usage is expanding rapidly (as it is basically everywhere), and no roofs or canopies are collapsing.
 
mschwett said:
california also has mountains (highest in the CONUS), wintery regions, deserts, cities with lots of AC, and lots and lots and lots of EVs.
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I live in the California mountains. No rooftop solar in my neighborhood, no AC, and the only EVs are people vacationing from down the hill. Over 7000 foot elevation. Some years we don't get much snow. Some years there are ten foot berms. At our elevation, the snow doesn't melt between storms. Sure, the desert and cities are totally different.
 
mschwett said:
of course a structure needs to be designed for the site. go to switzerland, which is certainly a snowy, alpine place, where new roofs are required to have solar, usage is expanding rapidly (as it is basically everywhere), and no roofs or canopies are collapsing.
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I've seen the roofs collapse on several homes in my community. Both Goodwin's Market and Jensen's had their roofs collapse three years ago during Snowmageddon. A couple of decades ago, we lost the public skating rink in Lake Arrowhead that my daughter skated at when their roof collapsed during a big snow. I thought you were an architect.

12904783_030223-kabc-md-crestline-snow-vid.jpg
 
There is land where nothing else can go such as old landfills. Old landfills dot the entire continent per 100.000 people. You can't build on it or grow crops. It is a natural for solar. Existing landfills have acreage that is already full with a smaller percentage that can still be worked. That unusable land can have solar. I get it about mountain shadows. Legacy landfills are always on the flatlands. The smoke is finally beginning to clear from a wildfire to the northwest. Record fires are still raging in Spain and France.
 
If you read my original statement, I said both solar and SMR projects are getting built. Solar and wind don't work everywhere and for every purpose, even with batteries.
 
You can put solar almost anywhere, but does it make sense to? Retired landfills make sense, as they are already clear cut and buildings cannot be built on them. However, many homes cannot accommodate them. Local zoning rules may not allow them. Homes on the north side of a hill will get a benefit, but what is the ROI? Homes surrounded by tall trees have the same issue. My last home was in a rural area surrounded by 90 foot white pines. I had a couple of solar companies stop by to give me a quote. Both were honest, and told me the only way rooftop solar would work would be to top the trees. If you know anything about white pines, if you take the top off, all that is left are trunks. The needles and cones are all at the top. So basically, my choices were to cut all the trees down, or set up an array on a steel pole in the middle of my back yard. No thanks. My current home is in a historic district where any solar must not be visible from the street. The front of my house faces southwest. It is also surrounded by 70 foot oaks and scrub pines. No thanks. To say that solar can be bought online and put anywhere is BS. Comparing SMR to solar on those terms is a ridiculous argument.

That won't stop politicians for jamming their renewable power down our throats, though.
 
Most of our travel takes us through Midwest agricultural areas many wind and solar installations. From an esthetics perspective, I don't mind wind turbines at all; graceful looking to me. Solar farms are downright offensive looking; some installations are miles long stretches of weed infested fields.

Neighbor across the street added solar to the east facing roof slope; can't be seen from the road. He does great 8 months of the year. Gets next to nothing for most of the other 4 months of the year; 4/12 roof slope is not conducive to snow sliding off. Another just added panels to west (street) side. Because of complexity of roof shape, looks like a hodge podge of panels randomly installed; ugly.
 
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stompandgo said:
Comparing SMR to solar on those terms is a ridiculous argument.
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I agree. You are comparing a product that does not yet exist with a product that works and you can purchase today.

This graph hammers it home hard:

Screen Shot 2026-08-01 at 7.10.47 AM.png

Source: https://ourworldindata.org/data-ins...-around-20-every-time-global-capacity-doubled

I quote from the above:

One of the most transformative changes in technology over the last few decades has been the massive drop in the cost of clean energy. Solar photovoltaic costs have fallen by 90% in the last decade, onshore wind by 70%, and batteries by more than 90%.

These technologies have followed a “learning curve” called Wright’s Law. This states that the cost of technology falls consistently as the cumulative production of that technology increases.

The chart shows the perfect example of this for solar power. This data comes from the International Renewable Agency, Greg Nemet, and Doyne Farmer & François Lafond.
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So a hypothetical SMR product isn't competing against what solar costs today, it is competing against what solar would cost five years from now. Which one can reasonably expect based on the obvious long-term trends to be around a third of what it costs today.

Based on those well-established long-term trends, many of the locations where solar is not feasible today will be in the coming years. And probably sooner that you'd expect. Exponential price drops have a way of doing that.

Note that batteries are on nearly the same insane cost curve.

A technology that is getting cheaper faster than its competition, and is also getting exponentially cheaper, will always win.

It is so terrible that we are being forced, obviously against our will, to purchase cheaper electricity. Oh how unjust and cruel this world can be...
 
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This is part of a project called LANDSCHOP in Falmouth. They have a 30 year lease with the town, which is the expected lifespan of the equipment. After that period, it is supposed to return to the town as conservation land. I won't be here in 30 years, but I bet the lease gets renewed. There is only 18% open space left here, and this is what they want to put on it.

That's something that the green advocates never talk about, the equipment lifespan. They talk about costs going down linearly, but that's just a projection, not a fact. Many things affect that cost curve.
 
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