Iceland is a hot spot geology. So it doesn’t need to do that much to tap into geothermal power. It has to deal with volcanoes however.
Taiwan isn’t geologically ideal for geothermal because Taiwan has a subduction zone geology. That means earthquake is a bigger problem than say volcanoes. Not to say there isn’t any, but it’s mostly extinct or dormant volcanoes. That means you have to drill DEEP to get usable geothermal power.
Yes I realize Beitou has hot springs but it clearly isn’t hot enough to drive a turbine.
Anything as complex as a nationwide energy-generation system can’t be boiled down to simplistic charts. Each implentation is, of necessity, completely ad-hoc, and the costs can vary wildly depending on various design decisions, the unique problems that are being addressed, and the unique (fortuitous) characteristics of the country in question. It’s not as simple as saying “This structure X costs $N to build and this other structure Y costs 1/10th of that, therefore X is better”. It just doesn’t work like that. If structure Y doesn’t solve your problem in an optimal fashion - or doesn’t solve it at all - it’s a boondoggle, not a cost saving.
I’ll give you a concrete example. My farm is in the middle of bloody nowhere in a third-world country. If I wanted to power company to install a cable, they’d charge me $300 (which would, in reality, be 10% of the actual cost, the remainder being subsidized via sky-high per-kW prices). I would then spend the rest of my existence cursing their pisspoor service and their extortionate bills. Or, I could spend $1000, and have free PV power for at least the next 20 years.
To me, that’s a no-brainer decision, and the same economic logic would apply to all of my neighbours. In fact it could be done by a small private corporation or co-operative, apart from the uncomfortable fact that the power company is owned by the governor and managed by his little friends. Any such enterprise would therefore be shut down, probably via the judicious application of bullets to heads.
So yeah, I’m not a big fan of the idea of large projects lifting people out of poverty. The stumbling blocks aren’t quite where they appear to be.
I see where you are coming from, but I think teams of engineers with supercomputers can probably find a workable large scale solution that keeps the green premium acceptable. I also think your power requirements are a bit lower than average compared to the top 16%, where everyone deserves to live.
This does have potential, but as usual it requires a fair bit of understanding to successfully integrate solar panels with plants.
I think I would have spaced the panels more widely to get variable shadowing as the sun moves across the sky, and I would be inclined to use it for managed pasture. I have successfully grown all sorts of things in deep shade, under trees, but the best place for putting PV panels is on land that doesn’t have excellent fertility or is otherwise unsuitable for crops; and that would imply pasture. Animals benefit from shade probably more than plants do. You could periodically plant some demanding plants to capture excess fertility deposited by the animals (which you would want to rotate through paddocks), or you could intercrop shrubs between the panels to perform the same function.
I’m not sure if “deserving” anything comes into the equation. Power consumption lags prosperity. Everyone in my area (those who are in the residental areas and connected to the grid) could theoretically burn 50kWh a day if they wanted to, just like Americans. But they don’t, because (a) they can’t afford to and (b) they don’t need to.
Ecept taiwan, as predicted, has done an astonishingly HORRIBLE job at this! I have met with a few farmers that were interested in actually making money instead of.just sucking the teet of the taiwanese wellfare state and.built the solar farms different.a simple
Example is how short they nake the panels, making ffarming inceedibly difficult and inneficeint to the point the land now is a negative towards our already serious food security crisis in taiwan.
A smallchane and abit more money in concrete and rebar vuild posts taller allowing peoppeople and.vehicles to go under. Lots of craps van grow well in shade. The best examples should.be muahroom farms in my.opinion.
The places where the land is literally.sinking due to constant abuse of the water table and the obvious aftermath of salinity in the soil are now also being built up with more solar fields. at least that farmland is trash and we arent losing much.
Either way, typical outcome intaiwan is spe.ding lots of money, hiring monkey consultants and fucking everything up. They will be either abandoned in 10 years or redone when new grants and government projects become available (wellfare state). Taiwan has everything at iits finger tips, we the people choose to be sub par. Honestly, our future is quite grim.
How about integrating PV and hydroponics and building them as high as possible. Could produce more food than on the ground alone I’d bet. Giant cities of agriculture supplying all the food we need, at least until a typhoon comes setting things back a bit.
Im neither positive or negative, its the reality. Its a pitty. Because as you say, that is one such good. That is something i have done it lot reseresearching and building, 3 dimensional farm and using.space more efficiently. All the resources, information and money is there just lacking motivation and foresight.
My personal experience is that nobody (policymakers etc) gives a rat’s ass about innovation. If you have something that works, then make it work and make some money out of it. All that will happen is that the neighbouring farmers will be jealous as hell and badmouth you. Not one person will come and say “hi, could you explain how you did that?”.
That is exactly right. Only thing is, that attitude isnt limited to farmers…
@CopyCat thats exactly what we are doing. But as we dont get free gov money or play the corruption game we pay everything out of pocket so its slower. In areas of pest control and nutrition we see farmers copying us, which is very satsifying. Electricity production is out of many farmers scope, thats usually a simple easy money thing like so many fake farmers programs here.
“Environmentalists can’t say climate change is an apocalyptic, unacceptable risk and then turn around and rule out the most obvious way of avoiding it, nuclear power. They’re not only inconsistent, they’re insincere.” — MIT climate scientist Kerry Emanuel
Yea you know I read an article somewhere that explained it clearly.
Basically Greens isn’t about environment, but often this is the argument they use to justify their action.
Greens is a political movement. A movement that shuns any centralized institutions or facilities. They favor decentralized means of production. That means small businesses, individually generated electricity, etc.
Unfortunately nuclear flies in the face of it. Basically you can’t do nuclear without big government or corporations, so even if it’s the cleanest and safest form of electrical generation, Greens will shun it. They’d rather people burn trees and logs to generate electricity than use nuclear.
None of the usual tricks get past the paywall, but it’s pretty clear a large portion of “greens” are happy to exclude nuclear so long as they keep receiving that good fossil fuel funding and the carbon industry is happy to do it because they know that without nuclear, they’ll be a big part of the future. Maybe some of the greens are betting on a DAC Hail Mary breakthrough or something, but I’m going to go with a combination of ignorance and pandering to that ignorance for the rest of it.
Well, there are stages. Wood, coal, oil, natural gas, then nuclear. You can’t really skip steps, as the economy has to rise with each stage in order to support the maintenance and such things.
