The punishment for crimes these active police officers commit, especially those that are not accidental and a direct result of trying to enforce the law, must be DOUBLE that of a civilian.

Breaking public trust should be a separate crime with mandatory charges.

Solar panels do not produce nameplate capacity because of clouds, rain, snow, and nighttime. So, we have to build significantly more 'capacity' (GW) in order to produce the amount of energy we actually consume over time (GWh). Naturally, this is why energy storage is so important.

Your math is wrong in other ways too, because you are assuming that in the future we will be consuming the same amount of electricity as we are consuming today. That's pretty silly, since today we are only beginning to electrify buildings, manufacturing, and transportation. In order to do that, we will need additions of 3,000 GW of capacity each year.

You should probably never comment on anything, ever again.

Forecasts for the production of photovoltaic panels are showing continued exponential growth over the next decade. The "economies of volume" are at play, according to Silicon Valley venture capitalist-turned solar entrepreneur Bill Nussey. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is expected to lead to the installation of 950 million solar modules.

15 to 20 years ago, the world did not have 5 TW of plant generation capacity. Unstable polysilicon prices lead to major drama in the solar industry, earning solar stocks the moniker "the solar coaster". But in the wake of bankruptcies and lawsuits, China's manufacturing power took the industry by storm, driving the per-watt price of polysilicon down over 96%.

Today, with the IRA as a catalyst, domestic manufacturing and installations are expected to double every few years, and continue doubling. As long as we can build the required storage, intermittent wireless fusion power will soon be able to power the entire globe.

New estimates for the world's total solar power installations in 2022 range from 230-300 GW, blowing the doors off projections made late last year.

Manufacturing capacity has exploded in the past year and is expected to continue rapidly scaling-up through 2023. Factories could produce as much as 500 GW of solar modules next year. For perspective, it is estimated that the world's total solar capacity reached 1000 GW only 9 months ago, in March of 2022

The article briefly interviews Jenny Chase of BloombergNEF:

pv magazine USA: What most surprised analysts about 2022? Where did we go wrong?

Honestly, China was the biggest upset as usual, and we’re not even totally sure the final number will be our 126GW(DC) current estimate (our estimate was below 100GW for most of the year). However, the modules have got to be going somewhere in Q4. Also Europe has bought over 70 GW of modules from China, though we do not believe it has installed much more than 42GW yet.

Recently, you mentioned that projections beyond 300 GW to 400 GW a year before the end of the decade are tough to make, because even if we can manufacture such a large quantity – where are the national programs and power grids to connect it to?

Honestly, I just can’t bully the local analysts for the individual markets which haven’t already got a lot of solar into forecasting transformative growth. You need new markets to hit 1 TW/year, but progress has been slow – not nonexistent, but slow – in places like Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and parts of southeast Asia (but not Vietnam). There aren’t national programs in these places (at least not ones I trust to do anything, looking at you Saudi Arabia) and often the solar will need to support the grid rather than just connecting to it.

One of the only requirements to grow weed commercially in MA was to prove you had access to a lot of cash, like a couple hundred thousands dollars if my memory is working properly.

And I'm sorry, but they are still selling enormous volume. It may have gotten a lot cheaper (I have seen $120/oz for pre-ground flower) but they are still making money hand over fist. While they now worry about 'where's the bottom' of the market, several years of insane profit taking have gone by. If they already blew all that money they made, that's their problem. Welcome to capitalism, dispensary moguls.

Researchers at MIT have been developing assembling robots that are made up of the same components they use to build structures. The small subunits of robots can move on their own and in large numbers to build much larger structures, quickly accomplishing large-scale assemblies.

Now that the robots can build themselves/each other, the team is working on strengthening the physical connections that make up the robots, so that they can withstand heavier loads.

These autonomous building techniques will be particularly useful in dangerous and hard to access environments like space, deep ocean, etc.

It is very much the opposite.

Vibrant Clean Energy (VCE) has proposed a ~210 line underground high-voltage DC transmission line network, with underwater lines along coastlines, which would improve the efficiency of electricity distribution across the US.

In the lowest cost scenario, solar capacity is expected to exceed 830 GW and wind capacity is expected to exceed 1130 GW, by 2050.

The colossal transmission system would cost only $400B if financed over 30 years at 3%, which would result in a cost of $7.5 per MWh, enabling extremely low electricity costs of $25/MWh. (That's $0.025/KWh)

I post about my interests, which include playing trombone, riding motorcycles, designing kit cars, and keeping up with renewable energy and related technologies. Sometimes I post in r/politics. I started r/agrivoltaics because of my combined interest in farming and solar.

When I wrote this submission statement I had just finished reading the article, and so I quickly summarized it. The facts look like an advertisement because they are flattering to Jerchen's PEG racking system. That's how facts work. I do not personally know or care about anyone at Jurchen, and if their racking system had blown away, we would have all been reading about that instead.

I absolutely did not 'admit' any such thing.

You have no idea what you are talking about, or how to use units, and you're acting like a jerk. Now you're blocked. 😘

MWh is in the article. (as KWh/KW/year)

Your math is funny, you didn't even try to account for the price of a tracker, and yet you have a final number on costs?

FYI, the price of a solar panel is NOT the same as the price of installed, interconnected solar project. Panel pricing has come down so aggressively over the last decade that it is considerably cheaper per MWh to install more panels than to operate trackers. Labor is a significant factor in solar projects, and most trackers take more labor to install as well as never ending O&M.

(There are a couple of recently developed single-axis trackers that might tip the scale the other way, but MOST tracking hardware is silly expensive)

If you had read the article, instead of reacting to the title, you would have learned that dense panel fitment is actually a way to protect against severe weather AND take advantage of limited land, both top concerns for islands in the Caribbean.

Jurchen Technology's PEG racking system is not just cheaper and lighter than most, it's also incredibly resistant to high winds because it is low to the ground and because there is no space between panels, so extremely high winds are less likely to damage the racking and panels.

As hurricane Ian passed by Cuba as a category 3 hurricane, winds whipped over a solar facility that was currently under construction, miraculously damaging none of the panels or racking despite 120mph winds.

The ultra dense PEG racking covers 97% of the ground it is installed on, with a capacity factor of 0.74 MW per acre. For comparison, a solar tracking facility has a capacity factor of 0.2 MW per acre. Now that solar panels are cheaper, it typically makes sense to choose a dense ground-mount racking system, rather than invest in solar trackers.

LOL what the fuck, first you didn't understand units of measurement, now you don't understand taxes and government funding? G'bye.

One must understand units and context to differentiate between these two.

¢/kWh is a measure the price of a unit of electrical energy, a "kilowatt-hour". That unit is equivalent to 1000W for one hour, or 500W for two hours, etc.

Pennies per watt is a unit describing the amount of money it takes to build a solar panel. At a (subsidized) 2¢/watt, a "400W solar panel" will cost 800¢ ($8.00). When manufacturers label a solar panel as having a certain number of watts, they are referring to the panel's capacity to produce electricity. A 400W panel in direct sunlight will produce approximately 400W. At night, it will produce 0W.

Due to a combination of subsidies for manufacturing and project tax credits, the United States could see solar and wind PPAs signed at prices below 1¢/kWh. PPAs below $0 have happened before (in Portugal), however, they are still the exception the the rule.

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) will pay solar panel manufacturers up to 18¢/W to manufacture solar modules. Every part of the panel is subsidized - the poly silicon, wafers, cells, and modules. The Production Tax Credit, worth 2.6¢/kWh, pays out (inflation adjusted!) for 10 years after a project is constructed. And that 2.6¢/kWh will increase ~33% for modules manufactured domestically, and an additional ~33% for projects built in solar energy communities (energy communities are brownfields & other sites where coal/oil/NG were burned after Dec 1, 1999)

When we combine the cheap IRA solar panels with the PTC, that's when we see domestic solar power PPAs signed for $0/kWh or below.

One consequence of the subsidized pricing - Credit Suisse predicts that the United States could become a net exporter of solar modules to the global market.