Quote from: jojo69 on January 29, 2018, 04:41:18 AM

Quote from: STT on January 29, 2018, 03:49:28 AM

I thought Solar had become feasible now. Not far from my house there is a solar farm that is feeding an oil refinery pretty sure (ironic). Now the weird thing is where I live its not even that sunny but apparently they've produced something usable in a field for the factory, maybe because it can be placed so close. The solar farm is next to a school which a normal power station couldnt do.

I rate hydro power over solar but it needs further development. I also live a mile away from the worlds largest tidal range resource, they dont use it... So lots of waste and inefficiency remains sadly

My understanding, and I'm not claiming to be 100% up on the latest, things are changing all the time, is that photovoltaics have only become a net EROI positive in the last 2 years or so...just the panel itself. Then you have deployment and associated infrastructure. We are close, right around break even in a pure energy sense, but remember that PV manufacture has its own externalities. It is a hugely polluting endeavor utilizing, as I understand it, dubiously sourced rare earth minerals.

Hydro has its own issues, here in the US Pacific North West we have pretty much destroyed our anadromous fisheries resource. We have even resorted to limited dam removal.

then throw on top of that lithium producers for batteries

not very green at all