Why it's photovoltaic solar so much more popular than a thermal solar power plant...

Why it's photovoltaic solar so much more popular than a thermal solar power plant? Thermal solar doesn't require any of the rare Earth metals. A small turbine could easily power a small town. Is a liquid salt system more complicated than a steam system?

yes

to expensive and large scale, buildings those is like building a whole factory and require a lot of contracting and maintenance

individual panels can be used by anyone and are more easier to to privatize

>Why it's photovoltaic solar so much more popular
you can mount a photovoltaic system on your roof.

how about we just burn fat ameritards for energy?

Easier to maintain and I am not even kidding. PV costs have also gone down massively while solar thermal has pretty much stayed the same.

Yeah but you need a theoretical degree in physics to operate one of those things.

worth the cost. These things are cool as fuck to look at. We as a species can afford this expense

Because they're mostly water anyway. Better to put them in hamster-wheels.

you over estimate our cardio abilities mate

Because PV solar cells lose efficiency after 15 or so years, and have to be replaced. This makes the merchant happy.

but they're too fat to walk!

One down in Oakland got shut down because the refelections attract lots of birds, who then get literally cooked midflight.

exactly - and the Al Gores of the "green world" have invested heavily in the sourcing of rare earth metals and the PV cell manufacturing process

A massive magnifying glass in the desert could boil a shit load of water.
Except probably a few pilots may be blinded

Solar is just a terrible way to generate electricity on any kind of large scale.

I guess it's because of muh birds

Is it true that the manufacture of lithium batteries is carbon neutral, pol?

Geothermal energy even better

Lithuium is a rare earth mostly found in China.
Guess whos pushing the ((((battery)))) meme.

Chinese shillbots. They fucking wrecked Plebbit and they are coming here.

That's not how focal points work.

Only if in the entire mining, manufacturing and shipping process you never burn a single hydrocarbon.

Power towers are not terrible. They have a lot of advantages over PV plants: don't need flat areas, track the angle of sunlight through the day, the heat stored in molten salt generates electricity at a more consistent, controllable rate. The problem comes with all the upfront costs, complexity, and operational costs, which start to make it look like conventional power, only worse. A natural gas turbine plant seems better in most cases.

China is definitely limiting exports and overcharging for their lithium to keep market values and their own battery profits higher. Exploding Chinese eCars incoming.

It kills half a ton of biomass in a month. Insects butterflies birds and all the other small things.

Just flying south for the winter, oh hey is that water

>bbq

Efficiency
/thread

>cover the earth in highly reflective mirrors/metals
>what could go wrong?

Think the biggest issue is that you need reliable source of sunlight. You cant build these things everywhere.

>death laser
>bird holocaust

How? I can imagine moths being stupid enough to go near the molten salt, but a few mirrors isn't enough to kill something.

You can burn an ant with a small mirror user. Birds die cause their feathers catch fire easily.

Since no one else replied, I'll let you know I got the reference

Are you sure you aren't thinking of a magnifying glass or a parabolic mirror that focuses the light? It's hard to believe that they'd be so flimsy against a 100% increase in light.

PV still works when it's cloudy.

> People learn of this new source of energy
> Spawns everywhere
> In 10 years, average temperature goes down by 10 degrees

Nuclear is the only good solution.

I have experience in mining some of these materials. In countries where there are commonly mined there are literally no environmental controls or concerns for once they completely level a mountain. The beneficiation process (how they get what they want out of the raw mined material) is extremely messy using chemicals that they then just pump into the environment with all the waste ore. They use and pollute tens of millions of gallons of water every day at these facilities generally dumping the wastewater back into a river or the ocean.

Then they load this material or the finished product on to ships. If you don't know almost nothing on this planet burns a higher volume of absolutely shit fuel with no emissions restrictions than heavy haul ships. There is literally no point in ever doing any of this simply on the basis of the shipping pollutants alone not to mention the destruction of the environment for mining and beneficiation.

personnaly I wonder what happen if you focus the sun into a few atoms sized beam?

Well, a ray that turns anything into plasma
Already thought about it, it's connected to the Dyson Sphere topic.