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In the news a couple of days ago, the amount of solar panels installed or approved for installation since 3.11 has reached about 70 GW peak capacity, enough that a few districts have had to call a moratorium on subsidies for megasolar permits (homeowner-level tariffs unaffected so far).

 

70 GigaWatts! To put this number in perspective, Japan's entire pre-3.11 peak capacity output was 250 GW. Even knocking that solar number down by a factor of 5 to account for average insolation, the newly-installed solar panel capacity covers about 15 nuclear reactors.

 

Holy crap.

 

I don't know about you, but I'm completely impressed with this level of coverage.

 

All we need now is to solve the storage problem, so that we can make full use of such renewable power sources to meet unsynchronized demand. In my next life, that is what I plan to work on.

 

Any bright ideas out there?

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Plenty of those said solar panels around Yamanashi and parts of Nagano.

Doubt they got to produce much electric though with so few sunny days that we had.

The panels we have on our house roof only produced about half the power or less on many days this summer.

It is good to have them, but and there is a big but, they forget to mention the fact that they have chopped down many forests to make space for them, which I think is not a good idea and they look ugly if they are put up where you can see them, which in quite a few case they can be.

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When the sun is out, solar creates power when it's needed most, during the day when industrial and commercial uses are going. I think demand peaks about 5pm when residential also comes into play.

 

The problem is that you can go for days without generating very much, so it all has to be backed up with fossil fuel based power plants that can follow load, i.e., can be easily turned on and off with 100% reliability.

 

Japan has some storage in the form of hydro plants that can be run backwards to pump water uphill, though the classic usage is to pump water using unneeded overnight power from nuke plants and to release it during the demand peak the following day. Storing solar power generated during peak demand for use during cloudy weather in a day or two's time is much more difficult.

 

Ideally with renewables, you mega diversify them so you wouldn't be massively dependent on the sun or the wind. You'd have both, plus geothermal, plus tidal. And some high voltage lines over to China and import their solar from the Ghobi or wherever its more reliable. The more diverse your sources, the less storage you'll need.

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Plenty of those said solar panels around Yamanashi and parts of Nagano.

Doubt they got to produce much electric though with so few sunny days that we had.

The panels we have on our house roof only produced about half the power or less on many days this summer.

It is good to have them, but and there is a big but, they forget to mention the fact that they have chopped down many forests to make space for them, which I think is not a good idea and they look ugly if they are put up where you can see them, which in quite a few case they can be.

 

They look a lot nicer than some of the evacuated areas in the towns around Daiichi, I'd say.

 

Or oil wells or coal mines.

 

Why can't the electricity be stored? Is it a size problem.....like the battery systems required would just be crazily gigantic? Or is it so ething else?

 

Regular batteries can only be recharged about 500-1000 times, for one thing.

Some people are working on sodium batteries (actually, I think there are some commercial ones used for neighborhood energy storage), but that's not easy stuff to work with, either.

 

Japan has some storage in the form of hydro plants that can be run backwards to pump water uphill, though the classic usage is to pump water using unneeded overnight power from nuke plants and to release it during the demand peak the following day. Storing solar power generated during peak demand for use during cloudy weather in a day or two's time is much more difficult.

 

Yes, I think there is about 25 GW peak hydro capacity in Japan, though don't know for how many hours it would last at that rate. And there really isn't much more that it could be expanded -- almost any place that can be dammed here has been.

 

It would be nice if one could build a home-based pumped hydro storage system, but the amount of water one would need to use for just one house would be completely impractical.

 

Maybe generate hydrogen through electrolysis, then burn it in a fuel cell to recover the energy?

 

Ideally with renewables, you mega diversify them so you wouldn't be massively dependent on the sun or the wind. You'd have both, plus geothermal, plus tidal. And some high voltage lines over to China and import their solar from the Ghobi or wherever its more reliable. The more diverse your sources, the less storage you'll need.

 

That'll help some, sure. Still won't eliminate the need for energy storage if one is to get away completely from fossil fuels, though.

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Yamanashi must get some kind of unique deal on panels.

 

Yes they do.

The government hand out subsidies to Yamanashi to erect these solar panels, although my wife was telling me that has run out so they are not going to be putting anymore up.

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Well Yamanashi written as 山梨

does mean mountain pear, but actually very few pears are grown here.

Lots of grapes and peaches in Kofu, Enzan areas and surrounds with minami alps area being famous for cherries.

Here in my area though there are no grapes or peaches grown, too cold for them. No cherries either.

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May be you should look at a map of Japan and see how Yamanashi is written, you will find that two kanjis are used 山梨.

It is not written using kanji and hiragana or katakana.

 

It maybe written in all katakana as a lable but never half and half unless you are 5 years old.

 

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