this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2026
996 points (98.3% liked)
Technology
89137 readers
3533 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Solar is great for where it's sunny. Not as great where it's not.
Not true. Modern solar tech no longer needs direct sunlight and will still generate a good amount of power in overcast conditions.
That does mean you need more panels for the same output, yup. Good news is panels have become so cheap that it's not remotely a deal breaker.
Shit has been bleak out there but the advances in solar tech are incredible and legit one of the most positive and exciting things going on right now.
I agree in general but as someone who lives in a place that's grey much of the year and have evaluated solar for my location, the ROI is not amazing, and it's pretty useless during winter. Even at current prices.
Ha! I have done the same evaluation for my location (also grey much of the year) and came to the opposite conclusion. I do have reservations about winter, but they're more about the duration of the day. Thankfully that's also when we get a lot of wind.
You gonna do home wind turbines?
I mean, you gonna do home nuclear?
They do have home wind turbines but they don't look that practical.
Yeah. Wind (plus batteries) will likely have to remain a grid thing for the days when the sun just won't cut it. I'd like to get to full autonomy mostly for peace of mind reasons but I don't see that happening, barring storage advances that would allow storing power across seasons.
Still, mostly full solar with a wind-powered grid as backup would already be amazing, and it's just plain fantastic that we're making good progress in that direction.
Your place is not the world. In general PV is working fine.
Depends on geography but yes it works fine in many places.
It's even better than you think. Organic and semi-organic solar panels are improving fast, so even disposing of the toxic metals involved in their manufacturing is likely to become a problem of the past.
True, but:
Yeah I hope for Europe they just do some big farms in Spain and Morroco and make a really good grid for the rest of Europe.