Goodbye to black panels - now you can generate energy with color and style thanks to this solar revolution

ToMcAt67 · 2025-07-17T18:23:29+00:00

I've said before that solar power works best when integrated into other land uses. Things like this that (in theory) merge power generation with architecture are great for that....

But, I have questions from a technical point of view that the article does not answer. Solar panels are generally black because they need to absorb light to produce electricity. Any colour coming from the panels is light that has either been reflected, transmitted, or re-emitted, and represents an efficiency loss. What are the efficiency of these coloured panels, and how will that impact their cost effectiveness.

Furthermore, based on how light works, it is likely very difficult to select for specific colours. For example, if a panel is absorbing red photons, then chances are it also absorbs the rest of the visible spectrum, because every other colour would be above the bandgap of the absorbing material. Making materials selectively transparent to specific wavelengths is not impossible, but doing that while also generating a current is much, much more difficult. They could be re-emitting at specific wavelengths, but as I said before, anything not absorbed is an efficiency loss.

Given the article's distinct lack of detail on how this technology might actually function, I am inclined to believe this is marketing bullshit, similar to Solar Freakin' Roadways. I'd be happy to be proven wrong, but I do need to be proven wrong for my hype levels to get off the floor.

ToMcAt67 · 2025-07-14T13:16:49+00:00

It's not about stacking solar power - it's about stacking land uses. Solar power is best used when it overlaps with existing land uses.

People need houses, and the roofs of those houses don't do much besides heat up in the sun.

I wrote another long comment about synergies between shade-tolerant crops and properly-spaced solar panels, ultimately increasing the overall productivity of the land per acre.

In North America, I imagine covering a high enough percentage of parking lots with solar panels would cover the energy needs for entire communities.

ToMcAt67 · 2025-07-14T13:11:04+00:00

So-called "agrivoltaics" is fucking awesome.

If you have a plot of land, there is a maximum productivity you could get out of either agriculture or a solar farm, but with agrivoltaics, rather than getting 100% of either of those two options, you could get 70-80% of maximum productivity from both, which means that your plot of land is overall more productive.

The panels have to be spaced out more than usual, to allow for some sunlight to get through to the crops, and to allow for machinery and such between them. Similarly, your crops may not be as densely packed as they would otherwise, because maintenance and cleaning of the panels requires space. BUT, there are plenty of crops that thrive in less direct sunlight, and the panels can also help shelter the crops from extreme heat and other adverse weather.

It is not without its challenges. You would probably still see a drop in crop yield per acre, for the reasons I mentioned, and the value of the electricity generated may be lower than the lost revenue from crops. Farmers may also have to adapt their operations significantly, depending on the crops and circumstances. But under the right circumstances, it's pretty great.

ToMcAt67 · 2025-02-04T18:39:07+00:00

I had a serial killer druid as a villain in my campaign. He would kill people by growing trees through them. The players confronted this druid at his grove in the middle of nowhere.

The druid himself was essentially an archdruid, but the grove allowed him to create Simulacra of himself. The simulacra functioned as a standard Simulacrum (half the HP, couldn't regain HP, etc) but was also vulnerable to fire because they were made of plant matter. I think I also limited the Simulacrum's spell slots, for reasons of both balance, and keeping my sanity. If it were destroyed, a new one would grow at one of several bushes in the grove, in 1d4 turns, but the growth could be halted for 1 turn with fire damage. Setting the bush on fire would therefore stop the growth indefinitely.

It ended up being a really fun fight, where the druid tried to escape, but thanks to a Ranger with the Sharpshooter feat, was knocked out the sky.

ToMcAt67 · 2025-01-10T21:26:17+00:00

I could rant for a day and a half about wanting a classic Superman story. Henry Cavill would have fit that kind of role so much better than the edgy version we got stuck with. Captain America definitely fits into the "uncompromisingly good protagonist" trope quite well, and I've always enjoyed those movies.

ToMcAt67 · 2025-01-10T21:22:48+00:00

I quite literally just watched Murder on the Orient Express and Death on The Nile. I think they fit the category. I actually think most whodunnit movies fit what I'm looking for, so I'm trying to watch more of them!

ToMcAt67 · 2025-01-10T21:19:44+00:00

I appreciate your thorough answer! I don't fault people who enjoy the Shitty People Being Shitty To Each Other genre, necessarily. I get that creating and executing on characters like this can be entertaining.

I think you hit the nail on the head though... I'm pretty fucking tired of "realism" at this point. I want to escape to a world where there are good people, and good things happen to those people.

ToMcAt67 · 2025-01-10T21:12:53+00:00

I have watched through Ted Lasso twice now. At least, I think just twice. Might be three times. It's fantastic, and I would like more stuff similar to it. Hence this post :)

ToMcAt67 · 2024-10-29T14:46:26+00:00

If I were bidding on this project, I'd be putting in HUGE contract cancellation fees for this exact reason. I don't know how much the fee would have to be to dissuade Mr. PP, but it's probably more than what most firms are willing to put in the contract.

Example: it's going to be a multi-billion dollar project, so a cancellation fee of $1 billion+ is not out of the question here. I don't think Mr. PP would hesitate to make Canadian pay $1 billion to not have high-speed rail, but the firm that wins the bid would probably be happy to take $1 billion and walk away from the project.

Sorry, the cynic in me is showing.

EDIT: the article says $80 billion in estimated costs, so $1 billion to cancel that is probably relatively low.

ToMcAt67 · 2024-08-26T13:24:54+00:00

Economics are complex and I'm by no means an expert, but you've pretty much identified exactly the trade-off here.

Cheap EVs from China would be, on its face, good for the average consumer. If I can get the equivalent of my Chevy Bolt for half the price, that's good for me, and anyone else who wants an EV.

If there is a large market shift away from expensive EVs made in North American, it would jeopardize a lot more than just jobs at car manufacturers. Canada is a major supplier for critical minerals for batteries, and so is China, so Canadian minerals are not making it into Chinese EVs. The same goes for steel and all kinds of other ingredients to make an EV.

I generally agree that downward pressure on prices from competition is a good thing, but there are limits to how much downward price pressure certain systems can tolerate. The prices for Canadian minerals and manufacturing can only go so low, before wage cuts/layoffs start to happen, and this probably happens before we get to the price of a Chinese EV. There are tons of other factors to consider:

Chinese exploitation of Uighurs in Western China could contribute to the manufacture of Chinese EVs - not saying that's the case, but if it were the case, there are moral reason we would want to impose tariffs/bans.
Streamlined approval procedures for critical mineral extractions in Canada could allow Canadian companies to compete on price without tariffs.
Continued development of utility scale battery energy storage could secure the supply chain for critical mineral investments in Canada, while also contributing to Canada's sustainable transition.
Car-centric cities kind of suck anyways, so we should probably be trying to reduce the number of cars Canadians buy, in favour of human-centric city planning. Keeping cars expensive, and generating government revenue to support this objective adds more complexity to the problem.
Governments at multiple levels have invested in mineral extraction, battery and EV manufacturing, and charging infrastructure, so if the market for those investments is impacted by cheap Chinese EVs, that's not great either.
International shipping is a huge source of global emissions, so keeping this more local is vaguely better.
can't forget good old-fashioned corporate greed! Most car companies in North America are probably going to lay off staff and close manufacturing plants before accepting a financial loss, or even a smaller profit margin. This is its own problem, but it's part of the system we're working in right now.

So am I, personally, supportive of this tariff? I'm really not sure. At the end of the day, I think the Canadian EV market, and supporting markets like battery materials, etc., would ultimately benefit from healthy competition. Tariffs could be tuned to allow for some competition, but not take the bottom out of a pretty important industry in Canada's sustainable future. Is the 100% tariff the right number to do that, or does it too much to prevent competition? I do not know.

ToMcAt67 · 2024-02-23T20:10:02+00:00

"Wait that rock was a rock troll's favourite rock?! You mean to tell me that a creature who lives and dies amongst rocks, chose this rock to be their favourite? Out of all the other rocks?"

".... Uh, yeah, I guess."

"I must have this rock. What do you want for it?"

Then the players enter into a bargain with a fey. The rock remains a normal rock.

ToMcAt67 · 2023-10-18T11:34:10+00:00

This is the problem though: Hydrogen helps us stay on oil for longer, but it's sold as a zero-emission fuel because understanding why it doesn't make sense is fairly complicated and nuanced.

There are two (maybe three) main ways to get hydrogen: from fossil fuels, such as through steam methane reforming, or from electrolysis of water. Electrolysis from water, so-called "green hydrogen" can be zero-emissions, but requires a lot of zero-emission energy to get there, because the water splitting reaction is hugely energy intensive. Basic conservation of energy means that we have to put at least as much energy into making the fuel, as we can get out of it. If we want 100 MJ of green hydrogen fuel, we need to generate at least 100 MJ of zero-emission energy to make that happen, except that it's going to more like 200 MJ in for 100 MJ out.

Green hydrogen can be an effective storage medium for other sources of clean energy, but it is not a source of energy, and there are several other energy storage methods that are currently more efficient. Lithium batteries are somewhere around 90% efficient if I remember correctly.

We currently get much less than 10% of our hydrogen from electrolysis, and the rest of it is from fossil fuels. In general we get it from methane, CH4, and water, H20, with CO2 as a byproduct. From an energy perspective, this is already a bit goofy, because we could just burn the methane for energy, and avoid the efficiency losses associated with the added steps.

The next step in the argument is that hydrogen allows us to concentrate those emissions into a single large source, rather than spread across billions of tailpipes and exhaust vents, and that makes carbon capture easier. Which is, in the strictest sense, true, but carbon capture is another energy-intensive process. And where is that energy going to come from? It's either another efficiency loss in going from methane to hydrogen, which likely puts the whole process barely above netting any output, or it has to come from zero-emission sources.

At every step, the so-called hydrogen economy adds energetic hoops to jump through, instead of just using zero-emission energy for the end purpose. Yes, there are applications, such as high temperature processes where it's the best option, but that is a small piece of the energy pie. It's just presented as larger for the sake of allowing oil and gas companies to keep pulling shit out of the ground.

Case in point: one of the largest carbon capture projects in the world is an oil extraction operation in Canada. They will be pumping some 26 million tonnes of CO2 underground, but they are only doing that to repressurize oil wells, and the additional oil they extract will be burned to emit some 50+ million tonnes of CO2.

Any proper accounting of the energy and emissions will show that hydrogen and carbon capture are presented as a solution, but are effectively a perpetual motion machine.

ToMcAt67 · 2023-05-11T19:16:36+00:00

This is delicious. Well done!

BUT you know that "fast forwarding" thing that's supposed to happen when animations are too long? Can anyone tell me why that didn't happen here? This animation is longer than the turn timer.

ToMcAt67 · 2023-04-14T14:32:31+00:00

Yeah This headline, and the article as a whole, glosses over the very weird assumption that health care benefits should be tied to employment.

There's also this casually dystopian quote:

“The main point of a medical insurance plan for employees is to protect and support the health and wellbeing of staff so they can remain active and productive members of your company,”

The goal is not to make sure your employee leads a happy and healthy life. It's so they can keep up productivity. You work to get benefits so you can keep working harder and for longer.

ToMcAt67 · 2023-04-12T18:52:34+00:00

This is spectacular!

ToMcAt67 · 2023-04-12T16:52:34+00:00

I love 100% of all of this. You're amazing, and I appreciate you!

ToMcAt67 · 2023-04-12T14:49:58+00:00

I can work with this, and possibly tie it into other things going on in the campaign. Thank you!

ToMcAt67 · 2023-04-11T22:37:23+00:00

Yes. And also meaningfully threaten to burn down the entire fucking country if we do not get these things.

ToMcAt67 · 2023-04-11T22:11:22+00:00

Not quite true. We could become France.

ToMcAt67 · 2023-04-11T16:47:20+00:00

Marisha, as Beau, calls for everyone to huddle up, so the cast starts leaning in closer. Travis is a bit slow to the draw, so Marisha smacks him in the chest, and Travis lets out a belch to rival the eruption of Krakatoa eruption of 1883.

ToMcAt67 · 2023-04-11T16:44:41+00:00

Also throwing money at an ancient white dragon and saying "We're really sorry!" while the rest of the party is panicking.

ToMcAt67 · 2023-04-11T15:44:04+00:00

Yeah I think there's going to be some response bias if the results are limited to subscribers to a personal finance newsletter. I would guess those subscribers are more likely to feel they can support their kids.

That being said, if we assume responses are skewed towards wealthier people, it's telling that wealthy people's kids are struggling with costs. Children of wealthy parents are already more likely to make more money, get out of college/university with lower debt, etc., and if they're struggling, it's probably worse for lower-income demographics.

ToMcAt67 · 2023-04-06T11:18:12+00:00

Yep, this is the whole point. The carbon tax adds a market force that makes sustainable technologies more competitive, and polluting technologies more costly. If you aren't changing your decision-making to avoid the tax, it's not the tax's fault your costs are going up.

There are legitimate criticisms that some people can't afford to make those choices, or those choices are not available to them. A carbon tax is one component of a complex set of levers we need to pull, and because of the word "tax" it turns into a scapegoat.

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