golli

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I actually think all the posts talking about the size of communities, amount of memes on the frontpage and so on are wrong, since those will naturally change over time and are not fixed.

Every platform will see changes in their user base to some degree. Reddit now is very different to Reddit 10 years ago. The same thing will happen to Lemmy: If growth continues we will see more engagement in niche communities, but also more low effort posts and reposts.

Considering it doesn't do anything fundamentally different to reddit in the way of being a content aggregator with comment section it will be a similar experience. It would be different if it e.g. had a function to make older posts resurface and stay relevant longer to foster longer conversations, or structure comments differently since right now the further down a chain you go, the less people will engage with it.

Even if the average user doesn't care about open source or federation, they'll still benefit (and suffer) from the consequences.

On a centralised platform like Reddit you are beholden to their will for better or worse, and incentives might change over time such in their case with taking investor money and going public. This can have consequences such as forcing out third party software (one of the events that brought a lot of people here), but also censoring specific content or taking away powers from moderators.

There are downsides to it, since smaller, less professionally run instances might disappear at some point or have less reliability. But The upside is the option to choose and the resilience that should things change at one instance/community, you can switch without having to leave the whole ecosystem. And for that you do not have to be a moderator or volunteer

The existence of different instances also to some degree helps identify users to some degree, the obvious choice being political instances like hexbear.

The average user is not looking for NSFW

That's an assumption i'll challenge. Looking at the amount of porn on the internet, the average person most definitely is looking for it. But that is probably a bit offtopic.

Hydro is very variable power output. If drought last year then can be a huge jump this year. Hydro in general, globally, averages 45% capacity.

Yeah that could make sense, although the article doesn't have enough information to know whether or not that is a factor.

A good way to boost that is to use solar to power pumps bringing water up to the high side during the day.

Pump storage is indeed very cool. However if one would count it twice when it is produced by solar and then again when getting it back from the storage, then that would majorly distort the statistic. You'd effectively count the produced amount of energy double (minus whatever efficiency loss you have from storing it).

Europe is mostly densely populated. Onshore wind is struggling in west due to noise, but best locations are already taken is an issue as well.

That is definitely true, however at least where i am from in Germany the NIMBY mentality is still going strong regarding onshore wind turbines. So i am reasonably confident that there would still be some decent spots left.

Overall that seems like great news.

I am kind of surprised to see that hydropower grew more than solar. I'd have thought that solar with falling prices and relatively easy/flexible installation would be easier to scale, compared to hydro that probably needs specific locations and nowadays might also be under more scrutiny regarding the impact on local ecology.

Onshore only growing by 6% is disappointing and I imagine a lot of it still has to do with resistance from nimby people and the likes?

Is YouTube doing it with small creators actually in mind? Who knows, other than them?

I am pretty confident in guessing that they are not doing it for selfless reasons. Imo the reason is that the less information they give the user, the more you are beholden to the algorithm choosing for you.

But depending how they hide it it actually might not just be users, but also companies that e.g. buy ads from them. The less information they get, the more they need to trust whatever metric google offers them

I recently read a plausible reason that I hadn't thought of yet:

Apple would need to include a specific flexible cable rated for continuous movement with the mouse. If the port was in the regular spot, then people would ofc also use it wired at times. However if buyers would use regular charging cables, then the experience would both be worse and the cables might get damaged over time from bending.

I still think the main reason is simply that they value form over function, otherwise the shape would be more ergonomic, but it's another interesting factor to consider.

It was more the relation between them (40x) that struck me as bigger than I expected given the relative performance between photovoltaic and photosynthetic efficiency.

Honestly i was suprised aswell by the difference. I did some further digging and while i think i found the german source they used, it was a bit harder to comprehend.

But i also looked at this paper which forexample seems to support the rough numbers for energy/hectare biomass (it's also on scihub if you dont have institutional access). It's using fast growing tropical tree varieties as an example, but i imagine that if anything this would influence results favorably for biomass. If you look at figure 5 the yield is between 15-25 MWh/hectare.

As a swede, energy usage in the winter is warm at heart which is something that is hard to compare and muddles the numbers. In Dec-Jan energy (kWh) output from solar is at best 9-10% of their peak output during summer at my latitudes, (further north, this goes towards zero as there is no sunlight in winter), so with that in mind, the stored 20MWh/hectare, available round the clock, looks apetizing until we find a better solution to store energy.

Yeah, in the end there probably isn't one solution. In Sweden for example area efficiency probably doesn't matter as much due to your low population and large areas of woodland (that wouldn't be suitable for much else). And you are right that PV probably wouldn't work, so wind/hydro or maybe even tidal power generation would be the more appropriate competitors to compare biomass to, although those have more specific needs in terms of location.

I'll try to track it down, but am kind of having a hard time finding their methology for those stats. Which ones do you think are unsure about? the 20MWh/year/hectare biomass, 800 MWh/year/hectare solar or the energy loss through stroage with batteries/hydrogen? Or something else?

I'll try a bit further to find their specific methology when i find the time. But for the solar part i also did a quick google search and found for example this paper. To quote from their conclusion:

Based on empirical observations drawn from a large, nearly complete sample of utility-scale PV plants built in the United States through 2019, we find that both power and energy density have increased significantly over the past decade. Modelers and analysts, policymakers and regulators, and others who continue to rely on outdated benchmarks from the last comprehensive U.S.-based assessment of power and energy density conducted nearly a decade ago [6] will, therefore, significantly overstate the land requirements, and by extension perhaps also the land-use impacts, of utility-scale PV.

Updated benchmarks as of 2019 established by this study are as follows.

• Power density: 0.35 MWDC/acre (0.87 MWDC/hectare) for fixed-tilt and 0.24 MWDC/acre (0.59 MWDC/hectare) for tracking plants.

• Energy density: 447 MWh/year/acre (1.10 GWh/year/ hectare) for fixed-tilt and 394 MWh/year/acre (0.97 GWh/year/hectare) for tracking plants.

It is about the US and not Germany, but i wouldn't expect there to be massive differences. If we assume that Germany has slightly worse conditions for solar, then 800MWh/year/hectare seem in the right ballpark.

I’m learning a lot about energy in Germany this way. Thanks!

Glad to hear it, by doing some more digging i am learning new things aswell. I actually came across this site (sadly only available in German) by one of our environmental agencies, which i found quite good and mirrors pretty much my opinion (but maybe that is why).

One particularly interesting piece of information is that they give specific numbers for the energy yield per hectare of biomass vs solar. They estimate using corn as an example crop that for biomass it is on average 20MWh/hectare vs 800MWh/hectare for solar, so a difference by a factor of 40x. Further for load balancing renewables they estimate 10% loss for short term storage through batteries and 40% loss when converted to chemical energy sources (presumably hydrogen).

And while biomass currently plays a substantial role particularly in electricity production, they link to studies that long term (2050 being the target date) energy demands can be met completely without biomass useage.

So basically farmers in Germany grow food to make fuel for cars? Like ethanol? Thats an abundance of agricultural lands!

I mentioned E10 fuel earlier, which mixes 10% bioethanol into petrol. Seems like according to wikipedia it is also a thing in Sweden/Finland/Denmark. So that would be an example where plants ultimately get fed into cars. I think this is also a case where demand is induced by some EU directive that requires reduced emissions in the transport sector, and mixing in biofuels was one of the solutions to achieve this goal.

I am not 100% certain on the specifics and i assume that it isn't a pure play where literally nothing from those plants is used for other purposes. But it's still fair to say that these crops are primarily planted for extracting energy from them, not for feeding livestock or food. So they are directly competing with those and without this demand farmers would plant different things.

But if I’ve understood correctly from the TEN-T directive, Germany and Switzerland has invested pretty much in H2?

Yeah, seems like we are investing a good amount in clean hydrogen. That includes storage and pipelines. I wasn't particularly aware of the ten-t directive, but if i undestand it correctly this is about transportation? I think as far as hydrogen goes here in Germany the main focus for that is on use in industrial settings (particularly stuff like chemical processes and steel production). But ofc it'll also be used in other areas.

but most common is district heating. (I got the name wrong in translation earlier)

Instead of one boiler in every house, there is one boiler per 50-100000 inhabitants or so. Efficiency is great and heat is pipes to where it is used. When it’s cold (-20 or so) those boilers go through tens of semitrucks of wood every day. And as I said, it’s a fairly common set up in parts of Europe, although i understand its not common i Germany.

Not as common, but Munich for example has a large network, which currently is still mostly based around fossil fuels, but they are investing a lot in renewables (particularly geothermal) and plan to get it climate neutral in the longterm while expanding its reach.

Also because of a recent law every municipality has to create a strategy paper for heating (until mid 2026 for larger, 2028 for smaller ones), which includes feasibility studies for district heating. So we might see them become more widespread.

How is 1€/day cheap for such limited home Internet? I guess it might depend on where you are, but unless you are in the middle of nowhere that seems expensive.

Here in Germany for example, which really isn't known for its cheap internet, I can find options that offer 100Mbit Flatrates for 20€/month.

That’s a whole lot of extra steps you added there

I added those steps, because it is exactly what is currently done at least here in Germany and at scale. Although we might need to clarify here if we want to limit the discussion to just wood and heating specifically, or also other plants such as corn/rapeseed that are grown for biomass often converted into gas/biofuels (like with E10 petrol) to make existing technologies use less fossil fuels without need to immediately replace them.

And it is a way better solution than trying to produce electricity to heat your home,

Yes, directly heating with electricity e.g. with infrared heating panels is not the way to go and uses a ton of energy.

But heat pumps are a great piece of technology and pretty popular in nordic countires aswell, aren't they? With well designed ones having a COP (coefficient of performance) of 3-5. Technically they aren't creating heat, but moving it, however i think we can ignore this distinction, since both leads to the desired effect of a warm house. Added bonus that depending on the device they might also work for cooling, which will sadly become more relevant.

As for energy storage: Electricity can not practically be stored between seasons

There definitely are ways to store energy, although of course this comes at a price and the conversion steps are associated with energy losses. Besides the obvious batteries (which are improving, but admittedly probably not at a point sufficient enough to fully scale as needed), there are other options. Pumped-storage hydroelectricity is a in my opinion cool solution. You can also convert excess to hydrogen gas and store that.

Obviously a tree standing in the forest is stored great, but between the time to grow and sufficient supply for each season, how much space would we actually need for this solution if it were actually adpoted at scale (enough to replace existing fossile solutions)? Probably hard to estimate, but i'd imagine it would be a lot. And comercial forests like that probably aren't great for bio diversity either, and not risk free looking at the current health of existing ones and the increase in wildfires.

At least it will not add CO2, unlike the coal that would have been used instead.

That is true for sure. Although being better than coal in regard to climate impact is a low bar.

68 million Europeans heat their home with some kind of central heating system. It not common in west, or central Europe, but it is in the Nordics and in the eastern part.

I'm not certain if i understand what exactly you mean with "central heating system". Do you just mean having something like a boiler that uses e.g. gas or wood pellets in the basement? If so those are common in Germany aswell. Particularly the gas boilers are something we want to move away from (there was huge outcry when the green party of our government moved to ban new installation of those).

So i guess in the context of our discussion the question would be if the better replacement for those would be a wood pellet burner or something like a heat pump. And at scale my opinion is that the later is the way to go. As stated both because i doubt that wood production could scale that large and air quality is also a factor; see e.g. here. If too many people in dense residential areas would start to use them it could have health impacts. Not that we don't have those already from ICE cars, but no need to replace those as a source with something else, now that we are finally starting to get rid of them.

I’m sure if bigger batteries sold better there would be more (any) options. The issue is not enough people care.

This in my opinion is only true to some degree. The real world doesn't reflect the idealistic demand->supply concept, and instead there are many other factors that play a role. There's the reverse supply->demand effect aswell, where companies especially through marketing steer consumer demand into the direction that suits them.

The issue is not enough people care.

Here the big issue is that not all qualities are equally easy to experience.

When you go into a store you can immediately see and feel the effect a larger, brighter screen or a thinner device has, the difference in real world battery life for your own specific use case is impossible to quantify. Even more so when asked to extrapolate it into the future and factor in degrading capacities. You can't even directly translate a concrete number like the mAh size of the battery into it, since hardware/software efficiency and useage patterns can distort it substantially.