[HN Gopher] Solar Is Cheapest Electricity in History, U.S. DOE A...
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Solar Is Cheapest Electricity in History, U.S. DOE Aims to Cut
Costs 60% by 2030
Author : mg
Score : 41 points
Date : 2021-03-26 20:07 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (cleantechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (cleantechnica.com)
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Headlines that take the facts completely out of context for $400,
| Alex
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| I make that $20 per MWh. That's somewhere around half the
| wholesale price of electricity in the UK. That's pretty
| incredible.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| I like to believe that millions of years ago the people of Saturn
| made giant solar collection tree-like space elevator power
| facilities to catch all those passing rays. That is where
| Saturn's rings came from.
| briga wrote:
| This is good to hear. I assume location must play a large part in
| this? Solar must be more cost-effective in, say, the Mojave
| desert, than it is in Alaska.
|
| I sometimes wonder if the widespread adoption of solar is going
| to have an environmental impact that isn't immediately apparent.
| Every solar panel you put on the ground is going to take up solar
| energy that could otherwise be absorbed by a plant, which in turn
| means that plant can't absorb carbon from the atmosphere. So
| unless we just limit ourselves to rooftop solar panels there's
| sure to be some sort of environmental impact if we just switch
| all our energy to solar.
| kragen wrote:
| > I assume location must play a large part in this? Solar must
| be more cost-effective in, say, the Mojave desert, than it is
| in Alaska.
|
| Yes, each peak kilowatt of utility-scale solar produces about
| 240 watts average in Arizona, 140 in Maine, and 100 in Germany
| ("capacity factors" of 24%, 14%, and 10%). I assume the number
| for Alaska would be even lower.
|
| > Every solar panel you put on the ground is going to take up
| solar energy that could otherwise be absorbed by a plant, which
| in turn means that plant can't absorb carbon from the
| atmosphere.
|
| Yes, and also it will reflect less heat back into space than
| the plant or bare dirt would, locally raising the temperature.
| These will start to be important problems when the quantity of
| power produced by solar panels is about 100 times larger than
| current world marketed energy consumption. I expect that this
| will happen in about 30 years. However, merely switching all
| our energy to solar will have an effect that's about 100 times
| too small to matter.
| eloff wrote:
| > These will start to be important problems when the quantity
| of power produced by solar panels is about 100 times larger
| than current world marketed energy consumption. I expect that
| this will happen in about 30 years.
|
| You predict energy needs will increase 100x in 30 years?
| Surely you mean just solar energy production?
| brundolf wrote:
| > it will reflect less heat back into space than the plant or
| bare dirt would, locally raising the temperature
|
| I'm not sure this checks out... the light gets absorbed, but
| the energy doesn't get turned into heat, it gets turned into
| electricity. If anything, where it's covering up concrete or
| asphalt it should _reduce_ the conversion of sunlight to
| local heat.
| Nullabillity wrote:
| Some of it turns into electricity, some of it is wasted
| (turned into heat). And the whole point is that the
| electricity gets used at some point, turning into heat,
| computation (heat), light (heat), or motion (heat). And of
| course, you also have transmission losses (heat) along the
| way!
| kragen wrote:
| A 21% efficient solar panel reflects about 9% of the light,
| turns about 60% of it into heat immediately, and turns the
| other 21% into heat shortly afterwards, perhaps somewhere
| else, when the power the solar cell generates is dissipated
| by, for example, an electric motor or lightbulb.
| tzs wrote:
| > Yes, each peak kilowatt of utility-scale solar produces
| about 240 watts average in Arizona, 140 in Maine, and 100 in
| Germany ("capacity factors" of 24%, 14%, and 10%). I assume
| the number for Alaska would be even lower.
|
| In this US government report [1] that looks at solar energy
| in remote parts of Alaska the capacities of 11 systems in use
| in 11 villages they looked at ranged from 7.1% to 11.6%.
| Looks like around 9.4% average.
|
| [1]
| https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2016/02/f29/Solar-
| Pr...
| kragen wrote:
| Thank you, this is wonderful information!
| jxidjhdhdhdhfhf wrote:
| One possibility is to use farmland or grazing land. You can
| pick crops that do better in part shade and then place solar
| panels over them. If done right it could have a beneficial
| effect on crop growth while at the same time earning extra
| money.
| xnx wrote:
| Possibly, though I don't think solar panels will ever catch up
| to the amount of pavement there is.
| Someone wrote:
| https://news.mit.edu/2011/energy-scale-part3-1026:
|
| _"A total of 173,000 terawatts (trillions of watts) of solar
| energy strikes the Earth continuously. That 's more than 10,000
| times the world's total energy use"_
|
| That article is from 2011, but I think it's a very safe bet
| that factor is still more than 1,000 today.
|
| Also, I would think about every solar panel you put on the
| ground reflects less energy into space than the ground did.
| griffinkelly wrote:
| I've read a few articles that these solar farms are creating
| their own microclimates, and particularly in already warm areas
| can have significant impacts to wildlife with the local
| temperature increasing in the range of 3-4 degrees C:
| https://www.nature.com/articles/srep35070
| m463 wrote:
| I've wondered about that too (competing with nature for the
| sun) but I think just putting panels on the roof or over the
| parking lot would probably address 95% of the problem.
|
| Along similar lines, I've wondered if solar panels will start
| to look like pine trees at some point.
| briga wrote:
| >I've wondered if solar panels will start to look like pine
| trees at some point.
|
| Interesting thought, but I'm not sure there same factors that
| led to plant evolution will play out with solar panels.
| Plants reaching up into the air was a direct response to
| competition with other types of plants. Presumably the same
| sort of competition won't be necessary with solar panels. I'm
| sure nature still has a lot of inspiration we can draw from
| for creating new types of solar panels, but my guess is that
| the most efficient surface for collecting solar energy is the
| flat square design we see today.
| cbmuser wrote:
| It doesn't matter that solar itself is cheap, it still needs
| backup plants which are the reason Germany has the highest
| electricity prices - world-wide.
|
| > https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/electricity_prices/
|
| It's really strange that users on HN keep rehashing the myth that
| solar and wind energy will result in lower electricity prices for
| consumers - they won't, never.
|
| Even if solar and wind energy was free, consumers would still
| have to pay the costs for running backup and/or storage plants
| which lets consumers prices soar.
|
| The problem with solar and wind is that they simply can't produce
| electricity on-demand which means the kWh has an actual market
| value and can therefore be sold with a profit.
|
| If a solar or wind park produces huge amounts of electricity when
| demand is low, the result are dumping or even negative prices.
|
| Affordable and clean electricity in populous industrial countries
| like Germany or the US can be provided through nuclear energy
| only.
|
| Proof:
|
| > https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-emissions-by-sector?t...
|
| > https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-emissions-by-sector?t...
|
| Germany: 350 million tons p.a. CO2 in the energy sector France:
| 50 million tons p.a. CO2 in the energy sector
|
| Germany: 38 cents per kWh France: 22 cents per kWh
|
| Germany: 50% renewables in its electricity mix France: 70%
| nuclear in its electricity mix
| yazaddaruvala wrote:
| Here is a commercial installation of solar + storage at
| $0.04/kWh[1]. And it's not unique, that article links to the
| cheapest solar + storage in the US at $0.025/kWh.
|
| Additionally, these are today's prices, as per this article the
| price for renewables is dropping exponentially every year. And
| if Elon Musk is to be believed (which I do) the price for
| storage is also dropping exponentially.
|
| [1] https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2019/09/10/los-angeles-
| commissio...
| rich_sasha wrote:
| If solar were free, but we still needed to pay for battery
| storage, how would it then compare in cost to fuel-based
| alternatives (fossil fuel, nuclear etc)?
| kragen wrote:
| It's a little hard to predict how the price of battery storage
| will change as demand for it increases by orders of magnitude,
| and also how energy usage patterns will change as the relative
| cost of nighttime energy usage goes up. I've explored these
| themes in the past in a number of notes.
|
| https://dercuano.github.io/topics/solar.html and in particular
| https://dercuano.github.io/notes/energy-storage-
| efficiency.h...,
| https://dercuano.github.io/notes/heliogen.html, and
| https://dercuano.github.io/notes/lithium-supplies.html.
| https://dercuano.github.io/notes/balcony-battery.html and
| https://dercuano.github.io/notes/the-suburbean.html explore the
| question at the household scale.
|
| More recently, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26219344
| and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26229595 explore this
| question in more detail, and
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26308189 explores
| specifically what it would cost for California to switch to an
| all-solar grid with only battery storage over the next decade.
|
| David MacKay wrote a wonderful and highly accessible overview
| of the topic in 02009 as part of his excellent book,
| _Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air_ , which is
| specifically about sustainable energy in Britain. Unfortunately
| it needs to be updated--in particular, it doesn't consider
| utility-scale battery facilities at all--and he is sadly no
| longer in a position to update it. The license does permit
| third parties to provide an updated version, but he did not
| publish the source code. Still, here it is:
| https://www.withouthotair.com/c26/page_186.shtml
| jessaustin wrote:
| _...how energy usage patterns will change as the relative
| cost of nighttime energy usage goes up._
|
| My fondest dream is that they'll stop dotting the countryside
| with those ridiculous pole-mounted "security" lights, and
| we'll be able to experience nighttime again.
| kragen wrote:
| I would love this, but battery costs and solar-panel costs
| are nowhere near high enough to cause it to happen in order
| to save on the power bill. They probably never will be.
| kleton wrote:
| Would need $20/KWh battery storage to be competitive with
| nuclear for baseload according to
| https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(19)30300-9 At
| the moment, we're at about $800/KWh.
| jxidjhdhdhdhfhf wrote:
| Aren't car battery packs under $100/KWh? Is there some other
| factor which drives up the price for grid level storage?
| turtlebits wrote:
| ~$140/KWh is the current low price for cells (that can be
| bought by consumers). I just built a battery last month.
| andechs wrote:
| Not all battery storage needs to be electrochemical -
| hydroelectric dams work amazingly as pumped storage batteries
| (although site specific).
| amelius wrote:
| What is the typical efficiency of a charge-discharge cycle?
| vkou wrote:
| It's relatively high, the problem is that building new dams
| is an environmental disaster, and existing dams are two
| orders of magnitude below needed capacity.
|
| Also, hydro dams kill a lot of people when they have
| accidents.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Do you have to dam a river to store energy in this way?
| Can they just build water towers that pull water from
| underground up into a tank and release it via gravity to
| generate power when needed?
| danans wrote:
| And even simpler: electric heat pump water heaters, which
| already coat about the same as has water heaters to operate,
| and also serve as dispatchable one way energy storage for
| intermittent renewables.
| turtlebits wrote:
| People use way too much power for battery storage to be viable.
| The average household consumes 28.9kwh in a day (in 2017),
| which is way more than rooftop solar can provide.
|
| Maybe when we have smaller houses and don't have a bajillion
| devices plugged in all the time.
| coderintherye wrote:
| The majority of solar comes from Utility scale about 60/40
| vs. rooftop solar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_
| in_the_United_Stat...
| zizee wrote:
| > The average household consumes 28.9kwh in a day
|
| Maybe in the USA.
|
| > which is way more than rooftop solar can provide.
|
| Maybe in your part of the world this is true, but it is not
| unrealistic in many places.
|
| Also, why are you limiting your thinking to rooftop solar?
| danans wrote:
| > The average household consumes 28.9kwh in a day, which is
| way more than rooftop solar can provide.
|
| The average house doesn't need to source 100% of their
| electricity from rooftop solar. Electric utilities are how
| most people will still get a significant portion of their
| electricity, even those with rooftops solar.
|
| Also, the average household's electricity needs could be
| reduced significantly while increasing comfort via better
| insulation, air sealing, and higher efficiency appliances.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Most people will have a big battery in their garage capable
| of powering their house for days pretty soon.
| vidanay wrote:
| Once solar generating costs are further reduced, there needs
| to be improved effort on improving local infrastructure
| (within a single residence). Getting rid of DC-AC-DC
| conversion would be a huge improvement. If we standardize on
| a DC system (48v?) then household devices can be more
| efficient without the conversions.
| cronix wrote:
| It's amazing how much less of something you use when you
| don't have basically an endless, cheap supply of it. You tend
| to conserve a lot more because you know it's finite and will
| run out if you use too much.
| jxidjhdhdhdhfhf wrote:
| Might be of interest to you: the think tank Rethinkx is
| forecasting wind and solar + lithium ion batteries will be
| cheaper than continuing to run already existing coal and gas
| power plants by 2030. They believe this will cause the capital
| invested in other types of power plants to become "stranded".
|
| https://youtu.be/6zgwiQ6BoLA
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(page generated 2021-03-26 23:01 UTC)