[HN Gopher] Solar
___________________________________________________________________
Solar
Author : kmax12
Score : 252 points
Date : 2023-09-13 22:43 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (patrickcollison.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (patrickcollison.com)
| throwaway892238 wrote:
| Lots of people on HN only talking about solar recently. Solar
| will not solve all our energy needs.
|
| - Batteries are not cheap, nor renewable. Just because there
| _may_ be advances in the future does not mean batteries are going
| to always be cheap and freely available. They are also currently
| quite dangerous to deal with.
|
| - A society based on only solar would have to reduce its power
| needs in winter, or increase its solar generation capacity to
| account for winter losses. (Winter losses is largely the shorter
| daylight hours, but also snow in northern climates)
|
| - Solar only works under ideal conditions, which is to say, in
| daylight, without clouds, smoke, ash, snow, etc. Even if you have
| batteries to account for occasional environmental losses, those
| batteries probably won't last for weeks on end in the event of
| the more bizarre weather that climate change is bringing.
|
| - At some point, people run out of land to put panels on.
| Geography and legal/political boundaries around the world vary.
| Sometimes there just won't be enough land.
|
| - A lot of the cheap manufacturing is centered in one or two
| countries, which creates a political and economic disadvantage to
| the rest, if they become over-dependent on this energy generation
| method. Look at what's happened recently from a loss of access to
| cheap natural gas.
|
| - Transmission/distribution/management is still a significant
| challenge which is not solved; you can have all the solar
| generation you'll ever need and still have power shortages.
| gumby wrote:
| Who is advocating a solar-only future? Whom are you arguing
| with?
| its_ethan wrote:
| No one is proposing a solar-only future, and this guy's
| comment isn't arguing against that...
|
| His comment points out valid concerns for a future that
| appears to be trending in the direction of relying more and
| more on solar power - these are real concerns even if solar
| accounts for ~20% of all power generation, not some 100%
| solar-only future. It's a reminder that solar power is not
| some silver bullet solution to energy generation.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| GP said "A society based on _only_ solar would "
| standardUser wrote:
| I've been hearing these "concerns" for 25 years, yet as the
| link shows this has not stopped a an ongoing explosion in
| solar investment - presumably a large chunk of that from
| people who are not complete fucking idiots and are aware of
| OPs 1990's-era concerns.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Behind the objection to the solar-only future are fears that
| this turns the high latitude white countries into energy
| ghettos. Solar, the anti-colonial energy source.
|
| Solar's experience rate is greater than any other energy
| source. In the long term, can even wind keep up?
| reducesuffering wrote:
| > - Batteries are not cheap, nor renewable.
|
| Forget batteries for now. How about replacing half of the US
| that is using coal in the middle of the day?
|
| > - A society based on only solar
|
| Said no one
|
| > - Solar only works under ideal conditions, which is to say,
| in daylight, without clouds, smoke, ash, snow, etc.
|
| Ok, use them for those ideal conditions then, not coal or nat.
| gas.
|
| > - At some point, people run out of land to put panels on.
| Geography and legal/political boundaries around the world vary.
| Sometimes there just won't be enough land.
|
| You must be joking. Take a look at all the land in the US.
| Especially in places that are >50% coal in the day, like
| Wyoming, Montana, and most of the Midwest.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| This is the same old dumb hand-wringing, if we replace all
| daytime sunny-location generation with solar and use fossil
| fuels for everything else, it's still massive progress.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| There is a simple solution to all these problems. Continue to
| use fossil fuels as we currently are and build massive solar
| plants attached to carbon sequestration to hit net zero
| emissions. And that's only the most obvious one, no one is
| suggesting we generate 100% of electricity from solar.
| whats_a_quasar wrote:
| My favorite take on this sort of issue: "Can we just get the
| 90% done first?" [1]
|
| The faster we build solar, the better. We can sort out lots of
| things along the way.
|
| [1]
| https://twitter.com/JigarShahDC/status/1701228390735602048?t...
| throwaway892238 wrote:
| Go ahead and build out all the solar possible. Then not have
| any way to distribute it, balance the load, recoup the cost
| from customers, supplant new energy demand outside of a
| narrow band of peak sunlight hours. Then not be able to pay
| back all the loans you took on building it out. Then cause
| the state to pay for the defaulted loans. Then have the
| unmaintained infrastructure break down and become a writeoff.
| Then have the economy slowly go downhill due to wasted govt
| investments, lack of jobs, lack of new investment, and
| literally lack of power (a shuttered coal plant isn't a flip
| of a switch to turn back on).
|
| It is not enough to merely fill bids for new generation
| contracts. There's this assumption that just because you
| build it, everything else will come. This is a dangerously
| shortsighted view of the world that only people hoping to win
| a quick buck on a stock price increase will sell you on.
| Anybody pushing this idea is vested in a green energy
| company.
|
| A nation isn't a start-up. There are real-world consequences
| to running before you can walk. People need to come to grips
| with this or we're all gonna suffer the consequences.
| [deleted]
| itishappy wrote:
| Holy slippery slope Batman! Was there a suggestion here or
| just the fear of uncertainty?
|
| The world is filled with uncertain and dangerously
| shortsighted ideas. Our current power grid has been
| unintentionally (arguable) geo-engineering the planet for
| more than a century. Whoopsie daisy.
|
| You're right, the world isn't a startup; there's more to
| life than financial incentives. I have a lot more tolerance
| for risk when it comes to the profits of green energy
| corporations than I do with our collective future.
| wilg wrote:
| Tesla's plan for Earth's energy needs seems workable
| https://www.tesla.com/ns_videos/Tesla-Master-Plan-Part-3.pdf
| invalidname wrote:
| > Batteries are not cheap, nor renewable
|
| Batteries are MUCH cheaper and their prices are declining.
| Especially at grid scale. There are MANY ways to store energy
| surplus, we're not at that stage yet but we will get there.
|
| Batteries can be recycled. Again, especially at grid scale.
| Since they contain renewable energy for later use I'll call
| them WAY more renewable than gas/oil/coal.
|
| > A society based on only solar
|
| No one said that.
|
| > Solar only works under ideal conditions
|
| This is untrue. There are two types of solar, photovoltaic
| which is what most of us talk about works even under cloud
| coverage. No, it won't get 100% efficiency but it will give you
| energy during the day.
|
| Couple that with the fact that wind is stronger during those
| seasons and that there are other sources of renewables and you
| will get a more even picture across seasons.
|
| > At some point, people run out of land to put panels on
|
| Right now most deployments are conventional and we still have
| plenty of land. Unlike regular energy factories we can place
| panels above every single interstate. Many crop fields and keep
| the crops which actually grow better and improve electric
| generation... Every building, every parking lot and right in
| the middle of the city.
|
| Unlike other means of electric generation this can be deployed
| everywhere. The main things stopping us from doing it are time,
| costs and incentives.
|
| Governments regulate roads and can provide financial
| incentives, they stopped so the costs aren't as great. But with
| the continued drop in price of panels I'm sure we'll see a lot
| more of that.
|
| > A lot of the cheap manufacturing is centered in one or two
| countries
|
| This is just weird. I have no idea what you're claiming here.
| That if China decides to stop selling or raise the price of
| panels it will be a problem? Do you know who controls Uranium?
| Oil?
|
| Nice thing is that these are "renewable. Once installed we
| don't need to worry about China for 25+ years...
|
| > Transmission/distribution/management
|
| This is the one correct point here... But not really.
|
| Right now coal/gas plants need to be far from the city center
| so transmission is expensive. You don't want to breath that in.
| So should nuclear, you REALLY don't want that near your
| building.
|
| You can have a solar roof right above your head. The road
| leading into your city can be solar. Batteries can be stored
| right outside the city and save the cost of transmitting...
| They can be underground which further saves on real-estate. A
| smart grid can take advantage of all of that.
|
| The problem is that the grid is also very out of date and not
| interconnected enough to trade surplus. This is something that
| governments need to fix. Even between countries e.g. northern
| states should sell surplus to Canada and vice versa.
|
| I'm for the free market here. The free market needs an
| infrastructure to work on. Since solar and wind are some of the
| cheapest options around, once the grid is properly open and
| modern, the market will take care of everything. Obviously,
| that's a huge investment but it will make energy cheaper and
| cleaner for everyone.
| gumby wrote:
| > If one takes at face value the estimate that the world will
| deploy 300-400 GW of solar in 2023 (IEA), and that 1 MW of solar
| =~ 5 acres, we're deploying roughly 3-4 acres of solar per
| minute.
|
| The thing about solar is location, location, and location. The
| annual average GHI in the Mojave is over 6 kWh/m2/day while in
| Alaska it's under 3. Interestingly, Germany, who funded a big
| push into Solar, has the solar resource of Alaska.
|
| So you can't derive the area or cost from a unidimensional
| installation chart.
| kmax12 wrote:
| > At peak, renewables provide up to ~90% of California's
| electricity
|
| In fact, renewable generation regularly hit more than 100% of
| load in California during April and June of this year. The peak
| was 132% of load [0]!
|
| How can generation be more than 100% of load? California was
| exporting power to other regions.
|
| We track all this data and more across the United States at Grid
| Status: https://www.gridstatus.io/home
|
| [0]
| https://www.gridstatus.io/records/caiso?record=Maximum%20Ren...
| [deleted]
| jandrese wrote:
| This seems like a good thing. Export sun power from sunny parts
| of the US to less sunny parts.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| You'd think so, but it often turns out that distribution is
| more expensive than inefficient local generation.[1]
|
| We still want to do lots of distribution, but it'll be for
| reliability reasons rather than cost.
|
| 1: https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2020/12/27/the-future-
| of-...
| kyleee wrote:
| Does that still hold if various negative externalities are
| included in the comparison?
| Joeri wrote:
| Over longer distances it is more economical to use hydrogen
| as intermediary for electricity transport, as it can be
| moved through pipelines and ships and takes its loss mostly
| in the conversion, not the distance moved. Other benefits
| are the ability to time shift loads and to use the hydrogen
| directly in industrial processes.
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211467X
| 2...
|
| This is why the EU has plans to build out a large hydrogen
| transportation and storage grid.
|
| https://www.h2inframap.eu/
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| > HVDC transmission losses are quoted at 3.5% per 1,000
| km (620 mi)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_curren
|
| > The Changji-Guquan ultra-high-voltage direct current
| (UHVDC) transmission line in China is the world's first
| transmission line operating at 1,100kV voltage. The
| transmission line traverses for a total distance of
| 3,324km and is capable of transmitting up to 12GW of
| electricity.
|
| https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/projects/changji-guquan-
| uhv...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-
| voltage_electricity...
|
| Losses can be compensated for with...more renewable
| generation.
|
| (note that the above distance is roughly the distance
| across Europe east-west, distance across the US is a bit
| more, but you don't need to pull east coast generation
| all the way to west coast load centers or vice versa)
| bfrog wrote:
| This is interesting. I guess I would've have expected
| more and more localized generation and coordination
| rather than long distance transmission and storage, but
| maybe it will be more of a combination of things.
|
| Thanks for the insights, its not something I really
| thought of before.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Also, if you pay the cost of making the hydrogen, you can
| use it not only for transmission, but also for storage at
| both ends of the pipeline. This allows the pipeline to be
| operated at constant high load, allows smoothing of the
| production fluctuations, and smooths demand fluctuations
| too. Multiple bites from one apple.
|
| The cost of a hydrogen pipeline is only slightly larger
| than that of a methane pipeline of the same BTU capacity,
| even though the energy value of a hydrogen molecule is
| considerably less than a methane molecule. That's because
| hydrogen has considerably lower viscosity, which reduces
| pumping costs.
| pydry wrote:
| If you get 1MWh with 50% efficiency from a solar panel
| that's still better than burning 1MWh's worth of gas.
| [deleted]
| vasco wrote:
| That entirely depends on how the panels are produced, no?
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Not if local generation is fossil fuel with its unpriced
| externalities and shadow subsidies.
|
| Bring on the sodium ion grid storage! Also, I'd think
| California has the terrain to do pumped hydro storage.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| The article is about local solar vs distant solar.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Now that you pointed it, the patent-hell around molten
| sodium batteries should have ended already. Yet, I
| haven't hear about anybody doing anything with them. Is
| there some action happening?
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| The technical term for long-distance power delivery is
| "transmission". Distribution refers to getting the power
| from the local substation to the individual homes and
| businesses.
| boringg wrote:
| Easy technical remedy -- add in storage on key nodes - sell
| it back to the grid in the evening or when its not high or
| bid back in on capacity markets.
|
| Challenge is getting the pricing model correct for such
| ancillary grid benefits to make it worth it for developer
| to build.
| benj111 wrote:
| Why storage rather than using when available, eg running
| fridges/freezers/Aircon slightly cooler, water heaters
| hotter, charging cars, running the washing machine /
| dryer.
|
| Industrially smelting aluminium, making hydrogen, heating
| water, desalination.
|
| Not that I'm saying storage shouldn't be part of the mix.
| rtkwe wrote:
| "Just do storage"... It's one of the hardest problems in
| the entire energy grid and on of the real sticking points
| of renewable energy, it's quite hard to store appreciable
| amounts of energy.
|
| Pumped hydro is one of the better options but it has the
| ecological impact of just building new hydro power but
| less great economic impacts because the water level is
| less stable for people to live beside.
| Retric wrote:
| The numbers really aren't that insane when you consider
| how quickly battery production has been ramping up.
| Nearly 100% of passenger cars going EV fairly quickly
| isn't crazy looking at adoption curves. It's likely those
| slow down soon, but continuing to build factories just as
| fast for grid storage is perfectly reasonable.
|
| There's over 280 million cars in the US, assuming on
| average that's ~75kWh each we're looking at ~21 tWh worth
| of battery storage. Meanwhile the average daily
| electricity use in the US is currently only 11 tWh. Of
| course that increases in a 100% EV world but EV's are
| generally quite flexible demand.
|
| PS: Solar power plants are often built to store ~50% of
| their daily output in batteries. It's currently
| economically viable because that's released at peak
| demand and thus peak prices, but with how quickly battery
| prices have been falling they will soon be viable even
| for normal nighttime prices.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Just do batteries.
|
| How many years do you have to go back before "just roll
| out lots of solar" was the silly hippy-dippy answer that
| all the sophisticated commenters who got their
| information via unofficial fossil fuel PR laughed at?
|
| Remember when solar was the big problem that no one had a
| solution for? Turns out we did.
|
| The future of energy is a lot of solar and a lot of
| batteries. Some other stuff will be involved but those
| two will do lots.
|
| We're already at the point where new build pumped hydro
| doesn't make financial sense unless you have other needs
| for a big pile of water. Solar and batteries will beat
| it.
| sanderjd wrote:
| Ha yeah, this was my thought too. "Do storage" is the
| right idea, but there is no _" just"_.
| solardev wrote:
| It's like high frequency trading, except with the
| nation's power supply
| boringg wrote:
| Not quite but also, you know power trading markets have
| existed for a long time right and the lights stay on -
| probably a 99.9% uptime ;)
|
| edit: Just re-read your comment I assumed you were
| implying high frequency trading as a bad thing - though
| it might have been to help non-energy people understand.
| alex_young wrote:
| Well, there was this one energy trading company called
| Enron, and the power outages in California engineered to
| boost their profits. I'd say that some amount of
| weariness is justified in this case.
| solardev wrote:
| Well, you're not wrong! I understand power arbitrage is
| already a thing and for the most part it's OK. But once
| in a while you get situations like the crazy contracts in
| Texas a few years back. And I am a little concerned that
| if we create a large enough storage market controlled by
| a few big enough players, they could play financial games
| with a critical commodity, ie hoarding both generation
| and storage for peak resale value.
|
| In both situations maybe there's an argument for market
| efficiencies and liquidity and such. But it scares me a
| little.
|
| I am not a financial person (in the solar field, but not
| markets). I could totally be talking outta my ass!
| boringg wrote:
| There's always a risk of bad actors in any market.
| Hopefully we have learned and not forgotten the
| california energy crisis and Enron from the early 2000s.
| There are regulators who work on this though the market
| bad actors normally get caught a couple years after the
| fact. As long as the regulators keep catching them it
| seems likely that we won't have as many cheats.
|
| The energy markets are significantly layered in power
| contracts that I would think it would be difficult for an
| energy storage provider to play that much of a position.
| mcculley wrote:
| Do you have some idea on how to do storage cheap at
| scale? There is a lot of money for anyone who has an easy
| technical remedy.
| mprovost wrote:
| Solar pairs well with hydro - a reservoir is basically a
| big battery that you recharge by pumping water uphill.
| arwhatever wrote:
| Any idea what the efficiency loss might be?
|
| I'm sure the loss is very high, but maybe could be
| overcome with ample solar inputs?
| pfdietz wrote:
| Modern pumped hydro has a round trip efficiency of around
| 80%, I understand.
| [deleted]
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://www.tesla.com/megapack
|
| https://electrek.co/2023/04/19/tesla-reports-massive-
| increas...
|
| https://lorenz-g.github.io/tesla-megapack-tracker/
|
| (on a smaller scale, to date, Tesla has deployed
| Powerwalls and Powerpacks at more than 50,000 sites
| worldwide; their Lathrop, CA facility is ramping to
| manufacture 40GWh/yr of capacity)
| briffle wrote:
| On the west coast, there are pumped hydro storage
| projects in Southern Oregon (500MW) the Columbia River
| (~1GW) , and Nevada (~1GW).
|
| These are targeting 8-10 hours of sustained power when
| needed.
| standeven wrote:
| My company is working on this. 50 kWh modules, similar
| cost/kWh to battery storage, but no lithium or rare
| earths. Optimized for daily 0-100% cycling.
|
| http://www.vortical.io
| cfn wrote:
| I hope flywheel storage takes off (no pun intended) it
| seems such a logic solution when compared with water
| elevation or chemical solutions. Why hasn't it gone
| mainstream yet?
| jsight wrote:
| I remember being really hyped about flywheel energy
| storage... 20 years ago. I wonder if it has become more
| viable since then? And if so, what changed to improve
| viability?
| cinntaile wrote:
| https://beaconpower.com/carbon-fiber-flywheels/
|
| These guys have two projects (check their operating
| plants) using flywheels. They're used for frequency
| regulation. About 20MW each.
| sanderjd wrote:
| Interesting! But 50kWh seems pretty small for (macro-)
| grid applications. How big are these units? Seems like
| most grid installations would want on the order of
| hundreds (~10MWh) to a few thousand (~100MWh) of these.
|
| Or do you plan to focus more on microgrids?
| standeven wrote:
| The focus is on microgrids, but they're modular and can
| be installed below grade so you can add as many as
| needed. Approximately 2m diameter by 1m tall.
|
| We're still working out costing, but it might even make
| sense for residential use to take advantage of time-of-
| use rates or energy arbitrage. Other applications are
| industrial processes that require high power for short
| periods.
| kitd wrote:
| Dual feed power line, one for home electrics, one for
| immersion heater. Store excess renewably generated energy
| in household hot water tanks during the day, to be used
| in the evening in place of fossil-fuel generated supply,
| which also evens out load peaks as a side effect. This
| also works well with home solar.
| metabagel wrote:
| I don't understand. How do you convert hot water to
| electricity in the evening?
| datameta wrote:
| The Seebeck effect will definitely have less than 8%
| efficiency with 80C water. Perhaps GP means that the hot
| water will already be available to use for hygiene and
| laundry, which for those with an electric water heater,
| is a large portion of the household power draw.
|
| I'm not sure if a household sized water tank-full could
| provide heat over the course of a cold night, and whether
| a heat exchanger for air heating or water pipes would be
| more efficient. I suppose it depends on the insulation
| and placement of the ducts and pipes and how much of the
| heat makes it to and through a wall.
|
| I did some very crude calculations but assuming 50
| gallons at 60C and 1000W energy loss per hour from a
| moderately insulated house on a 50F night, the full water
| heater could keep the house at 70F for 5.14 hours.
| Someone with more recent practical physics usage is
| welcome to check this figure.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| just use it durectly fir showers and heating the house
| kitd wrote:
| You don't. It's stored energy. If your hot water is
| already heated, you save on the energy required to heat
| it in the evening.
| mcculley wrote:
| That is a good idea for places that need heat.
| zo1 wrote:
| Do the opposite (make lots of cold water) for places that
| need cooling. Am I missing something?
| jsight wrote:
| Not at all. Peak shaving with approaches like this is
| fairly common with utilities. Lots of them will give huge
| rebates on smart meters in exchange for this.
| mcculley wrote:
| The energy difference between ambient-temp-to-frozen and
| ambient-temp to steam is much larger. I would think that
| this affects scalability.
|
| I live in a city center that uses chilled water for some
| use cases, but it certainly does not seem scalable enough
| to be an "easy technical remedy" to the issues of
| distribution being expensive.
| jsight wrote:
| I think grid load management for water heaters is already
| fairly common. I've basic versions of the concept in use
| by a coop in South Carolina, and I can't imagine them
| being anywhere near the bleeding edge.
| boringg wrote:
| Two things: (1) Price signals have to be further
| clarified especially at a utility level for ancillary
| services (2) Battery system prices have been dropping
| quickly mainly as a function of Chinese manufacturers
| building out quickly e.g. CATL. Tesla is also helping.
|
| Competition is already there - its next how do you deploy
| your development costs for winning those assets.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| Yep. It's why the Texas situation is so silly.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| It's possible to still net lose money by exporting power.
| So much so that it might even still make sense to not do it
| even after a catastrophic failure every decade or two. The
| actual calculation will need to be done by those who have
| the figures and exact costs handy.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| Why even go down the road of trying to rationalize
| catastrophes for millions of people if you don't even
| have any numbers or evidence?
|
| Your post boils down to "maybe it's fine (based on
| nothing) for people to freeze or die in heat from a grid
| that's isolated for political reasons"
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Did you misread my comment?
|
| If not, what 'numbers or evidence' are you referring to?
|
| The only thing I mentioned, costs and figures, are
| explicitly not known by me, so it seems bizarre to think
| I made judgements based on non existent knowledge.
|
| The rest seems like your own rambling thoughts.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| Did you misread my comment?
|
| Texas has an isolated grid. They can't buy or export
| power. This causes grid overloads. People have ended up
| freezing and dying in heat waves due to power outages.
|
| You said "maybe it ok, maybe it saves money even if there
| are catastrophes, but I don't even know what the money is
| like".
|
| Why would you say that a terrible power grid induces
| crisis is ok at all, let alone when you don't even know
| how the money breaks down?
| jamiek88 wrote:
| Who the hell was talking about the marginal profits when
| the clear alternative is 'occasional catastrophe'.
|
| What a ghoulish, inhumane, MBA (but i repeat myself)
| perspective.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| > Who the hell was talking about the marginal profits
| when the clear alternative is 'occasional catastrophe'.
|
| You are the first to bring up 'marginal profits', so it
| seems like arguing against your own idea, or at best a
| self-imagined strawman.
|
| Did you intend to reply to the post instead?
|
| Though the closest in what Patrick wrote is still not
| this concept.
| sanderjd wrote:
| I love love love gridstatus! Both the website and the open
| source library. Thank you for your work!
| rj45jackattack wrote:
| Can an American explain to me why there are so many solar scams
| in the USA?
|
| I'm about to bring my 20,000W rooftop array online. In my country
| I simply got quotes from local professionals and it was painless.
| I picked the best system that met my needs and they installed
| within weeks.
| standardUser wrote:
| You know how haggling is accepted in some countries as part of
| doing business? In the US, small businesses scamming consumers
| if simply part of doing business. It's up to the consumer if
| they want to spend their time getting competing quotes or
| finding trusted referrals. But for a lot of people, a lot of
| the time, it's just easier to pay the premium even though you
| know you're getting ripped off. You'll find this in auto
| repair, landscaping, construction, plumbers and electricians,
| even web developers!
| jsight wrote:
| In the US, it is really hard to sell solar in a lot of places.
| This can be true even for houses where it would obviously be
| useful and even when incentives make it so obvious that anyone
| _should_ do it.
|
| Companies minimize their sales cost by using the lowest cost,
| most effective salesmen that they can find and don't monitor
| them very much.
|
| Perhaps unsurprisingly, the ones that you hear from the most
| are the ones that you almost certainly shouldn't do business
| with.
|
| I feel like there should be some term for this kind of market,
| where the worst of the worst natural rise to the top for
| periods of time.
| justicz wrote:
| Hope it's cool for me to plug this here -- I'm one of the
| cofounders of a YC-backed startup working on robots that build
| large-scale solar farms!
|
| We basically stick a bunch of industrial robot arms in a shipping
| container and use them to build solar fields out in the middle of
| the desert. https://chargerobotics.com/ (we have an open software
| engineer role for the factory, email in my profile if you want to
| chat! team is currently 7 people)
| stvltvs wrote:
| Solar energy plants in the desert, including the transmission
| lines needed to get it to where it's usable, come at a cost to
| the ecosystems they disrupt.
|
| We tend to think of the desert as a lifeless wasteland, but
| that's far from the truth. Visit Death Valley National Park for
| example and see the marvelous diversity and beauty of life
| there, especially during a superbloom.
|
| Solar power plants in the Mojave desert threaten wildlife like
| the Desert Tortoise by reducing their natural range and plowing
| over the desert habitat.
|
| Rooftop, parking lot, etc. solar makes much better sense by
| utilizing already disturbed land nearer to where the power will
| be used thereby reducing transmission costs and the treat to
| biodiversity. A major downside (from one perspective) would be
| that rooftop solar installers out-compete the developers of
| desert power plants.
| TorKlingberg wrote:
| Climate change also disrupt ecosystems. Tradeoffs have to be
| made, and blocking everything doesn't mean things stay the
| way they are. It means continued CO2 emissions, higher energy
| costs and housing shortage. Rooftop solar, while a good
| thing, is more expensive to install and not enough to replace
| fossil fuels.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| You're being downvoted as it sounds like a concern troll,
| similar to wind turbines and birds but...
|
| There is actually less and less reason to site solar in
| deserts.
|
| As solar has dropped in price, lots of things we used to do
| to optimise the expensive solar no longer make sense.
|
| We used to build trackers that would point the cells directly
| at the sun all day, now that extra complexity can be replaced
| with just buying more panels.
|
| Similarly, long transmission lines out to deserts can be
| replaced by more solar spread everywhere that we need it.
|
| But to close, I want to reiterate that if you're reading some
| article about solar panels destroying the desert it's almost
| certainly bad-faith bullshit, so don't worry too much about
| it.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > Rooftop, parking lot, etc. solar makes much better sense by
| utilizing already disturbed land
|
| Citizens For Responsible Solar is a front used by fossil fuel
| companies to block solar farms and they object to every
| single solar farm claiming it should be on the roof. They
| object to rooftop solar and claim it should be on another
| roof, etc.
|
| Land use by solar is not a primary concern, there is more
| land wasted on gold courses than would be required to power
| the country.
| VHRanger wrote:
| Rooftop solar is more expensive than people think. You need
| to attach the solar panel to the roof, and roofs really,
| really want to leak. You also need to change all of this
| every 15-25 years when the roof needs a new cover.
| stvltvs wrote:
| Granted the are costs that are often overlooked but that
| can also be mitigated by choosing installers with a good
| track record and offer a good warranty on their work, not
| whoever shows up on your doorstep, and by investing in
| better roofing materials.
|
| The solar panels should still be productive after 25-30
| years even if they're less efficient, and they should have
| paid for themselves by then. If you're like me, at
| installation time, the roof was overdue for maintenance
| anyway.
| solardev wrote:
| It's very unlikely for a solar company, whether an
| installer or manufacturer, to last 25 or 30 years. I
| worked in equipment sales and our suppliers would
| routinely go out of business or be on the verge of
| bankruptcy. We'd advertise warranty insurance and
| reinsurance because it was assumed that the company
| wouldn't be there that long from now.
|
| If you just have modules (the panels themselves) on the
| roof that long you'd probably be okay, but if you have
| microinverters or power optimizers under them, those
| power electronics have a finite lifespan and will
| eventually die. Or if a single module wired in series
| goes bad, you'd still have roof work to do.
|
| It's not just install and forget. It's install and pray
| you don't have to do too much work too soon...
|
| (Edit: Ideally, these systems would pay for themselves in
| a few years. As long as that happens before they die,
| you'd still come out ahead. But that's not always the
| case. My last company got sued because the stuff we made
| kept failing -- it was in the news, so no company secrets
| there. One of our major installers also went bankrupt.
| Depending on who you ask, our equipment may or may not
| have been at fault.)
| jsight wrote:
| Yeah, this is one of the worst aspects of residential
| solar, IMO. Workmanship and labor warranties are fragile
| at best, and the cost to do seemingly basic things is not
| insignificant.
|
| Lose a couple of panels near the middle of an array due
| to a power optimizer after a few years and you might end
| up debating whether it is even worth fixing it. That
| isn't so bad in itself, but it also might completely mess
| up your financial return estimates.
| solardev wrote:
| Yeah. One of the companies I worked for actually sold
| mostly to the DIY crowd, and I've done a few installs
| myself. It's not very hard -- most of it just plug and
| play, and even the roof entry points can be easy if you
| have the right flashings. (You would need an electrician
| to do the final approval and connection in many
| jurisdictions, though.)
|
| That is to say, it might not be a bad idea to pick up a
| few spares when you buy a system, and learn to replace
| broken modules or power electronics on the roof yourself
| if you need to and the company no longer exists. Just a
| thought.
| JshWright wrote:
| Automated solar deployment via robots... I do the same thing in
| Factorio
| darknavi wrote:
| Just wait for the nuclear update!
| solardev wrote:
| This is really cool! If I knew Python I'd totally apply. What a
| fun project.
| jzig wrote:
| It's too bad they wouldn't let you learn on the job!
| solardev wrote:
| I don't blame them. With tens of thousands of qualified ex-
| FANGers to choose from right now, it's a great time to find
| new talent! I'm just a random nobody who makes websites
| here and there lol. I'm sure they can find super qualified
| robotics people.
| simonw wrote:
| Since you work professionally with robot arms...
|
| I've always thought that it would be cool to run a robot arm
| museum, showcasing industrial robot arms from different periods
| - 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, etc. As far as I can tell the
| first one was Unimate in 1961:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unimate
|
| But... I don't have a feel for how many of these things
| actually exist out there. Do collections already exist? What
| happens to a robot arm once it becomes obsolete?
| [deleted]
| zellyn wrote:
| This sounds like something lcamtuf might be interested in...
| rtkwe wrote:
| Older and prototype arms are sadly often scrapped past a
| certain point, there's just limited use for an ancient arm
| with it's associated ancient control systems (often a bigger
| issue to keep running than the actual arms as you're dealing
| with real time operating systems that are tricky to run
| outside of their original equipment.
| leesec wrote:
| Cool idea!
| philipkglass wrote:
| I don't know if this message is better suited for you or dang,
| but the capitalization of your hiring posts here has always
| been a little off:
|
| "Charge Robotics (YC S21) is hiring meches to build robots that
| build solar farms"
|
| Mechanical engineers would be better shortened to MechEs
| instead of meches, IMO.
| justicz wrote:
| Haha, thank you, I am the one who was posting those. Will fix
| it when we are hiring MechEs again!
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Hiring mechs to build robots does sound very Von Neumann :-)
| VHRanger wrote:
| How do you plug that into the grid?
| onethought wrote:
| This is the hard part of that problem. You can't just connect
| 100MW onto the grid. It's actually a problem in many
| countries that invested in solar subsidy programs, had
| massive rollout of solar and were then had a grid that could
| not handle the huge load of electricity at peak sun times,
| causing them to leave entire farms disconnected or only
| partially connected.
| bilsbie wrote:
| Neat! Don't the arms need to move around though?
| justicz wrote:
| They do. It's a very special shipping container...
| mirchiseth wrote:
| It's almost as if everything on this earth is a reflection of
| Sun. We finally figured out how to harvest it at scale without
| depending on nature in the middle.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Heck, the next big revolution will probably be solar +
| agriculture dual land use, since you don't need all the sun's
| energy for plant growth during the day. It might even lead to
| higher yields because the solar panels might integrate led
| lighting for growing in the night.
| eternityforest wrote:
| So the plants get "saturated" and don't want more than a
| certain amount of light per hour?
|
| Growing at night outdoors seems like the kind of light
| pollution that would harm something and anger someone, but
| not unlikely anyway...
|
| Do we really need more yields? I thought we made enough food
| for everyone already and it's just distribution at this
| point?
| invalidname wrote:
| Some specific crops grow better in the shade and the bonus
| is that they cool the air around them. That improves the
| efficiency of the solar panel. It's a win-win all around.
|
| The one challenge is getting the mechanized equipment of
| industrial farming around the panels without damaging them.
| There are companies working on improving that too.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Any increase in yield reduces the amount of land needed. I
| thought land use was the putative horror critics of solar
| were objecting to, so surely they'd want to cut down the
| much larger area used by farming?
| suoduandao3 wrote:
| Some plants can indeed get saturated (they tend to tuck
| their leaves in past that point), but I could imagine more
| serious savings from the practice if the partial shading
| from solar installations reduces evaporation. In most
| places (particularly those where solar is most profitable)
| agriculture is limited by availability of water, so
| anything preventing evaporation is a potential boon.
| brigleb wrote:
| "in Fall 2023" my goodness this post is from the future!!!
| CTDOCodebases wrote:
| Calm down.
|
| The world consists of two hemispheres with opposite seasons.
|
| Let's cancel out that possibility first.
| lolinder wrote:
| I've always found it weird that people take the calendar at its
| word for when the seasons start and end. Does December 19th
| ever really feel like winter hasn't started yet?
|
| I prefer the meteorological seasons:
|
| https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/why-meteorologic...
| abraae wrote:
| Or the southern hemisphere
| V__ wrote:
| > Solar deployment is now running at about $500 billion per year,
| which means that about 0.5% of global GDP is being spent on solar
| deployment. This figure is up an improbable 43% Y/Y
|
| What a mind boggling relative and absolute increase.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| This is caused by the cost of solar declining 89% in the last
| decade [1]. Batteries are next [2]. Which leads us to solar and
| batteries powering the world [3]. Extrapolate exponential
| growth of generation and storage, not linear. There is >1TW of
| generation and hundreds of GWs of renewables and storage
| (respectively) in aggregate across all US grid operator queues,
| for example [4]. Similar story in China [5].
|
| (obvs we have a long way to go, just need to push the pedal to
| the floor; enough sunlight falls on the Earth in 2 minutes to
| power humanity for a year [6], and space is not a concern [7]
| [8])
|
| [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-pv-prices
|
| [2] https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline
|
| [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37435387 ("Solar and
| batteries are going to win, and our thinking needs to adjust")
|
| [4] https://www.pv-tech.org/nearly-1tw-of-renewables-in-us-
| inter... ("Nearly 1TW of renewables in US interconnection
| queues as wait times continue to grow)
|
| [5] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/29/china-wind-
| sol... ("China is set to double its capacity and produce 1,200
| gigawatts of energy through wind and solar power by 2025,
| reaching its 2030 goal five years ahead of time; ...as of the
| first quarter of the year, China's utility-scale solar capacity
| has reached 228GW, more than that of the rest of the world
| combined.")
|
| [6] https://www.ku.ac.ae/two-minutes-of-sun-enough-to-power-a-
| ye...
|
| [7] https://landartgenerator.org/blagi/archives/77565 ("Land
| and Ocean Areas to Support a 100% Renewable Energy, Zero-
| Emissions, Regenerative Global Economy")
|
| [8] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37492062 ("Declining
| populations free up ag land for solar in densely populated
| countries")
| xnx wrote:
| Great charts. I hope they update them for current years soon.
| I'm not sure if: the trend continued (because of technologic
| progress and the learning curve), the trend reversed (because
| of supply chain issues), or stayed the same because of the
| combined effects of those 2.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Very informative. Note from your 4th link I wasn't previously
| aware what "interconnection queues" were. This is a good
| overview: https://emp.lbl.gov/queues.
|
| Importantly, though, only a small percentage of that capacity
| "in queue" will actually get built. From your link:
|
| > Much of this proposed capacity will ultimately not be
| built, however, with only 23% of projects seeking connection
| from 2000 to 2016 having subsequently been built based on a
| LBNL analysis of a subset of queues. Only ISO-NE and ERCOT
| exceeded 30% completion rates, with CAISO performing the
| worst at 13%.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Good callout wrt queue completion ratios. Unfortunately,
| there aren't many comparable leading indicators of future
| generation to rely on (maybe EIA's 860M survey? [1] [2],
| but it only gives you a short look into the future). Plans
| are plans until steel is in the ground and glass is getting
| racked. Open to other suggestions if it improves modeling
| and forecasting.
|
| Regardless, the amount of renewables and batteries coming
| online (at least in the US) can't be overstated [3].
|
| [1] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/eia860m/
|
| [2] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/
|
| [3] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/images/figure_6
| _01_c...
| danans wrote:
| > Regardless, the amount of renewables and batteries
| coming online (at least in the US) can't be overstated
| [3].
|
| > [3] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/images/figu
| re_6_01_c...
|
| The "Other" generating unit type on that map is all over
| CA and TX. Looking at the source data for the map [1],
| it's mostly batteries. I'm surprised they didn't break
| those out as their own category.
|
| 1. https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/eia860m/
| javajosh wrote:
| Holy cow that lithium price graph is astounding! It's a log
| plot that looks like a linear decline in price. It's like
| Moore's law for lithium..
| hamburga wrote:
| Moore's Law is a special case of the more general "Law of
| Accelerating Returns."
|
| > In my view, it is one manifestation (among many) of the
| exponential growth of the evolutionary process that is
| technology.
|
| https://www.thekurzweillibrary.com/the-law-of-
| accelerating-r...
| tuatoru wrote:
| No, not mind-boggling at all. It's about a tenth of what is
| required to meet governments' signed-up-for targets for
| limiting global average temperature rise to 1.5 degrees above
| pre-industrial.
|
| For reference about 2% of global GDP is spent on new fossil
| fuel mining and drilling investment, and another 2-4% on the
| fuels (including refining).
| itishappy wrote:
| A 10x increase is about 6 years at the current growth rate.
| That's mind-boggling.
|
| It can also be not enough. They're not mutually exclusive.
| oezi wrote:
| The figure I like to quote is that we need 2 to 5% of GDP
| spend per year to get to net zero by 2050.
|
| We already pretty much passed 1.5C anyway, right?
| somsak2 wrote:
| I would have expected the ratio of $ spent on new fossil
| fuels vs. new solar to be a lot higher than 4. My mind is
| quite boggled.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Jevon's paradox is one hell of a thing. When you suddenly make
| something very cheap, a lot of people suddenly start wanting a
| lot of it.
|
| What you are seeing is basically the consequence of solar
| changing from not the cheapest power source available into the
| cheapest power source available. Immediately, everybody that
| would invest into something else changed into solar.
| llimos wrote:
| I hope we can also make the cultural shift towards the goal being
| clean, plentiful supply as opposed to constrained demand.
| mrshadowgoose wrote:
| Couldn't agree more. We have so much untapped clean power
| radiating down onto our planet in the form of solar energy.
| Enough to provide every single human being with an energy
| budget far far in excess of a typical American.
|
| Yet so many people only fixate on the "solution" of "you must
| use less and have a shittier, less-comfortable life, there is
| no other way!".
|
| We are a civilization that fundamentally requires energy for
| all our wants and needs. People need to get over that and focus
| on gathering energy cleanly.
| [deleted]
| wilg wrote:
| The abundance agenda!
| oezi wrote:
| We will need to overprovision solar and wind for winter so yes
| electricity will likely be abundantly available most of the
| year.
| ricardo81 wrote:
| Load shifting would certainly help achieve the goal
| suoduandao3 wrote:
| If energy is like money, then this is the old 'increase your
| income or decrease your expenses' dilemma. Increasing income is
| naturally the more desirable option, decreasing expenses can
| still be a reasonable temporary measure until you can get that
| promotion/career change/side hustle off the ground.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| If energy is like money, demand will always increase to be
| just slightly over supply.
| suoduandao2 wrote:
| Or decrease to be just slightly over supply. We don't like
| to think about it but the current energy mix plus
| geopolitical factors make that a distinct possibility.
| llimos wrote:
| Yes, of course. But parts of the discourse make it sound like
| we need to reduce our energy usage as some kind of 'moral
| imperative'. They give the impression that they'd be
| disappointed if everyone could get everything they wanted
| with zero cost to the environment.
| tyoma wrote:
| If Solar provides up to 90% of CA's peak capacity, why is
| electricity here so monstrously expensive? Shouldn't it be nearly
| the lowest cost because there is no need to pay for fuel?
| philipkglass wrote:
| The most cost-effective form of solar power is utility scale
| solar farms. In 2012 California was installing those faster
| than it did last year. Hover over the chart in this article to
| see the year-over-year changes:
|
| https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/solar/chart-whos-the-le...
|
| As toomuchtodo mentioned in another comment [1], the cost of
| solar declined 89% in the past decade. California's installed
| base is weighted toward older, more expensive solar power
| installations because it started installing solar power sooner
| and more rapidly than other states. That's compounded by
| California's slowdown in utility scale solar farms added in
| recent years. Texas is about to surpass California on installed
| solar farm capacity and Texas's solar generation will be
| cheaper because those farms have been built more recently with
| lower cost solar hardware.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37502924
| beembeem wrote:
| I would appreciate data to the contrary, but the accounting
| in your first claim doesn't seem right to me. Behind the
| meter rooftop solar should be the most cost-effective because
| no new distribution is required nor is any land use change
| required.
| philipkglass wrote:
| The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has charts and
| reports showing US system prices per installed watt for
| residential solar and utility scale solar with single axis
| sun tracking:
|
| https://www.nrel.gov/solar/market-research-analysis/solar-
| in...
|
| In 2010, the cost-per-watt was a little more than 2 dollars
| higher for residential solar than for utility scale solar
| ($8.70 vs $6.54). In 2022, residential was still a little
| more than 2 dollars higher ($3.16 vs $1.06), but since
| system costs have plummeted, that means the _ratio_ now
| favors utility scale installations much more dramatically.
|
| You can see in the charts that "Soft Costs - Other" remains
| persistently high for residential solar. That includes
| things like permitting and inspection. A 100 megawatt solar
| farm requires permitting and inspection too, but it's much
| less cost than the 10,000 permits and inspections required
| for equivalent capacity distributed across residential
| rooftops. The other big difference evident from 2010 to
| 2022 is that residential solar inverter costs are still
| significant whereas the inverter costs have become
| practically invisible in 2022 for large solar farms. More
| aggressive price competition and increasing unit capacity
| have proportionally lowered the inverter costs much more
| for large solar farms.
|
| The cost per megawatt hour generated is actually even more
| imbalanced in favor of large solar farms than these cost-
| per-watt charts show. You can't use solar tracking on
| rooftops. Solar farms with single axis tracking to follow
| the sun's position generate more energy per year than
| equivalent wattage installed in fixed positions on
| rooftops. Average rooftop systems are also less frequently
| cleaned than ground level solar farms. Not only does
| rooftop solar cost 3 times as much per installed watt, it
| also generates maybe 30% less energy per installed watt per
| year.
| beembeem wrote:
| Thanks for the link.
|
| Two issues I see missing from NREL's analysis: land use
| and distribution.
|
| I don't see a cost attributed to land in there. It's free
| for residential because it's already put to use, but not
| so for utility-scale and probably hard to estimate
| broadly. Environmental impacts of that land use should
| also be accounted for in addition to direct land
| acquisition cost and/or leasing. Solar generation does
| not have land impacts when placed on a roof. That land is
| already "disrupted" and therefore allocated for human
| use.
|
| Either way, labor is now the dominant piece of the cost
| for residential, and it's obvious that one-off small jobs
| in high-price metros are more expensive than a crew
| operating in rural areas. An accounting looking strictly
| and materials + labor is going to heavily favor
| utilities, but it doesn't capture the full picture.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Last I checked in West Texas, the cost of land was < 2%
| of the total cost of installing a solar field. This was
| for land at $1200/acre.
| miguelazo wrote:
| Why is it so expensive? 3 words: Investor Owned Utilities. And
| two more for good measure: Regulatory Capture.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| You'll have to use more words to explain why other Investor
| Owned Utilities have power at 1/3 the cost. Not really a
| unique differentiator.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| I don't recall the breakdown, but someone posted somewhere (so
| it must be true) that the overall distribution of PG&E was 49%
| nuclear.
|
| Now, nuclear is not fossil fuel, but Lazard measures LCOE of
| nuclear as 6x more expensive than solar and wind. So that might
| be part of it.
| foota wrote:
| Wholesale electricity prices are based on the marginal cost of
| electrical generation. As a result, wholesale costs will
| generally be driven by the cost of natural gas generation.
| JumpinJack_Cash wrote:
| > > why is electricity here so monstrously expensive?
|
| This is in line with why are we replacing fossil fuels with
| solar.
|
| It was never a quality of life play, it's some sort of
| altruistic effort / dumbness deciding to be the suckers kind of
| thing.
|
| California for sure cares about them Californians who'd be
| alive 150 years from now more than those who are alive right
| now. Actually not even that, given that the atmosphere is one
| for everybody, they care more about Indians and Chinese who'd
| be alive 150 years from now than Californians who struggle and
| are 'alive' right now.
| tzs wrote:
| > Actually not even that, given that the atmosphere is one
| for everybody, they care more about Indians and Chinese who'd
| be alive 150 years from now than Californians who struggle
| and are 'alive' right now
|
| Given that the atmosphere is one for everybody, comparing by
| country does not make sense because some countries have more
| people than other countries.
| JumpinJack_Cash wrote:
| > > comparing by country does not make sense
|
| It makes sense to identify who are the fools and who are
| the wiseguys.
|
| Like the solar panel industry which was jumpstarted with
| immense subsidies by Germany, EU and the US and now is 99%
| a Chinese industry manufacturing product. Amazing.
|
| And EVs will be too, once the smoke clears we'll be lucky
| if we are left with just the brand and the cult of
| personality of Tesla, while everything else will be
| manufactured in China.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Chinese clean energy subisidies were over half a trillion
| dollars in 2022 alone.
| robsh wrote:
| They don't mean 90% during peak demand. They mean at most solar
| makes up 90% of our generation. This would occur 11a-2p. Peak
| demand is 5-7 pm, and it's twice as high as the midday load and
| it's met by huge natural gas turbines that run a few hundred
| hours per year.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Transmission, paying for PG&E starting wildfires and the
| resulting settlements, paying for living wages for folks
| working at PG&E living in monstrously expensive places, paying
| for debt and the rest of the power generation infrastructure.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| The problem is actually battery storage. There's a great tiktok
| that breaks down the costs here:
| https://www.tiktok.com/@lthlnkso/video/7258394490145099050
| coryrc wrote:
| Because you still have to pay for enough fossil fuel generators
| to power the grid AND the solar and wind subsidies, because the
| latter can't supply power all the time. If every solar setup
| had to provide guaranteed minimum power 24/7 for 30 days, then
| you'd see the true cost is much higher because they would need
| to directly pay for a mostly-idle power plant, instead of the
| very inefficient way we do now (brinkmanship of grid stability
| and occasional massive spikes in wholesale cost).
|
| In WA we pay more for "fish mitigation" than all other hydro-
| related costs. I expect CA has similar money pits.
| beams_of_light wrote:
| https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/insight/barriers-fish-
| migrati...
| ttymck wrote:
| 1. How much "area under the curve" comes from _up to_ 90% of
| _peak capacity_. If it read "50% of annual consumption", I
| might be more inclined to ask your same question.
|
| 2. It doesn't necessarily follow that free fuel == cheaper
| power. I'm not at all familiar, but I imagine building,
| operating, and maintaining a solar plant could be expensive,
| perhaps even more expensive than a coal plant, for all I know.
| jeffbee wrote:
| The best way to measure this is from the CO2 emissions
| estimates. These fell by about 23% from 2018 to 2023[1],
| implying that renewables have displaced about one quarter of
| fossil fuel inputs. However, it should be noted that nobody
| really knows the true denominator of energy demand, because
| distributed small-scale solar production adds up to an
| unknown quantity.
|
| In the spring and summer seasons California routinely hits
| over 100% of demand generated from renewables at some point
| in a given month. CAISO, which does not cover the entire
| state, says that in June about 47% came from renewables. Last
| June it was only 37%.
|
| 1: http://www.caiso.com/Documents/GreenhouseGasEmissions-
| Tracki...
| pfdietz wrote:
| Operating a solar plant is very cheap.
| aiallthewaydown wrote:
| the other 10% ...
| gvkhna wrote:
| Yea if you look at your bill a lot of the cost is not in
| generation, it's in transmission. We're paying for the grid
| mostly, upkeep and PGE/SCE profits.
| jhenkens wrote:
| Last I checked my mother's bill in the SF-Bay, her price for
| each, transmission and generation, was higher than my total
| delivered price in Oregon.
| [deleted]
| advy wrote:
| > In Spain, electricity provided by solar increased 8 percentage
| points Y/Y, from 16% to 24%.
|
| This increase is only for the month of July, not Y/Y.
| jwitchel wrote:
| Despite these very exciting data points you can watch California
| systematically push against these trends:
|
| https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/solar/new-california-ru...
| pfdietz wrote:
| These trends are precisely why NEM has to change.
| fiddlerwoaroof wrote:
| Yeah, I also find the NEM changes pretty hard to understand: if
| the goal is to shift as many people to solar as possible, why
| cut the incentives right when they're starting to produce
| meaningful results.
| tonyarkles wrote:
| > why cut the incentives right when they're starting to
| produce meaningful results
|
| Because it's unsustainable and every rooftop solar
| installation that has net metering causes electricity to be
| more expensive for everyone. The same time your rooftop
| system is producing its peak capacity is likely to be the
| same time the nearby grid-scale solar plants are producing at
| peak capacity, but the utility is forced to pay you _retail_
| price for the power you 're producing when they'd rather get
| it at _wholesale_ price from the larger facilities.
| beembeem wrote:
| A few comments:
|
| Your comment assumes that the utility needs to be using up
| lots of land to power customers. Rooftop solar is far more
| efficient and there is no extra transmission required.
| Utilities don't need to consume vast tracts of land just to
| provide power to customers.
|
| > retail price
|
| Utilities in California (by law) already deduct fees out of
| this, so it's not reimbursed at full retail rate anyway
| under old NEM rules. There's also an absolutely massive gap
| between retail and wholesale rates that could be explored.
| tonyarkles wrote:
| If what you're proposing about rooftop solar being more
| efficient was true, why wouldn't the utilities just pay
| to roll that out to residential customers? E.g. the
| utility pays to install the panels on your roof and then
| you get a discount on your electricity to pay for the
| "roof lease"?
| beembeem wrote:
| It is because utilities can externalize many costs with
| their current development practices. Every now and then
| the federal government jumps in with some more funding
| for them too (see: Diablo Canyon). Incentives aren't
| aligned between the utilities and their customers.
| tonyarkles wrote:
| > It is because utilities can externalize many costs with
| their current development practices
|
| I'm curious what you mean with that statement. Which
| costs are they able to externalize by building grid scale
| solar that they'd have to cover out-of-pocket for a grid-
| scale rooftop solar deployment?
|
| > Incentives aren't aligned between the utilities and
| their customers.
|
| I mean, as a first approximation the utilities incentives
| are:
|
| - keep capex and opex costs as low as possible
|
| - while selling electricity at the prevailing rate inside
| their RTO
|
| "Shorting The Grid" by Meredith Angwin paints an
| absolutely atrocious picture of the governance structures
| inside many RTOs and there are definitely perverse
| incentives at play, but fundamentally the utilities want
| to sell electricity while maximizing their margins.
|
| I'm not even sure what the "customer incentives" are
| beyond paying as little as possible to keep their lights
| on and houses heated and cooled.
| curriculum wrote:
| I think the idea is that California has plenty of solar
| generation during the day (or is on track to have plenty);
| what it needs is storage for when the sun isn't shining.
|
| The new NEM (the Net Billing Tariff) shifts the incentives
| away from solar generation (which the utilities have a lot
| of) and towards energy storage. I am in the market for solar
| right now, and I've been running the numbers. Whereas I would
| have had the greatest ROI with a large solar panel array
| under the last NEM, I now get the largest ROI with a small
| solar array + a battery.
|
| I can't say that my ROI will be the same under NEM 3.0 as it
| was in the old NEM, but solar is not suddenly a bad
| investment, as some might claim. A small solar + battery
| setup will pay for itself in 5 years in my situation. A
| battery alone (no solar panels) pays for itself within a
| decade, since you can buy energy for "cheap" during super off
| peak and store it for use during peak hours, pinning your
| electricity costs to the lowest of the day.
|
| This is all with existing rates. The upcoming shift to an
| Income Graduated Fixed Fee will likely come with reduced per-
| kilowatt-hour rates, which will reduce the ROI for home solar
| and batteries.
| thelastgallon wrote:
| Module prices are now $0.130/W - $0.151/W: https://www.pv-
| magazine.com/2023/09/08/china-solar-module-pr...
|
| This is less than the 2030 projections of $0.17/W for modules:
| https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/articles/2030-solar-cost-t...
|
| Related, China adds enough new solar and wind every year to cover
| the total electricity use of many major economies such as
| Australia and the UK:
| https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/china-renewables-2...
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Youtube's premier economist/deadpan comedian, Patrick Boyle had
| an interesting video on 'Electrify Everything' a few weeks ago.
| It could be seen as pessimistic but I think its a fairly
| realistic view of the costs involved in moving away from gas and
| oil for transportation and household & industrial energy demand.
| In particular, grid capacity is going to have to at least double,
| if not triple. Perhaps he underestimates a push towards more
| efficiency (i.e. a one-to-one replacement of relatively
| inefficient fossil fuel-powered devices in terms of energy usage
| is an overestimate of demand, I think), but there's little doubt
| that the price of grid improvements and battery storage is going
| to at least match the costs of the primary wind/solar energy
| generation systems:
|
| https://youtu.be/w4WfbqE5elk
|
| Technologically a complete transition to renewables is entirely
| plausible, but it's a mistake to try to play down the scale of
| effort needed - but this doesn't mean it's not possible. Look at
| the > $10 trillion in global oil infrastructure for comparison -
| offshore oil rigs, continent-spanning pipelines, gargantuan
| refinery complexes, a huge fleet of ocean-travelling oil & LNG
| tankers, etc. Of course replacing all that is going to be a major
| effort, requiring a significant diversion of civilizational
| resources to the task.
| rtpg wrote:
| for transportation, there is one kind of out: synthetic fuel.
| It's 3x the cost of normal fuel at the moment, but in exchange
| you get a very dense form of energy storage that can be used
| with a lot of existing infrastructure.
| thomascgalvin wrote:
| I wish home solar was more ... trustworthy?
|
| I've looked into having rooftop solar installed a number of
| times, and every time I've walked away with the feeling that I
| don't know enough to know what to watch out for, and that there
| was a high probability that any company I dealt with would be
| trying to take advantage of my ignorance.
| onethought wrote:
| 100% true. And you are right. They have the same vibe as car
| mechanics.
|
| Also Panels, inverters and batteries are all quite different
| and have varied pros and cons and installers are typically
| getting kick backs from specific suppliers so their advice is
| not impartial
| oezi wrote:
| The downward trajectories are so strong now, it soon won't make
| any sense more to do these small deployments anyway.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Yeah, and the cost gap between home solar and grid simply means
| that the firms are probably pocketing the federal subsidy
| indirectly.
|
| There seems to be some DIY advertised costs that might be
| better. Really, this is mounting stuff on a roof and wiring it
| to your garage. While there is code and best practices, this is
| not disassembly of your car's transmission.
|
| I'm hoping DIY practices and experience disseminates over the
| next decade, as well as cheap-good perovskite+silicon panels
| and sodium ion/sulfur/solid state battery storage.
| czbond wrote:
| >I'm hoping DIY practices and experience disseminates over
| the next decade
|
| I am not affiliated with the below, but saw DIY kits - your
| comment reminded me others might have experience. One quote
| that is interesting "With the current tax incentives to go
| solar, our DIY solar customer's average ROI is less than 5
| years."
|
| https://www.solarwholesale.com/diy-kits/
| atourgates wrote:
| I agree completely, and the best antidote is getting a little
| knowledge about how home solar works. Something that should be
| well-in-reach of most of the HN crowd.
|
| A typical grid-tied home solar system has 3 big areas of
| component costs:
|
| 1. The actual solar panels.
|
| 2. The thing that mounts the solar panels in place (called
| racking)
|
| 3. The things that turn the solar panel's electricity into
| electricity that can be used in your home and by the grid.
| Typically inverters and wiring.
|
| The good news is that you can price this all out yourself, to
| get an idea of what your system SHOULD actually cost. Then you
| could theoretically do it yourself, or be a more informed
| consumer when shopping around to have someone do it for you.
|
| I haven't pulled the trigger yet, but I've been planning,
| revising and tracking prices on a DIY install for the past
| couple years.
|
| Here are some of the resources I like:
|
| 1: Unbound Solar is a good resource for ready-to-install DIY
| kits. Their kits are a good resource for "this just works" -
| and you can then price out individual components as-needed. -
| https://unboundsolar.com/shop/solar-kits?product-category=gr...
|
| 2: For buying actual panels, I like A1 solar. They seem to have
| the best selection/pricing I've found:
| https://a1solarstore.com/
|
| 3: OpenSolar is a free tool designed for solar installers, but
| available to DIY'ers. It lets you specify your panels, racking,
| inverters etc., and then lay them out no your roof or the
| ground. https://www.opensolar.com/ - It's very likely the tool
| that the contractors you're getting bids from are using.
|
| The last bit of info I'll share is that in general,
| microinverters don't make sense from a cost/benefit standpoint.
| Panels have gotten really cheap, microinverters haven't. You're
| probably better off adding more panels with a traditional
| inverter system vs. paying for microinverters to get marginal
| efficiency gains from a smaller number of panels.
| cyri wrote:
| I've did this all and currently installing a ~29kWp solar
| roof myself here in Switzerland. I will pay less than one
| third of the costs as when it gets installed via a company.
| wilg wrote:
| As far as I can tell I didn't get screwed using
| https://solaroptimum.com/
| sowbug wrote:
| Yesterday I finished a DIY rooftop installation. I went DIY
| partly because I shared your concern, and mostly because I
| thought it would be fun. I have thoughts.
|
| My quick take is that there is enough competition to ensure
| reasonable prices for solar equipment (panels, racking,
| electronics, etc.). However, a lot of manual labor goes into a
| rooftop installation that's comparable to other trades like
| plumbing, electric, roofing, construction, etc., which means
| that if your local cost of living is high, then the labor cost
| will be high as well. Until we have robot labor, I accept that
| other people need to put food on their tables as well, so I
| don't think that a lot of overhead in a solar project's cost
| beyond the materials is necessarily evidence of exploitation.
|
| This means that you can online-shop and build a cheap system
| (I'm sure under $2 per watt is easy). But it needs to be
| shipped to you, lifted onto the roof, mounted, and finally
| wired to your grid. All that is pure labor. I did everything
| except the high-voltage wiring and the conduit runs, and I bet
| a competent version of me could have done everything I did in
| three 10-hour days (it actually took me twice that). Where I
| live, California Bay Area, you can't get any tradesperson out
| of bed for less than $100/hour, so that's at least $3,000 in
| labor. The electrician, permitting, and re-patching the roof
| around the new mounts added another $4,500 -- again, mostly
| labor and/or bureaucracy.
|
| That makes about $7,500 to install maybe $10,000 of equipment.
| I avoided about $3,000 in labor costs by spending at least 60
| hours of my own amateur time, including mistakes, worrying,
| second-guessing myself, and other activities that a
| professional wouldn't have done.
|
| I learned a lot. I understand the difference between
| microinverters and regular ones; I know more about split-phase
| residential electricity in the US; I appreciate how a system
| design trades off cost and efficiency for issues like
| "clipping" when an inverter can't handle the full output of a
| PV panel; and I know way more than I ever wanted to know about
| the foam, insulation, tar, gravel, and wood that make up my
| roof.
|
| In retrospect, I'm glad I did the project because of the
| knowledge gained, and because I now have even more respect for
| the skills and effort that are needed to put solar on a home's
| roof. But would I do it again? Probably not; I'd rather have
| paid the extra few grand to have someone do it for me while I
| stayed cocooned in my office, writing code.
|
| TL;DR: profit is being made in residential solar, but I believe
| most of it goes to honest labor.
| iteratethis wrote:
| Surprised by your labor estimate.
|
| Here in the Netherlands, the norm is that it's a single day
| of work by a crew of two. That includes everything you
| described: rails, installation, repatching, wiring, inverter,
| basically the entire package.
| rpnzl wrote:
| You could try speaking with a supplier like AltE Store
| directly. They'll help you design a system for your use case
| and you can get a local installer to handle the installation,
| or DIY. I'm not clear on how the subsidies work with this
| approach, though, and whether you'd have to go through a local
| dealer / installer to qualify.
| cbhl wrote:
| If you have a backyard (or a balcony) I'd start with a single
| solar panel and "portable solar generator" off of Amazon. For
| about $500 (admittedly terrible $/kWh) I felt like I got a much
| better intuition about things like "solar panels generate ~no
| power in partial shade" and "power output from a solar panel
| changes from month to month" which can help you in your
| decision-making.
|
| It's not obvious to me that rooftop solar panels will still pay
| for themselves (in the past there were subsidized rates that
| made the math work better) but being able to run off
| batteries+solar "microgrid" in a power outage for a few hours
| is a quality-of-life improvement that I'd consider for the
| right price. (There's some of this in corporate offices, luxury
| apartments, etc.)
| itsrobforreal wrote:
| During the pandemic I built a number of simple indoor solar
| systems, setting panels in the lower part of my windows (I
| keep the shades open at the top) and hooking up to either a
| homegrown controller/battery/inverter system or a jackery.
|
| The jackery is roughly 30% more expensive but feels a lot
| less fragile than my homemade stuff, and I've moved all my
| device charging (tablet/phone/power tool battery) charging
| over to these systems.
|
| It was a fun project! Cabling is always the part that sneaks
| up on you so make sure to plan out the cabling / what plug
| types you want / crimp or buy / etc. ahead of time.
| zo1 wrote:
| One thing I'll tell you: don't listen to anyone wanting to come
| and inspect and propose stuff. It's a huge salesman heavy
| market, so you have to research it or just ask someone that has
| it already.
|
| The only thing the installers have to figure out is how to wire
| up the panels with your inverter in the right ratio, and if
| your roof can hold the panels you want. The rest you pick and
| they do.
|
| Don't get an offgrid inverter, hybrid grid-tied inverter all
| the way. Even if you live in the sticks with no grid, just get
| a hybrid one.
|
| Also, don't worry if your batteries will last the night or
| cloudy days or whatever. Just make sure you have enough to
| handle your load if it goes down, the rest works on its own and
| the inverter just blends your solar with whatever it needs from
| the grid.
| svieira wrote:
| > Don't get an offgrid inverter, hybrid grid-tied inverter
| all the way. Even if you live in the sticks with no grid,
| just get a hybrid one.
|
| Would you please expand on why a hybrid inverter is better
| even if you're not going to grid-tie it?
| boringg wrote:
| 100% true - find a friend or good online resource. A lot of the
| workforce is just repackaged contractors. There are many good
| ones -- but their model is still built on needing to sell more
| solar and you need to know what you are buying.
| shove wrote:
| The data is whatever the data is, but measuring in nominal
| dollars sure seems like the wrong way to approach this. Did 40%
| more gigawatts get deployed or did the cost of installation labor
| account for some/most/all of that increase?
| philipkglass wrote:
| Hourly wages for solar farm construction labor have gone up,
| but more efficient installation processes and lower cost
| hardware have compensated for that increase.
|
| The International Renewable Energy Agency says that 191 GW of
| solar capacity were installed in 2022:
|
| https://www.pv-magazine.com/2023/03/22/new-global-solar-capa...
|
| Wood Mackenzie estimates that 270 GW of solar will be installed
| this year:
|
| https://electrek.co/2023/08/03/a-record-270-gw-of-solar-is-p...
|
| 270/191 = 1.41, or a 41% increase in installed capacity this
| year.
| shove wrote:
| A nice surprise. Thanks for the links!
| csours wrote:
| It seems like the neighborhood is the sweet spot for battery
| deployments - Easier to spread capital allocation, Lower stress
| on transmission lines.
|
| Are any organizations working on neighborhood storage in a big
| way?
| somethoughts wrote:
| There was one retirement community in Florida that was talking
| about this:
|
| https://babcockranch.com/our-vision/core-initiatives/
|
| "In partnership with Florida Power & Light, Babcock Ranch
| houses the FPL Babcock Ranch Solar Energy Center and FPL
| Babcock Preserve Solar Energy Center on 870 acres of land. Each
| one is capable of generating 75 MW of clean energy, for a
| combined total of 150 MW capacity and 680,000 solar panels. The
| FPL Babcock Ranch Solar Energy Center ensures that the net
| production of clean, renewable energy at Babcock Ranch exceeds
| the total amount the town consumes.
|
| Another exciting part Babcock Ranch's clean energy program? We
| house the largest solar-plus-storage system operating in the
| U.S. today. Created by FPL, these ten large gray steel battery
| storage units can store 1 megawatt of power and discharge for 4
| hours. The new battery storage system ensures a steady supply
| of power on partly cloudy days and at night."
|
| Small Florida community aims for energy independence by
| harnessing the power of the sun
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7TrBu_uEhI
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