[HN Gopher] Solar will supply almost all growth in U.S. electric...
___________________________________________________________________
Solar will supply almost all growth in U.S. electricity generation
through 2025
Author : kieranmaine
Score : 177 points
Date : 2024-01-11 17:18 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (cleantechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (cleantechnica.com)
| tallowen wrote:
| I found this podcast with Jesse Jenkins to be a really helpful
| start to understand non fixed energy resources.
|
| https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/what-the-sun-isnt-alwa...
|
| I thought that the most cost effective way to supply energy would
| require a certain amount of base load. It seems like this is a
| misunderstanding because of how much cheaper and more available
| these non fixed resources are than fixed resources. Energy this
| cheap gives us a huge incentive to change our energy use patterns
| to match power abundance rather than to take energy demand as a
| constant.
| specialist wrote:
| Yes and:
|
| I appreciated Jenkins' explanation of the different variability
| time scales. "Base load" is folk understanding and not
| especially helpful for planning our future green energy grid.
|
| IIRC, seconds, minutes, hours-days (diurnal), and months-years
| (seasonal). Meaning there's huge opportunity for all sorts of
| novel energy storage (and demand shifting) systems. Dynamic
| load balancing might use modestly sized of Li-ion batteries
| scattered around the grid. And thermal batteries could be used
| for long-term storage.
|
| The opportunities are insurmountable. -- Yogi Bera
| 7thaccount wrote:
| Yes, but please keep things in context. We're transitioning
| away from baseload, but it's a major endeavor and not going
| to happen over night. I think the HN crowd is a little
| overzealous in this area. NERC is reporting the potential for
| energy shortages in many regions in the United States. This
| was once virtually unheard of. Solar alone isn't going to fix
| this in the next few years and many regions still have only
| tiny amounts of demand that is responsive to price.
| Retric wrote:
| The ramp up is inherently slow, we're still generally
| seeing cheaper nighttime rates than daytime rates even
| after years of 'heavy' investment in solar.
|
| Solar's impact on prices is going to remain fairly trivial
| for the next few years. But start looking 20 years out and
| a great deal of nighttime load will shift, which
| dramatically reduces the need for storage even as decades
| of X0 GW per year adds up.
|
| Aka it's not just one trend you need to follow but several.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| The merit order effect of renewables like solar and wind
| has already been substantial on wholesale prices with the
| spot price being $0 or below $0 in significant
| percentages of the year. This probably hasn't trickled
| down to retail rates as we're stuck paying for the fixed
| costs of many of those assets via the PPAs that the
| utilities sign.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Thus the rapidly expanding introduction of storage, which
| can take advantage of those periods.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| 3400GW of solar nameplate is expected to be built from
| 2023 to 2028 globally, which is maybe 40% of all existing
| global electrical generation. So I don't think "20 years"
| is the right time period to be thinking in.
| delecti wrote:
| That's shifting generation, not demand. Most people won't
| respond immediately, so 20 years isn't a crazy guess for
| a significant amount of the equipment in peoples' houses
| to cycle out.
| Retric wrote:
| US produced ~4% of its electricity from solar in 2023 and
| it's predicted to hit 5.6% in 2024 and 7.0% in 2025. So
| ~4 years to break 10% of total generation which still
| doesn't offset higher daytime demand.
|
| Thus for the next few years we'll see higher daytime
| rates than nighttime outside of specific regions and
| specific times of the year.
|
| Beyond that you need to consider increasing EV adoption,
| energy storage etc. Cheaper daytime rates is going to
| happen faster than people realize, but not fast.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Looking to the US to be on the cutting edge of the energy
| transition is like looking to the US to be on the cutting
| edge of steam engine development during the early
| Industrial Revolution. In a global sense, prices are
| going to change rapidly and huge amounts of industry will
| adapt to intermittent sources. The US will catch up a
| decade later, adopting whatever ideas worked overseas.
| Retric wrote:
| The US close to average in terms of solar with most
| countries are on a similar curve +/- a few years.
| However, I used the US because our electricity demand is
| fairly static. The US is only up 13% since 2000 unlike
| Africa's electricity demand which doubled, or China's
| 600% increase over that period.
| cycomanic wrote:
| > Yes, but please keep things in context. We're
| transitioning away from baseload, but it's a major endeavor
| and not going to happen over night. I think the HN crowd is
| a little overzealous in this area. NERC is reporting the
| potential for energy shortages in many regions in the
| United States. This was once virtually unheard of.
|
| What do you mean? Do you recall Enron? Also when I was
| living in Tennessee for a year in the 90s brown outs
| occurred at least a couple of times and some of my US
| friends tell me about interrupted power happening quite
| regularly still. I'd call that energy shortage.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| Enron was a special case when California first started
| their electricity market and made many mistakes in not
| having processes to take care of market manipulation. An
| entity deliberately and unethically putting a generator
| on outage to drive prices up is not what I'm referring
| to. I'm saying the reserve margins of baseload generation
| have shrunk.
| cycomanic wrote:
| Others and myself have been arguing against the baseload myth
| on HN and other places for ages, but it just persists.
|
| The thing is, while we are still ramping up renewables wind
| and solar compete with the traditional "base load" large
| nuclear and coal plants, they are not replacing load
| following gas turbines until much later. Even Wikipedia says
| that variable supply like wind and solar are one of the
| sources to supply base load.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| We're already incentivized to do things like running the
| dishwasher in the evening do to costs, no? Or is the
| implication that it would be _considerably even more_ cheap?
| dpkirchner wrote:
| Depends on where you live -- where I'm at, there's no time of
| day based savings (unless you're a big industrial user,
| IIUC).
| axus wrote:
| In my area, summer "peak hours" often make up half my
| electricity usage. The off-peak hours are the other half.
| The price at peak times is more than double the flat rate,
| but only 30% cheaper for off-peak. I'm already reducing my
| energy use as much as is comfortable, if I want to maintain
| that I'd be paying more money than the flat rate.
|
| The scheme only saves energy if its not optional.
| jakewins wrote:
| This is rapidly changing worldwide though: as more variable
| production comes online, the value of shaping demand grows.
|
| Missouri is moving to hourly rates this year IIRC. EU
| already is on 60-min day-ahead prices and pushing hard to
| get to 15minutely prices.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Depends on whether your jurisdiction has time of use pricing.
| dylan604 wrote:
| This is where I'm really intrigued of all-house battery packs
| like the Tesla Powerwall (it's the only name of one I'm
| familiar to call out). I like the idea that it charges at
| night during the lower rates, and during the day the house is
| powered from the battery. Just haven't seen any longevity
| reports on them in general vs brochure data.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Tesla warranties the Powerwall for 10 years, 15 years if
| part of one of their virtual power plants (orchestrated by
| Autobidder [1]). Look into the 30% federal tax credit for
| it, as well as state, local, and utility incentives.
|
| If you don't yet have solar and your site is favorable, I
| strongly recommend considering it if you can have it
| installed at a reasonable cost.
|
| [1] https://www.tesla.com/support/energy/tesla-
| software/autobidd...
| dylan604 wrote:
| Solar doesn't work for my property. There are too many
| trees doing exactly what they were intended to do by
| shading the roof top. Otherwise, it would be great as the
| roof alignment is pretty ideal.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Can you submit a residential battery to Autobidder?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| If Tesla has a virtual power plant program in your
| geography.
|
| https://www.tesla.com/support/energy/tesla-virtual-power-
| pla...
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32500926
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| One thing to consider is that _if_ that 's profitable to do
| at house scale, then it's probably even more profitable to
| do at grid scale and you'll likely be out-competed by
| utility companies.
|
| Edit: Unless you're taking advantage of tax incentives to
| do it at house scale. Its hard to beat the economics of
| just being handed free money.
| dylan604 wrote:
| An individual can take action now whereas the grid scale
| action is molasses like. It's even worse when your state
| is not in the pocket of but the actual pocket of Big Oil
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| But an individual can't take action without the grid
| taking action to provide customers with the different
| pricing rates.
| dylan604 wrote:
| What? The entire premise was that it _is_ cheaper at
| night. Thanks for jumping into the middle of the convo
| though and trying to jerk the wheel.
| mcbishop wrote:
| Settle down. A lot of the U.S. doesn't have time-
| differentiated rates.
| dylan604 wrote:
| And that has precisely squat to do with my intrigue into
| looking at a system like this. If it didn't make sense, I
| wouldn't be interested. So what's your point exactly?
| antisthenes wrote:
| > One thing to consider is that if that's profitable to
| do at house scale, then it's probably even more
| profitable to do at grid scale and you'll likely be out-
| competed by utility companies.
|
| Depends. It may be more profitable for utility companies,
| but they keep the profit of the economies of scale. It is
| almost never passed on to the customer.
|
| If you DIY your own energy system, you're free to keep
| all the surplus generated by it through the life of the
| system.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Only if they let you by giving you a big price discount
| to charge
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Their alternative is to find some way to generate a lot
| more cheap electricity after sunset. If whatever they're
| doing can't beat the cost of solar panels on your roof +
| batteries and a small generator to top them up in
| exceptional circumstances, people will just stop paying
| them altogether.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > One thing to consider is that _if_ that 's profitable
| to do at house scale, then it's probably even more
| profitable to do at grid scale and you'll likely be out-
| competed by utility companies.
|
| Utility companies have to pay for distribution networks,
| and generally pass that cost on in the price per kWh.
| Which you avoid the less you use the grid -- and which
| then become a higher proportion of the prices the utility
| has to charge the more people do that.
| dylan604 wrote:
| In a lot of urban locations, it is not legal to have a
| residence that is not connected to the grid. If you have
| home generation capabilities and storage that means you
| take the least amount from the grid provider, you can be
| technically still connected to the grid without using any
| power. If this continues, I would not put it past the
| grid provider to come up with a minimum monthly bill so
| it is impossible to have a $0 payment. Otherwise, who's
| going to pay for the administrative costs of having you
| as a customer?
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Large minimum monthly fee + required to buy service seems
| like the kind of thing that would piss off voters.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Ah, I see where you strayed from reality. Your comment
| seems to be based on a premise that voters are rational.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > In a lot of urban locations, it is not legal to have a
| residence that is not connected to the grid.
|
| Woah, I didn't know this. In any case, surely it's legal
| to have grid service to the house and simply not use it.
|
| > I would not put it past the grid provider to come up
| with a minimum monthly bill
|
| My electric company (a community owned co-op) has done
| this for many years. You pay $15/mo no matter what. Your
| power usage is billed on top of that.
| rstuart4133 wrote:
| > if that's profitable to do at house scale, then it's
| probably even more profitable to do at grid scale
|
| There is a reason home generation wins. It's because
| retail prices are 3 times what the generator is paid.
| (That's true where I live).
|
| So yes, in absolute terms power generated by home solar
| costs more than a utility generating it. But it's not 3
| times more, so if you install home solar and use the
| power, it's always a big win. It will be the same with
| batteries.
|
| The traditional forms of generating power, coal, gas,
| hydro and nuclear only win because home generation costs
| using those technologies (eg, putting a coal mine and
| generator in your back year) costs far more than 3 times.
| You can't put wind, or pumped storage in your back yard
| either.
|
| But solar and batteries are different animals. They are
| different in other ways too. It always makes sense to
| over provision solar. The question is not whether to do
| it, but by how much. So home generators will always be
| looking to sell power, and since it's free selling it at
| 1/3 of what they would pay for the same power looks like
| money for jam to them. It makes you wonder how many
| utility generators will be left standing if solar takes
| over the world.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > it's always a big win
|
| _AFTER_ you finish paying off the financing of the
| source of home generation. so maybe it 'll be a big win
| for the people in your location after you're gone???
| olyjohn wrote:
| Does this reduce your energy usage though? You're still
| using the same amount of power during the day. So it saves
| you money, and takes some load off the grid during peak
| usage. What does that do to reduce emissions from power
| generation? Without solar, you're still charging off the
| same infrastructure.
| dylan604 wrote:
| As if someone trying to save money is such a ridiculous
| thing to do? WTF?
|
| I subscribe to a power company that produces power via
| wind. So my money is supporting green energy generation.
| So yeah, it would still be doing plenty. Not really sure
| why you gotta be so negative about something
| itsoktocry wrote:
| Do you even actually save money, accounting for the
| financing and installation of the solar panels?
|
| A while back there was a thread on the SolarCity
| subreddit linked from HN where the OP discussed his
| savings thanks to nice weather, but still figured he had
| a 20 year payback period on his setup.
|
| That is crazy.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I never even suggested solar. I just want a battery pack
| that charges when grid prices are cheap, and powers off
| battery when grid prices are high. Complicating it with
| solar is beyond the scope of the original intent.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| That seems like it would be hard to ever make a financial
| return.
|
| Say a battery costs $10k and a home uses $100/ month
| electricity. If you assume electricity is _free_ at night
| to fully charge the battery and meet energy demand,
| that's 100 months (8 years) to break even. Real world
| costs are going to make it quite a bit worse than that.
| dylan604 wrote:
| As they say, "location location location". In a Texas
| summer, it is easily 3x that per month for 4 months out
| of the year for a house. So, that's 12 months in one
| quarter based on your math. The vast majority of that is
| just running the A/C. So again, this makes much more
| sense when you look at the nuances vs just some lame
| internet posting of using averages. If it makes no sense
| for you, that's too bad, but to come out with broad brush
| comments alluding to it not making sense ever is just
| naive.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| On a modern grid, off-peak, cheaper energy coincides with
| low carbon.
| tallowen wrote:
| I think the implication is that we'll see a further split
| around pricing.
|
| One thing that stood out to me is that in the case of thermal
| loads (perhaps your dishwasher but more realistically a
| hotwater heater). It will become more worthwhile for that
| system to know when high and low electricity prices are and
| store more heat (i.e. hotwater) at low electricity prices and
| wait until prices fall again to refill it. In this sense, a
| heater would be operating like a battery.
|
| In a world where energy prices are stable throughout the day,
| it doesn't make sense to manufacture, for example, a price
| aware water heater with extra storage capacity. It seems like
| that calculus is changing with solar and other renewables
| creating an incentive for variable rates compared to
| traditional fixed rate alternatives.
| jakewins wrote:
| Recall your entire house is a thermal battery too!
|
| In fact, all the four major energy loads in a house -
| Heating/Cooling, Water heating, EV Charging, House Battery
| - are extremely flexible.
|
| But we're still lacking good standards for _reliable_
| control. Today we do stuff like tell your HVAC to stop via
| vendor X 's cloud API. What happens if your router dies
| after we send a "stop" command in the middle of the winter?
|
| For many of the minisplits I see control code for, they'd
| just let the house freeze, waiting forever for another
| command that'll never arrive.
|
| For critical functions like "keep my water pipes from
| freezing" / "be able to drive to work in the morning", we
| need much better standards for reliable control and safe
| failure modes.
| phh wrote:
| French's "fil pilote" to control electrical radiators is
| quite bullet proof in this regard: No power on command
| wire = comfort thermostat, full power = "eco" thermostat,
| and there are other more convoluted signaling for various
| modes (send only positive voltage, only negative, only a
| third of the phase) , including simple anti freeze mode.
| There is an off command as well, but you really can't
| send it accidently.
|
| If your IoT dies, you'll most likely get to the comfort
| mode.
|
| Only nit is that in 2023 the default mode would probably
| be "eco" rather than "comfort"
| MostlyStable wrote:
| Tangentially related gripe:
|
| My biggest issue in making this work reliably is that my
| "smart" thermostat is trying to be too smart.
|
| Our power gets cheap at 10pm. I can't just set my HVAC to
| turn on at 10 and go full blast until power gets
| expensive again at 6am. I have to program a set
| temperature at a time. if I set that at 10pm, my
| thermostat tries to make sure that it _reaches_ that temp
| at exactly the time. So it will actually turn on an hour
| early. So I have to guess how long it will take my HVAC
| system to reach whatever temperature I have it set to,
| and then set it for that much time _after_ 10PM. It's
| inexact and annoying, and means that I am leaving
| performance on the table.
|
| I have idly searched a few times for a replacement
| thermostat that would interact locally with home
| assistant and have had zero luck (partially due to the
| fact that my system is complicated and seems to have a
| non-standard wiring setup).
|
| Everything else: hot water heater, EV, laundry, etc. are
| all trivially easy to make run during the desired
| periods. But the biggest use of energy I have (yes,
| larger than charging the car) is a PITA to make it play
| well with TOU billing.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| What's your "smart" thermostat?
| Symbiote wrote:
| Check the manual for the thermostat. Mine has a setting
| to disable this feature.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > In fact, all the four major energy loads in a house -
| Heating/Cooling, Water heating, EV Charging, House
| Battery - are extremely flexible.
|
| The dominant energy load in existing houses is heating.
| EV charging is 100% new generation capacity and doesn't
| take any of the existing load off the power grid. House
| Battery isn't a load, it's the expensive thing you suffer
| when the actual loads are inflexible.
|
| Heating is slightly flexible, you can lower your
| thermostat at night, but it's also colder at night. And
| most existing heating is fossil fuels. Converting that to
| electricity is going to require _more_ electricity
| consumption _at night_ than we have now.
| jakewins wrote:
| > EV charging is 100% new generation capacity and doesn't
| take any of the existing load off the power grid.
|
| All the more important to ensure this additional demand
| is flexible. Shaping it to match renewable production and
| low-usage hours in the distribution grid means higher
| capacity factors across the board and less new
| transmission+distribution need.
|
| > Converting <home heating> to electricity is going to
| require more electricity
|
| Yes.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > All the more important to ensure this additional demand
| is flexible.
|
| It's inherently flexible. Shaping it to be that way isn't
| a particularly hard problem. The issue is that it's
| entirely new demand -- what you're really replacing is
| the petroleum burned in existing cars, not any part of
| the existing power grid. So how do you solve the demand
| currently served by coal and natural gas, rather than
| gasoline and diesel?
|
| > Converting <home heating> to electricity is going to
| require more electricity
|
| I feel like editing out the "at night" part hasn't
| actually provided a mechanism for supplying that
| electricity at night when it's cold and you need heat.
| Nick87633 wrote:
| This is an interesting thought. There are already some
| energy meters you can add to monitor all of the circuits in
| your house. It's a short step from there to have smart
| breakers or switches to help retrofit old-fashioned
| heaters, radiant systems, etc as thermal storage. Electric
| buffer tanks may become a cost effective installation when
| paired with an on-demand water heater and time-of-use
| electric pricing.
| cycomanic wrote:
| This is how things are done in NZ already. Most electricity
| company have contracts with two tarrifs (sometimes even
| more), one normal one and a second significantly cheaper
| one where the circuit is controlled by the power company
| and they can turn off things when there is hight demand.
| Typically you'd put your water heater, electric car and
| other things on this circuit.
|
| I the more long term, exchanging resistive water heaters
| with heat pumps is the way to go (and already done
| throughout Scandinavia)
| gizmo686 wrote:
| My energy provider (BGE) used to offer a program where you
| could get a rebate in exchange for letting them control
| your hot water heater and/or thermostat. The HVAC portion
| is still running, but only for people who signed up prior
| to 2020. The water heater program has been completely
| stopped since 2021.
|
| The good thing with both approaches is you don't need the
| appliance built to support it. For HVAC, the control system
| is in the thermostat, which is cheap and has a standard
| interface.
|
| For waterheaters, you can just stick a relay in sequence
| with the heater.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > We're already incentivized to do things like running the
| dishwasher in the evening do to costs, no?
|
| Not where I live. Electricity costs the same here no matter
| what day or time of day it is.
| soco wrote:
| My (Swiss, small) provider just got rid of differentiated
| pricing "for simplicity sake". On the other hand they
| continuously increase the solar installations, so I really
| don't get their point. But I'm not an economist so...
| Scoundreller wrote:
| My jurisdiction went all-in on residential smart meters
| for all to do time of use billing.
|
| Even apartments where hvac, hot water and laundry are
| central, and the builder/owner chooses the big
| appliances.
|
| But it turns out people don't care and didn't bother with
| enough load shifting to cover the cost.
|
| "Smart Metering Costs to Date Exceed Projected Costs and
| Benefits" says it all.
|
| They did get/build a $249m centre to monitor all the data
| though.
|
| https://www.auditor.on.ca/en/content/annualreports/arrepo
| rts...
|
| Even after ~15 years, most equipment still doesn't care
| about time of use.
|
| Most savings have been due to better
| regulations/promotions around efficiency. Subsidized LED
| light bulbs accomplish more than telling people to turn
| off the incandescent.
|
| But you know, giving useful stuff to people for free is
| WeLFarE but forcing untested policies on them and making
| them pay for it is okay.
| Symbiote wrote:
| What are the relative costs?
|
| It depends very much on the weather, but in Denmark the
| cost can vary from around 1DKK/kWh (EUR0.14) to 5kr/kWh
| (EUR0.67), or a few hours a year even more.
|
| Recent and future prices are shown here:
| https://andelenergi.dk/kundeservice/aftaler-og-
| priser/timepr...
|
| I don't know of any studies done here, but anecdotally I
| do know people who have the app version of that webpage
| and will schedule their laundry/dishwasher accordingly.
| (And of course EV owners will configure their car to
| charge at the cheapest period.)
|
| Personally, the saving isn't worth thinking about for me.
| I run the dishwasher overnight anyway and sometimes the
| washing machine, but that's to avoid the noise during the
| evening rather than any economic or environmental reason.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| For the power price, in winter, it's 8.7 cents/kwh at off
| peak, 12.2 mid peak and 18.2 peak. (Canadian prices,
| about CAD$1.35:US$1.00).
|
| There are other charges that don't vary by time of day or
| kWh, so those numbers are only good for absolute, not
| relative comparisons.
|
| https://www.oeb.ca/consumer-information-and-
| protection/elect...
| JohnFen wrote:
| > But it turns out people don't care and didn't bother
| with enough load shifting to cover the cost.
|
| This doesn't surprise me a great deal. Personally, the
| price difference would have to be very high in order for
| it to affect my usage patterns. It would have to exceed
| the cost of having yet another complication for me to
| keep track of.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Some of it is mispricing.
|
| We're getting the kids version of market pricing, but
| when you give people real market pricing without cross-
| subsidization, they tend to get confused/angry/bankrupt.
|
| I still think they could do real-time pricing with some
| kind of cap that gets balanced out amongst all users, but
| the uptake still may not be there. It averages out for
| those that treat it as noise and still not a lot of
| equipment out there to take advantage of it at the
| personal residential level.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I checked my electric provider and although I said in an
| earlier comment that they don't do this sort of
| differential pricing, I was incorrect. They've been doing
| it for years now -- but it's optional and you have to opt
| in to it.
|
| They say that the percentage of users who actually do
| this is somewhere around 10%.
|
| Personally, I value having electric prices being stable
| very highly. I'd prefer pay higher rates (up to a point)
| to keep that stability.
| bruce511 wrote:
| I had a solar system installed last year. During the day,
| from around 8am til around 5pm we are "off grid" in the sense
| that we can generate more than we use.
|
| I've already switched hot water and pool pump to daytime
| rather than night. The dishwasher now runs in the morning,
| not after dinner. Washing and drying, Aircon/ heating mostly
| happened during the day anyway.
|
| Overall our use of grid power has dropped to 20%, and I think
| we can get it down to 10% (at least I summer time.)
|
| So yes, in the sense that the daytime cost is now a -lot-
| cheaper (think free) I'm seeing how we are heavily
| incentivised to change our usage patterns.
| anthomtb wrote:
| I moved to a house with a solar system in October. I now
| make a point to run the dishwasher and dryer during day
| time hours. And avoid using the dryer on cloudy days.
|
| It doesn't really matter when I run these appliances.
| Between fixed rate electricity and net metering, the cost
| will be the same even if they run at night. But I get weird
| satisfaction knowing that the sun is providing the power.
| guerby wrote:
| And don't forget the ultimate flexible load: electric
| vehicles.
|
| In 2023 near half of my (relatively well insulated all
| electric home) energy use was charging my EV at home.
| anthomtb wrote:
| That's in the game plan for 2024, no question. My new
| home came at the cost of doubling my commute distance. An
| EV charged by my own rooftop would be better for both the
| planet and my own bottom line.
|
| Edit: Any chance you're in the US? If so, what EV are you
| driving?
| anonporridge wrote:
| Jenkins is a worthwhile follow.
|
| https://twitter.com/jessejenkins
|
| https://bsky.app/profile/jessejenkins.bsky.social
| klabb3 wrote:
| > Energy this cheap gives us a huge incentive to change our
| energy use patterns to match power abundance rather than to
| take energy demand as a constant.
|
| I have not listened to the podcast, but I know for a fact
| that's much harder than it sounds. Parking spaces, highways,
| factories, offices, parks, beaches, hiking trails, skiing,
| museums, stadiums, even grocery stores have an extreme
| variability in demand. Almost all demand comes from human
| activity, and like all other animals that activity is highly
| variable and intermittent. Yes, there are a few exceptions:
| batteries, some household appliances like washers, and perhaps
| certain factories/refineries that could be run with minimal
| operations at night. Incentives don't even work to suppress
| leisure: people go through massive traffic, no parking and
| crowds to get to the beach on sunny weekends. Imagine chores or
| even actual needs: like keeping the heat or AC on. Electricity
| is survival-critical in many parts of the world.
|
| In short, I think the incentives needed to alter fundamental
| human behavior are less like cute coupons and more like a gun
| to your head. In most places, there won't be enough political
| lunacy to push that through, and instead the glorious green
| energy programs will be stalled, delayed and eventually
| scrapped. I can't think of a better outcome for fossil fuel
| companies.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| You can replace a _significant_ proportion of the grid with
| intermittent generation without any trouble. Using solar for
| the air conditioning load in the summer is perfect. Use
| whatever you want to charge electric car batteries because
| they 're _batteries_ and most cars are parked >90% of the
| time. You can can't shift 100% of the load based on time of
| day through pricing, but you can do a non-trivial amount.
|
| Then you pick the low-hanging fruit and start trying to find
| a solution to power heat pumps in the winter at night and
| it's... not as easy. But a grid can be 0% fossil fuels
| without being 100% solar and wind.
| stcredzero wrote:
| _Using solar for the air conditioning load in the summer is
| perfect._
|
| Ish. They don't completely correspond.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| It's close enough that you can compensate by setting a
| lower indoor temperature during daylight and letting it
| rise a few degrees around sunset before the outdoor
| temperature declines.
| danans wrote:
| > Then you pick the low-hanging fruit and start trying to
| find a solution to power heat pumps in the winter at night
| and it's... not as easy.
|
| But it's also not impossible, especially as heat pump
| efficiency keeps marching up in colder conditions and
| stationary battery prices keep going down with new
| chemistries that trade off energy density for cost.
|
| Heck, if batteries are still too expensive, we could even
| use residential hydrogen fuel cells in that situation,
| which could easily power a heat pump.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Storage isn't just a bad fit for that because it's
| expensive, though. What do you do when it runs down,
| because it's unusually cold or you have an extended
| period of low generation, or both? Now it's 20 degrees
| below freezing and you have no heat.
| bilsbie wrote:
| I've always said this! Make daytime energy 100x cheaper and the
| market will respond.
|
| Appliances will start building in batteries, behaviors will
| change , and who knows what else the market will come up with.
| DennisP wrote:
| That's just externalizing costs though. Instead of building a
| large battery at the power station, you're building lots of
| little batteries everywhere else.
|
| Even demand management can be an externalized cost. If a
| factory shuts down half the time, then you need twice as many
| factories to produce the same stuff.
| tialaramex wrote:
| > If a factory shuts down half the time, then you need
| twice as many factories to produce the same stuff.
|
| No. It means you _might_ need twice as much of whatever the
| bottleneck is, assuming that 's a real time manufacturing
| resource which it might well not be. You definitely don't
| need twice as many whole factories. And if that bottlebeck
| isn't energy intensive that's not the problem at all, you
| can just re-arrange the energy intensive parts and you
| won't even need more factory.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I'm not sure I would call it "externalizing costs" if the
| only change was making daytime energy significantly cheaper
| (and not increasing off-peak energy prices). You could
| simply not add any batteries and your costs would still go
| down. You would presumably only decide to add batteries if
| the cost of doing so was less than the money you'd save by
| shifting energy usage to cheaper times.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| How is daytime energy supposed to get 100x cheaper and still
| allow solar, which only generates during the daytime, to
| recover its costs? Unless you mean for the nighttime price to
| increase by a huge factor, but then how would that out-
| compete existing technologies for generation at night?
| winter_blue wrote:
| I think he means solar panels becoming so cheap that the
| total cost of solar is 1/100 of nighttime energy sources.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Even if the panels were free, you couldn't cover the
| labor to install them for that.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| or the land. A lot of people seem to forget that...
| sheepybloke wrote:
| You get a larger market share of the total energy
| consumption/payments to be during the day. E.g. because
| solar is cheaper, I shift my usage so that all of my energy
| costs are during the day, and if a majority of people do
| that, there will be enough money to keep the businesses
| afloat.
| outside1234 wrote:
| AND how we manage our personal energy - for example, adding
| batteries to arbitrage the cheap daytime energy during the
| night
| danans wrote:
| I do this today with residential batteries on a time-of-use
| rate plan that is highest between 3PM and midnight (with an
| average $0.30/kWh price difference between peak and low
| rates).
|
| I end up arbitraging about 5kWh/day (1825kWh/yr ) of usage
| between those rates, which works out to about ~$500/year in
| utility bill savings. Compared to the cost of the battery
| system, that's not much and the payback period is well beyond
| the life of the battery.
|
| In some locations (alas not mine), you can sell your
| battery's charge back to the grid during, providing grid
| ancillary services, for an even better ROI.
|
| There is still, however, some resistance against opening the
| gates to leaf-node distributed energy resources from
| traditional utilities and generators.
| epistasis wrote:
| The EIA (and the IEA) have historically underpredicted solar
| deploys, to a comical level. They need 2-4 years of spot on
| predictions before they can regain credibility on their
| projections, IMHO.
|
| So I would put these projections as a bare minimum floor on how
| much solar will get installed. The true number is likely quite a
| bit higher.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _would put these projections as a bare minimum floor on how
| much solar will get installed_
|
| Is there evidence they haven't fixed this bias? The EIA and IEA
| are in general credible forecasters. Assuming past errors will
| persist doesn't sound like a good strategy unless you have
| methodological clues that they haven't made adjustments.
| apsec112 wrote:
| This isn't like trying to beat the stock market. There's no
| intrinsic reason why their predictions should be any good,
| and in fact they've been comically bad, coming in too low
| every year for 21 consecutive years:
|
| https://www.pv-magazine.com/2018/10/09/iea-low-balls-
| solar-g...
|
| (this is from 2018, but the same trend has continued up
| through 2023)
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _no intrinsic reason why their predictions should be any
| good_
|
| This is where the "generaly credible" bit comes in. They're
| good forecasters in other domains. Part of being a good
| forecaster is adjusting as you make errors. So we'd need a
| hypothesis for why they wouldn't be making those
| adjustments.
|
| As a trivial example, Hoekstra's chart shows the WEO
| serially predicting false plateaus between 2006 and 2018.
| Those plateaus are no longer the case for the IEA's solar
| predictions [1].
|
| Again, not rejecting that this may be undershooting
| reality. But if your only evidence is past performance,
| that's likely oversimplistic.
|
| [1] https://www.iea.org/reports/renewable-energy-market-
| update-j...
| scythe wrote:
| The link you're referring to only goes to next year,
| whereas the infamous pessimistic graphs tried to
| extrapolate for around a decade. I suppose capitulation
| would count as an adjustment.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _link you 're referring to only goes to next year,
| whereas the infamous pessimistic graphs tried to
| extrapolate for around a decade_
|
| This _CleanTechnica_ article references the short-term
| energy outlook. The context is near-term forecasts.
|
| > _capitulation would count as an adjustment_
|
| What else would it be?
| epistasis wrote:
| If they are specifically bad in an area, with a very
| strong reputation, why should we assume that specific
| reputation would change to match the general reputation?
|
| Also, I'm not familiar with any projections that are
| generally good. Collecting existing data? Sure they are
| good at that. But projection is an entirely different
| skill set and I have not ever heard somebody cite great
| projections from EIA.
| DeRock wrote:
| Their predictions are comically bad, year after year they
| massively under appreciate the growth of solar. Just look at
| this graphic:
| https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DsX2rpPW0AIVORG.jpg?name=orig
| robertlagrant wrote:
| You don't want methodological clues. You just want to monitor
| their predictions and see if they get better.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Well, we could try something with skin in the game. We could
| test our strategies. $1k to a charity of our choice 1:1? I'll
| say their best predictions today for capacity 2 years from
| now will be under the capacity 2 years from now.
|
| If you're in SF, I'll send someone to make a deal with you.
| It's not on Kalshi or we could have some fun.
| cycomanic wrote:
| > > would put these projections as a bare minimum floor on
| how much solar will get installed
|
| > Is there evidence they haven't fixed this bias? The EIA and
| IEA are in general credible forecasters. Assuming past errors
| will persist doesn't sound like a good strategy unless you
| have methodological clues that they haven't made adjustments.
|
| I would contest the credible forecaster label when it comes
| to solar. By now we require evidence that they fixed their
| biases. If somebody gets something so badly wrong for over 20
| years why should we assume they suddenly fixed their models.
| All historical evidence points to the contrary.
| ctoth wrote:
| No, 2050 isn't some sort of tipping point[0].
|
| [0]: https://www.liberalpatriot.com/p/to-avoid-the-worst-
| impacts-...
| epistasis wrote:
| This link has no relevance to my comment or to this thread.
| weakfish wrote:
| I'd hardly qualify a sub stack with a policy agenda as a
| source here.
| specialist wrote:
| Excellent.
|
| Witness the power of the cost learning curve (Wright's Law).
|
| Per Jenny Chase, we also need new wind power generation capacity
| to keep pace. If solar gets too far ahead of wind on the cost
| learning curve, it'll (further) spoil the financing of wind. Our
| glorious green energy future requires both wind and solar, in
| roughly equal measure.
|
| This Volts episode is quite good:
|
| Checking in on solar power - A conversation with Bloomberg NEF's
| Jenny Chase. [2023-11-29]
|
| _" longtime solar industry analyst Jenny Chase, author of Solar
| Power Finance Without the Jargon, catches us up on the current
| state of the global solar industry and looks to where it's
| going."_
|
| https://www.volts.wtf/p/checking-in-on-solar-power
| drycobbler wrote:
| This was fascinating! Thanks for sharing!
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| Sadly, wind has much better capacity factor, and works during
| nights and winter.
| intrasight wrote:
| Why sad?
| zardo wrote:
| Getting the wrong ratio of installed green power generation
| means less CO2 reduction per dollar invested.
| intrasight wrote:
| Markets are imperfect - even more so when government
| subsidies play a major role. Wind will play a growing role.
| datameta wrote:
| According to the charts, battery storage seems to be growing
| roughly in parity.
| darknavi wrote:
| This forecast has wind up as well, just not as much as solar.
| recursive wrote:
| There's room for both. Solar works when the wind is calm. It's
| probably good to be diversified.
| pydry wrote:
| They actually anticorrelate, significantly reducing the
| amount of storage required when paired.
| lm28469 wrote:
| Sadly wind doesn't blow as hard during the night anyways
| Panino wrote:
| Wind is my favorite generation source and we need much more of
| it, but I can say that my rooftop solar in USDA Zone 5 (colder
| than most of the US) produced a net-surplus of energy for my
| all-electric house in December. So it's pretty good. Saying
| that solar "doesn't work" in winter is some mix of lazy,
| factually wrong, and unsubstantive. I've also got some
| standalone panels out in the yard right now hooked up to an LFP
| battery that I haul out there most days. Solar is awesome and
| I'm thinking about the best ways to expand.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Wind has a less aggressive experience curve than solar, so it's
| probably headed for secondary status in a renewable world.
| Places like India are probably going to get by with very little
| wind.
|
| This is bad news for high latitude energy-intensive industries.
| verisimi wrote:
| I don't get why solar is so popular.
|
| In more northern regions, you get much less light in the winter.
| You effectively can only generate around one tenth of the energy
| you can in the summer - this is from experience talking to others
| who monitor their solar installations.
|
| But, you need more energy in the winter. People are in more,
| using electricity for heat cos it's colder. I'm pointing out that
| there is a supply/demand reversal. Sure there are sweet spots in
| spring and autumn, but when you really need energy, you have
| less.
|
| You can mitigate some minor fluctuations with batteries.... Ie
| you can smoothen things a bit, but you can't really take the
| summer's excess, to use in the winter.
|
| It just seems like a fundamental mismatch, that leaves you
| exposed, when you need the most amount of support.
| dralley wrote:
| >But, you need more energy in the winter. People are in more,
| using electricity for heat cos it's colder. I'm pointing out
| that there is a supply/demand reversal. Sure there are sweet
| spots in spring and autumn, but when you really need energy,
| you have less.
|
| Northern areas tend to use fossil fuels for heating at higher
| rates, and less heat pumps.
| morsch wrote:
| Let me introduce you to Scandinavia...
| https://www.euronews.com/green/2023/10/30/do-heat-pumps-
| work...
| megaman821 wrote:
| The answer is a bit simple. Only a small amount of Earth's
| population lives at north European latitudes (https://engaging-
| data.com/population-latitude-longitude/). Solar is quite
| effective for the majority of the population, so its adoption
| rate will have the biggest impact on further climate change.
| switchbak wrote:
| I get that it's a great solution for much of the world - and
| that is fantastic.
|
| But they were asking about its effectiveness in northern
| climates during winter (which I also live in). It sounds like
| your answer is: "it doesn't work there". If so, that's fine,
| we can focus on other approaches in such climates.
|
| What seems like an emerging shortsighted opinion (on HN at
| least) is: "it's so cheap, just use more". That doesn't
| really work when: - you're in a place that gets a small
| fraction of solar radiation during the winter - it's often
| overcast - the requirement for electricity for heat pumps
| goes up drastically during this time - the nighttime
| requirement is even higher, as temps can get to -20 C or
| lower
|
| I can't imagine the system you'd have to build to satisfy
| such demand with solar and battery (or similar) storage in
| the worst case, but I don't imagine it's "cheap".
| megaman821 wrote:
| There are solutions that are carbon-free; wind, enhanced
| geothermal (if fracking was legal in Europe), and nuclear.
| Solar electricity imports out of Spain or Morocco seems
| more feasible that solar situated in northern Europe.
| cycomanic wrote:
| The OP was saying:
|
| "I don't get why solar is so popular" based on the fact it
| doesn't work as well in extreme Northern regions where only
| a tiny fraction of the world's population lives.
|
| That's sort of like saying I don't get why boats/ships are
| so popular because they can't drive on land.
| ragebol wrote:
| In my native Netherlands, in the summertime there's solar, in
| winter there's is wind.
|
| I have a dynamic energy contract, I pay spot prices + taxes and
| markup. What solar energy I sell in the summer, I can buy in
| the winter. With our heat pump, I need to generate about twice
| as much as I did before we had the heat pump, to match it in
| money (summer is cheaper than winter at the moment). Watt for
| watt is not a useful measurement IMO, since I can't store
| Watts, but I can store euros.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| This just assumes someone else fixes the
| storage/overprovision problem, otherwise energy will get
| cheaper in the summer and more expensive in the winter until
| storing euros does not work.
| sigilis wrote:
| That's what markets are for: someone else will fix the
| problem because there's money in it. It's generally
| something you can rely on, that someone will try to get
| their hands on stored euros.
| GaggiX wrote:
| Solar PV systems has reached grid parity in many parts of the
| world (it's cheap), at a national level renewable energy means
| energy security and solar is usually used with others power
| sources like wind and/or hydro.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| People closer to the equator tend to use more energy in the
| summer than in the winter, since they need more cooling than
| heating.
| tallowen wrote:
| I think solar is becoming popular because it is so much cheaper
| where it works.
|
| One point of disagreement is that you are saying "you need more
| energy in the winter". Right now, for example, tomato paste is
| made in a facility that runs year round. The main cost in
| converting tomatoes into tomato paste is in the thermal cost of
| energy. Having abundant cheap energy at one time of year will
| shift the way such industrial processes work so that we use
| more energy when supply is the highest rather than using the
| most energy when demand is the highest.
| protastus wrote:
| Solar is super cheap, making it a very effective complement to
| the matrix even though it's not enough by itself, for reasons
| you mentioned.
|
| Every kWh from solar is one kWh less from fossil fuels. It
| seems inevitable that electricity becomes free when there's
| sun, because of solar.
| v4vvdq wrote:
| In northern (and southern) regions the less light you get in
| winter, the more you get in summer. It is a zero-sum game.
| olyjohn wrote:
| You can't take the power you generate in the summer and use
| it to heat your house in the winter though.
| robotnikman wrote:
| One thing I've thought about, how hard would it be to set up a
| lot of solar panels in a region with 99% good weather (like
| Arizona) and then supply some of the energy to areas with less
| favorable weather?
|
| Though that would be putting all your eggs in one basket.
| blackbeans wrote:
| It is possible but traditional power grid lines have quite
| some losses over longer distances. An expensive HVDC
| connection would be more efficient.
|
| Furthermore Arizona could be too hot and dusty to be ideal.
| Solar panels work best when they are unobstructed and not too
| hot.
| Aloisius wrote:
| Most homes in the Northern US outside use propane, natural gas,
| heating oil or wood to heat their homes in the winter, not
| electricity.
|
| Electricity demand in summer in the US is far higher than
| winter due to air conditioning.
|
| Moreover, most of the utility-scale solar generation capacity
| isn't in the Northern US.
| cycomanic wrote:
| > I don't get why solar is so popular.
|
| > In more northern regions, you get much less light in the
| winter. You effectively can only generate around one tenth of
| the energy you can in the summer - this is from experience
| talking to others who monitor their solar installations.
|
| When we looked at installing solar on our house in Sweden the
| calculations showed that in winter we'd produce about 20% of
| the power IIRC. I just had a look for a source and I could only
| found this [1] which might be more like 10%. That said Sweden
| is quite extreme, all of the US save Alaska get much more
| sunlight in winter.
|
| [1] https://adelsfors.se/2022/12/29/solar-vs-wind-power-in-
| swede...
| wiredfool wrote:
| I've done some math on residential solar in Ireland, on east-
| west facing pitched roofs, and it looks like a 4-6KW system
| would be break even in 5-7 years, given the current prices
| (44c/KWh) and the current subsidies (~2k for a ~8k install cost
| all in).
|
| It's a little complicated because of time of use, and it's
| unclear if net metering or feed-in rates will continue.
|
| While Ireland has a good chunk of renewables, mainly wind, our
| electricity rates are still driven by gas import prices, so
| they're 2x what they were a couple years ago.
| hammock wrote:
| Welcome to the future.
| https://media.sciencephoto.com/c0/47/01/29/c0470129-800px-wm...
| Fauntleroy wrote:
| 1) That ain't even bad 2) There are better ways to integrate
| solar into communities
| hammock wrote:
| _> 1) That ain 't even bad_
|
| It's not exactly a step towards a 15-minute city, either
| r00fus wrote:
| Right, in a 15m city this would be on rooftops or
| integrated in the agriculture.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Being that we've not taken any steps toward the 15 minute
| city in the US, solar or not, I don't think that's much of
| a measuring stick.
| dvdkon wrote:
| No, but a 15-minute city would offer no opportunities for
| this to happen, except on hard town borders. Any plot of
| land this big in a dense city would be much more
| lucratively used for houses.
| marssaxman wrote:
| Better yet, there are better ways of integrating solar with
| agriculture.
| orenlindsey wrote:
| We really shouldn't have waited this long to start transitioning
| to clean energy. If 2050 really is the point of no return
| (somewhere around then, from what I've heard), we'll have to
| replace over a century of infrastructure in about 20 years. And
| scaling is the hardest part. (we've already done some scaling,
| but renewables only account for ~20% of US energy, so we have to
| 5x that) Then, there's less developed countries, which can't fund
| subsidies and have unstable governments making it less likely for
| big infrastructure projects to get started anyways.
|
| Not to mention oil-based economies. Many of them are just
| sticking their heads in the sand pretending oil will hold up
| their economy forever. This will be disastrous for them, and I'm
| sure many will lobby to stop clean energy (which will only make
| things worse for the planet). Only Saudi Arabia is really trying
| to diversify. As I said, we really should have started sooner so
| we could get the politics out of the way and we could just be
| focusing on deployment at scale today.
| vladms wrote:
| Information takes time to disseminate to people. I think the
| transition happened "as fast as it could" given that people
| tend to oppose change, have a hard time understand scientific
| results and science takes a long time anyhow.
|
| If anything I would say "we should educate more people".
| Because that is the only thing that might prevent the next "we
| shouldn't have waited..." (for any of the problems that we
| could solve, but people just don't think/understand them - like
| antibiotic microbial resistance and other topics)
| alfor wrote:
| Solar and batteries are on an expodential path.
|
| The cost is going down so fast it won't make sense to have
| anything else.
|
| I think that by 2035 most of the transition will be done even
| if we don't have major new developpement, but if you look at
| what AI is finding in new materials I think that the next few
| years are going to be very weird.
|
| Look into Tony Seby, he predicted the current path 10y ago.
| londons_explore wrote:
| The real question is will growth of solar push electricity prices
| down enough that fossil plants get decommissioned early because
| they are no longer sufficiently profitable?
| collinmcnulty wrote:
| Almost certainly, assuming the growth of solar occurs as
| stated. The real tipping point is the fuel-only operating cost
| of a given plant, which is a function of the plant's efficiency
| and the price of its fuel.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Remember that many plants have futures contracts setting the
| price for both fuel and electricity sometimes 10+ years in
| advance.
|
| Theoretically futures contracts should never affect wether an
| activity is financially worthwhile or not, but realistically
| a profitable contract can keep a plant online even though it
| otherwise makes no sense to do so.
| huytersd wrote:
| It depends on what you mean by fossil fuels. With solar and
| wind you absolutely need gas peaker plants to come online
| quickly and provide power during downtime so that's not going
| away anytime soon. Batteries may offer some replacement but
| we're not there yet. Pumped hydro is probably the best bet if
| governments can work out the issues with it and start getting
| it right.
| sheepybloke wrote:
| They've already majorly affected what sort of plants get built.
| For example, most of the new build plants are natural gas based
| and designed to be started quickly to supplement the current
| production of power.
| ren_engineer wrote:
| I love having our energy grid being reliant on a geopolitical
| rival. I'm sure this won't end in disaster
|
| >China makes 80% of global solar panels
|
| >controls 95% of overall supply chain for solar
|
| https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/energy/china-to-dominate...
| r00fus wrote:
| We only have ourselves to blame (mostly due to being in the
| pockets of Big Oil/Coal).
| baron816 wrote:
| This is what the a big part of the Inflation Reduction Act was
| meant to address. You can thank Biden and Manchin for taking
| action to address your concerns.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I dislike when people criticize something without being
| inquisitive or acknowledging the elephant in the room.
|
| What is your alternative? Continue heating the planet through
| burning oil/NG/coal? Develop solar panels domestically and wait
| to flip to solar (missing out on benefits in the meantime)?
| Nuclear?
| VintageCool wrote:
| If China stops selling us solar panels, the ones we already
| have will keep producing power and we'll be just fine.
|
| I feel like you're making an analogy here to 1973 when Saudi
| Arabia cut off the supply of oil or 2022 when Russia cut off
| the supply of fossil gas, but the analogy doesn't work.
| fastaguy88 wrote:
| How hard would it be to include one graph that plots the relative
| contributions of solar, wind, gas, coal, etc to total energy
| usage, rather than growth in energy usage?
|
| If the growth over the next 2 years is 10% of current total,
| having it mostly be renewable is nice, but not very meaningful.
| It is reassuring that coal growth is negative, but what is the
| total? Negative 2% is very different from negative 20%.
| MichaelNolan wrote:
| For the US, the eia has all of this info in a pretty accessible
| format.
|
| For electricity - https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/browser/
|
| For energy -
| https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/browser/?tbl=T01.03#/?f...
| tomohawk wrote:
| This makes me sad, as it means the industrialization of non-urban
| lands that will get covered with panels. Croplands. Wild lands.
| If subsidies were only provided for panels that cover existing
| urban hardscapes, it would be much better.
| jcampbell1 wrote:
| We currently have 40 million acres of corn dedicated to ethanol
| production. All our energy needs can be met by 15 million acres
| of solar panels. The same set of facts that make you sad make
| me happy.
| megaman821 wrote:
| But can I cut a maze out of solar panels?
| alfor wrote:
| Parking, flat roof, unprofitable argriculture land, there is
| plenty of space.
| zackmorris wrote:
| Just so we have some numbers:
|
| $0.41 per watt utility-scale solar panel cost in 2020
| ($0.17-$0.30 by 2030):
| https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/articles/2030-solar-cost-t...
|
| Cost projections (note the 2019 upswing where market forces and
| installation costs exceeded solar panel cost):
| https://www.solar.com/learn/solar-panel-cost/
|
| $480/kWh utility-scale battery cost (falling by 32% to $326/kwH
| by 2030): https://www.energy-storage.news/li-ion-bess-costs-
| could-fall...
|
| Solar energy will likely be stored in low-cost sodium ion
| residential and high-temperature sodium sulphur utility-scale
| batteries. This is probably a solved problem in the lab but will
| take 5-10 years to roll out at scale.
|
| To put this in perspective, Bonneville Power in the northwest
| supplies some of the cheapest electricity in the US due to its
| installed hydroelectric base. But it is no longer able to compete
| with renewables, as solar and wind prices have fallen below its
| $35/MWh wholesale price:
|
| https://www.bpa.gov/energy-and-services/rate-and-tariff-proc...
|
| http://www.bluefish.org/notobase.htm
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity
|
| Now the cost-benefit of dams is being examined due to their
| environmental impact on fish runs (like salmon) and the
| starvation of wildlife like killer whales near estuaries.
|
| Meaning that since solar is scalable, it has made nuclear the
| most expensive form of electricity today in terms of levelized
| cost. That doesn't mean that newer thorium and pebble bed
| reactors aren't worth exploring for high-power use cases, but
| that there's no way to build, fuel and decommission a nuclear
| reactor more cheaply than operating an existing dam which is
| already more expensive than solar.
|
| The smart investment today is in energy storage and AC/DC
| transformers. Photovoltaics are second to that because they are a
| saturated market, but there could be opportunities in thinner and
| disposable panels, especially for electric vehicles.
| hgomersall wrote:
| I'm suspicious of those numbers. I personally can build a home
| scale battery storage system for around 280PS/kWh. As in, I can
| go and buy the parts to do that and put it together. I can't
| believe they can't already do it cheaper at grid scale. That
| said, it might well be it's as easy to buy at small scale as at
| grid scale currently.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| solar is 10x cheaper than nuclear generation, but storage is 100x
| more expensive than nuclear.
|
| Need a massive change in our understanding of storage costs to go
| 100% renewable.
| doug_durham wrote:
| Citations? I find this difficult to understand.
| MilaM wrote:
| Do you happen to have a source for this comparison? I'm curious
| to know what the economics of grid scale electricity storage
| are.
| BenoitP wrote:
| Cost figures are very hard to come by as:
|
| * Financing and returns are spread over 60 years for nuclear,
| which makes it hugely dependent on the interest rate. Which
| we don't know in advance, and also is at risk of irrational
| public perception (Leading in democracies to early closure of
| perfectly fine plants. That affects ROI hugely).
|
| * Nuclear too profits from scale: you have to maintain an
| army of competent engineers. But once done, you can copy-
| paste plants cheaply. And raw fuel is less than 10 of the
| operating cost.
|
| * LCOEs (financially Levelized Costs) are all over the place
| and highly dependent on plugging holes in production
|
| * Chinese solar panels are state-sponsored to an unspecified
| amount
|
| * Chinese solar panels are produced using coal electricity,
| and with lots fossil heat in the process. Models for pricing
| it in a CO2-free (or levelized with nuclear) are inexistent.
|
| * Even calculating the EROEI (Energy Return Over Energy
| Invested) is difficult as you need to define an envelope. For
| example: do you need to account for producing gasoline from
| solar energy to power the mining truck necessary for your
| materials. How about powering it with batteries? Which you
| would need more mining.
|
| * Battery storage needs are of humongous size. What's
| marginally fine now will probably be humongously expensive at
| scale. If done on lithium, we need about 180 years of mining
| for 28 days storage. And that's without accounting for other
| uses of lithium.
|
| * Having cheap or expensive energy from one source may help
| you get more of another.
|
| TLDR: At scale, it's a system with 150 variables dependent on
| each other, including geopolitical game theory hidden
| variables; and of course the climate crisis affecting the
| whole thing. But maybe we can trust physics: nuclear forces
| >> electric forces.
| wiredfool wrote:
| Other recent threads have mentioned gridscale battery storage
| on the order of 8-10c/KWh.
| Kon5ole wrote:
| It doesn't have to be batteries, hydrogen gas can be generated
| from solar at 80% efficiency, and storing hydrogen is way
| cheaper than batteries. Certainly way cheaper than nuclear.
| kimmk wrote:
| Round-trip efficiency of hydrogen storage is at best around
| 40% though. But with abundant and cheap renewables, this
| might not be much of an issue.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-01-11 23:01 UTC)