[HN Gopher] Solar energy is now the cheapest source of power, study
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Solar energy is now the cheapest source of power, study
Author : giuliomagnifico
Score : 226 points
Date : 2025-10-07 17:50 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.surrey.ac.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.surrey.ac.uk)
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Without digging into the study, hasn't this been true for many
| years now? Would love to know an actual pivot date where
| commercial scale deployments became the cheapest option.
| michaelbuckbee wrote:
| I dug down trying to get the actual paper and it appears it's a
| pre-print with only the abstract available (but maybe I wasn't
| looking in the right spot).
|
| That being said, the quotes from the author were more to the
| point of it being a milestone that in the UK that Solar+Battery
| systems were now less expensive than gas/coal.
|
| To my understanding, this is a milestone vs "raw" production
| numbers, which you're correct in saying have had solar as the
| cheapest option for years.
| epistasis wrote:
| Holy crap, the UK has absolutely awful solar insolation, that
| solar and battery is now cheaper than coal really emphasizes
| how much the tech has advanced, and continues to advance!
|
| Germany also has absolutely terrible solar resources, worse
| than any continental US state, and is also deploying tons and
| tons of solar.
|
| Solar really is one of the more amazing technologies of our
| time, especially when combined with batteries, which advance
| almost as fast.
|
| We will have such greater reliability, cost, and air quality
| as coal is completely replaced by modern clean energy
| systems.
| DamonHD wrote:
| UK insolation is very roughly half that of (say)
| California, IIRC...
|
| (BTW, this is my crowd at Surrey, and Ravi is my (IfS)
| director!)
| hvb2 wrote:
| Germany has deployed a lot of solar because of the
| Stromeinspeisungsgesetz from the 90s. It was the first feed
| in tariff law in the world afaik.
|
| It made it that you were guaranteed a certain rate for x
| amount of years. As a result people were driving to farmers
| to rent their roof to install solar on it.
| hinkley wrote:
| There's a weird thing the contestants in the solar car
| challenge that Australia has been hosting since forever
| where they generate more power on haze or partly cloudy
| days than on sunny. I don't know if they ever sorted out
| why. Speculation was reflected light off the clouds, but I
| suspect panel temperature also played a role. And road
| temperature affects panel temps.
|
| What the UK cannot do is concentrating solar. The
| efficiency absolutely crashes in diffuse light.
| LamaOfRuin wrote:
| Yeah. The temperature issue would have been my first
| guess.
|
| Regarding concentrating solar: are people still trying to
| make that work for commercial generation? I thought this
| had generally failed to pan out for electricity
| generation.
| rcxdude wrote:
| Concentrated PV is pretty dead, the cost and complexity
| of the tracking is not at all worth it for the
| theoretical increase in efficiency.
| hinkley wrote:
| The latest discoveries with double sided panels really
| puts the last nail in that coffin I believe.
|
| There are still plants out there, but I don't know how
| many are still operating versus being decommissioned.
| hinkley wrote:
| There are many variations of concentrating solar. There's
| the tower, there's the curved mirror with the tube of
| oil, and there's the magnifying glass with a small,
| exotic solar cell that can handle 10 Suns' worth of
| light.
|
| None of them work on overcast days because they rely on
| parallel rays of light.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| It's kind of funny because you just know that in 30 years
| or so Texas is going to be a gloriously wealthy producer of
| solar power, and it'll probably be owned by the same people
| who own the oil fields today, but the current stranglehold
| of oil is preventing those very same people from getting
| richer.
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| You're not getting richer from selling cheaper energy
| gglon wrote:
| The claim hinges entirely on the narrow definition of "large-
| scale energy generation." For the UK, with its high seasonal
| energy demand and low winter solar output, the cost of
| generation is almost irrelevant next to the cost of firming
| that power for 24/7/365 availability. While the paper[1]
| shows solar PV and daily-cycle batteries are getting cheaper,
| it also shows seasonal storage solutions like hydrogen are
| still an order of magnitude too expensive and inefficient
| (huge capex for electrolyzers/storage + poor round-trip
| efficiency). So providing reliable, 24/7/365 baseload power
| from PV + storage in the UK is demonstrably not cheaper than
| gas or nuclear today.
|
| [1] https://www.authorea.com/users/960972/articles/1329770/ma
| ste...
| epistasis wrote:
| It's now passed peer-review, but hasn't yet been formatted
| into the journal's format as a PDF.
|
| Abstract here: https://www.authorea.com/users/960972/articles
| /1329770-solar...
|
| Which links to this .docx: https://www.authorea.com/users/960
| 972/articles/1329770/maste...
| fred_is_fred wrote:
| Wouldn't it depend a lot on where you live in terms of weather
| and/or required pollution controls?
| dingnuts wrote:
| skimming the article it looks like this excludes transmission,
| construction, and disposal costs
| epistasis wrote:
| Do you think those are significantly different for solar versus
| other technologies? Seems they would be right in line with
| anything else...
| DamonHD wrote:
| Capacity factor for renewables is generally lower than
| thermal plant, so some transmission costs may be higher.
| Though batteries firming output mitigates that for example.
| epistasis wrote:
| Right, and the majority of solar is getting installed with
| batteries these days because the really profitable hours
| are in the evening. Something like 60% of new solar in 2024
| in the US had batteries on site.
| DamonHD wrote:
| Wind + solar + batteries at one site can be a good combo.
| epistasis wrote:
| Depending on when the wind blows! (Which in most of the
| US is more at night, IIRC?)
| DamonHD wrote:
| For the UK there is more wind in the winter, solar in the
| summer.
|
| Intraday anti-correlation is there, but it's more
| complicated:
|
| https://bmrs.elexon.co.uk/generation-forecast-for-wind-
| and-s...
|
| The US picture varies a lot over the contiguous states, I
| think, but often, again, there is anti-correlation in
| general.
| pstuart wrote:
| Let's not forget the cost of carbon emissions which are not
| normally accounted for in pricing fossil fuels.
| hvb2 wrote:
| This. We're about to find out how expensive those are going
| to be...
| luizfzs wrote:
| Also, the health impacts on us, by breathing the fumes of
| fossil fuel power plants, etc. The cost of fossil fuel is
| much more than a price tag in the electricity bill.
| epanchin wrote:
| In the UK, wind is primarily in Scotland away from most of
| the population - people don't build where it's windy.
|
| So transmission of solar should be less, as the sun shines
| everywhere, and people like to build houses where it shines
| the most.
| epistasis wrote:
| Hopefully coal is not built close to the population
| either...
| DamonHD wrote:
| There is no coal-fired electricity generation in the UK
| now.
|
| But no, neither coal nor nukes would be welcome in cities
| just to reduce transmission costs!
| numpad0 wrote:
| It is. Output of solar panels are proportionate to areas and
| they contain all sorts of heavy metals.
| epistasis wrote:
| No, solar panels do not contain "all sorts of heavy
| metals," they leave the land open to all sorts of use
| afterwards (unlike fossil fuel infrastructure) and disposal
| is no more difficult than shipping the panels somewhere.
|
| When a site is repowered with new panels, the old panels
| are often reused, as well, and there's a robust secondary
| market for panels.
|
| In short: disposal costs are well in line with other
| technologies, at least according to this consultant (top
| hit on a web search):
|
| https://thundersaidenergy.com/downloads/solar-power-
| decommis...
| numpad0 wrote:
| Solar panels are photodiode arrays. Photodiodes are made
| by lacing mid-purity Si with ultra toxic metals. More
| neurotoxic the better is the basic rule of all high-
| performance opto-electronics semiconductors. The less
| toxic you make, the worse they get, and less they
| responsive to longer wavelength lights.
|
| In, Ga, As, P, Si, Zn, Se, Ge, Cd, Te, Pb, etc. The duh
| materials. Sometimes the whole panel is thin crystals of
| GaAs. You have to melt that down to recycle.
| epistasis wrote:
| Key word here being "lacing." Tractors, trucks, and cars
| with lead acid batteries are far more dangerous to have
| out in a field than solar panels.
|
| Usually lead used the solder, if there is lead, is the
| biggest risk!
| numpad0 wrote:
| Those metals are not like Mo additive on greases. The
| machines that contained those came with warnings long
| before Prop 65 or EU RoHS simply by toxicity. And
| deploying PVs is to scale that out into the fields. It's
| mildly insane thing to do.
|
| Even nukes are more eco friendly, even if you include
| things Fukushima, maybe Chernobyl too. The elephant foot
| is going to passivate itself before the collapse of human
| civilization could occur. I don't know same can be said
| about panels blown away in rainstorms.
| fred_is_fred wrote:
| Is there a form of power that doesn't have these? A coal plant
| has all these plus fuel costs, workers to run the plant, parts
| for the turbines, and ash disposal to deal with.
| hvb2 wrote:
| Transmission is more of a problem with the centralized forms of
| power generation? So transmission should be a net positive for
| solar?
|
| Construction and disposal I'm not sure to be honest,
| intuitively I don't think those are much more expensive.
| adrianmonk wrote:
| It doesn't exclude construction. The abstract says they
| analyzed levelized cost of electricity (LCOE). LCOE includes
| investments, operations, and fuel, so it includes construction.
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| Also storage
| nashashmi wrote:
| Does that include the delivery of power too? Or just for on site
| consumption?
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| As usual, nothing, and not covering storage either.
|
| So it's cheapest in sun peak, when it's sunny
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| I don't understand. Why is it that in every single discussion
| about power- and in particular, solar power- is the cost of land
| omitted ?
|
| This is literally the most important factor to consider as it is
| a very scare resource in some markets - nevermind that this would
| be a significant driver of cost for solar, as it requires massive
| amounts of land (and taxes). This is true for solar, wind, etc be
| built.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Land is also spoiled and occupied for fossil fuel extraction,
| refinement, and distribution. And at least you can be within
| the near vicinity of solar panels without experiencing
| significant health issues, so we need to tabulate the very real
| public health costs too when comparing. I highly doubt there is
| a solar equivalent of "Cancer Alley" in the US. Another
| consideration is that we can slap solar panels on top of
| existing structures, which you cannot do with fossil fuel at
| any stage.
|
| I don't doubt that the costs are considerable but if we're
| going to go down that path we need to make sure it's applied
| across the board here and I imagine the gap is not as bad as
| you're implying. I'm going off my gut though so I could be
| entirely wrong.
| prepend wrote:
| Land and exploration costs are definitely included in fossil
| fuel costs.
|
| I think most major solar projects include land and
| infrastructure so only comparing the costs of the panels is
| like comparing hydro only based on operating the dam, not
| building it.
| hvb2 wrote:
| > Land and exploration costs are definitely included in
| fossil fuel costs. I think most major solar projects
| include land and infrastructure so only comparing the costs
| of the panels is like comparing hydro only based on
| operating the dam, not building it.
|
| Fossil the way we're running it now is only priced out
| based on burning it not dealing with its externalities
| either.
| ragequittah wrote:
| What about the trillions of dollars per year in damages,
| health costs, etc. due to emissions?
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Exactly my point. People always want to be nit picky
| about solar and wind costs, which I agree we should be,
| but the same scrutiny hardly gets applied to the fossil
| fuel industry.
| epistasis wrote:
| You're very right to bring up how much land is needed for
| fossil fuel extraction and refinement.
|
| Take all that land that's currently used for fossil fuels,
| and replace its use with solar, and you're replacing pretty
| much 100% of the world's total energy demand, not just fossil
| fuel demand. (I need to find that citation again...)
| DamonHD wrote:
| Because solar (for example) can often go on rooftops so not
| needing new land. And solar and wind are often good in remote
| areas where population is low and land is cheap.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| That doesnt really seem to answer the question unless you are
| suggesting solar doesnt have any land costs? I completely
| understand that in some situations its effectively zero. But
| in aggregate?
| DamonHD wrote:
| If UK golf courses were turned over entirely to solar PV
| that would more than cover the ~30GW extra called for in
| the UK's Clean Power 2030 plan, IIRC.
|
| I would regard that as a huge improvement in use from areas
| that are otherwise often fairly sterile from a biodiversity
| point of view, and only get used by a fraction of the
| population.
|
| What is the 'cost' of those courses, vs PV, vs horrible
| climate change?
|
| But the point remains that very significant PV can be
| provided on already-in-use land from homes and warehouses
| to reservoirs and farm land agrivoltaics.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| In good faith, rooftops are not the solar that is generally
| talked about, when we discuss solar as the cheapest form of
| energy.
|
| The solar discussed is massive investments into solar farm
| production.
|
| To your point, sure you can do "remote" - you still have to
| get a lot of power transmission lines to remote locations,
| and yes you still have to buy the land. Its not a 0 cost
| investment. But that's what the accounting looks like when
| discussing this topic.
|
| Its sloppy
| DamonHD wrote:
| We generally don't like to put our nukes (or coal plant) in
| the centre of cities even though that would reduce
| transmission costs, nor are major hydro resources often
| close to the areas that power from them goes to. So that is
| not unique to wind and solar even if sometimes amplified
| for them.
|
| Separate reports in the last couple of days suggest that
| both Norway and Germany could get ~25% of their total solar
| power from viable rooftop spaces, IIRC.
|
| And indeed one very positive feature of solar is that it
| _IS_ safe to deploy _AT_ load /demand centres, very much
| reducing costs and losses in the last 'distribution' mile.
|
| Solar also works when there is no grid locally, which is
| useful from rural UK to Africa.
|
| [1] https://www.pv-magazine.com/2025/10/03/rooftop-solar-
| could-g...
|
| [2] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/rooftop-solar-
| housing-b...
| hwc wrote:
| Yep, I can't quite get as much power out of the panels on
| my roof as I use on average, but that's okay because I am
| reducing the cost of transmission by a significant
| amount.
| hvb2 wrote:
| Because land doesn't need to be vacant to develop solar?
|
| Residential or industrial rooftops are perfect examples. Heck,
| sound barriers along freeways etc are now even profitable
| numpad0 wrote:
| Residential rooftops in places like Asian cities are already
| >50x overcommitted. Land on Earth is a scarce resource.
| Basically it's only in the US west coast among developed
| countries has cheap surplus land for some solars.
| DamonHD wrote:
| Counter-examples:
|
| [1] https://www.pv-magazine.com/2025/10/03/rooftop-solar-
| could-g...
|
| [2] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/rooftop-solar-
| housing-b...
| numpad0 wrote:
| Go look up US and Norway in the density list[1] before
| trying to use those countries as the mean average
| reference standard developed countries. Sort by density
| and scroll to the top and to bottom. Doing so also
| explains why EV drivers from basically nowhere else but
| from those countries appreciate the "full tank every
| morning" concept.
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_de
| penden...
| DamonHD wrote:
| I picked those two because they happened to come up in
| news items in the last 48h or so and were in my head.
|
| The UK also has a huge amount of roof-top PV potential,
| outside the very dense city cores, plus enough golf
| course space to cover all our PV needs and some I think.
|
| Spain and France and Italy are also doing well with PV
| and are nowhere near done.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Because the land cost and amount needed is immaterial. Solar
| and wind actually _contribute_ to the tax base where it is
| colocated, tax revenue that would otherwise not be provided
| (depending on jurisdiction). People overvalue land for some
| reason, most of the world is not Manhattan or Hong Kong. The US
| farms 60 million acres for corn and soybean for biofuels alone,
| for example, and of course that land is much more efficiently
| used if solar PV is installed for energy.
|
| https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/how-much-land-power-us...
|
| https://www.weforum.org/stories/2021/10/solar-panels-half-th...
|
| https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/food-agriculture-environm...
|
| https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/solar/california-first-...
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| None of the links (and I checked) actually attempts to answer
| my point.
|
| its simple
|
| * _Why is the cost of land ommitted ? *_
|
| A link to "rooftops" is not an answer when its primary use
| case is a ROI that doesn't work out unless its measured in
| decades.
|
| Sloppy accounting.
|
| My initial answer was literally going to be a Billy Madison
| quote. Specifically, the reply to Principal Max Anderson to
| Billy's rambling answer. But that's offensive, so i will just
| state:
|
| you can do better!
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| In the US, the lease cost per acre is typically
| $1k-$5k/acre/year over a 20-25 year lease. Feel free to
| back that out per kWh based on 1MW of solar per ~5 acres
| and ~1,460 MWh per year based on the four peak sunlight
| hours a day per the national average.
|
| https://www.agweb.com/news/business/4-500-acre-plus-
| signing-...
| rcxdude wrote:
| You don't tend to see it because it's so small it gets
| buried and lumped in with a bunch of other costs, either
| capex or as operating costs (if modeled as a lease). It's
| ~1% of the total costs in most markets, so the only people
| who think it's worth mentioning are people advocating for
| nuclear power, since energy produced per acre is one of the
| only metrics where nuclear comes out on top.
| epistasis wrote:
| Edit: your comment has changed a bit, so let me address the new
| sentence here:
|
| > I don't understand. Why is it that in every single discussion
| about power- and in particular, solar power- is the cost of
| land omitted ?
|
| You are incorrect that land costs are omitted; in fact I don't
| recall any sort of cost comparison that has ever omitted land
| costs, whether it's from Lazard or NREL or anywhere else. It's
| part of the CapEx, or as rent, or however it's modeled. NREL in
| particular looks at overall costs on completed and built
| systems. Further, the developers building these things know the
| land costs very well.
|
| Can you point to a discussion or paper where land cost was not
| included? If it's still an open discussion I'd love to add the
| high quality solar-is-cheapest studies that all include land
| costs.
|
| And as for this particular study:
|
| First, doesn't omit the cost of land. Secondly land is only the
| most important resource in very very few markets. Razing
| skyscrapers in Manhattan would be a bad idea. Instead of
| farming crops or the sun in Manhattan, it's done elsewhere and
| shipped in.
| pfdietz wrote:
| In places like West Texas land is maybe 2% of the cost of a
| utility scale solar field. Even in Europe the cost of the
| solar equipment installed on land is much greater than the
| average cost of land.
| hector_vasquez wrote:
| PV is fairly unique in that land is not required. It can be
| installed over existing land uses such as rooftops, canals,
| parking.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| It's also not clear if they factored in battery costs. They
| mention lithium battery costs have _also_ decreased in cost but
| not clear if its included. Batteries are a requirement for
| consistently delivering solar power. You cant just flip the sun
| on and off.
| DamonHD wrote:
| No generator runs 100%. Not so long ago the UK nuke fleet was
| managing only about 60% caopacity factor. The grid system
| runs as a whole with generators backing one another up. The
| last two big load shedding incidents (since the turn of the
| century, ~500k people had power cut to keep the rest of the
| grid up) on the GB grid involved thermal generators tripping;
| the older one was nuke+coal, the newer one gas+wind. And in
| general we know when the sun is going down a long time in
| advance so grid operators can plan for it!
| cesarb wrote:
| > And in general we know when the sun is going down a long
| time in advance so grid operators can plan for it!
|
| This is even more important for solar eclipses: unlike
| normal sunrise and sunset which are gradual, the ramp in a
| solar eclipse is very steep, so the grid operator has to
| have enough reserve prepared in advance and ready to absorb
| the sudden decrease (and increase) in solar generation.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| It's been included in every one I've read. You're not going to
| find it in broad surveys like this one, because it's a survey.
| They'll average together the cost of hundreds of projects. But
| when you look at the projects individually that were the
| sources, land acquisition is part of the capital costs or land
| lease is part of the operating costs.
| ajross wrote:
| What's the cite for solar requiring "massive amounts of land
| and taxes"? That doesn't square with the back of my envelope
| but I'd be willing to look at numbers.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Because the land is already owned for the most part?
| floxy wrote:
| Why are we assuming that the cost of land isn't included in
| their LCoE calculation?
| cycomanic wrote:
| Why are you saying land is not included in the cost
| calculations? I've not read this particular study, but every
| study looking at the cost of electricity generation I have seen
| in recent years, essentially looked at investment/returns which
| obviously includes land use cost. The reason why it's not a big
| topic, is because it's generally not a big contributor to
| overall cost, the main drivers being panels and construction.
| Incidentally, the main power sources where things are not
| included in the cost are nuclear (typically risk for major
| accidents is taken on by the government, as no insurance will
| do it, waste storage cost is often capped as well
| incalculations) and fossils (health effects of pollution,
| CO2...).
| kragen wrote:
| The cost of land is usually omitted in casual discussions
| because it's _not_ a significant driver of cost for solar.
| Quantitative cost breakdowns do include it. See for example htt
| ps://www.eia.gov/analysis/studies/powerplants/capitalcost...,
| where the cost estimate for a US$200 million 150-megawatt-AC
| solar plant in 02019 (six years ago) included US$133,000 per
| year in land leasing costs, one fourth the cost of "module
| cleaning" and one sixth the cost of "preventative maintenance".
|
| However, not every single discussion does omit it. For example,
| we were discussing this yesterday at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45487268 and
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45487197, where my
| calculation was that even in solar-unfavorable places like the
| northern extreme of Germany, the cost of land barely reaches
| the same order of magnitude as the cost of the solar modules,
| even at today's record-low module prices. US$72 million of the
| US$200 million of the estimate mentioned above was the modules
| themselves, but today that would be closer to US$15 million.
|
| The atom of truth in your confused assertion is that solar
| farms do take up enormous amounts of land compared to other
| kinds of power plants. But, at current human energy consumption
| levels, it's still only a tiny amount of overall land.
|
| I'm assuming from your past submission history that you're in
| the US, because you mostly only post US politics stuff. The US
| generates about 4200 TWh electric per year, which is 480
| gigawatts (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_of_
| the_Unit...). Under the 2000kWh/year/kWp conditions prevailing
| in the Californian Mojave Desert, parts of Arizona, and parts
| of New Mexico, according to
| https://solargis.com/resources/free-maps-and-gis-
| data?locali..., this would require about 2.1 terawatts (peak)
| of solar panels. A square meter of 22%-efficient solar panel
| produces 220 watts, peak, so this is about 9600 square
| kilometers, a 110-kilometer-diameter circle. (Although, if you
| don't leave spaces between the panels, you have to make them
| horizontal so they don't shade each other; in practice people
| set them further apart to use more land but less panels.)
|
| How big is that?
|
| It's almost 0.1% of the US, not counting the space between the
| panels. It's a little over twice the diameter of the VLA radio
| telescope in western New Mexico, a facility you might remember
| from the movie _Contact_. It 's slightly larger than White
| Sands Missile Range (8300km2). It's 15 times the size of Lake
| Mead, which was created by Hoover Dam to generate electricity.
| It's about two thirds the size of California's Death Valley
| National Park (13'793km2). It would take up one eighth of the
| Navajo Reservation.
|
| Almost everywhere in the US has at least half that much
| sunlight. Suppose you wanted to site the panels near
| Springport, Michigan, for some reason. You only have 1200
| kWh/year/kWp there, so you need 16000km2. The panels would
| cover a ten-county area centered on Jackson County; they would
| reach Lansing, and might reach from Ann Arbor to Kalamazoo.
|
| In real life, it wouldn't be a good idea to put it all in one
| place like that, both because it's fragile and because it
| creates higher transmission-line losses; it's better to put the
| panels closer to where they're used, which implies spreading
| them apart. So probably 0.2% of every state. In an average-
| sized state like Iowa (145'746km2) it might be 300km2, 20% of
| the size of an average-sized county like Hamilton County. To
| power the whole state.
|
| But try to keep perspective on the total amount of land we're
| talking about here: White Sands Missile Range, two thirds of
| Death Valley, or a small part of the Navajo Reservation to
| power the whole country.
| tehjoker wrote:
| Looking forward to the day when solar dominates and we can
| transmit from the sunny side of the world to the dark side... I
| think there are already some plans for a pan-European grid, maybe
| even a European/Asian grid. The bigger the grid, the more
| resilient solar is.
|
| It would also make the world more interdependent and thus
| hopefully more peaceful.
|
| I remember reading about this in IEEE. If you google "hypergrid
| IEEE" you can find papers in IEEE explore, but there was also a
| perspective that was more readable that I read a few years ago...
| echelon wrote:
| I'm not sure how practical that would be. Transmitting power
| over distances incurs losses.
|
| I did see a proposal to build out solar in Africa and pipe it
| undersea to Europe. That seemed wild, and, predictably, it got
| canned for its impracticality.
|
| Edit - it looks like there are several such proposals, and that
| they're not all cancelled:
|
| Several travel across the Mediterranean:
|
| https://gregy-interconnector.gr/index_en.html
|
| https://www.ecofinagency.com/news-industry/0210-49221-egypt-...
|
| Here's the one I thought was cancelled, which travels along the
| western coast of Africa to the UK:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xlinks_Morocco%E2%80%93UK_Powe...
|
| https://xlinks.co/morocco-uk-power-project/
|
| https://thenational-the-national-prod.cdn.arcpublishing.com/...
| tehjoker wrote:
| I suspect a mix of batteries and baseload delivery from the
| sunny side will be helpful. Even a few more hours of daylight
| from across the country can help batteries "last longer" by
| shortening the demand period.
| hvb2 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec
|
| For those interested
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| I feel like it would be more feasible than that to just put
| something in space and beam it down by laser/maser/whateber,
| that way it's outside the penumbra and can be in full light
| 24/7.
| tehjoker wrote:
| I feel like this makes some sense, but imagine the laser
| gets a degree or two misaligned....
| fwip wrote:
| At risk of being annoying - getting solar panels to space
| is expensive. Even though you can make them very thin in
| space, optimistic estimates I've seen are around
| 1kg/kilowatt for just the panels, at some point in the
| future. (Current designs are closer to 10kg/kw). Once you
| add in the weight of the electronics & beam, I'm not sure
| it makes financial sense.
|
| Last I've seen, it would cost (roughly) $5k per kilogram
| that you deliver to space. Local costs for rooftop solar
| that I've seen are around $3k per kilowatt - and that's
| after the cost of installation, including power hookups,
| etc.
|
| Once you factor in the efficiency loss from beaming down
| the power (plus the cost of building the base stations, and
| the cost of manufacturing these awesome solar panels), I'm
| not sure that it makes economic sense.
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| Why transmit it rather than just storing the unused power for
| later near the source?
| immibis wrote:
| Because only one of those things is something we know how to
| do on the scale required.
| hinkley wrote:
| To transmit power you will need battery storage on both sides
| of long distance power lines. We never build enough of them,
| but if you can peak shave and trough fill with stored power,
| you increase the MWH per day available on the far end.
|
| Solar tends to come with battery storage. But you could also
| just build the battery storage.
| cycomanic wrote:
| The Pan-European grid is already reality. The fluctuating
| generation costs between e.g. the Nordics and mainland Europe
| are already driving investment into undersea HVDC cables.
| swader999 wrote:
| It'll be interesting if the sodium ion battery hype can combine
| with solar and give real base power alternatives. I think claims
| of cheapest don't really count unless it's qualified as non base
| power.
| ajross wrote:
| Define "real base power"? You think the grid can only operate
| if every generator is always-on? How do you square that with
| the fact that the grid is operating just fine with this stuff
| already?
|
| This is a fallacy, basically. Not least because electricity is
| _by far the most mobile traded commodity in human history_. Not
| enough sun today where you live? Buy your power from across the
| continent, where they have plenty. Or from your wind generators
| which are working fine. Or the wind generators across the
| continent if you have to. Or crank up the hydro dams (most of
| which rarely run at 100%) a bit to handle the shortfall. Or
| even fire up an idle gas plant if you absolutely can 't get
| anything else.
|
| The idea that solar and wind aren't (sigh) "real" is a lie that
| someone sold you. The real world relies on a _lot_ of this
| stuff already and the promised apocalypse never arrived. Go
| figure.
| mgh95 wrote:
| > Or the wind generators across the continent if you have to.
|
| Transmission losses are typically very substantial in most
| grids that are AC based. For example, a cross-country power
| transmission with the USAs grid would result in ~36% losses
| (napkin math at about 20% loss per 1000km).
|
| Reality isn't as simple as "ship the electricity"
| unfortunately; it makes a lot of sense to keep generation
| near consumption.
|
| Edit: Since people like this comment, take a look at this:
| https://patternenergy.com/projects/southern-spirit-
| transmiss...
| mikestorrent wrote:
| Clearly something we'll need to get over. HVDC has
| something like 3% per 1000 KM loss - and when we start
| generating massive quantities of solar, 3% is going to be
| pretty acceptable.
| mgh95 wrote:
| You're talking about roughly ~5T (the prior estimates I'm
| aware of) in costs for replacing the grid with a HVDC
| transmission line. That's a massive cost and undertaking.
| It's much more likely we see an incremental transition to
| point-to-point transmission in major industrial corridors
| (Los Angeles/Irvine to IE solar generation capacity in
| the future, Lousiana Basin, North Texas to the gulf,
| etc.) where major benefits can be cost effectively be
| realized.
|
| A "full" transition is unlikely in our lifetimes due to
| the fact that the majority of the benefits can be reaped
| without needing such an expense.
| mikestorrent wrote:
| I never suggested replacing the entire network with HVDC.
| Point to point is exactly what I'd have recommended also.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| They also have limits on how much power they can transfer
| before the lines sag too much.
|
| Here in Norway the limitations of our rather poorly
| connected energy grid has become very apparent last few
| years, with 100x price difference between regions that
| aren't that far apart physically.
|
| While we've been paying "winter prices" during summer, up
| north they've shut down hydro plants since the prices there
| are so low it's less than operating costs.
| cycomanic wrote:
| Where does your 20% for 1000km come from? Transmission
| losses for long distance lines are much lower, e.g. the
| below is from wikipedia:
|
| > Depending on voltage level and construction details, HVDC
| transmission losses are quoted at 3.5% per 1,000 km (620
| mi), about 50% less than AC (6.7%) lines at the same
| voltage.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current
| mgh95 wrote:
| The US is currently an AC grid. HVDC is not currently in
| any meaningful use in North America (yet)
| renewiltord wrote:
| That may be true but the number quoted there is 6.7%/1000
| km for AC which is very far from 20%/1000km.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >or example, a cross-country power transmission with the
| USAs grid would result in ~36% losses (napkin math at about
| 20% loss per 1000km).
|
| wait, is that it? I can get my electricity from a solar
| panel in Nevada, middle of winter, far longer than I have
| local sunlight for,
|
| for about 40 cents a kwh?
|
| And that's treated as an existential problem?
|
| Solar panels are so cheap we should be extremely
| overprovisioning anyway.
| xienze wrote:
| > for about 40 cents a kwh?
|
| That's fucking expensive if you don't live in Germany or
| California! I pay a little less than a third of that for
| nuclear power.
|
| > And that's treated as an existential problem?
|
| Yes, tripling one's electric bill is a problem.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| It is, but hopefully you could do the math and see my
| _current_ electricity price is like 30 cents a kwh
| (generation and delivery), primarily because our state
| has not built out any generation infrastructure in a long
| long while. Not "triple" my electric bill.
|
| Likely, being able to buy from a generator across the
| country would REDUCE our prices. Allowing a solar farm in
| Nevada to compete in markets all over the country would
| be a large benefit to states like Maine.
|
| Most people are not as far from the western deserts as
| Maine is, so they would see smaller losses. Add to that,
| as others have pointed out, a HVDC line is much better
| than 30% loss to get from Nevada to Maine.
|
| So all this whinging is dumb. Lets build giant solar
| farms in Nevada deserts and ship it all across the
| country. Remember, I can't have local solar power past
| 4pm in January. This capability would replace wind or gas
| power
|
| The financial fact is that solar is cheap enough that de-
| rating all panels by 30% to support such a "cross country
| grid" would be inconsequential. It's the equivalent to
| buying solar panels from a couple years in the past.
|
| We should be building 2x what we "need" anyway.
| pfdietz wrote:
| The transmission/distribution loss in the US, summed over
| the whole grid, is about 6%.
| buckle8017 wrote:
| > How do you square that with the fact that the grid is
| operating just fine with this stuff already?
|
| Simple every grid in the united states has enough reliable
| generation capacity to take up the slack when solar fails.
| But that means the cost of building all those natural gas
| peaker plants is part of the cost of solar (it's never
| included in the LCOE).
| mikestorrent wrote:
| This is what we're hoping battery-style plants will
| supplant. I say "battery-style" because it turns out that
| filling a tank with compressed air, lifting a heavy weight
| with a crane, or pumping water up into a lake all have
| excellent energy storage potential while not requiring any
| kind of esoteric matter or construction techniques. It does
| remain to be seen if such activities can be profitable or
| not - but if you're effectively buying power when it's
| cheap / free / paid to take it, and you're selling it when
| it isn't, it should be possible....
| buckle8017 wrote:
| The only large scale energy storage system im aware of
| that is also cost effective is pumped hydro.
|
| However pumped hydro is shall we say extremely
| environmentally bad.
|
| Like casually remove a mountain bad
| hvb2 wrote:
| Norway disagrees, it depends on your environment
| mikestorrent wrote:
| I suppose it depends where you're doing it. Makes most
| sense to do these things where natural formations do 99%
| of the construction and you just build a dam. Honestly,
| we probably need to do a lot more damming to keep more
| fresh water in - we lose so much of it to the ocean where
| it becomes useless salt trash...
| hvb2 wrote:
| > But that means the cost of building all those natural gas
| peaker plants is part of the cost of solar (it's never
| included in the LCOE).
|
| This is a weird position to take. How would you price out
| nuclear then? As that cannot respond to changes in demand
| quickly either? Should every power source's cost have some
| gas tacked on to it? Or can we just assume that for now we
| have a mix of sources where different sources have
| different pros and cons.
|
| And as said in many other places here, fossils don't have
| their externalities priced in either. I wouldn't be
| surprised if future generations scold us for burning so
| much natural gas that can also be used for many other
| things than burning
| Leherenn wrote:
| Not the GP, but I think it's fairly reasonable, yes.
|
| Ultimately, what we care about, from a grid policy
| perspective, is the cost to provide 99% (or whatever)
| guaranteed 24/7/365 power. Each energy source will have
| its own challenges in order to do that, and for solar
| availablity it clearly one of them. And yes,
| externalities should be factored in.
|
| > Or can we just assume that for now we have a mix of
| sources where different sources have different pros and
| cons.
|
| Of course, but the question is: what is the right mix for
| the right place. And saying "solar + storage" is cheaper
| than gas means very different things if it can only
| guarantee 60% availability like in England, or 95+% in
| the sunniest regions of the world.
|
| The figures reported here come from (among others)
| Lazard' LCOE analysis.
| (https://www.lazard.com/media/xemfey0k/lazards-lcoeplus-
| june-...) If you have a look at how it's calculated,
| "solar + storage" only has enough storage for 4h for
| instance. You cannot really meaningfully compare it
| directly with nuclear which is much more reliable in
| itself.
|
| What LCOE says is that the system will produce X amount
| of energy at cost of Y. It says nothing about when that
| energy will be produced. An energy source that produces
| 365 MWh on January 1st only, and another that produces 1
| MWh every day, for the same cost, will have the same
| LCOE. The latter is, provided you can scale it, much more
| useful in practice.
|
| Look, I'm not saying that solar is bad or we shouldn't do
| it. It's just that the "solar is cheap" thing which is
| regularly reported is a bit misleading. We've heard it
| for years now, and yet electricity prices around the
| world are mostly increasing. Clearly there's a mismatch,
| but where does it come from? And I think part of the
| reason is that the "ancillary" costs of solar have been
| underestimated. Sure, the energy straight out of the
| panel is very cheap, but if you need 10s of billions in
| grid upgrades and storage/backup to make it work in
| practice, then it should definitely be included in the
| comparison! Just like the externalities of fossil fuels
| should be.
| epistasis wrote:
| > (it's never included in the LCOE).
|
| Right, because that would change the definition of LCOE.
| And you are right that it's important, and there are other
| terms to look for, as LACE, which EIA has been putting out
| for a long time. And Lazard's energy reports:
|
| https://www.lazard.com/news-announcements/lazard-
| releases-20...
|
| have an entire section on "Cost of firming intermittency"
| where it estimates costs based on each region of the US.
| mikestorrent wrote:
| One thing that could help would be to see more folks who are
| bullish on solar actually push the new promise that it gives:
| not just that we'll have clean energy (yay, but abstract) -
| we'll have cheap energy, if we do it right. Tons and tons of
| it for so cheap that you'll almost not even have to think
| about it, especially in comparison to fossil fuels today.
| Every aspect of the supply chain is simpler and cleaner.
|
| If people could see that at some point, keeping their house
| at a perfect temperature with an electric heat pump would
| lead to them _never thinking about a heating bill again_...
| that would be far more concrete than promises of staving off
| climate change.
| hwc wrote:
| Probably not orders of magnitude cheaper than today. But
| energy prices will become very stable.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| A Spanish bank has calculated that the solar and wind built
| there between 2019 and 2024 reduced wholesale electricity
| prices by 40% compared with if they'd stuck at 2019 levels.
|
| They project a further 50% drop by 2030:
|
| https://www.bde.es/wbe/en/publicaciones/analisis-
| economico-i...
| xienze wrote:
| > we'll have cheap energy, if we do it right.
|
| Well by all means, show us how to do it right at scale. The
| leaders in this area (California, European countries)
| haven't exactly done much to deliver on the promise of
| cheap renewable energy.
| ericd wrote:
| Iirc, Texas has deployed more clean energy generation in
| the last few years than the entire CA fleet, despite CA
| subsidizing heavily, and retail energy rates >2x in CA.
| TX is at something like 3x the generation from wind/solar
| in CA. My understanding is that this is largely because
| of how much easier it is to deploy in Texas than in
| almost any other part of the country.
|
| That's how you do it right. You set some basic rules, and
| then otherwise get out of the way and let economics do
| its thing, and stop trying to master plan and control
| everything. So many of the existing regs are built around
| huge centralized generation sources, requiring extensive
| planning and approvals, rather than small distributed
| sources.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| Not every generator needs to be always on, but the generation
| needs to be relatively independent of external conditions,
| especially when there might be correlation between high usage
| at disadvantageous external conditions (for example it's
| colder and less sun in winter).
|
| Recognizing this does not mean one is hostile to renewables,
| even though some people that are hostile use this talking
| point dishonestly.
| epistasis wrote:
| The problem with the idea of "base power" is that in the past,
| the cheapest electricity was from the big thermal generators
| that take a day to warm up, and operate most cheaply by pumping
| out at maximum efficiency 24 hours a day. You could then layer
| on the more expensive electricity sources that could spin up in
| 15 minutes or a few hours, and match the demand curve, as long
| as you matched baseload generators to the minimum of the demand
| curve, and have a cost-optimal electricity mix.
|
| Now that we have cheaper sources of energy for parts of the
| day, "base" power is a much less desirable concept. It's gone
| from a simple and straightforward optimization problem that a
| middle-schooler could solve to a cost optimization problem that
| markets and linear solvers can solve.
|
| Now that we have cheap storage, and solar-plus-storage is
| cheaper than coal in the UK, the cost optimization is getting
| simpler: get rid of all the base load coal!
| rgblambda wrote:
| Didn't the last coal power plant in the UK close last year?
| xbmcuser wrote:
| 24hrs solar is already a thing that is possible for large parts
| of the world with lithium batteries.
|
| https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/solar-electricity-e...
|
| That study is already old as the prices for batteries have come
| down a lot more since then.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| Base power isn't really all that important for solar, because
| its already covered by nuclear/other.
|
| Getting "18" hours of power, thats actually important
| (https://timera-energy.com/blog/iberian-price-divergence-
| on-i...) if you can cover the evening peak, then most of your
| energy costs disappear.
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| yeah but not every country is france with ton of nuclear, in
| many it's still coal covering for those
| buckle8017 wrote:
| The actual paper seems to be available only as a docx file.
|
| I've converted it to pdf.
|
| https://files.catbox.moe/tfoim0.pdf
| buckle8017 wrote:
| This paper makes an error that is all too common in discussions
| of power grids.
|
| It talks about the California grid. Except there is no such
| thing, California is on the Western grid which is operated by
| WECC.
|
| The actual mix of energy on the western grid is here.[1]
|
| [1]
| https://feature.wecc.org/soti2025/soti2025/resources/index.h...
| hvb2 wrote:
| But California has this: https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook
| buckle8017 wrote:
| CalISO is a weird entity. WECC has essential subordinated
| contracting within a subset of the Western grid to CalISO.
|
| However it's not actually a separate grid. So when analyzing
| stability issues from inverter based sources of power
| (solar/wind/batteries) we can't use CalISO numbers since they
| can (and do) actually draw power from outside the CalISO grid
| area.
| bethekidyouwant wrote:
| The research team also found that the price of lithium-ion
| batteries has fallen by 89% since 2010, making solar-plus-storage
| systems as cost-effective as gas power plants
|
| Well, which one is it? Is it cheaper or the same price as a gas
| plant?
| bitshiftfaced wrote:
| New energy generation from solar is cheaper. New energy
| generation from solar plus storage is _cost competitive_ with
| natural gas peaker plants. By how much depends on the region.
| jmyeet wrote:
| This isn't surprising. Or new. I've been saying for years solar
| is the future. Solar has so many advantages over every other form
| of power generation. It's flexible, scalable (meaning you can
| have an installation any size from a solar farm to a calculator)
| and robust because it has no moving parts. It has no pollution
| (noise or chemical) and can be dual-use on many structures,
| everything from rooftops to adding solar to highways.
|
| The big problem with solar? Regulation around installing it that
| is entirely designed to protect the profits of utility companies.
|
| We have predatory financing around solar where companies are
| allowed to put a lien on your house and then essentially extort
| the homeowner if they ever choose to sell such that solar can
| reduce the value of your house significantly.
|
| We limit the amount of solar basically so the utility can keep
| selling you electricity.
|
| One might say it's to cover the bullding and maintenance of the
| transmission infrastructure. There's some truth to that. But at
| the same time utilities are generating massive profits, doing
| share buybacks and giving _massive_ concessions to data centers
| that everyone else is paying for.
|
| Basically we would all be better off if every electricity
| provider wasn't a private company but instead what a municipal
| operation like municipal broadband.
| macintux wrote:
| There's also the problem of rural opposition to solar farms.
| Not unusual to see a "no solar farms" sign every few hundred
| feet in some parts of Indiana where I wander (often in the same
| areas where the cars have bumper stickers celebrating coal).
|
| I assume astroturfing is at play.
| epistasis wrote:
| As a steady income stream, solar is a huge help to smaller
| farmers that might otherwise go bankrupt from a few bad
| years' of harvests. Larger growers hate that they no longer
| get to gobble up the land of the smaller growers, so there's
| a strong political incentive to block solar from their side.
| Tepix wrote:
| With $40/kWh batteries available soon, i think even having 100
| kWh of storage for a house will be rather common. With 14.4kWp
| solar, 5 MWh of electricity use per year and 100 kWh at 50EUR/kWh
| of battery you have 90% autarky and a time-to-value of 8-9 years.
| Pretty sweet.
| bboygravity wrote:
| Not if you consider that you need to either renew or add
| battery capacity (and panels and power electronics) after x
| years? Or did you take that into account?
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| That doesn't impact payback cost, if the batteries & panels
| last longer than 8-9 years (and they do).
|
| It's just one metric.
| triceratops wrote:
| x = ~25 years for the panels. They're paid off long before
| that.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| There is small problem though - all of the people will need the
| last 10% at the same time. And because you need infrastructure
| that will work only 10 percent of the time, expect the price of
| kwh to be 10 times the current to compensate.
|
| The less you need the grid - the more expensive is what you
| will pull from it because the infrastructure costs will be
| spread on fewer kwh.
| epistasis wrote:
| I'm not sure if everybody will need the last 10% at the same
| time. Perhaps on a grid that's only a few counties large?
|
| 100 kWh of energy will last the average US house three days.
| And when you throw in people's EV batteries too...
| DamonHD wrote:
| 100kWh would last me about the coldest (January) week with
| all mod cons and hot water and space heat via our heat
| pump:
|
| https://www.earth.org.uk/energy-series-dataset.html#V-con
| Tepix wrote:
| Yes. If the price per kW goes up too far, guess what? More
| batteries. Luckily they are about to get very cheap.
| snickerer wrote:
| $40/kWh sounds so fantastic, I can't believe it. Could you
| please provide a source for that price? Where will I get such
| cheap batteries?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Not OP, but a recent auction in China has utility scale at
| $52/kWh. Given the cost decline curve of storage, I would
| assume we arrive at $40 within 1-2 years.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44513185
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| That $52/kWh is for more than batteries, it's for a fully
| packaged bulk storage system. So it's quite possible that
| we're already at $40/kWh for batteries.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I will try to remember to include this on my next comment
| when referencing this cost point.
| Tepix wrote:
| CATL sodium-ion batteries, currently in mass production.
|
| https://aukehoekstra.substack.com/p/batteries-how-cheap-
| can-...
|
| https://energynews.biz/catls-19-kwh-sodium-ion-claims-
| face-r...
|
| https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2025/08/catl-sodium-ion-
| batter...
| bb88 wrote:
| It is also worth noting that you can buy sodium ion
| batteries if you want to play around with them. The only
| trick is charging method is not the same as lithium ion, so
| they need a specialized charger. There are some sources on
| aliexpress. One listing sells a ~700Wh battery for around
| $76. So not quite $50/KWh but not awful either.
|
| The discharge curve is also different than lithium ion, so
| it's easy to see if you actually have a lithium ion battery
| or a sodium ion.
| alecco wrote:
| That sounds dangerous for inexperienced people.
| nevi-me wrote:
| My cheat code for 100 kWH is an EV that supports V2H. It's
| becoming supported in more cars, so I want to buy an EV as my
| next car. I don't anticipate battery savings and new tech
| reaching me faster than replacing my aging car with an EV,
| hence this path.
|
| I'm in South Africa if relevant, and range anxiety is being
| alleviated by competition in the vehicle charging space, and
| municipal grid charging still comes to about 70% cheaper than
| fuel.
| m55au wrote:
| It has become so incredibly cheap that in some parts of the world
| it has started eating itself, called solar cannibalization.
|
| https://www.aalto.fi/en/news/rapid-growth-of-solar-power-in-...
|
| https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/plunging-solar-captu...
| oompydoompy74 wrote:
| It's almost like market forces aren't what you want for a
| utility.
| epistasis wrote:
| Very few people realize that for most of the US, cheaper
| electricity costs for the utilities means lower profits,
| because most are regulated utilities that take a fixed profit
| on costs. Models for this vary greatly, sometimes they only
| take fixed profit on necessary grid investments (where
| necessary is determined by the utility, then stamped for
| approval by a Public Utility Commission, which has a board
| that might be elected and susceptible to bribing/election
| malefeasance, such as in Arizona...)
|
| So-called "natural" monopolies are quite difficult to
| regulate correctly. And the solution we chose as a society a
| century ago might not be the right one for today.
| floatrock wrote:
| Utilities tend to make most profit as a fixed rate of
| return on infrastructure built, not really based on
| electricity costs. Build a new substation, some poles &
| wires to distribute it to the new subdivisions, and bammo,
| regulator grants you a fixed rate of return on that from
| your ratebase (paying customers) over the lifetime of that
| infrastructure.
| zdragnar wrote:
| You get a fixed return on that infrastructure, but you
| need to keep pace with inflation in all other areas of
| the business. Storms, errant vehicles, animals, fires,
| all sorts of things cause that same infrastructure to
| require maintenance personnel and equipment, and that
| equipment needs its own maintenance, as do the offices
| for the personnel, and so on. It becomes a balancing act
| because you only get to adjust the rates every so often,
| and with regulator approval.
| bobsmooth wrote:
| >cheaper electricity costs for the utilities means lower
| profits
|
| You say that like it's a bad thing. Maybe electricity
| generation shouldn't be a profit seeking enterprise?
| epistasis wrote:
| I don't say it as a bad thing at all, I say it as a thing
| that's in contrast to the rest of the companies and
| proprietors and corporations we deal with. (And my last
| comment also hinted that I think it's time to reevaluate
| this social relationship with the utilities...)
|
| Typically, if a person/corporation is clever and figures
| out a way to reduce costs, they are incentivized heavily
| to do so because they take the gains, at least for a
| while until others figure it out too and compete.
|
| With utilities, they are actively incentivized to
| increase prices as much as possible. This is a crucial
| distinction for people asking why cheaper electricity
| generation methods are not resulting in cheaper utility
| bills: because the regulatory structure is not operating
| the way it should, and they need to get involved
| democratically to change the system!
| tehjoker wrote:
| Sounds like you're saying it's a bad thing.
| kulahan wrote:
| A century isn't very long. I guess things have changed
| somewhat since then, but age isn't a very convincing
| argument against these regulations imo. Having to update
| all of this every hundred years sounds exhausting to me.
| bb88 wrote:
| Fortunately, we pay people who are called "legislators"
| who pass laws and are paid to pass legislation to fix
| problems like this and update laws when they become
| outdated.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Solar also offers the possibility of grid defection, as is
| occurring on a large scale in Pakistan. At some point (and
| particularly if that thermal storage thing I've been
| touting matures) electric utilities may see dramatic
| shrinkage, particularly in less populated areas with ample
| unused land.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| Works perfectly for the electricity market. Negative prices
| is just an opportunity waiting to be exploited.
|
| The transmission should of course be state owned due to being
| a natural monopoly.
| skybrian wrote:
| This seems good for investors in utility-scale batteries, since
| they can charge them very cheaply and sell at night.
|
| (Although, that might not work well in Finland in the summer.)
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| This was one of the actual problems highlighted by the people
| who coined the term "duck curve" over a decade ago.
|
| One of the main ways we've avoided this problem so far is that
| solar kept getting cheaper.
|
| So it's not really a problem caused by cheap solar, it's just
| basic market competition, lots of supply with no barrier to
| entry drives prices down towards the long term marginal cost.
| m55au wrote:
| Right, but would not marginal cost approaching zero amplify
| this problem under the current market system (and without any
| other mitigations)? So not exactly causal, but making it from
| a small to a bigger issue.
| jaggederest wrote:
| This is really a non-problem. Curtailment is easy and doesn't
| cost anything, it just needs a slightly better feedback
| mechanism than the current grid supplies, but honestly even a
| 24hr timer and ammeter would do it.
| m55au wrote:
| This is not about grid balance, so I'm not sure what you mean
| here by curtailment.
|
| It's about nobody making any money, so there will be no
| incentive to continue building solar.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| Today storage is enabling renewables to fill the gap during
| wind lulls and nights.
| silvestrov wrote:
| We already have this in Denmark as we have a lot of wind mills:
| when the wind is blowing a lot, the electricity prices goes
| negative!
|
| 5th October was one such day. From midnight to 17:00 the spot
| price was negative or zero.
|
| Taxes and distribution costs make the consumer price a lot
| higher than zero.
| joe8756438 wrote:
| i have a house in a lot of sun in mid atlantic usa. i have spent
| a modest amount of time casually exploring solar. the
| cost/benefit never seems that great. what am i missing?
| cinntaile wrote:
| Where are your calculations? It's hard for anyone to comment
| without seeing your cost/benefit analysis.
| floatrock wrote:
| Lets do some simple napkin math: Lets say a solar system will
| cost $25k (that should get you an 8-10kW rooftop system). Pay
| for it with, say, a 5% APR loan.
|
| - 10 years: $265/mo
|
| - 15 years: $197/mo
|
| - 20 years: $164/mo
|
| What are your current monthly electricity costs, and what time
| horizon gets you a good break-even?
|
| Also consider what electricity costs are gonna do. The loan
| locks in a monthly cost, but electricity rates have lately been
| increasing around 3% per year. Say you currently have a $150
| monthly electricity bill... in 10, 15, and 20 years that will
| be $202, $233, and $270/mo.
|
| There's other ways to finance it (PPA's, leases, maybe
| incentives if we get serious about our energy again someday,
| etc.) that have their own advantages/disadvantages, but even
| this simple approach shows there's some wins depending on your
| exact consumption, time horizon, time-value of money, and what
| you expect your electric load to do (will you get an EV? will
| you adopt heat pumps? will you need to start using way more AC
| in the summers? etc)
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| I'm in a leaky, 80 year old 3 bed 2 bath in the Midwest (that
| doesn't have insulation in the walls... brick and plaster).
| Worst in the Summer is around $100/mth, worst in the Winter
| $40/mth (of course gas for heat is around $80 Winter, $15
| Summer for water heater, stove, etc.).
| marcosdumay wrote:
| The median cost/benefit of home solar is good, but not great.
| It tends to be a good investment, but not hugely different from
| other possibilities.
|
| But the variance is huge.
| ravedave5 wrote:
| Depends on the state/city. In Minnesota with cheap electricity
| and not a ton of sun it's still worth it, just takes a while to
| recoup. In places in california you can recoup costs in as
| little as 2 years sometimes because the rates are so high.
| beembeem wrote:
| The biggest benefits are in the later years due to utility
| escalation rates. Compounded growth rate of 4-6% does wonders
| 20 years later!
| testing22321 wrote:
| I'm in Canada , in a tight valley where it snows a ton. I pay
| 13 cents a kWh for electricity.
|
| I installed 7.8kw of rooftop solar for $8k out of pocket, all
| of which is on a ten year interest free loan.
|
| In 12 months it makes smack on $1000 worth of electricity. So
| my payback is 8 years ( less, actually. The price of
| electricity here is already pre approved to increase no less
| than 5% a year) After that I get $1000 of power per year for
| twenty or so years.
|
| The term no brainer doesn't seem enough.
| opo wrote:
| It should be noted that those low costs for solar installations
| are not including consumer rooftop solar. The consumer rooftop
| solar cost is usually one of the most expensive ways you can
| generate electricity - often several times the cost of utility
| solar installations:
|
| https://www.lazard.com/media/xemfey0k/lazards-lcoeplus-june-...
|
| The high rooftop solar price is usually hidden because no power
| source has been as subsidized as rooftop solar. Besides direct
| subsidies, wealthier home owners have often been paid the retail
| rate for the electricity they sell to the grid which causes
| higher electricity bills for those who can't afford to put panels
| on their roof. Also, in almost all cases, the home installation
| doesn't have enough battery power to actually last through
| inclement weather and so is free riding on the reliability
| provided by the grid, putting more costs on the less well off.
| The whole thing is sort of a reverse Robin Hood scheme.
|
| Any subsidies for solar power should go to utility grade solar.
| Money is limited and is fungible - a dollar spent subsidizing
| utility solar will go much, much, further than a dollar spent
| subsidizing wealthy homeowners who install panels on their roof.
| iknowstuff wrote:
| Totally. Grid solar and grid battery installations are gonna
| rock the world but rooftop solar is too bespoke and labor
| intensive. It goes directly against the benefit of solar's mass
| manufacturing
| devjab wrote:
| This is true. A lot of the older panels are also rather
| inefficient and come with a rather poor lifespan. It's part of
| the reason I don't personally have any form of solar despite
| working in the industry.
|
| Technology is catching up on the solar panel front though.
| French Heliup are producing panels which are only 5kg per
| square meter. Which makes them significantly easier to install
| on roof-tops. I imagine I'll eventually have solar panels on my
| roof, but I'll likely wait another decade for battery tech to
| also be more viable.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I would have to cut down so many trees around my house to get
| effective sunlight on the roof more than a few hours a day.
| Plus my roof is pitched east/west so at best I have half the
| roof in sunlight for half the day. I do have quite a bit of
| clear space behind the house, so I could consider a system
| that sits on the ground.
|
| I just like paying the utility every month and not having to
| worry about owning, maintaining, and repairing my own
| infrastructure though. As it is now, if anything goes wrong
| upstream of the meter, that's not my responsibility.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Why don't you do a small installation where your generation
| does not exceed your usage so storage considerations are
| moot?
| jgilias wrote:
| Because you mostly end up generating when you don't need
| the power, and need the power when you're not generating.
|
| If the way things are structured in your country let you
| draw the same amount of kWh that you've put into the
| network, that works. Where I live they recently changed to
| buying the solar at market prices. When the sun is up
| during sunny months that's zero or close to that. So you
| pretty much need the battery installation too.
|
| My neighbour got a solar + battery installation, and it
| works well enough!
| colechristensen wrote:
| by
|
| >a small installation where your generation does not
| exceed your usage
|
| I meant explicitly a small system where the moment to
| moment generation generally did not exceed moment to
| moment usage.
|
| >the way things are structured in your country
|
| In the US things are structured per utility which varies
| widely by state, city, or even neighborhood and they have
| many different kinds of rules.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Australian rooftop solar is the cheapest consumer energy in
| history. This is despite the hardware and salaries being
| roughly equal to the US where the cost is about 3 times more.
| So it's not wise to extrapolate from US prices.
|
| And in general, you should check your electricity bill to see
| how much is actually for generation vs transmission.
| nicoburns wrote:
| > Also, in almost all cases, the home installation doesn't have
| enough battery power to actually last through inclement weather
|
| That's true today, but I bet it won't be in 5 years time.
| Around this year or last year batteries have hit a price point
| where they make financial sense for ordinary people, and in a
| couple of years you'd be mad not to have them if you have
| rooftop (and somewhere to put the batteries of course).
|
| > Any subsidies for solar power should go to utility grade
| solar.
|
| At this point, it should probably go towards storage, grid
| capacity, or things like EV charging infrastructure. Solar
| generation doesn't need it.
|
| > The consumer rooftop solar cost is usually one of the most
| expensive ways you can generate electricity
|
| This may well be true, but there are positive externalities:
|
| - It has reduced land use compared to other energy generation
| methods
|
| - Power is produced near the point of use, reducing
| transmission requirements
|
| - Most of the cost is labour for installation which creates
| jobs
|
| Given that rooftop solar usually pays for itself despite being
| less cost-efficient that other forms of solar, I see no reason
| to discourage it.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| All new construction should have it, at least. The cost
| differential for building a new home's roof and outfitting
| that roof with solar just isn't high enough to justify doing
| it differently. Plus it improves cooling/heating costs and
| protects the roofing materials from direct sunlight.
| epistasis wrote:
| The high cost of rooftop solar in the US is mostly a regulatory
| choice. From tariffs driving up prices significantly, to
| completely scattered permitting processes city-to-city, to wild
| swings in utility policies that make solar a good-to-bad
| decision overnight, it all drives costs up. So the only solar
| installers who survive are those who are able to swoop in when
| the utility policies change and can drive customer acquisition
| super quickly ($$$), and have massive permitting office
| experience that lets them deploy. That all costs a lot of money
| and drives out competition from the space.
|
| So we pay something like 3x-5x for residential solar in the US
| versus Australia. Because we choose to as a society.
|
| Also, I heartily disagree that utility scale solar is obviously
| cheaper. Transmission and distribution costs are the biggest
| cost on the grid, and utility scale solar needs to pay for that
| whereas residential solar _drives down_ T &D costs.
|
| We definitely need a lot of utility scale solar, but if we want
| cheaper electricity we need to incentivize tons of residential
| solar so that we can keep our grid costs lower.
| ericd wrote:
| Well, very few in the US realize that residential solar in
| the US is 3x the price it is in Australia, let alone that a
| lot of it caused by regulatory structures, so it's hard to
| say it's a conscious choice we've made...
|
| But yeah, would be great if we could do something about it.
|
| There are some baby steps - Maryland passed a law last year
| to force adoption of uniform permitting process via NREL's
| SolarApp+, hopefully that'll make a dent.
| Tade0 wrote:
| That hugely depends on the region. In my corner of the world
| the scheme is net-billing, so homeowners are selling energy at
| wholesale prices.
|
| My friend has a 10kW setup combined with a 10kWh battery. Main
| adjustment he made was prevent the heat pump from keeping the
| water hot during the night, as that was just wasting energy.
|
| After this adjustment his electricity bills halved despite only
| really selling energy in the peak of the summer season. The
| savings translate to a 10-year return on investment before
| subsidies.
| OtherShrezzing wrote:
| I think you're missing the real-politik of rooftop
| installations. The person installing the panel has a few square
| meters of empty and unproductive space, over which they have
| exclusive construction rights. And which is already connected
| to a grid, with capacity to absorb its production, physically
| close to the consumers of its output.
|
| That combination of factors is fairly rare in most of Europe &
| North America - especially when you're looking for multiple
| contiguous kilometres of land for utility scale solar. There's
| a lot of that type of land out in Texas and Australia, but
| there's much less of it in the Scottish Highlands.
| ericd wrote:
| Yep, and electrical distribution is frequently a bottleneck,
| and electrification initiatives (EVs, heat pumps) and data
| center buildouts are causing that to a larger and larger
| issue - colocating generation and usage seems very helpful
| for this.
| Kon5ole wrote:
| It's not as bad as all that.
|
| Solar "subsidies" are almost universally tax credits, meaning
| the only money involved is the money paid by the homeowners.
| So, for society, rooftop solar is by far the cheapest option.
| It costs the rest of us nothing, the homeowners pay for it.
|
| Money is also not limited, it is in fact created by the banks
| when someone takes a loan, for example to put solar on their
| roofs.
|
| Meaning there is no money lost from society that could instead
| be used to build utility solar, just because someone puts solar
| on their roofs. If your county borrows money to make utility
| solar, that money is also created by the bank then and there.
|
| Also note that you are quoting last years Lazard report. Solar
| is way cheaper in this year's report. It will probably be even
| cheaper in the next one.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| A tax credit does mean that other taxpayers somewhere are
| paying for it, though
| omikun wrote:
| That only works if the budget is balanced or the debt is
| paid off.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| It is either today's or tomorrow's taxpayer.
| Kon5ole wrote:
| No it just means the person paying gets a discount on the
| tax, nobody else pays anything extra for that.
|
| If the tax credit results in an increase of solar panel
| installations it's still a net gain for society, even just
| financially.
| asdefghyk wrote:
| RE ".. Solar energy is now the cheapest source of power, study
| ...."
|
| Does this cost include needed storage( up to several days ) and
| often new transmission lines? Is any country running only on
| solar? if it is the cheapest? The actual all up costs to actually
| allow 100% solar actually make it very expensive
| Kon5ole wrote:
| Storage is not needed. You can consume solar power as it's
| generated, and it is as useful then as if it came from oil, gas
| or coal.
|
| When the sun goes down, you have saved tons of oil, gas and
| goal that didn't have to burn during the day. Which is very
| very good. You don't have to "solve nighttime" before solar
| makes sense, it makes sense immediately.
|
| Edit: And of course, nighttime is also being solved, in many
| ways, already.
| legitster wrote:
| > These hybrid setups, which combine solar panels with batteries,
| are now standard in many regions and allow solar energy to be
| stored and released when needed, turning it into a more reliable,
| dispatchable source of power that helps balance grid demand.
|
| On one hand, I think people underestimate how much energy our
| grids demand in a 24 hour cycle. The amount of lithium it would
| take to handle an unusually cloudy week would be astronomical.
|
| On the other hand, one of the ironies of electric cars is that
| they are one of the least effective uses of battery capacity. A
| Tesla with a 60kwh battery is probably touching less than 20kwh
| of capacity every day.
|
| So theoretically if you use the batteries for grid storage and
| actually cycle them regularly from 80% down to 20%, the battery
| capacity would be well over 2x - 4x more effective at offsetting
| carbon sources. (Even more so if you are offsetting worse sources
| like coal).
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Also, sodium batteries are now coming online. Slightly lower
| energy density, but potentially vastly lower cost. From looking
| at cost trends and increased production, it also seems pretty
| obvious at this point that we _probably are_ going to get those
| vast quantities of battery storage everyone is so surprised
| about.
| legitster wrote:
| I'm still a little bit skeptical because chemical energy
| storage is inherently corrosive and unstable and so
| maintaining installed capacity is more expensive.
|
| Unlike power generation, where you can build a facility and
| it can more or less run for decades with basic maintenance,
| batteries effectively have a limited number of cycles they
| can be relied on for. So you would effectively have to
| remanufacture your entire storage capacity every 10-15 years.
| So scaling up on storage would theoretically get
| exponentially more expensive the more of the grid you take
| over.
|
| Obviously battery technology is improving and each 1% gain in
| improvement represents drastic savings. But I think there is
| still lots of reason to diversify technologically and
| continue to look into complementary sources of base power
| like nuclear.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| I think the exponential works in the opposite direction.
| Let's say your manufacturing capacity is increasing by 30%
| per year. That means hypothetically at the end of a 15 year
| period you're building fifty times what you were able to
| install in year one. We don't know if that will happen for
| batteries, but for solar PV the rate was about a 37%
| average yearly increase over the past 20 years.
| wolfram74 wrote:
| Fortunately other chemistries are making their way down the
| learning curve lithium's been on, and after a few moment
| reflection it would be astounding if the same types of storage
| that are optimal for mobile consumers also happen to be optimal
| for grid balancing, as daily grid balancing can be done pretty
| reasonably with a c rating[0] of about .2 or even .1, and as
| long they aren't so heavy they need to be placed on massive
| foundation piles, weight is not really a factor. Just need to
| make it as cheap as possible.
|
| [0] battery c rating is what fraction of the battery can
| discharge in 1 hour https://wikibattery.org/en/wiki-
| us/battery/charging-rate-cha...
| epistasis wrote:
| > The amount of lithium it would take to handle an unusually
| cloudy week would be astronomical.
|
| I don't think it's astronomical. At most a few dozen kg per
| person. Compare that to the amount of steel that we produce per
| person just to give everybody access to cars!
|
| And it's certainly not more astronomical than the amount of
| natural gas that we already extract, transport, and burn for
| electricity.
|
| We have built big things in the past, there's no reason we
| can't do it again today. In fact, it's going to be far easier
| today because our tech is better and our factories'
| productivity is so much higher than in the past.
| legitster wrote:
| During the height of the industrial revolution, humans were
| able to double steel production roughly every 6 years. We've
| doubled global lithium production in the last 3!
|
| Even so, if you do the math about how much lithium we need to
| get to a few dozen kg per person given that rate of growth,
| we're still looking at 20-30 years. (There are also a lot of
| elemental and labor bottlenecks).
|
| So you're right that it's not astronomical! We just might
| have speedier expectations for when it's achievable.
| NewJazz wrote:
| Well, lithium is not the only option. For fixed storage,
| sodium is more and more feasible everyday.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| A few dozen kg is quite generous. There's 160 g of lithium in
| a kWh of lithium batteries. A typical household uses less
| than 30kWh per day. At 2.6 people per household, let's round
| to 10 kWh per person per day. So 1.6kg of lithium per day,
| 11kg for a week. But you don't need that much battery --
| solar produces power even on cloudy days.
| smt88 wrote:
| Grids don't need "batteries" as consumers think about them.
| They can store energy using gravity, for example pumping water
| up into a reservoir (to store) and letting it drain through a
| turbine using gravity (to convert back into electricity).
| supportengineer wrote:
| At grid scale, all sorts of different batteries become
| feasible. My favorite is the one that uses solar during the day
| to lift heavy objects, which then turn a generator at night
| when they come back down.
| pfdietz wrote:
| > The amount of lithium it would take to handle an unusually
| cloudy week would be astronomical.
|
| Unusual events shouldn't be handled by high capex, high
| efficiency storage. They should be handled by lower capex,
| lower round trip efficiency storage (as should long
| term/seasonal storage).
|
| I will once again point to Standard Thermal.
|
| https://www.standardthermal.com/
|
| https://www.orcasciences.com/articles/standard-thermal-copy
|
| https://austinvernon.site/blog/standardthermal.html
|
| Ten cents per kWh of storage capacity!
| KaiserPro wrote:
| > On one hand, I think people underestimate how much energy our
| grids demand in a 24 hour cycle. The amount of lithium it would
| take to handle an unusually cloudy week would be astronomical.
|
| but thats why you have more than one energy source right?
|
| Even on a cloudy week, I still generate power, just not enough.
| Thats why I'm not truely off grid, otherwise I'd need to move
| from 5kwp(3 electrical) to 15kwp.
|
| Mind you, the most expensive thing for doing that is either the
| inverters, or the mounts. Its got to the point that solar
| panels are cheaper than 18mm plywood.
| beembeem wrote:
| I don't think it's a fair argument to say that EVs are an
| ineffective use of battery capacity. They are certainly more
| affordable and accessible than home batteries.
|
| Have you seen the cost of home batteries? Napkin math shows
| their installed-cost in my region of the US is the same as the
| fractional cost of an EV. But the EV comes with a free
| drivetrain, seats, and airbags!
| 2snakes wrote:
| Does this include the lifetime costs of need to replace the
| panels? Also batteries though I'd imagine that is a separate. But
| the panels would seem to be direct additional costs.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Of course. That's the major cost (along with inverters and
| mounting and installation). If you didn't include that, if you
| just looked at operating costs, solar would be insanely cheap,
| far cheaper than any other source.
| silexia wrote:
| Nuclear is far superior as you don't need batteries and can have
| 24/7 reliable power. Cut the artificial costs caused by insane
| regulation and nuclear is the safest and most cost effective
| solution.
| RobinL wrote:
| I'm generally pro nuclear and think it should be a significant
| part of the energy mix. But an interesting point is that the
| floor price of nuclear is the cost of the turbines, which are
| surprisingly expensive, and aren't really getting cheaper.
| Solar can go much cheaper than that, potentially at least. More
| on this point in the recent Casey Handmer interview of
| Dwarkesh.
| themafia wrote:
| Ctrl-F:
|
| "Recycle" -- 0 results
|
| "Maintenance" -- 0 results
|
| "Insurance" -- 0 results
|
| Okay?
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