[HN Gopher] Analysis finds anytime electricity from solar availa...
___________________________________________________________________
Analysis finds anytime electricity from solar available as battery
costs plummet
Author : Matrixik
Score : 128 points
Date : 2025-12-13 17:32 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (pv-magazine-usa.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (pv-magazine-usa.com)
| ramshanker wrote:
| Has any production battery become cheaper than LEAC ACID for
| computer UPS ? I have not seen new cheaper UPS getting launched.
| fyrn_ wrote:
| Many "solar power stations" can be used as a UPS, with
| competitive switching speed. Just not sold under that label.
| You can even get one made entirely in the US, but it will cost
| you: https://enphase.com/store/portable-energy/iq-
| powerpack-1500-...
|
| But yeah, the cheap chinese "power stations" run circles around
| most UPS capacity wise. UPS market is very complacent.
| jcheng wrote:
| Seems like an opportunity for someone
| nomel wrote:
| No, it's a bad fit. it would be pure marketing. Lipo slowly
| destroy themselves when charged. Lead acid slowly destroy
| themselves when _not_ charged.
| cogman10 wrote:
| There are different LIPO chemistries. LFP in particular
| has little problem with being fully charged. You'll see
| it get swapped in for lead acid chemistries even in
| places like car/motorcycle batteries.
|
| If you want an Lithium power supply then the keyword to
| look for is "LFP".
| gpm wrote:
| And LFP is also cheaper per unit energy and less of a
| fire hazard. Hard to imagine why you would use a
| different lithium-chemistry in a UPS.
| lesuorac wrote:
| Can't we just not push the lipos to 100% and have the UPS
| maintain a ~60% charge instead and get a long life span?
| fyrn_ wrote:
| Many of these power stations (including the one I linked)
| are LFP chemistry
| rightbyte wrote:
| UPS is kinda different since they are hardly used. I haven't
| done the calculation but it would guess lead acid is still
| cheaper?
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| Lead Acid as far as I know is about $500 per KWh of usable
| space due to their depth of discharge being limited to about
| 50% and then they last about 3 to 5 years if they kept within
| their 500 cycles at most. Whereas a LiPho battery will last
| 10-15 years, 6000 cycles and costs about PS120 a KWh. So I have
| no idea how UPS based on lead acid is ending up cheaper, its
| not based on the battery tech cheapness.
| literalAardvark wrote:
| UPS aren't really cheaper.
|
| Sure, up front you're paying very little for that box that
| can run your PC for an hour.
|
| But over 2-4 years you'll have to replace that UPS after it
| fails catastrophically in really dumb ways, and that's if
| you're lucky and it doesn't also burn your house down,
| whereas a proper storage system will last for a long, long
| time with more capability.
|
| In my business I've never had a deskside UPS live longer than
| that.
|
| And yes, we don't buy the ultra expensive ones. That's true.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Some of the power stations from Ecoflow/Anker/Bluetti are
| competitive in terms of price and capacity while still having a
| fast enough switchover for UPS purposes.
|
| They tend to have features that may not be necessary for a UPS
| (eg solar or DC input), while lacking some features that are
| more common on UPS (eg companion app to turn your computer off
| when UPS gets low, although you might be able to rig your own
| solution)
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Problem with Lithium ones is that they tend to be quite
| flammable. Lead acid is mostly inert I believe?
| onraglanroad wrote:
| Weirdly, none of the many phones, tablets and laptops I've
| owned have ever caught on fire.
|
| I guess I've just been lucky.
| bingo-bongo wrote:
| It's not as much about the risk of failure, as both are
| safe when the correct safety measures are in place.
|
| But what might happen when they fail - thermal runaway is
| no joke with lithium-ion, ask any firefighter.
| andruby wrote:
| LFP is a lot safer than NMC. I think it's almost on par with
| Lead-Acid.
| SigmundA wrote:
| The acid in lead acid is sulfuric acid and if overcharged
| vents hydrogen gas, thats why they need a ventilated space
| typically. Sealed lead acid have safety vents that might pop
| if enough pressure builds.
|
| They are most certainly not inert, they just have well
| established safety and charging protocols and are not used in
| very high quantities together because of their low energy
| density and cycle life.
|
| LFP batteries which have iron phosphate cathodes are very
| stable compared to colbalt based batteries that tend to have
| catastrophic failures due to overcharge causing cathode
| failure. LFP have higher cycle life and are cheaper and
| typically whats used for storage and application where the
| loss in erergy density is not a big deal.
| ulnarkressty wrote:
| Eaton and APC at least have models with LFP chemistry, with
| comparable prices across power ratings. The LFP will be more
| expensive though due to the increased longevity, at least until
| lead-acid ones stops being produced.
| rssoconnor wrote:
| Do not try this at home, but I replaced the lead acid battery
| in my UPS with a LFP battery. From what I read online, the
| charging curves for lead acid batteries and LFP batteries are
| very similar. The LFP batteries have a slightly higher charging
| voltage, so I expect my LFP battery to only charge upto about
| 80% capacity or so due to the charging voltage being slightly
| too low. I'm hoping the battery will last 10 years instead of 2
| or 3 years.
|
| Do not try this at home, as changing battery chemistry is quite
| ill advised.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| $33 per MWh for solar. What is it for coal or natural gas? Maybe
| half that?
| Panino wrote:
| Why would you think that? Solar and wind are both far cheaper
| than fossil fuels even ignoring the problems caused by coal and
| methane.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Fuel cost for gas/coal can be rounded to $2/MWH - so then you
| need to amortize the cost of the plant over all the energy
| produced and you get to roughly 2x fuel cost for nat gas
| plants and 3x - 5x for coal ones. See page 10 here for
| sensitivity to fuel costs though;
|
| https://www.lazard.com/news-announcements/lazard-
| releases-20...
| mlwiese wrote:
| No, Lazard estimates the fuel cost is $22-$23/MWh for Gas
| Combined Cycle, and $13-$18/MWh for Coal. See pages 39-40
| of https://www.lazard.com/media/0sopmth5/lazard-
| releases-2025-l...
| fyrn_ wrote:
| In the US as of June 2024: Gas peaker plants are: $110-228 And
| Gas combined cycle: $45-108
|
| PV in the US is also more expensive than globally however:
| $38-171 for Utility scale with storage, when including
| subsidies, $60-210 when not.
|
| Coal is so much worse in every cost metric than gas combined
| cycle it's not worth considering, even leaving the pollution
| aside.
|
| https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2024-12/34-%20Exh...
| xbmcuser wrote:
| $100+ meh for natural gas. Solar and battery is so cheap that
| arab countries are now building large solar and battery systems
| to save money instead of burning oil and gas. Where as in the
| US the other big oil and gas producer wholesale electricity
| prices for Natural Gas is around $100-150 mwh which is cheaper
| than coal and the major reason coal got pushed out. Then we
| have China and India where coal is around $40-50 mwh.
|
| So solar and batteries are now cheaper than all other forms of
| energy/electricity the only problem is finance for poor
| countries as you need to spend for all the 15-20 years of
| electricity in one go where as for coal and gas you will spend
| the same amount over 10-15 years. For rich countries the
| problem is mostly protectionism as cheap energy would destroy a
| lot of wealth of people in power.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Solar and storage is the cheapest form of power now. Prices for
| both will continue to decline.
|
| _Battery storage hits $65 /MWh - a tipping point for solar_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46251705 - December 2025
| mullingitover wrote:
| It's already cheaper to _demolish an existing coal plant_ that
| 's already paid for and replace it with solar + battery. Solar
| and battery brand new buildout, plus their maintenance
| overhead, dominates coal even when you only count coal's
| maintenance cost.
|
| People have it in their heads that this is some bleeding heart,
| don't ruin the planet thing, but it's plain economics. Non-
| renewable energy is simply inferior, and will only become more
| so.
| luqtas wrote:
| > Non-renewable energy is simply inferior, and will only
| become more so.
|
| you simply can't say this. despite the lobby against it,
| solar and wind energy have lifespans of around 20 years and
| afterwards, it's a freaking mess to deal with recycling and
| often times, garbage we don't know what to do. not even
| counting the amount of NASTY chemicals going into the
| production of solar panels. these are sometimes permanent and
| will have a great long term impact on ecology if we just
| start destroying plants to substitute with "green"
| alternatives mindlessly
|
| one can also make a point that despite wind generators metals
| and batteries being almost to 100% recyclable, it's heck
| expensive to do and we don't have infrastructure. a
| comparison cosidering everything involved may show that
| hydroelectrics, nuclear, geo-thermal and heck even gas may
| have a similar or better impact depending on location
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > it's a freaking mess to deal with recycling and often
| times, garbage we don't know what to do
|
| I love that this is followed by "so go nuclear!"
| luqtas wrote:
| i recommend you starting with something easy to digest
| like this: https://www.amazon.com/Energy-Society-David-
| Pimentel-Ph-D/dp...
|
| then you can move on and judge what't the panorama of
| closed/paywalled science found out there (Nature) that
| evaluates impacts of solar panel not even considering
| numbers of last batches of thrash from ~ 2010 (which
| still have 10-15 years till they start filling the world
| with chemicals like lead)... then may dive into
| electricity security and distribution and recycling
| technology to bring up a single ignorant phrase comment
| downsizing nuclear generation, despite it being safer and
| ecological on the long-term compared to photovoltaics in
| LOTS of places, for example
| toss1 wrote:
| Sure, and none of that amounts to even close to the damage
| from stripping vast areas of the earth to dig up coal,
| grinding and transporting it to power plants, then setting
| it on fire, and releasing tons of CO2, and then disposing
| of tons of unburnt waste full of NASTY chemicals.
|
| And having to do all that continuously, every day, for the
| life of the plant.
|
| In every single solution you can point out problems.
| Complaining that "X isn't perfect" is the easiest and
| laziest thing in the world to do. Assessing the _ACTUAL_
| costs and damages _IN PROPORTION_ is more difficult, but
| actually yields good results.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| As opposed to coal that pump out NASTY chemicals right now?
| luqtas wrote:
| i'm not defending coal. i'm just saying that solution to
| energy is much more broad than the OP seems to pass on
| "being cheaper to destroy a coal plant and substitute
| with batteries and solar". i wouldn't be surprised trey
| sightread titles and didn't realized that it may be
| economical to re-use an OLD coal plant to produce solar
| energy but well... my last comment on this thread has it
| all, great book
| thinkcontext wrote:
| Its fair to do an accounting of externalities. However, I
| generally find those raising externality issues with solar
| and wind wildly overestimate their impact and wildly
| underestimate the externalities of fossil fuels. You
| mention the 20 year lifespan, this is a huge benefit
| compared to fossil fuels. The externalities of oil and gas
| add up for every second they are used.
| dalyons wrote:
| Who cares if we never figure out how to recycle them? bury
| them in a landfill, and we'll still be so far ahead on the
| pollution front than any other alternative. This is such a
| non issue
| aswegs8 wrote:
| Am I dumb or does that sentence "Analysis finds anytime
| electricity from solar available as battery costs plummet" make
| no sense grammatically?
| FfejL wrote:
| The actual headline is:
|
| Analysis finds "anytime electricity" from solar available as
| battery costs plummet.
|
| Those missing quotes go a long way to making the headline make
| sense.
| k1t wrote:
| I think they meant "viable" instead of "available"
| hammock wrote:
| Just read the subhead. It explains everything.
|
| Ember's report outlines how falling battery capital
| expenditures and improved performance metrics have lowered
| the levelized cost of storage, making dispatchable solar a
| competitive, anytime electricity option globally.
| kgwgk wrote:
| I.e. making it a viable option.
| hammock wrote:
| Well they are two different words with two different
| meanings. Both are true in this case. "Available" in the
| sense "obtainable," "ready for use," "suitable for a
| purpose" or perhaps "available to investors"
| malfist wrote:
| Its still really confusing. A better title would be "When
| solar power from batteries are available, costs plummet"
|
| Or since power has no provenience, "When batteries are
| available, electricity prices fall"
| bee_rider wrote:
| This doesn't really capture their meaning though. They are
| describing a change in how the solar generated electricity
| can be treated due to the changing battery prices.
|
| Arguably your edit is more factual. But part of the job of
| the title in an editorial like this is to tell you what
| their perspective is.
| fweimer wrote:
| I assume the intended meaning is "reduced battery costs
| make around-the-clock solar-generated electricity
| possible". I don't think it's possible to predict how
| technical changes in electricity production and storage
| impact prices.
| Angostura wrote:
| "Falling battery costs make electricity from solar viable
| day and night"
| evrimoztamur wrote:
| Baseload, ideally.
| pqdbr wrote:
| Came in the comment section looking to see if it was just me.
| Had to read it 4 times
| fweimer wrote:
| I think "anytime electricity" is a noun phrase, and the rest is
| just the usual headline shortening. So something like this:
|
| (Analysis finds ((anytime electricity) from solar) available)
| (as (battery costs) plummet)
|
| In the unsuccessful parse, "anytime" introduces a relative
| clause.
|
| (Analysis finds [that] (anytime ((electricity from solar) [is]
| available))) ???
| ttul wrote:
| If they were going for maximum confusion, why not write, "Solar
| battery costs plummet analysis findings back anytime
| electricity availability"?
|
| Subject (((((Solar battery) costs) plummet) analysis) findings)
|
| Verb [back]
|
| Object (anytime (electricity availability))
|
| Garden path sentence structure trap creation relies on initial
| word parse error encouragement. Brain pattern recognition
| system default subject-verb-object order preference
| exploitation causes early stop interpretation failure.
|
| Solar battery costs plummet phrase acting as complex noun
| modifier group creates false sentence finish illusion. Real
| subject findings arrival delay forces mental backtrack restart
| necessity.
|
| Noun adjunct modifier stack length excess impacts processing
| speed negatively. Back word function switch from direction noun
| to support verb finalizes reader confusion state.
|
| We write to be understood. Short sentences and simple words
| make the truth easy to see.
| robwwilliams wrote:
| Brilliant <ttul>! I would have needed help from Claude to
| tangle it up so well and on topic. But that last lucid
| sentence is rubbish.
| Etheryte wrote:
| Falling battery prices make storing solar electricity for later
| use economically viable. This means we can use electricity from
| solar anytime around the clock. Even accounting for the cost of
| batteries, it's still competitive with other sources of
| electricity.
| jt2190 wrote:
| The source report
|
| "How cheap is battery storage?" https://ember-
| energy.org/latest-insights/how-cheap-is-batter...
|
| In short: Cheaper batteries plus already cheap solar means that
| solar is now a cheap source of "anytime electricity".
| neom wrote:
| To me the context string is just a bit...lumpy or something, I
| don't think it's directly about the grammar. I would have
| written something more like: a battery costs plummet, analasis
| finds "anytime electricity" is now available from solar.
| state_less wrote:
| The scaling up of battery manufacturing for EVs and now solar
| storage has lead to prices I would have never imagined I'd see in
| my lifetime. It's one of the success stories that, having lived
| through it, has been a real joy.
|
| I know that folks might have been able to point to a graph years
| ago and said we'd be here eventually, but I had my doubts given
| the scale required and hacking through all the lobbying efforts
| we saw against solar/battery. Alas, we made it here!
| ak217 wrote:
| Alas is right, China is poised to dominate battery, solar, and
| EV technology and to translate it to military technology as
| well. Meanwhile the Republicans are blowing up US alliances and
| sabotaging the battery/EV industrial development policy that
| was actually making progress in giving the US hope in catching
| up.
| sdoering wrote:
| Same here in Germany/Europe. Our conservatives actually
| destroyed the solar industry for the third time. Our
| conservative party has actually destroyed significantly more
| jobs in solar industries over the last 20 years than it keeps
| alive with subsidies of 70kEUR - 100kEUR per person working
| in that industry (direct and indirect subsidies make the 70 -
| 100kEUR range).
|
| But hey, our populist right tell us, that the subsidies for
| "green technology" are bad and that we need to get rid of
| them, because they are making energy so expensive in Germany
| (cleared of inflation energy costs are lower than 2013, 12
| years ago).
|
| But hey - people vote for those parties. Because they know
| their economics, not like the leftists, who don't.
|
| Germany (or Europe in general) is fucked. In a few years, we
| will reap what we now sow. And not because of our social
| systems or immigration, but because our oh so great political
| leaders are not willing to invest in the future.
| bootsmann wrote:
| > cleared of inflation energy costs are lower than 2013, 12
| years ago
|
| This is not the argument you want to make. Energy prices
| are a significant component of the basket used to measure
| inflation. Like yeah, you expect energy prices to sink if
| you discount for the rise of energy prices. Germany is
| suffering from high energy prices its the key factor why
| the country has been stagnating economically for the past 6
| years.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Their energy prices are an outcome of incompetence,
| having tied their energy prices to Russia and a gas
| supply from them. In hindsight, economic diplomacy is not
| the path to keeping an authoritarian in check; a strong
| military and energy independence is.
|
| German energy prices will decline with battery storage
| and more renewables pushing out the last of their coal
| and fossil gas generation. Should've kept the old nuclear
| generators running too, as long as possible. Alas, a
| lesson they've learned.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| I think this take is too shallow, and based on hindsight.
|
| Germany has had fossil gas ties to Russia since the
| Soviet time.
|
| https://dw.com/en/russian-gas-in-germany-a-
| complicated-50-ye...
|
| When the iron curtain fell pretty much all of Central
| Europe liberalized and democratized. The sole exceptions
| being Belarus and Russia.
|
| Thinking they wouldn't choose the same path is
| revisionist.
|
| I remember growing up and gaming online thinking of
| Russians as nothing strange compared to anyone else. This
| changed with first Georgia and then very much Crimea.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| _'We were all wrong': how Germany got hooked on Russian
| energy_ -
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/02/germany-
| depend... - June 2nd, 2022
|
| > An arrangement that began as a peacetime opening to a
| former foe has turned into an instrument of aggression.
| Germany is now funding Russia's war. In the first two
| months after the start of Russia's assault on Ukraine,
| Germany is estimated to have paid nearly EUR8.3bn for
| Russian energy - money used by Moscow to prop up the
| rouble and buy the artillery shells firing at Ukrainian
| positions in Donetsk. In that time, EU countries are
| estimated to have paid a total of EUR39bn for Russian
| energy, more than double the sum they have given to help
| Ukraine defend itself. The irony is painful. "For thirty
| years, Germans lectured Ukrainians about fascism," the
| historian Timothy Snyder wrote recently. "When fascism
| actually arrived, Germans funded it, and Ukrainians died
| fighting it."
|
| > When Putin invaded Ukraine in February, Germany faced a
| particular problem. Its rejection of nuclear power and
| its transition away from coal meant that Germany had very
| few alternatives to Russian gas. Berlin has been forced
| to accept that it was a cataclysmic error to have made
| itself so dependent on Russian energy - whatever the
| motives behind it. The foreign minister, Annalena
| Baerbock, says Germany failed to listen to the warnings
| from countries that had once suffered under Russia's
| occupation, such as Poland and the Baltic states. For
| Norbert Rottgen, a former environment minister and member
| of Angela Merkel's Christian Democrat Union (CDU), the
| German government bowed to industry forces pressing for
| cheap gas "all too easily", while "completely ignoring
| the geopolitical risks".
|
| > In February this year, German Green economic affairs
| and climate action minister Robert Habeck said that gas
| storage facilities owned by Gazprom in Germany had been
| "systematically emptied" over the winter, to drive up
| prices and exert political pressure. It was a staggering
| admission of Russia's power to disrupt energy supplies.
|
| > "I was wrong," the former German finance minister,
| Wolfgang Schauble, says, simply. "We were all wrong."
|
| We win or we learn.
| lysace wrote:
| See also: Gazprom, Gerhard Schroder ("Putin's man in
| Germany" according to NYT) and the German nuclear power
| shutdown.
|
| https://atomicinsights.com/gazprom-profiting-mightily-
| from-g...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/23/world/europe/schroder-
| ger...
| jack_tripper wrote:
| _> > "I was wrong," the former German finance minister,
| Wolfgang Schauble, says, simply. "We were all wrong."_
|
| So when are they retroactively giving back their salaries
| and pensions for having fucked up the livelihoods of
| their taxpayers?
|
| Politicians have no incentive to ever make good decisions
| for the future of their country without any skin in the
| game from which their personal riches are derived.
|
| _> We win or we learn._
|
| Jensen Huang said that failure is learning but sometimes
| failure is just failure and you should know when to cut
| your losses before the failure goes from learning to
| bankruptcy. And Germany did far more failure than
| actually learning.
| braincat31415 wrote:
| A self inflicted wound. Europe keeps entering into spot
| gas supply contracts and paying through the nose instead
| of signing longer-term contracts for lower prices. The
| Russians have always been reliable suppliers even after
| sanctions took place, and calls from some hotheads to use
| gas as leverage was never seriously followed through by
| the real decision makers. And Habeck is an idiot. Lately
| Germany has not been buying enough summer gas to keep the
| storage full, and of course the storage gets emptied
| during the winter - people need to keep warm. To imply
| that Gazprom is somehow stealing gas from these
| facilities to exert political pressure is ludicrous,
| expecially since Gazprom has not even owned these
| facilities since 2022.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| _Europe Locks In Endgame for Russian Gas And Oil_ -
| https://finance.yahoo.com/news/europe-locks-endgame-
| russian-... - December 9th, 2025
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| > Thinking they wouldn't choose the same path is
| revisionist.
|
| Societies tend to not change how things work no matter
| who is in charge.
| pyrale wrote:
| That is a myopic view of history.
|
| Just look around yourself. No society is comparable to
| what it was 10 years ago, 20 years ago, etc, in any
| country. If you think nothing changed in a society,
| you're just poorly informed.
| tirant wrote:
| I don't care if German prices for electricity are below
| inflation. They're just still expensive. As an EV owner is
| difficult to find an electricity provider with costs below
| 0,25EUR/kWh, and most of them go beyond 0,30EUR. While I
| had prices in other European countries for around
| 0,05EUR/kWh at night for example.
|
| Not only that, Conservatives, Socialists and the Green all
| managed to increase our electricity CO2 footprint by moving
| from nuclear to coal/lng.
| junto wrote:
| That's mainly because German has fucked up the smart
| meter rollout. In their wisdom they separated the meter
| and the gateway when other countries just combined it.
| They also made it super secure (good), but then didn't
| look at the fact that lots of people live in rented
| apartments and their meters in the cellars have really
| poor or no cellular connectivity. When Germany can
| finally do steerable dynamic loads properly at 95% of the
| market rather than under 10%, it will finally make a
| difference on steering pricing for such consumers as
| yourself.
|
| Germany is investing in massive battery parks dotted
| around the grid. This will make a difference to
| supporting base load and offsetting coal, but it will
| take time.
|
| If there's anything about the Germans you can count on,
| is that they move slowly.
| jack_tripper wrote:
| _> but then didn't look at the fact that lots of people
| live in rented apartments_
|
| How would the political class know this obvious fact from
| the top of their ivory McMansions?
| lukan wrote:
| "If there's anything about the Germans you can count on,
| is that they move slowly."
|
| What happened to Blitzkrieg?
| aktuel wrote:
| > cleared of inflation energy costs are lower than 2013, 12
| years ago
|
| Dude, soaring energy prices are driving inflation. That's
| like saying the prices are lower if you just keep ignoring
| everything that actually makes them more expensive. Duh.
| api wrote:
| It's the innovators dilemma. We have so much not just
| technical but cultural and political sunk cost in fossil
| fuels and traditional industrial era infrastructure. The
| Chinese are just developing now and don't have so much of
| that sunk cost. So they can think like it's the future. We
| are stuck in the past.
|
| Eventually there may come a day when it's China that is stuck
| in the past, looking back to the early 21st century like we
| look back to the middle twentieth, and someone else will be
| ascendant.
|
| I really felt like Trump's 2024 election was the moment it
| became the Chinese century. It was the moment we chose to
| exit our position of world leadership both culturally and
| technologically.
| jack_tripper wrote:
| _> I really felt like Trump's 2024 election was the moment
| it became the Chinese century. _
|
| You must have been asleep at the wheel or living under a
| rock to have mised China's rise over the last decades. They
| didn't wait for Trump to get elected in 2024 and then
| flipped a switch from third world country to global
| superpower.
|
| _" Damn, this hot cup of coffee burned my tongue. Why
| would Trump do this?"
|
| -HN comments_
| api wrote:
| No I saw it. I just felt like that was the moment it
| tipped.
| jack_tripper wrote:
| You saw what? More like you missed decades.
| epistasis wrote:
| This is exactly right, IMHO. We were in a course to
| counter China's momentum, we had handled COVID so much
| better, our industry had a huuuuuuge investment in it and
| was poised to take tiff.
|
| And then it was all killed. And we are killing off our
| other competitive edges over China, the way we attract
| all the world's best science and tech talent to build
| here in the US rather than in their own countries. We
| have sat back scientific research 2-5 years by
| drastically cutting grants in nonsensical ways and
| stopping and decimating a class of grad students.
|
| We were the most admired country in the world, and in a
| short amount of time we have destroyed decades of hard
| work building a good reputation.
|
| We won't get that back in a year or two, it's going to be
| decades of work.
| jack_tripper wrote:
| _> our industry had a huuuuuuge investment in it_
|
| Which industry? How 'huuuuuge' was the investment?
|
| _> We were the most admired country in the world_
|
| According to who?
| epistasis wrote:
| This was reported all over, but certain circles
| considered it politically incorrect to acknowledge that
| anything good happened in the years 2020-2024, so perhaps
| you can be excused for missing it. Some random web hits.
| Check out the graphs herein the massive investment in
| factories:
|
| https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/econographics/the-
| ira-...
|
| https://www.manufacturingdive.com/news/inflation-
| reduction-a...
|
| Back then when I would inform the politically cloistered
| about this massive boom in factory construction and the
| hope for US manufacturing in strategically important
| energy tech, the most pointed critique was "yeah there's
| lots of spending but that doesn't mean that the factories
| are going to make anything." Turns out the skeptics were
| right. It was a huge mistake that all this stuff went
| into areas where it is politically incorrect to
| acknowledge that clean energy is changing the world.
| Management was not able to trumpet the new investment and
| the workers dont want to acknowledge what's driving the
| new higher wages.
|
| As for the US being the most admired country, I work in
| science and a bit in entrepreneurship. The US was so far
| and away the leader in these that there's no comparison
| at all to any other country. Any visitor is completely
| blown away when they see what's going on, even when they
| heard ahead of time how much better science and startups
| are in the US. It's a bit shocking that you think the US
| was not one of the most admired countries out there,
| unless you're posting from China or Russia.
| nutjob2 wrote:
| It was that Trump and the MAGA crowd conceded to the
| Chinese by destroying US goodwill and credibility built
| up over decades. The US will probably never recover those
| advantages, just as China is ratcheting up its program of
| dominance. Trump et al have destroyed many things that
| made the US great.
|
| It's bewildering why anyone would do such a thing but
| here we are.
| ksec wrote:
| May be it is not of an innovators dilemma?
|
| Chinese CCP are willing to scarifies whatever traditional
| industrial era infrastructure in order for things to move
| forward and gain a global advantage. Especially when they
| are not the one paying for the scarifies.
| mcswell wrote:
| "Make America Little Again" --Donald J. Trump
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| good. maybe we can copy some shit for cheap and leap frog a
| few generations instead of leading the world!
| jfengel wrote:
| Unlikely, since our labor costs are still considerably
| higher than elsewhere. For a very long time our economy has
| rested on developing high margin products and letting
| others do the low-marginal-overhead of making it. We
| assumed that they were not going to catch up to us as
| innovators.
|
| That was a dangerous mistake, and we may be left with
| nothing.
| dalyons wrote:
| Chinas labor costs are no longer cheap either. They just
| have higher tech factories now.
| antonvs wrote:
| > Alas is right, China is poised to dominate ...
|
| Are you saying "alas for citizens of the US who see things in
| competitive nationalist terms"?
|
| Seems like a win for everyone else, no? What happened to
| "competition", or is that something that's only supposed to
| be beneficial within the US?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Are you saying "alas for citizens of the US who see
| things in competitive nationalist terms"?_
|
| He's saying it as a realist.
|
| China is building the equivalent to America's sanctions
| power in their battery dominance. In an electrified
| economy, shutting off battery and rare earths access isn't
| as acutely calamitous as an oil embargo, but it's similarly
| shocking as sanctions and tariffs.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > shutting off battery and rare earths access
|
| Trump just leveraged Magnitsky sanctions against
| brazilian authorities to obtain access to brazilian rare
| earths until 2030.
| dalyons wrote:
| Yes and no - yes it's dumb to give up and let china have
| a defacto monopoly on the future of energy production.
| But no insofar as sanctions on battery and solar don't
| hit the same as oil and other things. Because once you
| have them, they keep producing for you.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _sanctions on battery and solar don't hit the same as
| oil and other things_
|
| Oil hits hardest. I'm comparing financial sanctions to a
| battery embargo. Both are slow. Both are powerful.
| ak217 wrote:
| China is governed by the CCP, which holds the world record
| for the number of people murdered by the state, feeds its
| citizens militaristic propaganda at scale, is currently
| controlled by a guy who fancies himself a dictator, and is
| politically stable only as long as it continues to suppress
| free speech and free trade. It takes a dangerous kind of
| willful naivete to just ignore that fact.
| antonvs wrote:
| What kind of willful naivete does it take to ignore the
| nature of the current government of the United States?
| Zigurd wrote:
| He's not ignoring it.
| ak217 wrote:
| Yours?
|
| I'm sick and tired of whataboutism from people who are
| somehow motivated to carry water for aggressive
| dictatorships that threaten the rest of us. I've already
| lost my birth country to zombies like that (they call
| them z-patriots, or turbopatriots, the supporters of
| Russia's invasion of Ukraine). In case you missed it, my
| original comment was intended as a criticism of the
| current government of the United States.
| lossolo wrote:
| This is oversimplified view of the world and China.
|
| China being powerful is not something new, it was the
| world's largest economy for 18 of the past 20 centuries
| (with exceptions being parts of the 19th and 20th
| centuries, when Western Europe and then the US surged
| ahead after the industrial revolution).
|
| > is politically stable only as long as it continues to
| suppress free speech and free trade.
|
| Your analysis is through the lens of Western culture. The
| definition and understanding of freedom and harmony are
| entirely different in China. I was in China and
| experienced this myself, so this is firsthand experience,
| not something I picked up from blogs or news.
|
| In the Chinese context, freedom is defined collectively
| so freedom from chaos, poverty, foreign domination etc,
| whereas here in the West it's individual liberty. Harmony
| and social stability are seen as more valuable than
| political pluralism, so authoritarian governance is
| culturally framed as legitimate. You know that 100
| million Chinese travel abroad every year and all of them
| come back to China? Chinese leaders and citizens still
| remember periods of fragmentation and civil war.
|
| There is a widespread belief that adopting a Western
| adversarial political model could reintroduce instability
| and weaken national unity so something China cannot risk
| given its size and diversity (you know how many
| ethnicities there are in China?)
|
| This is their natural state. China has a long history of
| centralized, bureaucratic governance (over 2k years since
| the Qin Dynasty), where stability and order are
| prioritized.
| ak217 wrote:
| Yeah. I have also been to China myself, and have first
| hand experience walking around Hong Kong with people who
| later found themselves in jail, or riding the subway
| getting bombarded with saturation level jingoistic
| propaganda urging attack against the capitalist
| aggressors, or getting a tour of Beijing from a friend
| who worked as a photojournalist and found himself
| followed by the security services and had to leave and
| seek asylum with his family.
|
| The silent majority is silent, yes. Those who try to do
| something get pushed out, or worse. It's the double-edged
| sword of immigration. But the Chinese people love freedom
| like the rest of us - you don't need to go far to
| disprove your entire narrative, Taiwan and Singapore are
| right there.
| lossolo wrote:
| Then you've had a very different experience than I have.
| If you don't mind me asking, where exactly were you in
| mainland China, and for how long?
|
| Hong Kong isn't representative of China. I've been there
| and honestly, it felt like a post colonial UK dump. Going
| directly from Shenzhen to Hong Kong felt like going from
| a first world country to a third world one, but I
| digress.
|
| I also talked with Hong Kongers (this year), and they
| told me a different story, one that isn't so black and
| white as the worldview you're projecting onto others.
|
| > or getting a tour of Beijing from a friend who worked
| as a photojournalist and found himself followed by the
| security services and had to leave and seek asylum with
| his family.
|
| That's another interesting anecdote. I actually know a
| photo blogger and a local journalist from China, neither
| of them is being followed by the security services, and
| neither has sought asylum anywhere. What was so unique
| about your friend?
|
| > But the Chinese people love freedom like the rest of us
| - you don't need to go far to disprove your entire
| narrative, Taiwan and Singapore are right there.
|
| You know Singapore isn't exactly a "free" country either,
| right? And Singaporeans are generally fine with that and
| accept the trade off. So who's disproving whose narrative
| here?
|
| Different cultures have different systems and trade offs,
| different value systems and philosophies of life. But
| some people seem not to understand that and view
| everything through the lens of their own values,
| convincing themselves there's only one "right" way to
| live and that everything else is evil. The Holy Crusades
| had similar vibes.
| nutjob2 wrote:
| It's alas for everyone but China. Who wants to be dependent
| on an aggressive totalitarian state?
|
| You can't compete fairly with China because the government
| applies massive subsidies and is coercive with both imports
| and exports.
|
| Right behind Russia, China is the biggest threat to global
| order and peace. It's no accident they are in cahoots.
| antonvs wrote:
| Where do you place the United States under the Trump
| administration in that list?
|
| I'm getting a strong sense of denial in this thread.
| alexose wrote:
| In addition to coming so far down in price, it's amazing to me
| how _good_ the technology has gotten. Batteries that can easily
| discharge 5C in cold weather, cycle 10000 times, survive harsh
| conditions with zero maintenance. Panels that last for decades.
|
| Which is why it makes me especially angry that the current US
| government is throwing away this gift in order to appease a
| bunch of aging leaders of petro-states. Literally poisoning the
| world for a 10-15 year giveaway to the richest of the rich.
|
| I take some solace knowing that fossil fuels are now a dead
| end. And even though certain people are trying to keep the
| industry going, that end is sooner than ever.
| venturecruelty wrote:
| We _are_ the petro-state, and they 're _our_ aging leaders.
| pfdietz wrote:
| > cycle 10000 times
|
| This is truly important, allowing the plummeting cost of the
| batteries to be amortized over so many cycles.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Yes! It's awesome!
|
| (Also, "alas" is a lament, expressing sadness, which is clearly
| not your intent.)
| epistasis wrote:
| You are certainly not alone in your beliefs, but it always
| amazes me which technologies get the benefit of doubt and which
| are severely penalized by unfounded doubt. Solar and especially
| batteries are completely penalized and doubted in a way that
| defies any honest assessment of reality. The EIA and IEA
| forecasts are as terrible as they are because the reflect this
| unrealistic doubt (random blog spam link, but this observation
| is so old that it's hard to find the higher quality initial
| graphs)
|
| https://optimisticstorm.com/iea-forecasts-wrong-again/
|
| Similarly, nuclear power gets way too much benefit of the
| doubt, which should simply vanish after a small amount of due
| diligence on construction costs over its history. It's very
| complex, expensive, high labor, and has none of the traits that
| let it get cheaper as it scales.
| solarengineer wrote:
| https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-
| regulat...
|
| 10 new plants at USD 2.7 Billion each. They take six years to
| build. USD 2/Watt. They have standardised designs, have
| invested in grownig their manpower and know-how.
| epistasis wrote:
| If you believe China's internal pricing numbers, sure....
|
| But their actual investments in billions of dollars and in
| GW show that nuclear is not competing with solar, and is
| sticking around for hedging bets. They the are deploying
| far far far more solar and storage than nuclear. And if
| those nuclear costs were accurate, then nuclear would be
| far preferable. $2/W is incredible, as in perhaps not
| credible, but it would also be far cheaper than solar.
|
| And even if China figured out how to build that cheaply, it
| doesn't mean that highly developed countries will be able
| to replicate that. Nuclear requires a huge amount of high
| skill, specialized labor, and doing that cheaply is only
| possible at certain levels of economic development. As
| economies develop to ever higher productivity, the cost of
| labor goes up, and it's likely that nuclear only ever makes
| sense at a very narrow band of economic development.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| In general it's obvious this is the trend & amazing.
|
| It is a little surprising to me that some markets don't see the
| benefit. I was pretty delighted ~8 years ago to get some
| 4500mah 6s batteries RC (under 100Wh) for ~$65 but the price
| doesn't feel like it's changed much since, based on some light
| shopping around. Just wanted to note what I perceived as an
| unevenness.
| https://rcbattery.com/liperior-4500mah-6s-40c-22-2v-lipo-bat...
| codersfocus wrote:
| Does anyone know whether it makes sense to setup solar arrays
| closer to users or to concentrate them in sunny places and send
| them throughout the country?
|
| e.g. an analysis of whether we should setup all the solar farms
| in Nevada for the whole country... set them up in the general
| south and transmit north... or will each state have their own
| farms?
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| High voltage transmission lines are really quite efficient, and
| concentrating generation is usually the right choice.
|
| That said, it doesn't make sense to have just a single place
| for the entire country, as there are multiple grids in the US
| (primarily East, West, and Texas), and with very long
| transmission you can get into phase issues.
| epistasis wrote:
| Concentrating generation made sense when transmission was
| cheap in comparison.
|
| But one effect of ever cheaper solar is that transmission
| costs start to dominate generation costs, because
| transmission is not getting cheaper.
|
| Cheap solar and storage requires rethinking every aspect and
| all conventional wisdom about the grid. Storage in particular
| is a massive game changer on a scale that few in the industry
| understand.
| estimator7292 wrote:
| We don't put all our coal and gas plants out in the desert,
| they're next to and within our cities.
|
| Physically transporting electricity across distance is _very
| expensive_ and a not-insignificant amount of power is simply
| lost on the way. These problems only get worse as the amount of
| power goes up, and the danger grows very quickly as power goes
| up. Plus the strategic and logistical benefits of distributed
| generation.
|
| Simply put you _can 't_ centralize generation for the entire
| country. There's no practical way to actually transport that
| much power. Not with the technology we have today. If we had
| high-temperature superconductors then it would make more sense.
| But with standard metal wires, it's not happening.
| DamonHD wrote:
| In the GB (UK mainland) grid only ~2% of energy is lost in
| transmission; distribution is more typically ~5%. And we did
| put most of our big thermal power generation in the middle of
| the country, which is now causing difficulties as we need to
| re-jig transmission to accept offshore wind and
| interconnectors.
|
| Solar PV on rooftops is great, injecting power directly at
| the load, eliminating transmission and distribution losses
| until there is excess to spill back to grid. It would be
| helpful if we stopped running an entirely artificial
| timetable in winter that demands heavy activity well outside
| daylight hours, so that demand better matched availability.
| coryrc wrote:
| > Simply put you can't centralize generation for the entire
| country.
|
| Depends on the country.
|
| In Washington state, our power sources are not next to our
| population centers; in fact many are in the center of our
| state! And our state would be the 87th-biggest-country out of
| 197 in the world.
|
| USA averages 6% transmission loss. New long-distance
| transmission lines are HVDC and have far less loss over
| distance. But people oppose them for dumb and good reasons;
| why would I in Washington state want to have good connections
| to California so the local producers can reduce supply and
| drive up prices?
| aaronblohowiak wrote:
| technically or politically?
| ericd wrote:
| Distributed. New transmission lines have big nimby issues, and
| many existing corridors are already getting overloaded. There
| are recurring attempts to reform the permitting process (in the
| last Congress it was called EPRA/energy permitting reform act),
| but... we'll see.
|
| Bureaucracy is the main thing holding back clean energy right
| now, rather than economics. You can see this in how Texas,
| which has lax grid regulation but isn't biased towards clean
| energy has far surpassed CA, which subsidizes and got a big
| head start, in wind/solar generation in a few years.
| wrsh07 wrote:
| Casey Handmer is a huge solar bull and his estimate is that
| solar becomes cheaper than any other form of electricity even
| when generated from northern states by 2030 (likely sooner)
|
| Iirc solar is meaningfully more efficient (30-50%) in southern
| states, so it will likely make sense to place energy intensive
| workloads in locations with more direct sun.
|
| However, the cost of transmitting additional power is
| interesting and complex. Building out the grid (which runs
| close to capacity by some metric^) is expensive: transmission
| lines, transformers or substations, and acquiring land is
| obvious stuff. Plus the overhead of administration which is
| significant.
|
| So there's a lot of new behind-the-meter generation (ie
| electricity that never touches the grid)^^
|
| With all that in mind, I expect energy intensive things will
| move south (if they have no other constraints. Eg cooling for
| data centers might be cheaper in northern climes. Some
| processing will make sense close to where materials are
| available) But a significant amount of new solar will still be
| used in northern states because it's going to be extremely
| cheap to build additional capacity. Especially capacity that is
| behind-the-meter.
|
| ^ but not others! Eg if you're willing to discuss tradeoffs you
| might find dozens of gw available most of the time
| https://www.hyperdimensional.co/p/out-of-thin-air
|
| ^^ patio11 has a good podcast about this
| https://www.complexsystemspodcast.com/episodes/the-ai-energy...
| Disclaimer: my employer apparently sponsored that episode
| DamonHD wrote:
| IMHO "efficient" isn't really the right term in your second
| para. The PV generation per W incoming is actually a little
| lower at higher ambient temperatures, but is otherwise fairly
| constant.
|
| I assume that you mean higher kWh/y/kWp, ie you get more
| generation out of a given solar panel in the south each year.
| wrsh07 wrote:
| I meant kw h/m^2/d I think, but I'm not sure what the
| simplest way to say that is
|
| I think you and I are saying the same thing though!
| grensley wrote:
| The transmission network is underbuilt, so it's mostly best to
| generate closer to where it's consumed (especially for data
| centers).
|
| We'll continue to see a mix though of Residential / Commercial
| & Industrial / Utility Scale
|
| There are about 7,000 Utility scale sites in the US right now,
| so even the big boys there are fairly distributed.
| lukan wrote:
| If you would have a high voltage DC transmission line already,
| linking the dessert and the clouded cities far away, then it
| makes sense. I think it is worth building them, but it is a big
| investment. Many lines are proposed, some already build, but
| with the current US administration I don't think it is a
| priority.
|
| So decentral is the current way to go.
|
| That is the current state in the US
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HVDC_projects#/map/3
| empiricus wrote:
| All nice and beautiful, but I don't understand how will this work
| in the winter in the temperate areas. You maintain parallel
| natural gas installations and ramp them up in the winter? Does
| this doubles the cost?
| Carlseymanh wrote:
| One of the few problem of nuclear is summer time water use.
| Combining solar with nuclear would be the best option in my
| opinion.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| Nuclear plants, like most large thermal plants, are almost
| always located near large bodies of water and return that
| water downstream so it doesn't really matter?
| moooo99 wrote:
| It does when you care about the environmental impact of
| your cooling (and also consider the fact that droughts are
| an increasingly severe problem).
| pbmonster wrote:
| It matters when the level of that body of water drops by a
| lot in summer and the water temperature rises at the same
| time. Add environmental laws (cooking the fish is
| discouraged), and your nuke plant needs to go into safety
| shutdown pretty reliably every summer.
| lukan wrote:
| It matters if people don't want to see the rivers full of
| dead fish, so last year there were already shutdowns
| because of heatwaves.
|
| https://www.euronews.com/2025/07/02/france-and-
| switzerland-s...
| Zigurd wrote:
| Historically the biggest impediment to nuclear power has been
| incompetent construction management and project management.
| Incompetent is a strong word for it but nuclear power plants
| are the largest capital equipment purchases on the planet.
| Even modern so-called modular designs can't save poor project
| management, and learn as you go engineering.
|
| That so mundane and should be easy to fix, right? That's why
| I bring up scale. Nobody has experience running projects that
| big. Some things are just too big to manage.
| jansan wrote:
| This probably depends a lot on how close you are to the
| equator. Here in Germany output of solar in winter is
| negligible, and if there is no wind, which can happen for
| several consecutive weeks, we need a backup. No utilities
| company will build a fossil power plant that will be used only
| a few weeks per year, so our government will have to step in to
| make sure this happens.
|
| On top of this you have very high costs for an increasingly
| complex grid, which needs to be built and then maintained.
| Prices will never again be as low as in the fossil/nuclear era.
| morsch wrote:
| Here are some numbers: January 2025, the output of solar was
| ~1500 GWh, it peaked in June at 10500 GWh. So the lowest
| output was about 15% of the maximum, this year.
|
| https://www.energy-
| charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&...
|
| https://www.energy-
| charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&...
|
| Looking at wind, the ratio between min and max per week is
| about 1:5 (~1200 vs ~6000 GWh). Just as there is always
| _some_ solar power generation, there is never no wind, though
| looking at those charts there were 4 weeks in the late summer
| of 2023 when production was low consecutively, between 700
| and 1000 GWh.
| gpm wrote:
| > it peaked in June at 10500 GWh
|
| And 8280 GWh the previous June for those wondering roughly
| how much of this was due to more solar panels being
| deployed.
| coryrc wrote:
| And this also leaves out all the heating power still
| consumed directly from fossil fuels. The gap is much
| larger.
|
| This doesn't have have to be by switching consumption;
| using less is possible: Passivhaus is from Germany, after
| all. However, you can't do that and keep all your
| historical protections on buildings and layers-upon-layers
| of red tape on renovations.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| Wind power. Mix with emergency reserves running on open cycle
| gas turbines, if deemed necessary, preferably running on with
| carbon neutral fuel. Optimize for lowest possible CAPEX.
|
| That is contingent on that we're not wasting money and
| opportunity cost that could have larger impact decarbonizing
| agriculture, construction, aviation, maritime shipping etc.
| tootie wrote:
| The next hot thing (pun intended) is geothermal. The tech to
| drill deep enough opens up the possibility of extracting
| geothermal energy in most of the world. The tech exists and
| is deployed. Scaling is not yet proven but is very plausible.
| Geothermal runs 24/7 and can be clean base load power.
| epistasis wrote:
| Not having to burn gas is cheaper than burning gas. There will
| be a decade or two of transition with rarely used gas turbines
| getting their yearly packet in a short amount of time.
| Eventually other tech will take over, or the gas infrastructure
| will pare down and be cost optimized for its new role or rare
| usage.
|
| Europe, and Germany and the UK in particular, are really poorly
| suited to take advantage of this new cheap technology. If these
| countries don't figure out alternatives, the countries with
| better and cheaper energy resources will take over energy
| intensive industries.
|
| This is not a problem for solar and storage to solve, it's a
| problem that countries with poor resources need to solve if
| they want to compete in global industry.
| rgmerk wrote:
| From a global perspective, people living in temperate areas are
| actually the exception, not the rule (if a disproportionately
| economically successful exception).
|
| The likely implication of this is that, long term, unless wind
| power starts going back down the cost curve, or you're
| fortunate enough to have lots of hydro power, Northern Europe,
| Canada, northern China and so on are going to have much more
| expensive energy than more equatorial places.
| buckle8017 wrote:
| Ok now shift summer sun into winter.
| gpm wrote:
| Just build more solar. You generate excess electricity in
| summer and enough in winter. This isn't a problem.
| Youden wrote:
| I live in Switzerland and my house currently consumes
| 35-40kWh of electricity each day. I'm in the process of
| installing as many panels as possible on my roof and right
| now in winter, they're forecasted to produce ~18kWh on a good
| day.
|
| While it'll be possible for me to be more than fully self-
| sufficient in summer, I'd need roughly 3x more panels to come
| close to having a chance in winter, plus far more battery
| storage than is reasonable.
|
| I suspect it might be more doable somewhere with milder
| winters, like Italy but especially as you go further north
| and the days get shorter, there's just no chance.
|
| For it to work in places with large seasonal differences, we
| need something else (e.g. nuclear) and/or storage.
| apexalpha wrote:
| A very large part of the people on this planet have (almost) no
| winters.
|
| We could start with those ~3 billion people.
|
| Also wind has proven to be a very good supplement to pv.
| jmward01 wrote:
| Batteries are probably going to kill long-range transmission
| lines and open up remote generation at a scale never thought
| possible. Desert solar, remote hydro, etc etc. As the price
| continues to fall and the density continues to rise the economics
| of transmission completely change and will decouple the location
| of power generation from the use of that power dramatically. This
| decoupling of location and use will drastically reshape energy
| production. Right now is likely the time to buy sunny land in the
| middle of nowhere but near train tracks.
| gpm wrote:
| I think long range transmission remains a thing anywhere having
| a local grid remains a thing (which will be most places for
| other reasons).
|
| Load-balancing the area having a cloudy few days and the area
| having a sunny days and the area having a windy few days and so
| on will remain extremely valuable. It lets you install a lot
| less batteries and isn't that much infrastructure given that
| the last mile problems are dealt with already.
| pfdietz wrote:
| The point being made is that if smoothing over time becomes
| sufficiently cheap then smoothing over space is supplanted.
|
| It would be nice if this happened before the next Carrington
| Event (or the next nuclear war with orbital EMP weapons.)
| gpm wrote:
| I get that, I'm just disagreeing that we should be looking
| forwards to storage becoming _that_ cheap. Particularly
| when our cheap energy sources (solar, wind) have a lot of
| location specific variability over time.
|
| With some exceptions for sufficiently remote (or
| sufficiently always-sunny and not too dense) places that
| local grids themselves are no longer worth it
| algo_trader wrote:
| The original report by Ember [1] is decent but clearly
| biased.
|
| They assume each battery cycles entirely EVERY day - even
| in winter. They also assume PV is never curtailed - not
| even in summer. They of course ignore multi-day weather
| anomalies. Like wise for weekend/holiday demand
| variations. etc.
|
| The best part of the report are real world bids of 2025
| ESS projects.
|
| [1] https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/how-cheap-
| is-batter...
| jmward01 wrote:
| I think there is a calculation that makes the point a little
| clearer. There is some distance, x, where it is cheaper to
| transport the electrons mechanically than it is to push them
| over a wire. Every month that distance gets shorter as
| battery prices drop. This gets even more advantageous for
| batteries when you start talking about variable use and
| generation since it is easier to change the destination or
| source of a battery container than it is to change the
| destination or source of transmission lines. My main point is
| that that distance x is going to rapidly get towards just a
| few miles away from point of use very shortly. Imagine a
| small city getting a local electricity provider. I actually
| think the way it is likely to go is that energy consumers
| (cities, factories, etc) will start installing backup power
| via battery shipment and then slowly start disconnecting from
| the larger grid as the cost of the battery container
| delivered power dips below the cost for transmission line
| delivered. The infrastructure is just so much more efficient
| for most use cases because we already have that
| infrastructure for shipping other goods.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Batteries alone don't quite do it, at least at mid latitudes
| and beyond, but I will once again point to Standard Thermal as
| a solution to that problem, at least at megawatt scale and
| above.
| laurencerowe wrote:
| I don't think this makes sense. Rail freight is about 20x more
| expensive than transmission at current battery densities.
|
| Transmission: $41.50 per MWh per 1,000 miles.
| https://docs.nrel.gov/docs/fy22osti/81662.pdf
|
| Rail freight: $160 / ton per 1,000 miles. At 220 Wh/kg a ton of
| batteries is 200kWh. So rail costs $800 per MWh per 1,000 miles
| without considering the cost of the batteries themselves.
| neuroelectron wrote:
| For about $100 the black friday, i got a ridiculous overkill LFP
| battery for my router and fiber modem. Would last about a week
| with no power.
| apexalpha wrote:
| It's somewhat humbling that this is essentially entirely done by
| one country.
|
| For all their faults, I am in awe of the scale and success of
| their industrial policy.
| nutjob2 wrote:
| It's amazing what you can achieve when you control everything
| in a nation and can execute anyone who disagrees.
| ponector wrote:
| If it was a real reason of their success we would see amazing
| results in russia and their friends: Iran, Korea and other
| countries.
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