New Record Bid Set for World's Cheapest Solar, Undercutting Coal

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-03/solar-developers-undercut-coal-with-another-record-set-in-dubai

by Osiris30 • 10 years ago

367 205 10 years ago

peteretep• 10 years ago

The potential desalinisation this could lead to is also pretty exciting

hyperbovine2• 10 years ago

Desal is not the panacea many believe it to be. There are serious environmental consequences associated with all the brine discharge.

raverbashing3• 10 years ago

Or, you know, you sell it as salt

(though you might need more sun and space for that)

Dylan16807• 10 years ago

Is that because it's actually hard to avoid the consequences, or because a lot of plants are lazy about diluting brine to save pennies? Let's think big, willing to bump the cost by 50% to make brine disposal safe. How hard is it then?

MichaelBurge• 10 years ago

Can't you just dump it back in the ocean where it came from?

The sea critters are already happy to swim around in it, and you're not going to meaningfully change the concentration of the ocean. You could mix it with sea water near the exit point to avoid temporarily raising the concentration there.

Gravityloss2• 10 years ago

Why not just put water pools in plastic domes, collect the dew at night?

Creating electricity with a lot of effort and using it for heating water doesn't make sense.

Retric2• 10 years ago

Cost. Large scale desalination is really cheap as in gallons per cent.

thinkcontext2• 10 years ago

State of the art desalination, reverse osmosis, doesn't heat the water it pushes it through semi-permeable membranes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_osmosis

johnchristopher• 10 years ago

Wait, these are still projected costs, right ? How can they guarantee they'll be able to recoup their costs and honour their prices?

ljf3• 10 years ago

From the discussion of this yesterday, I understand that most other companies could also meet these costs, if they had the same access to very cheap loans. These bids are supported by near minimal cost loans, that are being offered to help kickstart the industry in these areas, and to acquire skills and knowledge. Plus in the hope that the continued improvement in solar panels, rather than relying on the tech they can get their hands on today.

beefield• 10 years ago

Vast majority of solar power costs are upfront capital costs. So if you know how much the panels/installation costs, what are your financing costs for ~30 year amortizing loan and how much the sun is expected to shine in the installation place, calculating the cost of electricity price per kWh is not too advanced Excel trickery.

coldcode• 10 years ago

It's not cheap because the costs of building it is cheap, the companies are willing to undercut each other for the benefit of getting the contracts. The question is whether they will ever be profitable at this level.

akhatri_aus3• 10 years ago

Why would someone bid at a price like this before the project is set up if it was not the least bit feasible?

beambot• 10 years ago

PR? Hidden subsidies? Lucrative maintenance contracts? Desperation for revenue in a competitive market? Overly aggressive sales staff? Contract loopholes for cost overruns?

barney545• 10 years ago

They will is they get subsidies to do so.

discardorama• 10 years ago

My guess: looking at the curve, and when they'll actually have to purchase the PV panels (a few years from not), things will be actually cheaper.

ljf3• 10 years ago

No - they are able to undercut as they have access to hugely cheap loans, which the others do not, so the bid come in close to the actual hardware and running costs, not that figure plus the loan repayments.

Quote:

One can suspect that Masdar had access to long-term financing through the wealthy emirate of Abu Dhabi that no commercial banks, the primary source of capital for the other bidders, could match in cost.

From: http://www.apricum-group.com/dubai-shatters-records-cost-sol...

lukasm• 10 years ago

Also, UEA don't have taxes and cheap foreign labour to built it.

ljf3• 10 years ago

Discussion yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11617988

sharemywin2• 10 years ago

Big giant government projects never have cost over runs.

hacknat• 10 years ago

Actually they do, but they also result in dramatic changes (Railroads, Highways, Apollo, TCP/IP, etc).

briandear• 10 years ago

However for every Apollo, there's a dozen Solyndras.

djrogers• 10 years ago

Sometimes, yes - more often they result in cronyism and officials and bureaucrats amassing power to trade for $$.

Since you brought up trains, look at the giant mess that is the California 'bullet' train. Not a single section of track has been completed, and it's already doubled in budget, reduced dramatically in speed (current projections put the trip time at ~4hrs due to a number of issues including track sharing), with ticket prices 70% higher than promised, and the legal requirements for private investment have been ignored because no private company is willing to touch it with a ten foot pole.

Dramatic changes indeed...

sharemywin2• 10 years ago

Just pointing out it was an estimate and the end cost might be very much higher.

barney545• 10 years ago

One very important thing missing is that solar is not dispatchable. It does not serve the same purpose as coal and it is an apples to oranges comparison between solar and coal.

Coal provides baseless power--coal plants are designed to run at a relatively steady level for more than 90% of the time. Reliable power is critical for things like server farms which draw power all the time. Solar cannot serve the same purpose without battery or other backup.

At this time of year in places like California, solar doesn't help meet peak demand either. http://content.caiso.com/green/renewrpt/20160503_DailyRenewa... Solar has a role, but comparing it to coal is misleading.

jenno• 10 years ago

A lot of people use the battery argument when it comes to solar, but isn't Musk's home battery pack designed specifically for this purpose?

barney545• 10 years ago

No. They discontinued the larger battery and it isn't designed to operate at grid scale. http://gizmodo.com/tesla-is-discontinuing-its-10-kilowatt-po...

Cthulhu_2• 10 years ago

*Tesla's, Musk is only the CEO of the company that designed that device, and attributing Musk with its invention or production isn't flattering for the (faceless?) engineers behind the brand.

dragontamer4• 10 years ago

As are CAES, Redox Flow Batteries, Pumped hydro, and other utility-scale energy storage.

Energy storage is improving rapidly. Lithium-Ion batteries are but one technology that I don't personally expect will become the norm at grid-scale.

JoeAltmaier• 10 years ago

I thought that was a UPS, designed to cover outages for a short time. Not all night.

projectramo• 10 years ago

This is absolutely true. But the solar can still be used to nip in the use of fuels. If you have a fast acting source that can follow the solar signal, you'll still make a dent in the consumption of the fuel that creates the energy.

mavhc• 10 years ago

Also need wind to provide base load of course. It's always windy somewhere.

harterrt7• 10 years ago

Transporting electricity is not trivial.

ZeroGravitas2• 10 years ago

"At this time of year in places like California, solar doesn't help meet peak demand".

That's a very specific claim, and I don't think your cited graph even supports it.

Presumably, you say "this time of year" because you know that the yearly peak in California is driven by air-con usage in the summer afternoons, which correlates very well with solar.

But even right now, in early May, the graph is mostly flat through the afternoon and evening, with only the slight peak at 8 or 9 at night making your statement true in a very narrow sense.

Notably however, the graph only includes grid side solar production, so panels on homes or business roofs are not included in the graph. If you added those to the total demand curve would shift upwards during solar production hours.

barney545• 10 years ago

The peak demand in California yesterday was at 8:15 pm and solar produced zero electricity at 8:00 pm. http://content.caiso.com/green/renewrpt/20160503_DailyRenewa... But that's that the biggest problem. The problem is that solar is decreasing at demand is increasing. This is the problem they describe with the duck curve. https://www.caiso.com/Documents/FlexibleResourcesHelpRenewab...

Yes, solar can help meet peak load during the summer, but not the rest of the year and it causes stress on the system by requiring a lot of power to spin up to meet demand and solar decreases.

athenot• 10 years ago

This can be attenuated with variable pricing, like in France[1] which has 80% on nuclear—which doesn't ramp up/down very fast. One could call that free-market pricing: more expensive power during high demand, cheaper when supply is high.

Industries and homes find innovative ways to adapt to market pricing. All the appliances there have options to use power at night (when it is cheaper there). For solar, the times may be different but the same idea remains. Commercial power is priced at a premium when the grid is overloaded (typically winter months).

[1] http://residential.edf.com/energy-at-home/offers/electricity...

maxerickson7• 10 years ago

When you call coal baseload (I assume this is what you intended with baseless), you are contrasting it with dispatchable generation. Coal isn't nearly as responsive as hydro or natural gas or whatnot.

The difference between solar and coal is that the output of coal is more reliable.

barney545• 10 years ago

No. According to the US Energy Information Administration, coal is dispatchable. https://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/electricity_generation.cfm

It is correct that coal does not ramp up or down quickly, but that is not a characteristic of dispatchablilty.

rhino3693• 10 years ago

There are varying levels of dispatch-ability. You can ensure coal is on. And you can also turn it off. You just can't do it near instantaneously.

It's exists between something like nuclear (which has to just be on for months at a time) and natural gas peaker plants (which turn off and one during the day to meet demand.

You could, for example, run coal plants during the winter (when there is little sun) and not during the summer. Or you could run coal on cloudy days. Or just turn it off on weekends.

Osiris305• 10 years ago

Correct. But in large enough grid there are many non-fossil ways available using existing, deployable tech to integrate a high-penetration of non-dispatchable renewables.

For example - utility scale storage (pumped hydro); distributed storage (home batteries and Vehicle-to-grid battery Ev cars); demand-side management; power-to-gas (hydrogen); and geographic grid integration.

See more at

http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/re_futures/

https://www.raponline.org/featured-work/teach-the-duck-to-fl...

http://cleantechnica.com/2016/03/02/base-load-power-is-a-myt...

http://cleantechnica.com/2014/08/08/rmi-blows-lid-baseload-p...

harterrt7• 10 years ago

But stored solar energy no longer undercuts coal for most of these storage technologies.

Pumped hydro is probably the best bet, but is very geography dependent. Adding transmission is a non-trivial investment.

zeroxfe• 10 years ago

Solar cannot serve the same purpose without battery or other backup.

Think of the battery as a really big capacitor operating on a larger time-scale. It's perfectly reasonable to smooth out power this way, and as battery technology improves, you will certainly see more reliable power from solar for things like server farms.

Cthulhu_2• 10 years ago

More reliable, but more costly, too; this solar price comparison is skewed if you don't also include the cost of said batteries / battery capacity. Of course, comparing with coal is also missing the environmental impact.

cinquemb• 10 years ago

You would think CSP would at least get a mention on these subjects and how well it integrates with present structure of how we allocate of energy and can complement for those who require use of molten salts for dispatchability… its not like we burn coal in our cars to power steam turbine anyways…

riprowan• 10 years ago

You see a shortcoming of solar, I see a shortcoming of energy storage technology.

(I understand your actual point, and agree with it)

blazespin• 10 years ago

Not when you realize the desalination is a big thing around the world.

svalorzen• 10 years ago

There's something I never understood though. Technically there's always a side of the Earth that is under the Sun, so why can't countries make some sort of equal-sharing energy agreement to avoid needing batteries, if not at all at least hugely decreas the need for them? So that when it's night on one side of the Earth, everything just runs off the surplus on the other side?

Is it just too hard to move electricity so far away?

brianwawok• 10 years ago

So you are saying run a power line across the ocean, so the US can power Europe and Vice Versa?

Maintaining fiber optic cables can be hard across the ocean. How about a power line that has a diameter of 50 feet? I can't even imagine the engineering of that.

Info on losses here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission#Lo...

No idea on the math for what % of power we would lose across the ocean.

Seems local batteries would win out..

trose• 10 years ago

Yes, it's very difficult to move electricity far distances. I believe it has to do with the natural resistance of copper. While its quite low, it's not zero and it adds up over hundreds of miles of copper. IANAE so anyone feel free to correct me on that

Osiris305• 10 years ago

Look up High Voltage DC. Answer - It is hard - but not insurmountable. Technology and financing is readily available. It's lack of will, vision and integrating policies across national boundaries that's the problem.

“Let’s Build a Global Power Grid - IEEE Spectrum”

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/the-smarter-grid/lets-build-...

hueving• 10 years ago

I think you are forgetting that the earth is big. Running power lines big enough to power half of the planet thousands of miles across the ocean will be very difficult.

msisk6• 10 years ago

Transmission losses over large distances are high. And long distance transmission infrastructure is expensive. High Voltage DC (HVDC) is very expensive.

The holy grail in transmission is high temperature super conductors. We're not there yet.

whatever_dude• 10 years ago

We have never had to deal with the problem of storage for solar power. That's still in its infancy, but as it becomes more mainstream that will change.

It's a different game altogether - batteries etc instead of train cars full of coal. But it will happen.

dirichletdelta• 10 years ago

To give you some illumination on how to deal with intermittent solar checkout out the best paper I've read on this subject: Jacobson, Delucchi on Wind, Water and Solar https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/JDEn...

AtlasLion2• 10 years ago

That's why many solar plants use molten salts to store energy and generate electricity even at night.

"Technicians say that the Noor 2 and 3 plants, due to open in 2017 will store energy for up to eight hours – opening the prospect of 24/7 solar energy in the Sahara, and the surrounding region." http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/oct/26/morocco-p...

Brakenshire6• 10 years ago

Solar thermal is not really comparable to solar PV. This article, if I'm not mistaken, is talking about PV, which is an entirely separate technology, with unrelated learning curves / cost reductions.

7952• 10 years ago

Coal is usually designed to run all the time rather than be dispatchable on a minute-by-minute basis. To make it dispatchable you need to run it as "spinning reserve" and increase generation. But it cannot be turned on in a few minutes like a modern gas plant. And for it to be economical coal needs to be turned on all the time.

Solar reduces the base load required and makes the maintenance and capital costs of coal stations higher.

jussij• 10 years ago

Solar cannot serve the same purpose without battery

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla is some 2 to 5 years away from fixing that battery issue and getting extremely rich in the process.

Shivetya• 10 years ago

well the US's next Manhattan style project should be a nationwide distribution and storage system. We certainly have the tech and resources to move the majority of the country onto renewable sources within a decade.

the only question is, can politicians be convinced to do something good for the country which may not keep them in office?

MaysonL• 10 years ago

Until you do concentrated solar thermal using molten salts to store heat to drive a generator. See this announcement of one of the world's largest solar plants:

http://electrek.co/2016/05/03/worlds-largest-coal-supplier-b...

tedsanders• 10 years ago

It's misleading to say solar doesn't help meet peak demand in California. For at least the past 20 years in California, the annual peak electricity usage has ALWAYS occurred between 2pm and 5pm:

https://www.caiso.com/Documents/CaliforniaISOPeakLoadHistory...

It's true that the daily peak is in the evening and that won't be helped by solar. But grid generation capacity is built to handle the annual peak, not the daily peak, so the annual peak is what matters. And because the annual peak tends to be hot afternoons, solar actually will replace other generation in the long run.

I used to analyze this stuff professionally when I worked at a California utility.

diafygi• 10 years ago

I work in solar, and here's some quick facts:

1. 1 out of 78 jobs created in the U.S. last year were solar jobs[1].

2. There are more solar employees in California than utility employees[2].

3. Soft costs (non-hardware) were recently 64% of the installed cost of solar[3].

4. Solar is expected to reach a load defection point (i.e. cheaper to leave the grid) in most places in the next 10-15 years[4].

5. Energy over the next 25 years is a potential $200 trillion opportunity[5].

Like OP's article states, this industry's hardware has gotten really cheap, but the software in the industry hasn't kept up in places. So much so, in fact, that an entire startup accelerator program in the bay area, Powerhouse[6], has been created to try and attract tech entrepreneurs into the solar industry to make the next generation of solar software. My startup recently went through the program, and being a part of this industry is one of the most empowering and rewarding things I've ever done. It's one of those extremely rare instances where you can have a solid business model and a positive impact on the world.

And we need all the help it can get. Solar expected to grow 100-200x over the next 25 years[7], but it won't happen if smart people don't join in. Smart grid, machine learning, energy storage, demand response, customer acquisition, logistics, energy efficiency, inventory tracking, IoT, security, and many more software areas are currently in the dark ages in energy. Solar, wind, nuclear, geothermal, storage, and other clean energy sources have to replace 87% of the worlds energy in the next 32 years[8]. PLEASE HELP US!

If you're a tech entrepreneur, and want to do something that matters, please please please consider doing a startup in solar or other clean energy industry. To start, if you're in the bay area, there's a hackathon next weekend around solar software[9]. I encourage you to come and learn more about solar and software in the clean energy sector.

[1] http://energy.gov/eere/articles/1-78-new-jobs-america-solar-...

[2] http://www.calseia.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=art...

[3] http://energy.gov/eere/sunshot/reducing-non-hardware-costs

[4] http://blog.rmi.org/blog_2015_04_07_report_release_the_econo...

[5] https://www.citivelocity.com/citigps/ReportSeries.action?rec...

[6] https://powerhouse.solar/

[7] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-23/the-way-hu...

[8] http://www.pvsolarreport.com/the-next-internet/

[9] https://suncode.splashthat.com/

beeboop• 10 years ago

Can you give a quick summary of the non-hardware problems that need solving and can be solved by an outsider to the industry with no connections? Not having any knowledge of solar, it seems like the only thing to do is have something that monitors the panels and their energy output, which as far as I know already exists. IoT solutions (like a smart washer knowing when to run) are still largely hardware driven and not feasible for bootstrapping.

Working on stuff like smart grids, demand response, inventory tracking, security, etc seem like something the big companies who own the infrastructure need to be doing. Some random entrepreneur isn't exactly in a position to make solutions for these giant companies because there's no way to have access to the information needed. And even then, selling software to giant companies is hard as shit, and if you strike out there's not exactly a lot of other customers to sell to.

It just doesn't seem like an environment conducive to entrepreneurship.

nroets• 10 years ago

Most people will find leaving the grid very inconvenient, whatever the saving. Here in South Africa, rolling blackouts caused chaos. Yet very few people left the grid.

astrodust3• 10 years ago

I'm surprised a domestic solar installer hasn't grabbed market share. South Africa should be an ideal market, like Hawaii.

mdpopescu• 10 years ago

Are these articles on how solar is poised to make it big Real Soon Now (tm) an instance of pg's submarine? [1]

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

maxerickson7• 10 years ago

This is the far more common someone-wrote-a-press-release-that-makes-for-a-headline.

https://www.dewa.gov.ae/news/details.aspx?nid=1689

acomjean3• 10 years ago

And yet trying to work out the finances in my condo building, its not adding up... We can get solar and do the right thing, but it will still cost us.

JshWright2• 10 years ago

Is your condo located in an extremely sunny desert?

acomjean3• 10 years ago

No the northeast. (massachusetts). Brick building. Flat roof that gets good sun.

marze• 10 years ago

It's nuclear power from a remote reactor, and it isn't too cheap to meter but is heading that way.

JumpCrisscross• 10 years ago

the Dubai Electricity & Water Authority, the utility for the Persian Gulf emirate

Curious that Bloomberg opted for the Persian, over Arabian, Gulf when referring to the United Arab Emirates.

mintplant• 10 years ago

The body of water is historically and internationally known as the "Persian Gulf". Some Arab governments refer to it as the "Arabian Gulf" or "The Gulf", but neither term is recognized internationally.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_Gulf

mac01021• 10 years ago

Isn't "Persian Gulf" the globally recognized name of that body of water (at least in the anglophone world)?

kumarski• 10 years ago

This is great news in terms of econometrics, but I think the major looming questions still exist.

1/ Can solar impact CO2 emissions beyond single digit percentages?

2/ On what order of magnitude would battery storage capabilities have to improve to match performance characteristics of natural gas peaker plants or dare we say Oil/Natural gas?

3/ Don't the fluctuations in peak demand make solar less attractive because they require rapid natural gas peaking plants when there's increases in usage? (Outside of summer is a great example)

4/ What would be the desired performance characteristics of batteries that would make Solar a no-brainer for the environmental impact and actual viability? Cost, capability, and reusability.

Osiris305• 10 years ago

Comprehensive annual report on the state of various deployable grid storage technologies - and answer to your questions here:

http://blog.rmi.org/blog_2016_01_21_how_much_does_storage_re...

gaius• 10 years ago

Is it this cheap because it is subsidized by oil revenue tho'?

boona• 10 years ago

"Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada grabbed international headlines recently with a simple explanation of a cutting-edge technology called quantum computing."

While dodging a question about his understanding of economics. Forgive me, I'm just a bitter Canadian upset that we're now running a huge deficit and passing the buck on to our children.

Trisell• 10 years ago

I can tell you as an American, that after a while you get used to the feeling of a huge national deficit and multi-trillion dollar debt. It becomes something like a warm blanket of guilt that helps you sleep at night.

xenadu02• 10 years ago

Issuing debt is just an accounting trick to maintain credibility of the currency (i.e. That we aren't just printing dollars willy-nilly to fund the government)

The huge chunk of debt is owed from one part of the government to the other.

No one ever cut their way to growth. The key is almost always to grow the GDP faster than you grow the debt on average. The nominal debt number will never go down - ever - but it should stay fixed or shrink relative to GDP if possible.

tokenadult• 10 years ago

Bloomberg News reports[1] that David Keith, a Harvard professor of applied physics and public policy, used to be a solar power skeptic but has reexamined the economics of current solar power and now expects solar power to be important because the economics have changed.

Professor Keith's recent essay on solar power, "Cheap Solar Power,"[2] shows the facts and calculations to explain why solar power now beats several other sources of primary electricity for many applications. It is very likely that many industries will move to places where solar power is especially abundant and inexpensive.

[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-04/harvard-sc...

[2] http://www.keith.seas.harvard.edu/blog-1/cheapsolarpower

epistasis9• 10 years ago

Thanks for this pointer, it's very interesting!

It's hard to argue with numbers that are already there in front of you. A lot of the cost changes have been driven precisely because there was investment and the industry grew, his prognostications about it never being affordable were an attempt at a self-fulfilling prophecy in that by increasing skepticism about the tech curve, it never gets explored.

I'd be skeptical of his views of the future, though. For example, he mentions gas peaking plants, but grid-scale lithium ion batteries are already cheaper than natural gas peakers for many situations; lithium ion is getting cheaper but natural gas is not. The only advantage of natural gas is lower capex, but in this financial environment that's not a huge advantage. By the time that solar is displacing lots of other energy, lithium ion will be displacing all those natural gas peaker plants. Once he sees those numbers, he'll probably change his mind again.

Brakenshire6• 10 years ago

Lithium ion can't store electricity across seasons, though, which is important anywhere outside equatorial areas. Gas can be left idle during the Summer, and used during the Winter. If the cost of solar power went below the marginal cost for burning gas (i.e. lower than the per unit fuel costs for gas generation), the most cost-effective solution might actually be to use solar during the Summer, and maintain a fleet of gas stations solely for the Winter months.

hughw• 10 years ago

The Graduate, 2016: "I just want to say one word to you. Flywheels."

Brakenshire6• 10 years ago

It is very likely that many industries will move to places where solar power is especially abundant and inexpensive.

I suspect over time the cost of producing solar electricity will become negligible against the cost of storage. The key thing will be not so much the lower levels of sun which you get in temperate latitudes, but the variation you get between Summer and Winter levels of insolation, which means you have to maintain backup generation. Variation within a day you can deal with, variation from season to season will be much more difficult. But as you say that is going to drive some interesting changes in geopolitics.

beat6• 10 years ago

Sufficient storage to handle local load + variation should be pretty well predictable in the future. The interesting difference to me is, since storage will probably cost substantially more than generation, what the ratio will mean for cost of energy in various locations. I have no doubt that at some point, the solar generation + storage formula will be broadly cheaper than fossil fuel.

epistasis9• 10 years ago

the variation you get between Summer and Winter levels of insolation

The obvious thing to do is just size the solar array for the winter insolation levels, since the solar part is likely to be so much cheaper than the storage part.

Also, don't forget wind, which is also super cheap at the good sites. It will balance out some of the seasonal shift, and also a good amount of the night time needs.

This all depends on cross-continent interconnects, and energy markets. The entrenched interests are going to resist mightily to anything that might cost them even a cent, and they control the laws to lock out competition.

I view interconnects as important an issue as the interstate system. It will enable so much innovation and drive down costs quite a bit.

wjnc• 10 years ago

This is the best quote imho: "If we can get CO2 from the air at 125 $/t-CO2 then the idea of making fuels at prices of order 1 $/L looks plausible over the next few decades."

It's uplifting to me, both for the high value on a ton of CO2 and the (still) low resulting price of fuel. Solar beats fusion (chance * impact)!

ThrustVectoring• 10 years ago

Yeah, with cheap enough electricity you can run the chemistry of burning transportation fuels backwards, and wind up making our current cars carbon-neutral.

patrickg_zill• 10 years ago

Solar is fusion-at-a-distance, though...

arikrak• 10 years ago

Also with a really large number of solar plants, maybe the earth would cool slightly?

jcoffland5• 10 years ago

Dubai has both oil and solar in abundance. They are bound to continue to be one of the richest countries in the world along with the entire UAE. Political considerations allowing.

ericd• 10 years ago

Abundant sunlight is much less rare than abundant oil...

Mvandenbergh• 10 years ago

Dubai has almost no oil, there's a few small gas wells, that's it.

rsync• 10 years ago

"Bloomberg News reports[1] that David Keith, a Harvard professor of applied physics and public policy, used to be a solar power skeptic but has reexamined the economics of current solar power and now expects solar power to be important because the economics have changed."

I don't follow solar/power/coal news much, so forgive me ...

Is all of this ex-subsidies ? That is, if we remove the subsidies that coal gets and the tax credits / subsidies that solar gets, does the math still pencil out in the way that still makes David Keith no longer a skeptic ?

toomuchtodo3• 10 years ago

Yes, solar and wind are both below the cost of coal, natural gas, and nuclear, without subsidies (doesn't take capacity factor into account though). I'm always reposting that data here, so I won't dump a full page of citations here, but if you response with contact info, I'd be happy to send detailed information.

Gibbon13• 10 years ago

Is all of this ex-subsidies?

Also ask what price point would be needed to scale back CO2 emissions to something sustainable. Then run the economic analyses.

mactitan• 10 years ago

In the USA heating, HVAC, etc.. account for half of the energy used in residential buildings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_thermal_energy Direct solar water heating (passive) has been used for quite a while and has a maximum efficiency of solar thermal systems are between .46 & .74. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_water_heating

That compares to a solar panel efficiency of .15; and I guess a lot less when applied to water heating due to conversion. And implementing in dense urban areas, passive is not as viable as active. If we were serious we would first implement passive systems. But we don't. I guess there’s something I don’t understand.

maxerickson7• 10 years ago

Why would you expect physics to dominate economics?

For investors, a big power station like this is a purely economic decision (will it be profitable or not).

For a homeowner, a few dollars a month for hot water is not a significant motivator to make a change (replacing a thing that works to save money after several years is not exciting).

It would probably be a good idea to figure out how to incentivize rental property owners to increase building efficiency. Or maybe just pay for it directly in exchange for a few years of not capturing the benefit in the rent.

fgGAMI• 10 years ago

Based on Dubai's recent history, I'd speculate there is some slave or slave-like labor involved to make it viable.

beat6• 10 years ago

Slave labor doesn't help much for high-tech projects. Slaves are mostly useful for manual labor that doesn't require literacy or complex skills.

Remember, before we invented tractors, if you wanted to move a thousand tons of rock a mile, it had to be done largely by hand. That is a use case for slave labor. Before we invented harvesters, cotton had to be picked by hand. That is a use case for slave labor. Domestic servants are a use case. But the invention of powered machinery made most slave jobs obsolete.

dingo_bat• 10 years ago

I remember a few days ago when we had a thread about an Indian minister saying the same thing, and everyone was being skeptical and negative. Well look now, seems like he was right.

beat6• 10 years ago

There's been some discussion of solar generation cost vs storage cost here, with the idea that any generation project is necessarily coupled to storage. But is that really the case? I can see a model where generation and storage are completely decoupled businesses.

Large, somewhat unpredictable fluctuations in the cost of generation (solar and wind) should lead to large fluctuations in price of generated electricity, down to minute-by-minute. Ideally, generators want to sell every kwh they can at peak production, even at a lower cost. With modern computer controls, this makes a delightful opportunity for an arbitrage market.

Storage providers - and this could be giants like lake-scale hydro, or dwarves like the batteries in electric cars - could buy electricity from generators when it's cheap, and sell it when it's expensive (the sun isn't shining, the wind isn't blowing, hot day spikes demand, etc). This can be fully automated. Just plug your car into the wall at night. It might decide to buy electricity, or sell electricity, depending on the price at the time. Aggregators could pool capacity across many small providers. Large storage systems could benefit from economies of scale and long-term contracts.

Create a smart grid that can support this, and let the free market solve the pricing problems for us.

rhino3693• 10 years ago

There is already an large arbitrage opportunity. The difference between peak and baseload pricing is pretty high.

If it was clearly economical, someone like Exelon (who owns nuke plants) would probably be doing it.

Then again, at lest several utilities claims they were going to buy Telsa powerwalls to do it. So maybe the pricing is getting to the point where it's profitable.

beat6• 10 years ago

Building something genuinely new, like caching electricity, is fraught with technical risks, financial risks, and regulatory hurdles. It's the kind of thing that can put a billion-dollar enterprise out of business. So expect a decade or more of research, small-scale experiments, political negotiation, and more, to bring storage online at any sort of scale. It's really, really hard, and really risky.

Nuclear plants, as you probably know, are almost pure base load solutions. They can't just be scaled up or slowed down arbitrarily. A volatile, arbitrage-based market efficiency would be pretty hard on the existing nuclear base, and could render a lot of plants unprofitable.

Meanwhile, the gas-fired peak load plants are tremendously expensive, because they have so much downtime and are inefficient. One or two decades ago, competing against them with storage was economically impractical. Now, it's becoming feasible. Especially once we start building gigawatts of sitting capacity anyway, in the shape of EV cars.

harterrt7• 10 years ago

It looks like the markets are already moving in that direction.

The PJM capacity market had a big increase in demand response supply circa 2012, though not much of it was from storage. Still, new players are paying attention to these arbitrage opportunities. CAISO is already seeking out corporate partners to participate in demand reduction.

azernik• 10 years ago

I don't think I've see anyone argue that they have to be one integrated business; just that both need to exist to make the other useful.

Joeri• 10 years ago

Right now the model for electric cars is that you charge at home overnight and run it down during the day getting to and from work. But if employers outfit their roofs with solar, you could invert the model. Charge during the day as an employment perk, and run down overnight to power your home.

niels_olson• 10 years ago

Everyone is talking about storage, but why not route power to need? Put 4000 square miles of solar in the Mexican desert and sell the power to to the northern US and Canada all winter. Run power over Siberia and Alaska to get across time zones.

neolefty• 10 years ago

Ideally, yes we would do that! But see other comments about the cost and efficiency of power transmission for the physical challenges involved.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11628965

prbuckley• 10 years ago

I recently came across an interesting new approach to store renewable ebnergy by moving large masses on rail cars up a slope. Here is some more information on the approach http://www.aresnorthamerica.com/

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