Cheap Solar Power

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

by SushiMon • 10 years ago

174 96 10 years ago

keith.seas.harvard.edu

tvchurch4• 10 years ago

"Admits" seems a bit harsh, like he was doing his best to hide something from the world.

By all accounts, it looks like he had written out a reasonable explanation as to why he predicted solar would not become cost effective. At the end of the day, if something doesn't make financial sense, it won't last long without subsidies from the government.

The assumptions behind his predictions changed and therefore so did the conclusion. Seems pretty reasonable.

Like he says, solar power's intermittency is still an issue in non-sunny places, but in areas with lots of sunlight, the landscape of power generation is changing for the better.

Amorymeltzer• 10 years ago

I particularly liked his point about bringing processes with a high electricity demand to those areas and cutting down on cost across the board. He gives aluminum, ammonia, and desalination as examples, which could do a lot for reducing costs of production while still overall "greening" the process. If they can take advantage of the cycling in prices, I can see regions like the American Southwest selling this as a business incentive.

fovc• 10 years ago

It's not a novel idea. E.g., Dubai produces a lot of aluminum, since importing ore and exporting Al is cheaper than exporting natural gas.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubal

ThrustVectoring2• 10 years ago

The transportation fuels example is even more exciting, IMO. Transportation fuels are basically simple hydrocarbons that burn with oxygen to turn into CO2 and H2O. There's only engineering, capital, and energy costs that need to be overcome - then we can run that process in reverse and turning our current transportation infrastructure carbon-neutral.

beat7• 10 years ago

Cities like Buffalo NY exist due to proximity to enough water power to have an aluminum industry. I live in Minneapolis, a city that exists largely because of water power (although it's used little these days). So picking up and moving entire industries is viable.

mtgx• 10 years ago

Or maybe it was just another case of blindness to exponential growth curves and the law of accelerated returns. Many thought solar is inevitable, even when most were skeptical. Just like many thought the same about EVs (although it's becoming trendier to believe in EVs now, too, especially in light of Model 3's pre-orders, but it wasn't always the case).

Imagine if the founders of Solar City also thought like this guy. Suffice to say they probably wouldn't be owning one of the largest US solar companies in the US right now.

Animats• 10 years ago

"Imagine if the founders of Solar City also thought like this guy. Suffice to say they probably wouldn't be owning one of the largest US solar companies in the US right now."

Solar City did think like that guy. Solar City is heavily dependent on subsidies and the ability to sell power to utilities at retail, not wholesale, rates. Solar City pulled out of Nevada when Nevada took away some of those benefits.[1] Their business model requires subsidies.

The big utility-scale plants are now profitable at wholesale rates. Even in Nevada.[2] That's what matters.

[1] http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_juice/2016/01/sol... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper_Mountain_Solar_Facility

LanguageGamer• 10 years ago

To what extend can the decreases in cost be attributed to the subsidies? The subsidies shift the demand curve enough to incentivize R+D... or is my Econ 101 viewpoint missing something?

btilly2• 10 years ago

Supporters of the subsidies will claim 100% of the credit. Opponents will claim it would have happened regardless. Both sides will put forth impressive looking studies proving their case.

My belief is that it wouldn't have happened nearly this fast without both subsidies, and a widespread awareness under investors that there are going to be government incentives for a huge renewable market. But figuring out the amount is impossible.

beat7• 10 years ago

In other words, he's being a scientist, and adjusting his conclusions to suit the available evidence.

Which, to people not familiar with the scientific method, is shocking.

Joof• 10 years ago

Most people are more familiar with the standard argument of 'nuh-uh' when things change.

r0muald• 10 years ago

Yes, but only to a certain extent, I think. A truly honest, and most importantly, useful analysis wouldn't be limited to admitting that previous research did result in wrong predictions. I'd like to see a breakdown of what was wrong in the previous prediction, and to be sure that it's understood well, I would like to see also a true prediction based on modelling and not limited to .. observing what is happening with solar power right now. Am I too demanding of a scientist? Adjusting my predictions based on what I observe, he was wrong in 2008 and I have a low expectation that his new predictions will turn out correct.

ryangittins• 10 years ago

Agreed! His predictions were spot-on given all the information he had to work with. It's not like this guy was rabidly against solar power or anything; in fact it seems like he's pretty delighted to be wrong. Who wouldn't be? Solar's getting cheaper!

Everyone seems to be projecting their own egos onto this guy. Their minds say, "If I were proved wrong and had to admit it, I'd be mortified." These people aren't scientists. They're being emotional.

Again, props to this guy.

mrb• 10 years ago

"it won't last long without subsidies from the government"

This is a fantastic example of how government subsidies can help. Had there been no subsidies, the demand for solar power would have been smaller, the industry would not have been compelled to compete that much on improving solar power, and this Harvard researcher's prediction (solar not cheap enough in the near future) might have turned true.

He said these subsidies make no sense because solar is far from being competitive, yet they are the very reason solar became competitive.

kamran20• 10 years ago

Wind and geothermal is good options as well. The biggest problem is storage.

yoodenvranx• 10 years ago

A big problem with wind energy in Germany is a very vocal minority of old people who think that wind park visually destructs nature and it looks horrible.

Personally I think wind parks look awesome but there is a lot of opposition.

tvchurch4• 10 years ago

That's what I mean. Wind might be generated "for free," but one cost is what it looks like.

Another is how many birds it kills a year. (http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-many-birds-do-w...)

That's not to say we shouldn't build it. Just that we need to consider what it costs before we do.

jeffreyrogers• 10 years ago

When I was in middle or high school the town where I grew up put a wind farm in, despite lots of opposition. After a while you don't even notice the wind farm anymore and now no one even comments about it.

tvchurch4• 10 years ago

Right, and making sure the base load of energy generation is stable.

We'll get there. I'd just like to make sure we remember that absolutely everything has a cost. The cost of anything is the value it has in its alternative uses.

If we're subsidizing renewable energy, we're not spending money on something else (and we're reducing people's incomes in the process).

JaRail• 10 years ago

It was mentioned in the article that a worrying point with wind is that the costs have not been coming down. The cost of solar panels has been cut in half over the last few years while hardware for wind has remained roughly constant. Of course wind is deserving of further investment. As far as predictions go, however, solar is looking more promising.

dmvaldman• 10 years ago

So if this has the potential to change the future energy economy, what are some good investments to make now? Should I be looking at SolarCity, who sell the panels, or the energy companies like Sempra, PG&E, Edison? Something else?

pyoung• 10 years ago

Probably the safest 'investment' you can make is to put panels on your roof (assuming your utility is supportive, barring that wait for batteries to get cheap/good). Solar stocks are a minefield at the moment (largely thanks to SunEd[1]). There are also things called yield co's which are holding companies for energy projects that largely focus on dividends. They are kinda like REITs. But it is worth mentioning that these are relatively new investment vehicles, and they still share some risk with the parent company[2]

[1] http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-sunedison-collapse-201... [2] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-sunedison-inc-yieldco-idUS...

beat7• 10 years ago

That's fascinating. I especially like where he's going on the cost of synthetic gasoline. I'm a little iffy on it (what's the source for CO2 by the ton? Atmosphere?), but if sufficiently cheap solar electricity can generate gasoline straight from the air at a price that rivals fossil fuel, it both solves the storage problem (gasoline is wonderful high density storage), and makes banning fossil fuel via regulation an achievable goal.

danielweber• 10 years ago

I always ask about synthetic fuels as an alternative to electric vehicles and have never gotten a good answer on it. We already have a huge liquid fuel distribution network built up. Why re-invent the wheel?

beat7• 10 years ago

Cost. Synthetic fuels are very expensive. The ethanol industry sucks - it's just a fancy crop subsidy.

ZeroGravitas3• 10 years ago

EVs are simply better, e.g. lack of local pollution, higher efficiency, simpler. Synthetic fuels may have a place for airplanes, long distance trucking, demand management and long term energy storage though

ars• 10 years ago

what's the source for CO2 by the ton?

Coal. Using it like this you avoid all the pollution problems (all the impurities are captured inside the process and not simply emitted).

True you still emit some extra CO2, but that vast majority of the energy content of gasoline does not come from the coal, it's added from the solar power.

So even though you do still emit CO2, as a percentage it's much more minimal.

buovjaga• 10 years ago

Keith is one of the authors of the Ecomodernist Manifesto (2015). In the Manifesto they say:

The scale of land use and other environmental impacts necessary to power the world on biofuels or many other renewables are such that we doubt they provide a sound pathway to a zero-carbon low-footprint future.

High-efficiency solar cells produced from earth-abundant materials are an exception and have the potential to provide many tens of terawatts on a few percent of the Earth’s surface. Present-day solar technologies will require substantial innovation to meet this standard and the development of cheap energy storage technologies that are capable of dealing with highly variable energy generation at large scales.

Nuclear fission today represents the only present-day zero-carbon technology with the demonstrated ability to meet most, if not all, of the energy demands of a modern economy. However, a variety of social, economic, and institutional challenges make deployment of present-day nuclear technologies at scales necessary to achieve significant climate mitigation unlikely. A new generation of nuclear technologies that are safer and cheaper will likely be necessary for nuclear energy to meet its full potential as a critical climate mitigation technology.

evolve2k• 10 years ago

Ref: http://www.ecomodernism.org

vackosar• 10 years ago

Is solar using rare metals that we will run out of soon? So will in the end solar fail anyway?

wmeredith• 10 years ago

"Limited supplies of five rare-earth minerals pose a threat to increasing use of clean-energy technologies such as wind turbines and solar panels, a U.S. Energy Department report found."

Source is from 2012: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-01-05/five-rare-...

epistasis4• 10 years ago

The substances -- dysprosium, terbium, europium, neodymium and yttrium -- face potential shortages until 2015, according to the report, which reiterates concerns identified a year ago.

So, it's past 2015, apparently these shortages didn't materialize.

amalantony06• 10 years ago

Given that Solar power is the fundamental source of energy leading to petroleum based energy (starting with photosynthesis), it's surprising that we still rely on petroleum to the degree we do today. In 100 years this would perhaps be something people would find shocking (like how we are shocked today at how mainstream slavery used to be 150 odd years ago).

Solar Energy is unlimited, cheap and clean. My guess would be that energy will eventually end up being near free.

angli• 10 years ago

It's not as surprising as you'd think. The basic problem is energy density and availability.

Human beings don't directly photosynthesize for clear reasons. Solar power isn't available constantly and is too diffuse to power us in real-time. Instead, we eat plants (or animals, which is just another layer of indirection) that have photosynthesized over time and stored up that energy - we then convert that energy so we can metabolize it as needed.

The same thing is happening with petroleum. It's denser and more flexible than the sun. These are real constraints that have led us to use these sources of energy and prioritize them. They're not insurmountable - I think as prices fall we'll see more research into storage, I believe panel efficiency is going up - but the path of least resistance is a powerful force.

toomuchtodo2• 10 years ago

Human beings don't directly photosynthesize for clear reasons.

I've always wondered why humans did not evolve to photosynthesize, and am interested if they could be permitted to evolve to using CRISPR.

akiselev• 10 years ago

Is it really surprising that burning millions of years of conveniently stored, geologically formed chemical energy is easier than harvesting solar power using complex semiconductor tech? We've been burning things for energy for hundreds of thousands of years. We've had semiconductors for less than a century.

beat7• 10 years ago

150 years ago, slavery was much more economically viable - a lot of industrial-scale farming and mining was still purely manual labor. Machinery replaced most of the jobs once done by slaves.

Likewise, for the past century or more, fossil fuels were the cheapest source of concentrated energy by far. That's about to stop.

thrownaway24245• 10 years ago

That's an interesting interpretation. Historically didn't mechanization increase the demand for slaves? The relevant example would be the demand for slaves in the American south after the invention of the cotton gin.

agumonkey3• 10 years ago

Because history made us build structures and lifestyles that require oil class energy density. We surely don't need it since we were born without. We don't need all of this. Not to that extent, we could cut worldwide transportation. We could eat less. Rethink housing. Even internet[1].

I'd like to see the time when energy will lack.

Sometimes I wonder how we could rebootstrap technology in a frugal manner. Have shelter, a bit of comfort, a predictable enough supply not to worry too much.

[1] just the other day I put a gif on imgur, 1Million views, a few TB of bandwidth.. I felt bad. So much for this. And that's not the most viewed, nor the longest. Imagine how much is used everyday.

feld• 10 years ago

Don't feel bad. You did not waste any measurable amount of electricity. We constantly waste electricity by not utilizing the networks we have built to their full capacity.

(Ignoring that servers being busier without a good caching infrastructure tends to ramp up resource usage and pull more power)

djrogers5• 10 years ago

just the other day I put a gif on imgur, 1Million views, a few TB of bandwidth..

Umm, exactly how big was that gif? One of those numbers doesn't match up with the other...

mjevans• 10 years ago

It is not unlimited.

At the radius from the sun that our planet is, there is an upper limit to solar energy of about 4/3 Watts/(M^2) (projected across the curve of the earth during daylight... through atmosphere...)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunlight#Intensity_in_the_Sola...

The most effective way of collecting sunlight is to use curved reflective surfaces and concentrate it on to points that generate useful work either from the heat or from the photon intensity.

Interestingly, such mirrors also offer anime/bond villain/scifi style focused energy delivery 'weapons'; which is why I am most surprised that the US space programs haven't put any in to higher orbit above the majority of the garbage floating about the earth.

It might also be possible to use the delivered energy from such a system to incite deceleration of existing orbital junk and force burn-up/re-entry.

thrownaway24245• 10 years ago

Did you mean 4/3 kilowatts?

BatFastard• 10 years ago

Could this be a solution in the EU's problem of bringing jobs and wealth to North Africa? Thereby encouraging immigrants to stay in their homeland?

The Sahara has some of the Sunniest sky's in the world. Maybe its time to spend a few hundred billion and build those solar plants in North Africa.

_FKS_3• 10 years ago

It also has high winds with airborne, highly abrasive sand. Panels don't last long there unless you clean them daily. I can't immagine that happening for utility-scale installations.

roel_v• 10 years ago

Panels would be build elsewhere, installation is once in two or three decades, maintenance is minimal and low skill. The only profit is land lease, which will only benefit those that have plenty of money already. So I think no, this won't bring jobs or wealth to North Africa.

zanny• 10 years ago

Unless you mean to build solar manufacturing plants, which even then have very limited applicability for unskilled human labor, the installation and upkeep of solar are absolutely nothing compared to the human cost of coal, oil, or even to a lesser degree nuclear.

thrownaway24245• 10 years ago

When will this "duck pricing" actually trickle down to consumers? I'm on a PG&E rate plan that charges me an incredible $0.75/kWh during the afternoons of selected days. According to the figures in the CAISO paper, these are the hours of least net demand.

pilom• 10 years ago

The CAISO paper looked at January and March. In the summer when air conditioners come on, the graph would have no dip and afternoons become the peak rather than evenings.

thrownaway24245• 10 years ago

Ah, that makes some sense. Still, doesn't solar hack the top off that afternoon peak in the summer?

djrogers5• 10 years ago

I'm on a PG&E rate plan that charges me an incredible $0.75/kWh during the afternoons of selected days.

Yeah, PG&E is practically begging their customers to install solar. The biggest savings come on the days/times with the best solar potential, and dropping out of that highest tiers can be a real win.

thrownaway24245• 10 years ago

You think so? It seems like the rate system is stacked against solar. They just made the top tier cheaper, and raised the bottom tier so that your very first joule costs more. If you had installed solar based on the savings of staying out of the top tiers, now your payoff looks less certain.

brooklyndavs• 10 years ago

A bit off topic....

Currently Hydro power makes up a small (6%) but significant portion of the energy mix in the US.

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=427&t=3

When you look at just the clean energy sources in the US this percentage is greater obviously. Also, other countries rely more on Hydro than the US (Canada and China come to mind).

Has there been modeling done on what global warming will do to those Hydro power sources? For example, I can imagine drought is not good for reliable Hydro power. Has declining Hydro power been accounted for in possible future clean energy mixes?

fancy_pantser• 10 years ago

I wish there was more analysis around energy storage (mainly because that's what my startup does). I think it's often overlooked in the press when talking about the future of solar. We're working to flatten the duck curve that solar created.

jes5199• 10 years ago

I would love to see some good numbers about how much it costs to do grid-scale storage and how those costs are changing over time

josefresco• 10 years ago

"It does not mean rooftop solar in New England makes sense"

Someone forgot to tell my neighbors - in New England. Rooftop solar everywhere.

forrestthewoods• 10 years ago

I'll start paying attention when a solar company is formed and becomes profitable without any reliance on subsidies.

I'm not holding my breath.

homido• 10 years ago

If solar is such a good investment, why aren't power companies creating solar fields with a sense of urgency? Sure, there are a token few, but this is mainly for PR reasons or funded by grants ETC.

When businesses (wholesalers and consumers) start going to solar on a grand scale, Solar will have finally arrived as a cost effective alternative. Wake me when this happens.

sunstone• 10 years ago

Wake up! It's happening already in places with lots of sun (or high electricity costs). Examples are, much of Australia, Hawaii, California and others. As solar gets cheaper the viable territory expands.

_FKS_3• 10 years ago

In the meanwhile, a few other sources argue that the overall ERORI (energy invested vs. energy produced) is well below a somehow 'sustainable' level. The impression I'm getting is that the day oil/gas production starts to fall due to geological limits, so will the production of photovoltaic & windmills.

Please see: https://collapseofindustrialcivilization.files.wordpress.com...

And: http://science-and-energy.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/201...

And: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqhC6uI8TUY (for french speakers out there)

Please do convince me that we can run the current industrial civilization, at current rates of energy usage, with only solar & wind, on a long enough run, without oil.

maxerickson• 10 years ago

The first link is about installing panels in regions of moderate insolation like Germany. Areas with more sun make more sense.

marcosdumay2• 10 years ago

If solar power is cheaper than coal without subsides, it has greater than 1 EROEI by a big margin, and the question is settled.

Bottom-up studies suffer from a big diversity of flaws, and there are plenty of them with obvious bias both ways.

_FKS_3• 10 years ago

Fossil fuels are the base subsidy. It's hard to see how a manufactured product will be cheaper than fosil fuels consumed on the spot (as coal is primarly a local consumption resource). Also the economy of scale principle works here too: how can a (coal) thermal plant which feeds a region, cities, can be replaced by a collection of small scale devices that produce electricity, and pretend to be cheaper? Nothing will ever be cheaper than coal to produce electricity. There's a good reason why the industrial revolution started with coal and not with renewables (which for the record were already available in Europe for a few centuries before that - it was already widely used since the 12th century)

djrogers5• 10 years ago

I really have to take exception with a statement in the opening here:

rooftop solar seem systems which are (arguably) little more than green bling for the wealthy

My rooftop solar system (installed in late 2013) is 2.5 years in to what is looking to be a 5.9 year break-even point. After 6 years I will be earning $4-5k/year from it. Even if I had financed this (not a solar lease, those are usually structured so the leasing company gets all the benefits) at a high interest rate, it would turn out to be one of my best investments on a $/return basis.

The fact that basically don't have a monthly power bill (which is substantial in hot parts of PG&E land) is my #1 benefit here, as reducing my monthly budget by that amount makes the rest of my life that much nicer. The fact that I have reduced my 'carbon footprint' is barely on my radar compared to the financial benefits here....

I did find it crazy that the installer/designer wanted to know if I wanted more visible colors, or a portion of the panels facing the from top the house so they were more noticeable. I suppose some people just have to green-signal...

xrange3• 10 years ago

After 6 years I will be earning $4-5k/year from it.

Can you point us in the direction of a good write-up on net-metering? I'm sure different jurisdictions have different rules. I was under the impression that net metering was only good up until your yearly production was equal to your demand. Or are you saying that the $4-5k/year is at wholesale rates?

djrogers5• 10 years ago

If I'm not paying that $4-5k to PG&E, and the installation costs have been recouped, then that $4-5k/yr is profit. Money is fungible - if you manage it well, you get the same net effect from preventing it's loss as you do from earning it.

dang• 10 years ago

Submitters: Please don't editorialize titles when submitting stories. The HN guidelines ask you to use the original title unless it is misleading or linkbait.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

(Submitted title was "Harvard Physicist, Long-Time Solar Skeptic Admits Solar Power Now Makes Sense".)

ck22• 10 years ago

Imagine an earth 1000 years from now where countries on one side of the planet help out the other side via solar power through superconducting power cables that have little power loss over 10,000 miles.

Since each side gets sunlight somewhere, no batteries needed. Of course 1000 years from now they could solve the battery problem too where each residence has its own low cost, safe storage.

Or 1000 years from now terrorists dirty-bomb everyone. Sigh.

xrange3• 10 years ago

Or 1000 years from now terrorists dirty-bomb everyone.

...Well, on a more optimistic note, a dirty-bombs, while they may destroy property values and cause cleanup issues, don't really kill any more than a conventional/kinetic bomb. I think they may be one of the best-case scenarios when it comes to a terrorist strike, since the causalities will be low, but there will be a lot of "frenzy" about the invisible radiation. (I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, or if there are silent aerosolized short-half-life "bombs" in existence that are "detonated" secretly inside of buildings so that people are accumulating long term exposures unknowingly).

Also, I wouldn't be surprised if room-ish temperature superconductors appear much sooner than 1,000 years from now. And it will definitively be interesting to see how high of energy densities SMES (Superconducting Magnetic Energy Storage) will get to in the next 20 years with existing cryogenic superconductors.

http://snf.ieeecsc.org/abstracts/stp443-high-field-hts-smes-...

ck22• 10 years ago

Look at all the cancer from 9/11 and that was just fine particles in the air.

Now imagine radioactive fine particles with half-life of decades.

Sure, the death isn't instantaneous. But the suffering and early death will be massive. After the US nuked Japan (twice) the real damage was to those left living for the short time afterwards and all the radioactivity an slow death.

jernfrost• 10 years ago

So year after year it is becoming evident that solar is the future and yet very little seems to happen elsewhere to accommodate this. Solar cells produce DC. Batteries which can store the solar power uses DC. Our iPhones, laptops, flat screens, electric cars use DC. Yet the connection between this DC power production and DC power consumption happens with an AC line wasting power.

It is also a dumb line. Solar power production varies considerably and a lot of power consumption is flexible but we don't have any intelligence built into the power distribution network to be able to tell devices when to use power and when not to.

Imagine if smart cables went into our laptops so they could charge when power was abundant/cheap and use battery when it wasn't. Electric cars could automatically start charging when power was cheap and stop when it got expensive. Washing machines could have timer function which would start them as soon as power prices were low.

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