Solar’s Future is Insanely Cheap

https://rameznaam.com/2020/05/14/solars-future-is-insanely-cheap-2020/

by epistasis • 6 years ago

152 213 6 years ago

clairity3• 6 years ago

nice application of the learning curve, a model taught in strategy and operations courses in business school.

basically every model from around 2010 badly miscalculated the learning coefficient of the solar industry. apparently some forecasts are still badly calculating it.

greglindahl6• 6 years ago

The part that boggles the mind is that the forecasts are still terribly wrong, in the same direction, 10 years later.

frede2• 6 years ago

The forecasts from the IEA are my favourites, predicting a decline in PV expansion every year. https://www.pv-magazine.com/2018/11/20/iea-versus-solar-pv-r...

ksec• 6 years ago

I dont understand how you could continue apply learning curve , do we expect solar panel price to fall forever? And labour as well as land cost to fall ?

Some of those are fixed. Even if Labour and Solar are free, you will still have to paid for land. In a way I think this is quit optimistic projection of solar.

undershirt• 6 years ago

Is solar just a stopgap tech? Like, do they still require fossil fuel energy to create, not to mention maintain and rebuild? And I know we’re now strip mining the ocean for battery metals. I don’t yet sense the sustainability in this amid all this economic hand-waving of “it’s getting cheaper”. (forgive my tone, i have a hard time of making sense of the big picture of renewables, hoping to eventually see how it actually fits into a utopic idea of a “closed-loop economy”)

I’m reminded here a bit of Ted Chiang’s short story, Exhalation, where the people devise clever ways to try to put air back in the ground without using more than they’re sequestering. I hope our situation is better than that.

Barrin925• 6 years ago

I'm not sure about the resource costs of solar in particular but the question is a very salient one. Vaclav Smil has a great piece on this. "What I see when I see a wind turbine"

"the quest for renewable electricity generation. And yet, although they exploit the wind, which is as free and as green as energy can be, the machines themselves are pure embodiments of fossil fuels. • Large trucks bring steel and other raw materials to the site, earth-moving equipment beats a path to otherwise inaccessible high ground, large cranes erect the structures, and all these machines burn diesel fuel. So do the freight trains and cargo ships that convey the materials needed for the production of cement, steel, and plastics. For a 5-megawatt turbine, the steel alone averages 150 metric tons for the reinforced concrete foundations, 250 metric tons for the rotor hubs and nacelles (which house the gearbox and generator), and 500 metric tons for the towers.[...] For a long time to come—until all energies used to produce wind turbines and photovoltaic cells come from renewable energy sources—modern civilization will remain fundamentally dependent on fossil fuels."

http://vaclavsmil.com/wp-content/uploads/15.WINDTURBINE.pdf

lallysingh• 6 years ago

Sounds like a bullshit purity test.

arthurcolle2• 6 years ago

This seems a little silly - of course to develop future technologies we need to use existing technologies.

Imagine debating using an abacus to develop a computer - "ah but we must remain pure to the hopes, dreams and philosophies of what the computer aspires to be." Yeah, ok. I'll be over here funding wind turbine companies, you can debate the merits of the methodology and strategies of funding green tech with petroleum-based products yourself. Sounds a little boring to me.

ashtonkem2• 6 years ago

That’s just asking for a chicken and egg problem.

You can’t get fully renewable energy production until you can use EV trucks to deliver the windmills, and you can’t get clean EVs until you have windmills to power them. Sure, we currently burn some diesel to setup these windmills, but the alternative is to burn coal. Don’t let the perfect become the enemy of the good.

Also, who’s the ominous “they” above? Energy companies don’t setup power production out of spite; they setup energy production so we can have AC and TVs. We’re the consumers of all of that electricity, directly or indirectly.

cycomanic• 6 years ago

Well we should ask this for every energy technology and fortunately people have done this. The term for this is energy return on investment (EROI) where solar has between 8.7 and 34 and wind between 10 and 20 (although other literature says 20 to 50). A value 1 means you get as much energy as you invested. So for solar that means you get your energy used for production back in 1 to 4 years.

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment

woodandsteel5• 6 years ago

So are you saying that we should abandon renewables, and stick with fossil fuels until a truly green energy technology is invented, sometime in the future?

And if that is not what you are saying, then what exactly do you think we should be doing today?

kanox3• 6 years ago

the machines themselves are pure embodiments of fossil fuels. • Large trucks bring steel and other raw materials to the site, earth-moving equipment beats a path to otherwise inaccessible high ground, large cranes erect the structures, and all these machines burn diesel fuel. So do the freight trains and cargo ships that convey the materials needed for the production of cement, steel, and plastics. For a 5-megawatt turbine, the steel alone averages 150 metric tons for the reinforced concrete foundations, 250 metric tons for the rotor hubs and nacelles (which house the gearbox and generator), and 500 metric tons for the towers.

This is FUD. The mass of construction materials pads the quote but is not a useful measure of environmental impact.

woodandsteel5• 6 years ago

Vaclav Smil is looking at this all wrong. There are three phases here

1) power is produced by plants that take fossil fuels to build and fossil fuels to run

2) power is produce by plants that take fossil fuels to build and no fossil fuels to run

3) power is produced by plants that were built using renewable energy and run off of it too.

Most of the people who focus on phase 2 basically want us to stay on fossil fuels forever, but they don't want to come out and say it.

blunte• 6 years ago

If the manufacturing facility that makes the panels is itself powered by solar, then the true cost is mostly the materials and what it takes to source them.

As for batteries, not every dollar application needs metal or chemical batteries. There are other options as low tech as pumping water uphill, heating water, compressing air, etc.

Retric6• 6 years ago

Solar panels can’t use all that much energy and raw materials if the final unsubsidized price is under 2c/kWh.

sephamorr4• 6 years ago

I can't speak about wind (not my expertise), but for solar, the energy payback is about 1-year in operation for current installations, with a predicted 30-year lifespan. Compare this against estimates for the energy cost of bringing gasoline to market which can exceed 30%.

ktal2• 6 years ago

Until there exists 100% clean options for the entire pipeline of resource extraction, transport, assembly, distribution, etc., there will still be fossil fuel involvement in 'clean energy generation'. Can't really make clean energy cleanly unless we have clean energy to make it in the first place.

Resource extraction / recycling is a whole other issue of course.

avmich6• 6 years ago

We have that technology for decades - for example, Tu-155 flew on hydrogen in 1988 - and we gradually replace existing usage with more and more clean options. Don't worry - we won't turn off pollutions overnight, but will gradually drive them to zero. And then to net negative values, restoring some losses in the environment.

clairity3• 6 years ago

with enough infrastructure, particularly batteries and interconnected smart grids, you could average out solar power generation across the globe and fuel the whole world on solar many times over.

10% of our energy needs come from 440 nuclear power plants worldwide. for comparison, the sun is a nuclear plant 1.3 million times the size of the earth. all life on earth basically runs on solar energy (or a derivative of it).

avmich6• 6 years ago

Yes. Nuclear energy proponents sometime seem to forget that solar energy is effectively thermonuclear energy from a big free source reactor - the question isn't in having that reactor, or running it, the question is just in catching energy it radiates. Solar guys become increasingly good at that - together with wind guys, who employ that energy after another free conversion into moving air.

cobookman• 6 years ago

Almost 50% of residential energy usage is HVAC and Hot Water heaters.

I see no reason we couldn't use excess solar during the daytime to heat our hot water heaters, or cool/heat the house.

Modern Construction and Water Heaters have great insulation, and its possible to use the `cheap` electricity during peak solar to store as heating/cooling.

epistasis7• 6 years ago

Heat pump technology has come an amazing way, as well!

Switching to an electric heat pump water heater from my natural gas water heater saves nearly as many emissions per year as stopping 12,000 vehicle miles. And it saves money, though it front loads the cost a tiny bit.

We could have a massive economic boom just by retrofitting existing buildings with more efficient and modern technologies.

205guy2• 6 years ago

In the big picture, you could say that fossil fuels are a stopgap technology (with complex manufacturing and lots of parts needing maintenance) until engineers invent(ed) better/cheaper batteries. But the way I prefer to see it is that solar is helping the transition to 100% renewable energy.

Another way to see it is that we already have an electric grid, so we are just finding ways to provide electric power cheaper--then the "efficient market" will figure things out. Also, electricity is used directly in manufacturing, for example smelting aluminum, and that is often done with renewable electricity (hydro in the US Pacific Northwest, geothermal in Iceland). Trains in many parts of the world run on electric power, and of course you can charge EVs with solar power or other renewable energy. And I'm sure some ICE cars are manufactured with electric-powered tools that run on solar energy during the day.

PS: if you know your tone is off, why not ask in a different tone?

gnramires• 6 years ago

Virtually all energy on available on Earth is Solar-derived. Plants all use solar power, carbon sources are all ancient stores of solar power. There's enough solar energy for several of our civilizations (4-5 orders of magnitude more, by a napkin calculation). Roughly 1/50,000 of Earth's surface covered in solar panels would suffice.

do they still require fossil fuel energy to create, not to mention maintain and rebuild

That's not really particularly relevant. What is crucial is that they produce more energy than they consume. This is an important figure, EROI (Energy Return on Energy invested), which should be >1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment#Ph...

Photovoltaics generally have been well over 1. There are still sustainability challenges with the technology, but I think they're minor (relative to current alternatives and carbon technology).

frede2• 6 years ago

Energy is cheap, power is expensive - you can already get energy for free sometimes on the intraday market, but you still pay if you need delivery at a certain time and the grid fees for peak power consumption stay expensive. I am looking forward to Tesla's million-mile battery!

Retric6• 6 years ago

Another aspect of this is the cost of the physical solar cells have dropped low enough that other costs have become significant. This is pushing companies to increase efficiency which opens the door for other applications.

A hypothetical cheap ~30% efficient solar panel could add something like 40 miles of range per day to a car in ideal conditions. That starts to look actually useful vs a simple gimmick.

_-david-_2• 6 years ago

A hypothetical cheap ~30% efficient solar panel could add something like 40 miles of range per day to a car in ideal conditions.

Does this take into consideration the increased weight of the solar panel and any additional equipment?

andy_ppp• 6 years ago

Could it not be built into the roof directly! This is a great idea as presumably people who don’t use their car a lot need not leave it charging permanently and if you run out of battery you can just wait (if it’s sunny enough).

TheGrim-888• 6 years ago

Correct me if I'm wrong, and I quite possible could be, but from a quick Google search, I'm seeing numbers of anywhere 200Wh/mile to 350Wh/mile for a Tesla. If we're generous and assume only 200Wh/mile, then 40 miles of range translates to an energy consumption of 8,000Wh.

A 100 watt solar panel, producing the full 100 watts, would take 80 hours of perfect sunlight to produce enough power for an extra 40 miles of range.

Assuming best case (unrealistic) conditions, if you get 8 hours of perfect sunlight in day, and your solar panels produce 100% of their rating for all 8 hours, it would take 1000 Watts worth of solar panels to produce that extra 40 miles of distance over 8 hours. It seems kind of unrealistic to fit 1000 Watts of solar on top of a car. And that's an absolute minimum, under best case conditions.

If you had, say, maybe a more realistic 300 watts worth of panels on top, and they got 4 hours of full sunglight, you'd be producing an extra ((300W * 4h) / 200Wh/mile) = 6 miles. And that's still assuming best case condition for power consumption per mile.

[Edit] - And like the other commenter stated, those few extra miles get cut down when you consider the weight of hundreds of watts of solar panels added onto the vehicle.

rootusrootus2• 6 years ago

Here's a recent analysis: https://teslatap.com/articles/solar-vehicle-roof-analysis/

To me it looks like it will never be a meaningful solution, due simply to physics.

ravedev• 6 years ago

But you could have a few 100w (or 200w) solar panels installed on the roof of your house which either charge your home battery or offload that to the grid. And just charge your car when you want.

It is true that you lose some energy every time you store or transfer it, but if we install solar panels on every roof (so we get excess energy from solar) and also find a way to store energy cheaply for a long time, that should be enough to completely switch from fossil fuels, (well, mostly)

bbeekley• 6 years ago

Doing some calculations from another direction:

The maximum daily energy density of sunlight in sunny Los Angeles is about 6.4 kWh / m2 [1] (assuming perfect, moving angle of panels to sun).

If we can turn the entire footprint of a Model X into solar panels, that gives us about 10 m2 (big car!).

The US DoE reports the Model X gets 100 mi / 31 kWh [2]. Or 12.4 kWh for 40 mi.

So those panels would need to get 1.2 kWh / m2 of solar power. Which is about 18% efficiency and pretty reasonable for good consumer panels [3].

But it assumes the car is in sunlight all day at the perfect angle, there is no loss (eg due to weight), in a locale as sunny as LA (eg Seattle gets half of the sunlight as LA), and can be completely coated in efficient panels (the model S solar roof is <1 m2 in comparison). Bumping efficiency to 30% gives some headroom but it still seems pretty impractical.

[1] https://globalsolaratlas.info/detail?c=34.270738,-116.929301...

[2] https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=41196

[3] https://news.energysage.com/what-are-the-most-efficient-sola...

m4632• 6 years ago

just use off-car solar panels.

https://sunelec.com

routinely sells panels for 30 cents/watt.

If you could skip the inverter step, charging your electric car could be very low cost.

5,000 watts of (raw) solar panels for $1500 and would give even the most power-hungry 350wh/mi tesla ~ 70 miles of charge in 5 hours of sun.

(a 200wh/mi car would need ~ $500 of panels for 40 miles)

lettergram• 6 years ago

Do we really need a “2020” by the title?

ascorbic• 6 years ago

It's in the title of the original post, to distinguish from similar posts in 2011 and 2015

3fe9a03ccd14ca5• 6 years ago

I'm actually quite shocked at how much energy is produced by solar, especially when compared to residential wind turbines. Panels are efficient, and when it's sunny, you're juicing.

The real challenge is of course bringing down cost of storage, which is the key to make solar systems efficient (not just cheap).

Scoundreller10• 6 years ago

residential wind turbines

Wind has a scalability problem. Residentially, it's only a good sell as a backup supply for when solar isn't cutting it to hopefully prevent generator use. And even that's a tough economic argument.

Towers have huge economies of scale, both in total size and height. So the turbines just keep getting bigger and bigger because it's more and more cost effective.

somewhereoutth2• 6 years ago

If my understanding is correct there is curious difference in perceived scale with kinetic vs thermal energy. Based on a a rowing machine's advertised metrics, I calculated you could row across the English channel on half a packet of chocolate biscuits.

acidburnNSA5• 6 years ago

residential wind turbines

Wind power in the USA generated 7.3% of the electricity in 2019. Solar did 1.8%.

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

maheart• 6 years ago

I recently watched the documentary "Planet of the Humans". For context, the writer of the documentary is an environmentalist.

One of the stated points was that solar and wind cannot be relied upon 24/7 -- to account for the lack of reliability, you need to have a backup power generator (e.g. coal power plant) running. The thing about coal plants (does it apply to natural gas plants too?) is that if you "idle" them, then have to ramp them up to feed demand, then later ramp them down -- it's a very inefficient way of running them. Now based on my understanding, it might be more efficient to just run the coal plant (or natural gas planet?) 24x7, in which case you've just added waste with the use of solar/wind. How much truth is there to this?

qaq• 6 years ago

0? You can have utility scale storage and Nuclear as backup

ktal2• 6 years ago

Damn shame we haven't been investing in nuclear over the past few decades. Now when we need it most, it's too late.

keithnz• 6 years ago

Nuclear back up? Nuclear is good for base loads, not for peak loads.

pfdietz15• 6 years ago

Nuclear would be ridiculously uneconomical as a backup. You either run nuclear as baseload or you don't bother.

acidburnNSA5• 6 years ago

Today's nuclear reactors run constantly because the fuel is so cheap compared to the rest of the operations. They want to be selling kWh as much as possible because kWh is money. To convince nuclear operators to do backup, there would have to be some kind of market for their on-demand carbon-free characteristics. This would require market changes.

Of course, it's very possible for nuclear reactors to load follow from a physical point of view. Naval reactors load follow into battle mode quite impressively, and power stations could do the same, again if there were a market for it.

Even traditional reactors can couple to some kind of thermal energy storage system to allow them to stay mostly at 100% while the whole system load follows very nicely.

There are many exciting possibilities in on-demand, low-footprint, low-carbon energy with nuclear technology.

sephamorr4• 6 years ago

This is a relatively good point. In the California electricity market, the increase in renewables results in a very large power-ramp rate in the late afternoon (nothing unique to California). In general, more-efficient power plants either cannot, or lose efficiency, when changing operating power levels. A ~60% efficient combined-cycle gas plant cannot ramp power very much, which results in the grid building and running more ~40% efficient gas turbines, which can ramp their power output in order to meet the early-evening power ramp. Interestingly, at this point, adding more Solar to the California grid results in very little emissions reduction, since the additional solar displaces efficient baseload generation with inefficient ramp-able load. The solution, of course, is storage.

yoavm• 6 years ago

a natural gas plant doesn't really suffer from this "idle" problem you're describing with coal power plants. it's also much cleaner.

kanox3• 6 years ago

Why is that? I was under the impression that gas versus coal just changes the fuel that is burnt.

dbspin• 6 years ago

None - the documentary is full of half truths, out of date information, pseudoscience and outright lies. It's been absolutely torn apart both by the research community and the environmental movement.

Some examples:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/28/climate-...

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/05/05/real-problem-m...

https://medium.com/@btincq/10-reasons-planet-of-the-humans-g...

anesmike5• 6 years ago

Renewables are just a technology totally dependent on fossil fuels from birth to burial. The book by Charles Hall , Energy Return on Investment, opened my eyes to the true nature of renewables . Once fossil fuels are gone, renewables will soon follow.

acidburnNSA5• 6 years ago

To be fair it did challenge an extraordinarily popular mainstream narrative that renewable energy is marching in to save the day from climate change without hardly any meaningful negative externalities. Of course the mainstream is going to tear it apart. They knew this in advance.

That said, knowing which statements are outright wrong is indeed valuable.

Still worth watching IMHO.

Animats• 6 years ago

It's now reached the point that "energy producer" lobbyists are lobbying Trump to keep banks from refusing to finance fossil fuel projects.[1][2] They're now a bad long-term investment.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/05/08/us/08reuters-heal...

[2] http://archive.is/QSPle

sephamorr4• 6 years ago

Power markets are more complicated than most people realize. One thing to note is that solar power can be cheaper than gas, but still not be economic. The fact of the matter is that an intermittent kWh is not as valuable as an on-demand reliable kWh to a utility who's number 1 priority is reliability. Even as solar is acquired at lower and lower prices, if evening power is generated by expensive and inefficient gas turbines, the customer might not see costs go down (and emissions might not go down either!). Solar is clearly economic in many markets, but we'll never get grid emissions in a place like California down much more without storage.

CapitalistCartr• 6 years ago

Solar all day, NG all night would be a major improvement over our current system. Especially as batteries get better.

sephamorr4• 6 years ago

Depending on where you are, that's pretty close to what's happened. Right now (4pm), the California ISO is generating 73% from renewables+hydro, 7% nuclear, and the balance gas. Naturally, the night replaces solar with gas. This is largely how California has reduced electricity emissions to their current levels.

acidburnNSA5• 6 years ago

NG is still extraordinarily high carbon. "A little better than coal (if you ignore the pipeline and wellhead losses)" is not something we can settle for given the seriousness of climate change. We need 24/7 low-carbon power. Fracked natural gas for entire nights (recall in winter nights are quite long) is not an option.

Scoundreller10• 6 years ago

Or just smarter appliances. Plenty of opportunities for thermal banking/battery banking.

Most of my loads, on average, don't need to run that exact second.

I don't mind if my hot water tank super-heats water in the middle of the day for the rest of the day. If electricity is really cheap, my freezer can jump into overdrive.

I don't need my clothes to dry in the next hour, just over the next 8.

I don't care if my fridge/freezer takes a break while I run the microwave or pre-heat the oven.

I don't care if my car charges ASAP as soon as I park, as long as it's charged by 8AM. And let it run as a grid-power bank for a fee.

Then you could have A/C systems that make ice or compress refrigerant in a tank.

dumbfoundded• 6 years ago

I think the point is that in any case, price isn't a finish line for solar to replace everything. This process will be much longer and require lots of infrastructure changes in multiple places.

maallooc8• 6 years ago

I don't mind if my hot water tank super-heats water in the middle of the day for the rest of the day.

Water does not have the capability to store much energy.

If electricity is really cheap, my freezer can jump into overdrive.

Your freezer can't if it's not a ammonia refrigerant. You will actually be wasting energy.

I don't care if my fridge/freezer takes a break

Your fridge actually does not use electricity constantly. It detects the temperature and run the motor, stops it when it reaches the desired temp. It's already having a break.

fredophile• 6 years ago

You may want to look into phase change materials for home heat and ac.

dub4u• 6 years ago

I don't need my clothes to dry in the next hour, just over the next 8.

Then why not just hang them up for drying? Zero power consumption and they will dry in eight hours, maybe not under all conditions but under many.

pydry• 6 years ago

Intermittency and the unsuitability of grid storage batteries to compensate is heavily played up by the carbon industry.

The future of low emissions energy production will be largely driven by overproduction and demand shifting, not banks of grid level batteries.

This likely won't happen as soon in America, however, the economy is too tied in to fossil fuels and the appetite to upgrade the electric grid by utility companies heavily invested in gas isnt really there.

ThomPete• 6 years ago

then by your own logic it would happen other places, it doesent.

asdff• 6 years ago

It would be nice if you can have your appliances charging per day, and using a built in battery suited to run at night.

gwright3• 6 years ago

It is "played up" because that is how the physics/science works right now. Grid-scale storage is required to smooth out grid-scale intermittent generation.

peterwoerner2• 6 years ago

But the solution isn't batteries, it stored hydroelectric. Only works where you have mountains though.

remmargorp64• 6 years ago

All they need to do is build mechanical/hydraulic systems for storing solar power during the day and unleashing it at night.

For example, use solar power during the day to pump fluid from a lower reservoir into a higher reservoir, and then harness the energy of the water flowing from the higher reservoir into the lower reservoir through turbines.

As long as your output energy is always coming from the turbines, and as long as your solar powered pumps running during the day can keep up with double the rate of drainage flow, then you should have a constant loop with a steady supply of power.

This type of system could be retrofitted onto virtually any dam, giving you a way to create a closed loop with constant power and without the water loss typical from a dam (other than evaporation).

For areas where water is scarce and a dam isn't feasible, there are also other ideas, such as gravitational potential energy systems that use solar powered energy to lift weights on pulleys, which then power a generator as the weights are lowered by gravity.

Other ideas: Thermal storage including molten salts which can efficiently store and release very large quantities of heat energy, compressed air energy storage, flywheels, cryogenic systems, etc...

7thaccount2• 6 years ago

Which all costs a lot of money.

bananabreakfast2• 6 years ago

You're wildly underestimating how complicated pumped hydro is.

For one thing, existing dams absolutely cannot be converted to pumped hydro. Dams do not store water below them. Water flows downstream because a dam is in a river. There is no water to pump uphill. Unless, of course, you also build a second dam very close downstream to create another lower reservoir. This is usually a bad idea, and better to just find better geography that will support a new pumped hydro dam.

opo2• 6 years ago

...For example, use solar power during the day to pump fluid from a lower reservoir into a higher reservoir, and then harness the energy of the water flowing from the higher reservoir into the lower reservoir through turbines.

Trying to rely only on intermittent power sources has huge storage requirements due to weather along with daily/seasonal variation. If grid energy storage was a simple problem it would have been done decades ago.

For example, one estimate is that for Germany to rely on solar and wind would require about 6,000 pumped storage plants which is literally 183 times their current capacity:

...Based on German hourly feed-in and consumption data for electric power, this paper studies the storage and buffering needs resulting from the volatility of wind and solar energy. It shows that joint buffers for wind and solar energy require less storage capacity than would be necessary to buffer wind or solar energy alone. The storage requirement of over 6,000 pumped storage plants, which is 183 times Germany’s current capacity, would nevertheless be huge.

https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/144985/1/cesifo1_wp5...

gwright3• 6 years ago

Good ideas but not currently feasible at grid-scale and so can't be really considered today as viable components of a power grid.

karmakaze• 6 years ago

Yup, stacked concrete: https://qz.com/1355672/stacking-concrete-blocks-is-a-surpris...

blake1• 6 years ago

As mentioned in the article, solar power is insanely cheap. So while you are right that a kWh of solar is not, on average, as valuable as a kWh of semidispatchable coal, the insane cheapness means that at some point, it is economical to massively overbuild renewable and decommission fossil fuel plants. You provide no evidence for the implausible claim that solar causes emissions to go up: your argument is only that the emissions reducing effect is muted, which may be true.

Also, while storage would be helpful, it is not the only way to enable a renewable transition. Additional transmission is enormously helpful: as the sun goes down on California, the wind is picking up in the Midwest. And don’t forget demand response: if smart thermostats received price signals (maybe we should precool this house...) that would alleviate the evening ramp-up issue.

So I claim we’ll need less storage than “a whole day’s usage”. But the learning curve applies to batteries as well! This storage won’t cost as much anyway.

The whole issue of intermittency is overrated. While a single solar panel might generate intermittently, the solar fleet across a whole state generates more predictably.

I am predicting that grid emissions will come down a lot over the coming decades. Partially I’m predicting the past: they’ve already come down, a lot!

gwright3• 6 years ago

It doesn't matter that if solar/wind is cheap (or even zero) because you still have to have an alternate power source for when your intermittent power has gone AWOL. You need cheap grid-scale storage, which doesn't exist at the moment.

Retric6• 6 years ago

Exactly, the only thing limiting solar at this point is the rate of investment. Wind and hydro etc have a huge role, but for some back of the envelope estimates.

On the storage issue, at ~100$/kWh batteries that do a conservative 1,000 cycles are ~10c/kWh stored + generation costs + conversion inefficiency. Take current unsubsidized grid solar prices of 2c/kWh solar and double that for 4c/kWh as a conservative redundant safety margin. Tracking solar for example has much better morning and evening generation though at slightly higher prices.

If 2/3 of your electricity is at 4c/kWh and 1/3 is at 15c/kWh that’s 7.7c/kWh for pure solar 24/7 including peaking power needs. Obviously a specific mix of generation determines storage needs, but those are also really pessimistic estimates.

PS: Hydro power is 6.1% of the total U.S. electricity generation. If 80% of that is released at night that’s a huge reduction in storage needed. Similarly transmitting power east or west makes a large difference in storage needs.

westurner• 6 years ago

if smart thermostats received price signals (maybe we should precool this house...) that would alleviate the evening ramp-up issue.

Is there an existing model for retail intraday rates? Would intraday rates be desirable for all market participants?

"Add area for curtailment data?" https://github.com/tmrowco/electricitymap-contrib/issues/236...

clairity3• 6 years ago

"Solar is clearly economic in many markets, but we'll never get grid emissions in a place like California down much more without storage."

even before reliable utility-scale storage, there is a lot of low hanging fruit from covering the southwest US in solar and wind. but yes, the costs of intermittent power like wind and solar doesn't by itself end with installation.

GhostVII• 6 years ago

I wish more places had hourly pricing of power, with good integrations. Would be really cool to be able to set up your appliances/AC/electric car to consume more power when it is cheap. And then you could get battery banks for your house to store power when it is cheap and use it when it is expensive, absorbing the peaks in a decentralized way.

agumonkey2• 6 years ago

It's impressive how systemic predictability matters. When nothing happens at the right time, you basically die.

greglindahl6• 6 years ago

The fact of the matter is that an intermittent kWh is not as valuable as an on-demand reliable kWh

Don't worry -- every single time renewables are mentioned on HN, this aspect is at the top of the posting.

hrishirc• 6 years ago

And as long as it's true, may it long keep getting mentioned.

tonyedgecombe• 6 years ago

Every HN post has something negative at the top.

m4632• 6 years ago

also, solar might not be solar.

"Utility scale solar" is ambiguous and can mean solar thermal or pv solar.

I think solar thermal might be a completely different animal that is not long-lived and not clean.

It might be a similar situation to where "renewable power" turns out to me mostly burning garbage or burning trees.

This documentary might be a little biased but also have some interesting insights: https://youtu.be/Zk11vI-7czE

pfdietz15• 6 years ago

Concentrated solar thermal is basically dead. PV just slaughtered it.

sunstone3• 6 years ago

These days most contracts are being bid solar+battery at a ratio of about 5:1, if memory serves.

EarthMephit• 6 years ago

Battery prices are also dropping, although as not as fast as solar, but its at the point where in some regions solar + battery is cheaper than coal

Modern Gas turbines can also act as a good backup for solar in times where there is unusual demand because they can start up on under a minute

anotheryou• 6 years ago

Does cheaper prices open up some less efficient ways of storage?

I'm still hoping for this one, just because it's so epic: the giant rock-piston gravity storage: https://www.heindl-energy.com/

ph0rque• 6 years ago

This tells me that until fossil plants are mostly shut down (and perhaps afterward), we will continue to have negative electricity prices at times. It might be a profitable idea to buy extra energy storage capacity to get paid for storing energy at certain times, then sell it when it is high demand.

rootusrootus2• 6 years ago

Profitable for the first guy. Not profitable for anyone after enough people try to get a piece of that action. And maybe not profitable for anyone ever if the power company themselves installs enough storage capacity.

Scoundreller10• 6 years ago

I just wish the negative electricity prices reached the non-industrial consumer.

If it reached me, I'll have an Arduino controlled hot water heater, furnace and fridge/freezer dynamically turning on/off to take the most advantage of prices pronto.

tialaramex2• 6 years ago

In some areas you can buy electricity this way, but the other end of the deal bites you, so beware of that.

When it seems like you might die from the heat but the price charged is $8.50 per kWh how much longer do you want to wait before switching on the AC? (If you live somewhere it never gets hot, figure on the same but for a midwinter freeze and deciding when to pay for your resistive circuit heat pump boost)

discordance• 6 years ago

There’s an Australian startup that sells electricity at wholesale prices to consumers

https://www.amberelectric.com.au/

greglindahl6• 6 years ago

It's all up to the charging algorithm. If your grid access is priced according to energy transferred, you pay a positive retail price no matter how negative the wholesale price is. If your grid access is a fixed charge, you could directly take advantage of the negative wholesale price.

In some places, industrial users have the second algorithm.

pfdietz15• 6 years ago

The only reason renewables would cause negative prices is the subsidy they get on generated output, that would cause them to continue generating because for THEM they are still making money at that instant. Otherwise, the renewable source itself could capture the negative price by just not feeding power to the grid.

Scoundreller10• 6 years ago

Although I guess they "burn" their excess on-site, doesn't it make sense for solar panels to send power to a load at all times?

If they didn't, wouldn't that unspent energy make the panels even hotter and shorten lifespan/reduce efficiency?

lmm• 6 years ago

Dumping power is not free - you need properly cooled resistor banks etc. to do it safely. For many forms of generation it's worth putting power on the grid at negative prices under some circumstances.

ciceryadam• 6 years ago

Yup, storage just like that has been built in Switzerland: https://www.alpiq.com/power-generation/hydropower-plants/pro... California is mountainous enough to follow suit.

greglindahl6• 6 years ago

California has a lot of storage just like that already. The problem is that it can't be scaled up.

maallooc8• 6 years ago

Cheap for the economy, not so cheap for the environment.

These kind of articles rarely calculate the price to dispose old solar panels.

Our country recently found that current methods for disposing solar panels pose a grave danger to the environment and imposed strict regulations for it. As a result the price for disposal quadrupled. Because consumers of the solar panel, which are mostly individuals, can't afford those prices, the government is preparing for a law that charges manufactures up front for the price of disposal.

It is assumed that solar will be more expensive than natural gas after the changes.

pfdietz15• 6 years ago

"Grave danger" from what?

maallooc8• 6 years ago

That just dumping old solar panels into the landfill will cause Cu, Pb, As, Cr to spread into the ground effectively contaminating it. The government is trying to ban dumping it and trying to impose a responsibility to manufacturers to properly recycle and decontaminate it, which will cost about 4~5 times more than dumping.

skybrian2• 6 years ago

I'm wondering why landfills are insufficient? Are the linings not good enough?

maallooc8• 6 years ago

Not processing old solar panel was deemed dangerous by the government and we are building a government facility to recycle and properly decontaminate them. The price to run the facility will be collected from the manufacturers.

Same for Wind too. 81 tons of waste needs to be processed after 20 years of service of a 5MW wind turbine but operators and manufacturers does not take the price of disposal into account.

deepnotderp• 6 years ago

With launch costs set to drop aggressively I wonder if space based solar becomes viable sooner than expected. Iirc the NASA estimate was something like $200-500/kg launch costs. I wonder if concentrated solar in the form of thin mirrors can change that.

lachlan-sneff• 6 years ago

Musk's most recent estimate of the eventual cost per kg on starship was 10 usd/kg. He may be considered an unreliable source at this point, however.

swayvil• 6 years ago

Solar's future may be cheap but capitalism's future is always going to be pricey.

gyogyo2• 6 years ago

Making solar panels require massive amount of energy. If built in China, these panels are made with electricity from coal. They don't have a great C02 budget.

timbit42• 6 years ago

Today's solar panels are efficient enough that even if they are produced using electricity from coal, by the end of their life, they've reduced CO2 emissions by more than what the coal produced to manufacture them.

dave333• 6 years ago

I thought the old lie with statistics trick of starting the Y axis above zero was debunked in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s etc. The blog name above the X axis and gray shading make it look like the costs are approaching zero.

Solar’s Future is Insanely Cheap

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