Cheapest source of fossil fuel generation is double the cost of solar
pv-magazine-usa.com
pv-magazine-usa.com
This is close enough on a purely economic aspect that a carbon tax to allocate costs for the externalities of carbon or more stringent emissions requirements may make it cheaper overall for Solar + Storage!
At the moment, solar is slowing down, because private equity is turning to cobbling together quotes from residential installers as a bargaining tactic to get lower quotes from my brothers company.
It's a profoundly bad idea, but if they can get something together and flip it to naive buyers in a few years, they can get away with it.
All of that is to say, there's lots of bad cost estimation out there for commercial solar, and I know it'll happen sooner or later, but I'm still skeptical that solar+storage is going to beat carbon in the "sooner" range.
If solar panels are dumpstered at the end of their life cycle but save CO2 emissions, it’s a non-factor.
And in any case, they’re made largely of aluminum which is profitable to recycle (which means it will actually happen if its own accord) and a solved problem.
Any real negative externalities come in manufacture or installation.
Who cares about panel recycling? bury them if we have to, they're non toxic, and would be an infinitesimally small % of total annual landfill. Such an irrelevant "gotcha" i wonder why people keep repeating it?
This link from the EPA suggested that EoL solar panels could be considered hazardous waste under RCRA due to heavy metal leaching, which is an "externality" like CO2, and the very reason I asked the question.
So, if you believe the EPA, they are not "non-toxic" and could add up to "up to 10 million tonnes" of panels that need to be safely disposed.
https://www.epa.gov/hw/end-life-solar-panels-regulations-and...
So perhaps you should care about panel recycling?
To illustrate how fast this field is, just this month there have been some new results in recycling them: https://interestingengineering.com/energy/solar-panel-recycl...
A lot of research is going into storage. I would say energy storage is THE challenge of our lifetime.
You don't need storage if you can sell your afternoon solar to your neighbor who is at night
Sun's always shining somewhere else
Force storage and usage of that gas (and burning it at the well is better than letting it be a greenhouse gas on its own). Curtailing the waste will change the costs and economics drastically.
The LCOE measures overall production costs but overlooks availability and reliability. This is problematic for intermittent sources like solar and wind, which can't ensure continuous production. For instance, solar energy isn't feasible at night, necessitating backup sources like gas, coal, or nuclear. It's worth considering the immense lithium required for a 100% solar-powered country.
If renewables were the most cost-effective, private investors would already favor them. Yet, investments continue in gas and coal due to their reliability and continuous output, essential for economic stability.
Countries like Germany have replaced nuclear reactors with coal plants, despite their decarbonization goals, and India relies on fossil fuels for economic growth.
Misleading articles hinder decarbonization efforts. It's crucial that energy discussions are grounded in concrete data and rational analysis to advance towards a sustainable future.
Then you compare the cost of a gas peaker plant to the cost of a battery and make your decision off that.
Deferring workloads for when it's sunny is almost the exact opposite: using more power during the day rather than at night. That's probably better for most consumers, since people tend to use more power when they're awake by default.
Solar is pretty predictable and there are a lot of workloads that can follow solar output. Vehicle charging, water heating, water chilling/freezing, and industrial heat batteries. Depending on the capital cost of the plant, desalination and hydrogen splitting make sense too.
Same goes to electric cars, but in that case there are batteries storing, so I'm not sure it counts.
I mean, flip it around. Those of us who can plan ahead are being harmed by the fact that we’re paying for a system that caters to those who can’t.
Thermal energy in general is very cheap to store. This is also true industrially, where thermal storage has long been used for regenerative recovery of waste heat, for example in various places in steelmaking. Thermal storage of heat derived from electrical power is now being proposed as a way to soak up zero or negative price electricity. There's a company based on work at MIT that's doing this, using moderately electrically conductive refractory ceramic bricks as combined storage and heating elements.
If you live in Texas rooftop solar and a battery are highly recommended.
People might be confused a bit because there are usually several close calls over the year where supply is projected to outstrip demand, but the problem usually resolves when they go bribe some bitcoin mines to turn off. (Ugh.)
(I live in Austin, TX.)
And I never said a single thing about "running out of power," because that wasn't the issue in most areas. The power infrastructure was physically damaged. The state is on its own grid, refuses to winterize, and people also carried on in their households as if it were a normal day, which overloaded local transformers.
It took me a week to regain power in 2021 because the transformer blew behind my house on Valentine's Day and Oncor would keep sending trucks with technicians who didn't realize they had access to the transformer via the giant vacant lot behind it. Instead of doing the intelligent thing and calling to ask for a frame of reference, they would cancel the report. They did this for days while the temperatures were near zero.
Dallas had a week-long blackout in some areas a week ago. We had an almost day's long power outage in January in some areas. This is becoming a common occurrence in the area due to severe weather.
I never said that it was completely preventable.
I said that I was considering solar to mitigate the damage to my personal property.
You have a reading comprehension problem.
Some loads are slightly time-dependent because you can shift them with minor inconvenience such as pre-cooling your home or refrigerator (using it as a thermal battery) or scheduling when your car charges (using its battery as a battery).
Others are entirely time-dependent. Waiting until it's sunny to process an online order, take MRI images, run an assembly line, or use your TV to watch a sporting game incurs substantial additional cost and/or inconvenience.
What makes you say that? Do you know of a region that does not have DR (demand response) options?
Every US utility I am aware of has had DR programs for commercial and industrial customers for many years. Back when I worked in electricity markets a decade ago only a few had DR programs for residential customers but since then many have added residential DR or have started pilots as they upgrade their residential infrastructure.
TVP (time-variable pricing) is also very common, though moreso with commercial/industrial customers. I'm honestly not sure how many residential customers have the option to pick a provider with TVP/TOU pricing.
Some crazy ISOs (looking at you ERCOT) even allow residential customers to pay rates pegged to RTP (real-time pricing) which is gloriously insane and very Texas.
> A hospital probably needs a backup battery (or a guaranteed slice of the grid’s battery capacity).
Yes. Hospitals often have special utility contracts and get priority when there are brownouts or blackouts. (One benefit of living next to a hospital is that you'll get power back more quickly after a blackout!) But most hospitals still have backup generators, and special circuits so that they only need to power critical equipment.
> we don’t have any incentive to try and automate that inconvenience away, so who knows? Perhaps we could see a resurgence in more efficient designs, like chest freezers.
This is already very common with commercial/industrial customers, but hopefully you're right that as residential customers get more exposure to things like dynamic pricing and home solar generation that more of them will alter their behavior and appliances.
Consider the global perspective. In developing countries, where resources and infrastructure are already limited, expecting such flexibility is impractical. These regions often lack the luxury of choice and are more vulnerable to disruptions.
Moreover, the goal of decarbonization isn't just about ideological preferences for renewable energy. It requires a pragmatic approach that incorporates a mix of technologies: solar, wind, hydro, nuclear, batteries, and more. Each technology has its strengths and plays a crucial role in the overall strategy.
Cherry-picking preferred technologies without considering the broader context can delay our progress by decades. To effectively combat climate change, we need to embrace a comprehensive and inclusive approach that leverages all available solutions.
This is pretty vague. Practical challenges such as?
> Forcing billions of people and businesses to change their consumption habits is not only unrealistic but also fraught with potential issues.
Potential issues such as?
> Consider the global perspective. In developing countries, where resources and infrastructure are already limited, expecting such flexibility is impractical. These regions often lack the luxury of choice and are more vulnerable to disruptions.
I’m under the impression that brownouts or blackouts are a little more common in developing countries, so if we’re going to have to deal with intermittent supplies we probably should be asking them for advice.
I think we’d have to look, probably case-by-case, at what the issues are in less electrified areas, to see how renewables and load shifting would affect things. If the grid is less robust and parts become disconnected from time to time, then renewables are great, because they tend to be more disperse. If there are times where there isn’t enough generation capacity (not enough power plants or fuel) then great, whatever communication scheme is used to communicate information about renewables can also be used for fossil fuel.
> Moreover, the goal of decarbonization isn't just about ideological preferences for renewable energy. It requires a pragmatic approach that incorporates a mix of technologies: solar, wind, hydro, nuclear, batteries, and more. Each technology has its strengths and plays a crucial role in the overall strategy.
This is true. But I don’t really see any ideology in the idea of load shifting though. It is actually a practical answer. Renewable generation capacity that isn’t backed by batteries is always cheaper than that which is, unless batteries somehow become free. So, the pragmatic answer is to combine the two. Batteries are a cost, strategies to avoid them should be taken. That doesn’t mean 0 energy storage, though.
> Cherry-picking preferred technologies without considering the broader context can delay our progress by decades. To effectively combat climate change, we need to embrace a comprehensive and inclusive approach that leverages all available solutions.
Accounting for the price of batteries is often brought up as an argument against renewables. We should implement dynamic pricing now. It could even provide a market incentive to build more batteries. There’s no cherry picking here. Load shifting goes in the basket of solutions.
The practical challenges of deferring load to eliminate the need for batteries include significant disruptions to daily life and economic activities. Changing consumption habits on such a large scale would increase living and labor costs, thereby impacting the economy. Asking millions, if not billions, of people to change their habits is unrealistic, especially on a long-term basis. The discontent experienced during COVID-19 restrictions illustrates how difficult it is to enforce such changes, and doing so permanently would be even more challenging. Additionally, in democratic societies, politicians proposing such drastic measures would likely face significant opposition.
> I’m under the impression that brownouts or blackouts are a little more common in developing countries, so if we’re going to have to deal with intermittent supplies we probably should be asking them for advice.
While developing countries do have experience dealing with intermittent supplies due to frequent brownouts and blackouts, implementing advanced load-shifting strategies without substantial support and investment remains challenging. Economic implications are just one part of the issue. Many people in developed countries already struggle with stability, and further destabilizing their energy supply could lead to large-scale social and economic disasters.
> This is true. But I don’t really see any ideology in the idea of load shifting though. It is actually a practical answer. Renewable generation capacity that isn’t backed by batteries is always cheaper than that which is unless batteries somehow become free. So, the pragmatic answer is to combine the two. Batteries are a cost, and strategies to avoid them should be taken. That doesn’t mean 0 energy storage, though.
The most feasible and cost-effective solution to minimize battery use and costs is to use nuclear power as a baseload. This approach is pragmatic and unideological, focusing on what we can realistically achieve. Unrealistic proposals often overlook the practical implications of their implementation. The economic and social impacts of load-shifting strategies are substantial, and most electric infrastructure cannot support such changes without significant upgrades. Smart grids are not yet widespread, and the amount of rare earth elements required for battery production is a critical concern.
In Italy, a research institute found that a 100% renewable future using batteries would demand 70 times the world's annual lithium production. Even if we reduce this demand by 99%, it remains impractically high for just one country. Given these challenges, it is more sensible to prioritize solutions that are already proven effective, such as the renewable and nuclear combination. This approach requires less effort relative to what you propose and avoids the significant economic and social disruptions associated with large-scale load shifting.
In conclusion, I do not want to rule out that your proposal could be a solution in some areas of the world, for some parts of the population. And I hope it could help in decarbonization. But what I would like to hear, is a realistic comparison with the solutions we already have.
And before certain proposals can become a real solution, you have to accept and consider the huge implementation limitations in order to have pragmatic solutions.
Solar costs are still decreasing.
And fossil fuel costs still do not price in the catastrophic side effects of using them.
My main worry in 2010 was that it is very difficult to balance an exponential increase in demand for a thing that is a big employer (such as oil) with some convenient replacement that employs a similar number of people at a similar cost.
The economics of the transition to PV and wind are much smoother than I expected, because I am not an economist and did not have a remotely realistic model for how any of this would work in practice. (Hopefully my similar concern about the upcoming economic transition due to AI automation is misplaced for exactly the same reasons).
How to deal with that is a political problem, not particularly an economic one.
Even narrow AI is more of the same — one that can drive, would rapidly put millions of drivers out of work, but not much else. That's a huge one-off transition to manage, but not inherently radical.
General-purpose AI? Depends on the details. Let's say it's got the all the capabilities and limitations of an exactly average human, with a 24/7 equivalent power requirement of 17.2 kW — that will cost around $15.1k/year to run: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=17.2+kW+*+1+year+*+%240...
I picked that power requirement to get an annual cost comparable to the USA federal minimum wage: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%247.25+per+hour+*+40+h...
This means it's economically neutral to pick an average human or a machine for those roles and with that assumption about electricity cost… provided that humans are willing to accept minimum wages for that role.
This lowers the wages for the average human to minimum wages.
But! The USA's electricity supply is about 1.3 TW: https://www.publicpower.org/resource/americas-electricity-ge....
This is only 3.8 kW/capita: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=1.3TW%2Fusa+population+...
This suggests that prices may rise rapidly, at least before the AI can be put to work guiding robots to install solar power systems (there's a startup on Y Combinator dedicated to exactly this).
How much might prices rise? To whatever level where the AI can still be a neutral replacement for human labour. If the median capacity human earns $45k, then that assumption for power requirement would raise electricity prices to $0.30/kWh. If the AI is as energy efficient as a human brain, and uses 30 watts, then it doesn't have any impact on prices because the US doesn't run out of power in the first place; if the AI needs megawatts, then the effect is also reduced, because 1 MW * 1 y * $0.1/kWh = $876,000 and therefore it isn't economically sensible to displace even one worker.
So what I'm worried about is the transition, the time between now and the steady-state long-term future where the robots can put in as much PV as they need. Do we have a risky period where robots could use all the available electrical power and might be able to out-bid the average human on both sides of the equation, the income side by being as cheap as it's legally possible for a human to be, and the expenses because now the human isn't earning any money and can't pay for electricity?
Or does this dynamically fix itself because I'm doing an over-simplified toy model in my head and I've missed a critical part? (Probably).
I guess of you really think robots are gonna bid up electricity, residential solar makes even more sense.
I may be simply wrong, but I can assure you it's definitely not a hand-wave.
You may think it absurd that an economic choice would be made over a human value, but that kind of behaviour is exactly what happened in the Irish potato famine — there it was exporting food while starving to death.
I am also planning to get domestic PV as soon as possible precisely because I anticipate this dynamic.
Again, I'm aware I might simply be wrong, but "wrong" and "hand wave" are different things.
> What's driving the infinite demand if humans don't have wages to buy things with?
1) I didn't say infinite demand
2) I did say "out-bid the average human on both sides of the equation".
"Average" human.
Humans are not identical, but rather are a distribution.
The ones who are more economically viable can continue to compete while the rest starve.
This is also what we saw in the Irish potato famine, though "economically viable" had a different meaning.