Solar will get too cheap to connect to the power grid
climate.benjames.io
climate.benjames.io
What's left to figure out is the ratio of panels to water to land, and in turn whether the long term value of the land is worth the investment. (Dubai would argue it is.)
Compared to the amount of water that is naturally desalinated every day (ie via evaporation), even large scale desalination is a drop in the bucket.
Desalination is already operating on a massive scale in the middle east, and we're not seeing any medium scale effects there. Elevated salinity dissipates very quickly from the point of outflow.
I've not seen any evidence supporting this is the case, but the opposite; large swathes of high-saline concentrated blobs sweeping accross the sealife, killing it. We've had to build specialized very long outflow pipes to give the brine even a change to level
While brine can impact local salinity, so does treated-effluent outflows (mixed together they are neutral.) Regardless elevated brine levels drop off sharply from the point of outflow.
If it's profitable, it'll be implemented all over, and underestimating that cumulative effect is something we would plead willful ignorance on as we have done with other industries in the past.
Second point I will try to make, habitats are often unique and small, we would just want to make sure an ecosystem is truly ubiquitous before destroying a small pocket of ecosystem.
Especially now, there are animals that live in just one or few specific spots. We should be careful.
That's because almost all the water that is taken out of the ocean will make its way back to the ocean. We just borrow it for a while.
If all the water used by humans were taken from the ocean, we'd take about 1/300000th of the ocean's water per year. Most of that will be back in the ocean within 200 years. That puts the cap on the amount of water that would be missing from the ocean of 1/1500th of its volume, which means that the steady state increase in salt concentration would be less than 0.1%, which is much less than the natural variation in ocean salt levels.
WRONG WRONG!!!
No, we used the brines to create even more batries which store our solar charge Now we have POWER at day and at NIGHT. 24/7. 247 we are producing the brines, but then that goes onto make more batries. Ain't no ecosystem destroyed here (though I'm sure people will try to perform a regression of muh bad event unto muh new technology because that is a timelessly vogue thing to do)
Btw touristic heaters are based on https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_acetate and that's also energy storage
1) cheaper energy means you can mix more water in to get whatever salt level you want.
2) you can mix in the output of your sewage plants
3) most water is borrowed and returned, not a huge net loss. Every toilet full returns to the ocean, every washing machine run, etc.
Easy enough to add minerals/nutrients after the fact!
What kind of wattage was the device?
It was a peak ~700W device, and quite efficient for its price. It’d produce a few gallons overnight in summer in southern california when attached to a rather large battery.
Dehumidifier water in general isn't safe for consumption.
I meant acid rain and contaminated water probably lands on crops all the time.
Are you doing hydroponics or something? Because the soil has more minerals that you could ever possibly get from water. I mean the ground is where those minerals in regular water come from in the first place.
You also generate brine, you know, and that is its own environmental disaster that must be disposed of. In addition, maintenance of facilities in contact with salt water is murderously labor intensive.
Desalinization is economically useful up until you provide everybody with drinking water. Once you pass that point, desalinization is way, way, way less useful.
Most people so far don't comprehend the kind of huge change free/extremely cheap electricity would bring to the world. We have the tech to do a lot of stuff but it is not cost effective cheap electricity will change that.
Apparently seawater has 3.5% salinity. So desalinating enough to water crops/supply cities leaves you with a lot of salt.
Metals that can be extracted from seawater include:
Sodium (Na): One of the most common metals found in seawater, sodium can be extracted through solar evaporation or electrolysis.
Magnesium (Mg): A metal that can be extracted from seawater.
Calcium (Ca): A metal that can be extracted from seawater.
Potassium (K): A metal that can be extracted from seawater.
Lithium: A metal that may become more important in the future as demand for lithium batteries and fusion energy increases.
Copper: A high-value metal that is often present in seawater.
Nickel: A high-value metal that is often present in seawater.
Cobalt: A high-value metal that is often present in seawater.
The idea is that our salt would cover part of the salt dome, preventing that part of the salt dome from providing salt to the water. Instead, the salt that would have come from that part of the dome comes from our salt.
Take the Carlsbad plant in San Diego. It cost $1 billion to build, and it produces about 200k tons of fresh water per day. Let's say you build a similar plant and to finance the build you use municipal bonds that have a yield of 3.6% (the current level for 30 year muni bonds). That's 0.30% per month, or 0.01% per day. So only the interest on these bonds is $100k per day, which is 50 cents per ton of fresh water. According to wikipedia, it takes about 0.3 kWh to desalinate 1 ton of water [2]. In my state (NY) the average cost of electricity for industry consumers was about 7 cents for 2023 [3], so that would mean 21 cents per ton of water. If that cost goes to zero, you save 21 cents for each ton of water. But if you reduce the plant utilization from 100% to 25%, you increase the interest cost by 150 cents.
In order for desalination to be a useful target for peak electricity consumption, we need to find ways to massively reduce the capital cost of building desal plants. By "massively", I mean a factor of 10 or more. Is it possible? Yes. Is it guaranteed? No.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_%22Bud%22_Lewis_Carlsba...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination
[3] https://www.nyserda.ny.gov/Energy-Prices/Electricity/Monthly...
There is third option with excess solar energy production - send it elsewhere.
This is partly what China is doing with solar - concurrent with massive solar installation there is also extensive ultra-high-voltage electricity transmission lines being laid out, to load balance excess production in the sunny but sparsely populated N and W, with the excess consumption in the heavily populated S and E.
Australia, Morocco, Spain I think are also getting into this game, though in these cases for energy export
HVDC transmission losses are quoted at 3.5% per 1,000 km (620 mi), about 50% less than
AC (6.7%) lines at the same voltage.
Probably not in China, since the math with respect to losses works out. The distance from, say, a sunny place like Lanzhou to Shanghai, or even to Guangzhou, is relatively close.
But of course, exporting from Australia to the rest of the world will be problematic. Not sure how that will work? My impression, however, was that they were only trying to get the energy to Singapore? Which should work. It is 3 times longer than what the Chinese are trying to do, and underwater. But again, theoretically, it should work.
[1]: https://imgur.com/YMMaM6E [2]: https://apnews.com/article/australia-singapore-solar-sun-cab...
In fact with enough excess energy we could afford to generate enough liquid nitrogen at scale to have superconducting lines to improve efficiency.
so high voltage DC is a better option
For example in the US solar power from the west coast could easily supplement east coast evening demand. Ditto east coast supplementing west coast mornings.
Yes, this means investment in Trans-continental grids, but that makes sense in countries that are hot and wide.
(see e.g. https://theconversation.com/south-africans-are-opting-to-go-...)
1) The duck curve gets flattened to zero during the sunny days and there is excess power at that moment that no one can use. This can go into a variety of uses like hydrolysis or maybe a CO2 capture of the future. At the moment the only thing being deployed for this is storage for later release that day.
2) Solar exceeds what the grid can actually distribute. This can't be utilised as well by big centralised installations and will push towards somewhere to dump the excess power through the summer locally. Some companies are trying to turn the CO2 in the air and power into fuel for home installations and this might make homes quite a lot more independent with their own generators and fuel creation. Not a lot of solutions yet on how to utilise this power.
Other than storage of power for later use that day/week there isn't a whole lot of competition to try and use these periods of excess better. Its an area rife with business opportunities especially ones that can store the energy long term for a home once we hit scenario 2.
Definitely good to not be using fossil fuels but there must also be a later point at which marginal increases in energy consumption have negative effects.
Australia consumes 5882 PJ of electricity per year [1] = 1.63 PWh/y = 4.46 TWh/day.
A Nickel-Iron battery stores 30 Wh/L [2]. They would need ~150 GL (giga liters) of NiFe batteries to store all the power consumed in a day (they would need much less just for the night) = 150 million m3 (cubic meters). A stack of cells 3m high (+ frames) would occupy 50 million m2 (sq. meters) or a square with ~7 km long sides (without service roads), so let's say battery storage industrial zone 10 km by 20 km in total, split around major cities.
Cost: ~ 1T$ ( tera-dollars :) without the land and the roof )
I hope I didn't miss any 0s.
[1] https://www.energy.gov.au/energy-data/australian-energy-stat...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel%E2%80%93iron_battery
As the statista.com report says
>...Rooftop solar photovoltaic installations on residential buildings and nuclear power have the highest unsubsidized levelized costs of energy generation in the United States. If not for federal and state subsidies, rooftop solar PV would come with a price tag between 117 and 282 U.S. dollars per megawatt hour.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/493797/estimated-leveliz...
Looks like that report is a year old, but I doubt the installation costs have really gone down much since then. (Panel prices come down, but labor costs, etc don't.)
Sure, but they are not in most places. IMO subsidies made sense to kickstart the industry given the external costs imposed by climate change, but I agree that they don't anymore.
> >...Rooftop solar photovoltaic installations on residential buildings and nuclear power have the highest unsubsidized levelized costs of energy generation in the United States.
I don't think levelized cost for generation is the correct metric here. That ignores the costs imposed by grid transmission (and utility profit margins). It's also worth noting that installation costs in the US can be much higher than those in other countries (even other wealthy countries).
In general, if a dollar of subsidy spent on utility based solar will go much further than a dollar of subsidy spent on consumer rooftop solar, then it makes sense to spend that dollar on where it will go the furthest. That is true now, and was true 10 years ago.
>...That ignores the costs imposed by grid transmission (and utility profit margins).
But aren't those installations also attached to the grid? If not, the costs go very very high if you have enough battery that you don't need to attach to the grid.
>...It's also worth noting that installation costs in the US can be much higher than those in other countries (even other wealthy countries).
I wouldn't be surprised if some or all the OECD countries also subsidize rooftop solar, so it might be hard to compare actual costs.
282 U.S. dollars per megawatt hour
So it seems like solar would be cheaper even without any subsidy?
https://www.lazard.com/media/xemfey0k/lazards-lcoeplus-june-...
You seemed to disagree with that? I'm pointing out that, at least where I live, it appears this commenter was correct.
If rooftop solar costs me $300/MWh, that's a third cheaper than the $450/MWh charged by my local utility provider. So, even without any subsidy or feed-in tariff, it would be rational for me to install solar, use it when available, and fall back to the grid when it's not.
Again, the only point I'm making is that this this statement appears to be true:
The thing with rooftop/local solar is that it doesn't need to compete with wholesale electricity prices, it only need to compete with retail prices. It's already competitive there [without any need for subsidies]
If you want the capability of using your own rooftop solar, you need to install a much more costly battery backup system. With a typical solar system, the electrical output is sent to the grid. (So, if there is an outage on the grid, it will also shut down your panels since they don't want you to possibly electrocute the electrical workers.)
https://help.pge.com/s/article/Will-I-still-have-power-durin....
>If rooftop solar costs me $300/MWh, that's a third cheaper than the $450/MWh charged by my local utility provider.
The $300 is an estimated LCOE for the intermittent power produce by rooftop solar, not some charge you get in the mail. Utilities can buy or produce that power for much less than that cost.
>So, even without any subsidy or feed-in tariff, it would be rational for me to install solar, use it when available, and fall back to the grid when it's not.
Except as I pointed out, you can't "use it when available" unless you have a battery backup system which the LCOE will be much higher than what you will pay your utility over the life of the system. That might change in the future, but that is the reality today.
>Again, the only point I'm making is that this this statement appears to be true:
>> The thing with rooftop/local solar is that it doesn't need to compete with wholesale electricity prices, it only need to compete with retail prices. It's already competitive there [without any need for subsidies]
I guess you should ask yourself why you think that statement was true? The person who made that comment adjusted their comment to add that actual battery systems weren't competitive at this point:
>>"They're not quite affordable yet, but I'll eat my hat if they home batteries don't hit affordability in the next 5-10 years."
Except as I pointed out, you can't "use it when available" unless you have a battery backup system
https://calmatters.org/environment/climate-change/2024/01/ca...
While solar panel costs have dropped very low, the soft costs for installing rooftop solar (labor, permitting, etc.) have only gone up, so one off rooftop solar will always be more expensive than utility solar.
- Installing rooftop solar
- Retaining the existing grid connection but not connecting the solar to it (or not connecting it in such a way that power is sent back to the grid).
- Running household electrical loads off of the solar when available, falling back to the grid connection when it isn't.
You don't necessarily get full utilisation of the solar energy this way, but you can often still save a whole bunch of money compared to not having the solar. Especially if you are willing/able to load shift energy intensive things like washing/drying to times where the sun is shining.
You can also potentially gain additional savings by having a smallish battery that gains you some additional utilisation without it necessarily having to cover your entire daily usage.
Your energy bill has a fixed daily rate to be connected to the grid. That pays for poles and wires, maintenance etc. To oversimplify a bit there’s also your cost per kWh to buy energy and to sell it. Someone using their own PV system during the day and buying from the grid at night isn’t “free riding” like you think. The connection is paid for by the fixed connection fee.
this reminds me of "to cheap to meter":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too_cheap_to_meter
When the reporters asked him about the quotation and the viability of "commercial power from atomic piles," Strauss replied that he expected his children and grandchildren would have power "too cheap to be metered, just as we have water today that's too cheap to be metered."
> Most of the world's solar power was installed in the past 30 months
This is pretty impressive.
This is amusing to me as it’s very common to have metered water in Europe
Most places I've lived in the US have been metered.
I can easily imagine buying one of these as an extra “beater” car in a few years, and making sure we’re always charging at least one car at home when it’s sunny.
I see first-gen nissan leafs going for $3k, and I see tesla 3's for $16k
30kwh of tesla powerwalls is at least $23K. Sadly, those used cars don’t support v2h or v2g.
Solar panels are dropping precipitously in price. If solar installation companies had better incentives and less scammy behavior, or if you DIY’d your solar setup, it is hard to beat on price lately. As the article indicates, grid-connected solar is quickly approaching an end state, after which battery storage and opportunistic “excess” usage or transfer will be more important.
If wishes were horses....
You still need the mounting hardware, the wiring, the permits and interconnect with the grid if you're doing that it, the batteries and the permits for those if you're storing excess locally, etc. and none of that stuff is getting cheaper. Not to mention the labor to install it and connect it. Not saying there isn't scammy behavior happening, there is, just like there is in any other home improvement/remodel contracting market.
But the panels are an ever-shrinking part of the price of a project, and they are the only thing that's getting cheaper.
If solar is too cheap, it won't be overbuilt... or people will lose their return on investment => less solar.
Unless I am missing something major, another way to say this is "solar power during peak solar flux will become so valueless that people will stop building solar".
To the downvoters: Off-grid solar will be unlikely to be dominant energy consumption, and there are other options to build cheap, efficient and clean energy. Solar is an option and I don't "hate" solar.
This is a simple argument of negative prices or low-cheap prices will correct themselves on the market without external forces like subsidies from tax payers... which means it isn't nearly as cheap as everyone is saying.
Also, the other driving force here is the cost of grid-delivered energy. California is sure working hard on incentivizing solar + storage that way...
They will exit the market all together cause there are other ways to spend money than give away cheap solar.
Hydroelectric, in existing geological reservoirs, are the only grid-scale "battery" that currently exists. The primary reason they are not more popular is because not many reservoirs exist right next to major power consuming locales.
Seems like a good thing to me.
Misunderstanding efficiencies, capacities and costs lead to lobbying for subsidies on technologies.
This article point says at some point during the day, either: 1. you need high capacity & efficiency grid storage (ie hydroelectric storage) or 2. someone engineers a grid scale batteries that have never been deployed before that are 2x more capacity than current installs and with the same efficiencies - and they deploy them in tandem with the current solar installs.
While it is _possible_, there are a lot of other people competing for energy markets... it is not at all indicated by the article that market forces will be focusing 100% on solar.
"Although battery storage has slightly higher round-trip efficiency than pumped storage, pumped-storage facilities typically operate at utilization factors that are currently twice as high as batteries." [1]
[1]https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=46756
Total efficiency of batteries is 80%/2 = 40%
Also very limited run times on the grid: "For example, in 2015, the weighted average battery duration was a little more than 46 minutes, but by 2019, weighted average battery durations had doubled to 1.5 hours."
Your own link literally says this isn't true.
According to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), in 2019, the U.S. utility-scale battery fleet operated with an average monthly round-trip efficiency of 82%,
Math is hard. Understanding efficiencies via words is harder :)
Second, that isn't how 'efficiency' works, it is the percentage you get back from what you put in and your own link says 82%. Where are you getting these ideas?
efficiency is lower. This is what is meant by capacity.
Capacity or efficiency? You're getting your terms mixed up.
Math is hard. Understanding efficiencies via words is harder :)
It isn't that hard if you're talking about things that are true and make sense.
Cited from the source, from my first comment.
Batteries are permanently connected to the grid and I'm not an electrician but I'm pretty sure that makes them available 100% of the time.
I get that you're anti battery for some reason and you're trying hard to play word games and twist definitions, but this isn't reality.
After a heavy charge / discharge cycle temperatures in batteries might be high enough that you have to allow them to cool or recharge at lower rates.
Says who?
Also you're mixing up 'efficiency' which is what you said at first now with 'capacity factor' which is completely different.
ie the batteries need to cool
Where are you getting that from?
or recharge at fixed rates
Everything recharges at a 'fixed rate'. Lithium titanate batteries and some LiFe batteries like the Headway 38120 HP can charge at 10C, which means they can charge in around 6 minutes if you have the amps to put through them.
as one would need for grid batteries to work effectively.
Then how are people already using them as grid batteries?
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/energy-storage/chart-th...
What you are saying here doesn't follow what you've said before, doesn't make sense and isn't backed up by any evidence.
Effective utilization on the grid is affected by efficiency and capacity factor. One is "when the system is operable, how well does it perform". The other is "how often is the system operable".
People generally colloquially use efficiency as effectiveness. However in real systems, that power peoples lives & livelihoods, effective systems are both efficient and available.
Not if they are talking about specific technical definitions. You should ask these hypothetical people if they know anything about batteries.
However in real systems, that power peoples lives & livelihoods, effective systems are both efficient and available.
I don't know what point this vague abstract description is supposed to make, but battery systems are literally working right now and making people money.
You are starting from the conclusion or whatever.
Solar itself is already 3.9% of the _total_ us grid power.
Subdivide that 3.9% into a small category: grid disconnected solar... what one would be discussing is something that will not influence the total price of energy.