I saw a tweet the other day that said that solar and batteries are growing so cheap that the combination will shortly be a good way to supply night-time power. I wouldn't have dreamed of it a few years ago.
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/69e4cb33-3615-4424-996d-5aee9d1af... | https://archive.today/11TFI
It's a perfect weapon really, make energy so cheap, reliable and efficient that it destroys the petro-dollar.
As someone concerned about climate change, it's a wonderful thing but I think the hegemony should watch it and adapt.
It could be as simple as China just sort of stumbled into this situation and realized what's happening and now they just have to foster and grow their solar and wind industries.
Don't expect magic feats from autocratic organisations.
Though the other thing to note is that Texas and thus the US is now a net exporter of oil, the opposite of the 70' oil crisis.
Regardless of their intentions, energy independence is a huge thing for a country's sovereignty.
Capitalism requires no conspiracy. People will do anything to increase their wealth.
It turns out that these calculations are for utility scale purchases. You need to be buying thousands of panels to realize them.
That being said, I have noticed in the last year or so that you can find some pretty good individual panel deals, closer to $0.5/watt.
https://www.solartradesales.co.uk/8-33-solar-430w-full-black...
I could use only a quarter of the generated energy and still break even on the panels in 5 years.
Between 5 and 10pm yesterday, batteries supplied more than twice the power that our nuclear reactors did: https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook/supply
The grid has become so expensive due to the cost of fire proofing infrastructure that residential installs are a no-brainer if you can find someone to do the install for a reasonable price. DIY is even cheaper.
Because California forced Nuclear suppliers to throttle down to "make room for renewables", no idea who thought this decision makes any sense.
Power in California was incredibly expensive long before any of the money was going towards fire proofing.
residential power costs are substantially lower for customers in these areas vs their immediate neighbors - out-of-pocket power bills are as little as half or a third of for-profit statewide utilities for the same sustained consumption during peak usage times.
Fun project, I ended up making a simulator app with fancy graphs and stuff.