Hacker News Reader

Comment by marshray | Hacker News Reader

Electric power transmission loss is less than 5%:

https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/flow-graphs/electricity...

   14.26 Net generation
   0.67 "Transmission and delivery losses and unaccounted for"

It's just a tiny fraction of the losses resulting from burning fuel to heat water to produce steam to drive a turbine to yield electric power.

View on HN

That's the average. It's bought and sold on a spot market. If you try to sell CA power in AZ and the losses are 10% then SRP or TEP or whoever can undercut your price with local power/lower losses.

I just don't see 10% remaining a big deal while solar continues its exponential cost reduction. Solar does not consume fuel, so when local supply exceeds local demand the cost of incremental production drops to approximately zero. Nobody's undercutting zero, even with 10% losses.

IMO, this is what 'winning' looks like.

this is interesting but missing some scale aspects.. capital and concentrated power are mutual attractors in some sense.. these AI datacenters in their current incarnations are massive.. so the number and size of solar panels needed, changes the situation. Common electrical power interchange (grid) is carefully regulated and monitored in all jurisdictions. In other words, there is little chance of an ad-hoc local network of small or mid-size solar systems making enough power unto themselves, without passing through regulated transmission facilities IMHO.

The cost of solar as a 24hr power supply must include the cost of storage for the 16+ hours that it's not at peak power. It also needs to overproduce by 3x to meet that demand.

Solar provides cheap power only when it's producing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com