Newer solar panels don’t need full sun to function. It’s economically viable to place them further north and in cloudier climates now. So the area where these are alternatives are viable may be shrinking faster than you would expect.
But in sunnier, warmer parts of the world (which notably includes India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Nigeria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Mexico, and Brazil, amongst others), over the next few decades it's hard to see anything much competing against solar and batteries for the bulk of energy usage.
Though solar panels prefer if it isn't too hot. Still, any such inefficiencies are easily outweighed by their low cost. In Netherlands it is common to install practice (and advised) more Wp than the inverter can handle. Maybe also a solution if it gets too hot, make it up by having more panels.
Heat pumps work great under the right circumstances. In cold climates like Boston and north of it, ideally you want ground source, which means digging deep (or wide) holes to flow water through instead of just pulling heat from outside air. Alternatively, (or additionally, ideally) they're best used in homes with very tight air envelopes, good insulation, and heat/energy recovery ventilation (HRV/ERV) systems. Installed in radiant heating systems in well-built houses, heat pumps are fantastic and you'll be comfortable all year for pennies on the dollar.
The reality is that most (US) construction, especially older, is just terrible in terms of air seal and insulation. Couple that with a potentially undersized air-source heat pump, which gets inefficient as the outside temp gets near the low end of its operating range, and you will not have a great time. But even then they are a good way to supplement gas heating, so you can limit furnace use to the coldest weeks of the year and do the environment a favor, as well as cool in the summer.
Are you one of the grifters or just confused?
ACs in cold climates are cheap. Cooling a house down 20 degrees doesnt take a lot of BTUs. Plus they’re just cheaper per-BTU and a typical northeast homeowner is going to be comfortable installing a cheap brand because it’s not life-or-death if your AC goes out.
When you start talking about having a heat pump being the primary heat source in a cold climate home, that’s a different ball game. First you need WAY more BTUs to heat a house in winter lows — even NYC hits single-digits most winters, that’s a 60 degree temperature differential. And you need to be prepared for the worst temperatures which basically necessitates a top-end brand like Mitsubishi which is rated down to historic-ish lows.
Not to mention that many homes don’t have central ducts, so converting to a heat pump means ductwork or mini splits..
All in all it’s not really a negligible thing.
Here’s a concrete example that took 5 minutes to find. Two condensers from the same company, same seller, same SEER, same series, same tonnage, except the second does heat. The heat pump is 29% more expensive.
2 Ton 14.3 SEER2 Trane Air Conditioner Condenser - RT Series. $1615
2 Ton 14.3 SEER2 Trane Heat Pump Condenser - RT Series. $2090
https://hvacdirect.com/trane-a4ac4024d1-2-ton-14-3-seer2-air...
https://hvacdirect.com/trane-a4hp4024d1-2-ton-14-3-seer2-hea...
You can, right now, buy air source heat pumps rated to -28C (-14F). While not enough for record lows in, say, Chicago or Toronto, it's plenty for places like New York, Seattle, and Vancouver.
If anything having a backup heat source makes me feel secure. A lot of things can go wrong with a gas furnace; some things can go wrong with a heat pump; but 10kW of electric restive heat is dead simple and just by itself it can provide 34000 BTU/h, which is 60% of the output of my old gas furnace. I don't think the duty cycle of my gas furnace ever exceeded 60% running time.
The auxiliary heater consists of two 5kW heaters, so even if one fails, there is still the other.
Do you have a wood burning back up? At my house in Massachusetts, we had a wood-burning stove that we could always fire up in a pinch. It never came to that, but it felt good knowing that we can always just burn a super hot fire and not freeze to death.
I live in an urban environment, so I'm not too worried about losing power for an extended period of time, and if I do I would probably just leave temporarily.
In my rural living fantasy I have a Ford F150 Lightning which I use as a "portable" backup battery that can be recharged by driving it to a Level 3 charging station. That and either a pellet stove and/or a Masonry Heater fireplace that sits opposite to a large equator (south) facing window.
I don't know much about how heat pump performance degrades, but going in to a life-and-death situation where the main heat system is operating outside rated performance seems like poor planning.
>It’s economically viable to place them further north and in cloudier climates now
Which it really isn't unless we're neglecting to count in the need for long-term backup power. There still exists some amount of solar even now, though government subsidies and government provided peaker plants may have something to do with it
But that's not what the topic, no? It was about economically viable. It wasn't about fully relying on them. If someone can buy or place a solar panels/plant and it is economically feasible, then it is.
E.g. EU is finally connecting the various electrical grids together. So that electricity can more easily be exported/imported. Yet another way to deal with the fluctuations.
"then it is" what? economically viable? He still needs 100% backup from other sources, so you have to factor that cost in. Possible? Yeah, it's possible, but that wasn't the question.
Nope, you do not need to factor that in. If I put solar panels on my house, I check if it's worth the cost/investment. I am not intending to go fully off-grid, that is not the aim. Similarly for a solar plant. If it's economically viable it means if there's a good return on investment.
> He still needs 100% backup from other sources, so you have to factor that cost in.
Again, if you put solar panels up or if you have a solar plant it does not make any sense to factor in such costs to make a business case/economical sense. You're adding complications that aren't there.
I'm just not ignoring externalities. You can't do your thing _unless_ the other thing is being taken care of, you have a hard dependency on it, so factoring in the cost of that is the right thing to do. You'll pay that cost, too, be it via your net-hookup fees, or taxes that subsidize it. If you're lucky, others will pay more than you do and you can make more money. That's economically viable at a small scale but does not scale far, because you quickly run out of other people who foot the bill.
Much like tax havens do not scale, because they don't produce anything of value, their concept does not work without other countries where the value is being created.
European grids have been connected for decades, way before new renewables were a thing.
Agreed, but not in the amount of capacity that they're aiming for now due to increased (expected) volatility. See e.g. https://energy.ec.europa.eu/topics/infrastructure/electricit... which sets a 2030 target of 15%.
It is not a perfect way to deal with fluctuations, and it was proven beyond doubt that voters will not accept power prices to run unchecked in a EU connected grid.
Also, the various times I noticed talk about solar panels in the US it seems it is way overpriced, coupled with more expensive options being chosen. E.g. loads of micro inverters where a string inverter would make way more sense (economical).
Not affiliated, but e.g. https://www.solar-bouwmarkt.nl/ (use Google Translate), how do those prices compare to what you're seeing locally for panels and string inverters?
Only in the US, Australia, and few other places it makes sense to just put up some panels for free energy. Incidentally also sometimes apply to EV arguments.
The other half needs energy too though! And high-latitude areas are known to have dense enough populations and exceedingly high economic productivity, from Sweden to Ireland to New England.
Use the extra electricity to power machines that hydrogenate CO2 extracted from the atmosphere and turn it into methane.
Methane generated this way, (being the principal content of natural gas), would allow us to deliver nearly carbon-free fossil fuels to you and people in your biome, and everyone wins.
https://ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2024/08/iro...
The newer ones can. Though that's partly my dislike. There's always yet another new technological solution for the various drawbacks. Which often are unproven (e.g. SMRs) and that often results in crazy cost overruns.
Nuclear has a crazy high fixed cost so ideally you still run it continuously.
Now whether it is optimal economically is another question. If you have some sources of energy in your grid that cost per usage (eg fossil fuels), you should rather switch those off than nuclear which costs the same whether you use it or not. But if your grid is almost all nuclear (eg France), you do load following.
Why would that need to be? The full needs need to be taken into account. But that's a TCO calculation, not something to add to the solar cost.
Nuclear energy in Europe tends to be way more expensive than initially budgeted. Resulting in a crazy difference in the kWh cost vs solar/wind. And there's more ways to store "electricity" than just batteries.
I do not see that implication.
Solar and wind is significantly cheaper than nuclear. That doesn't mean it is a replacement. That implies that there's a great way to solve the obvious drawbacks solar and wind have because of the high cost difference, plus speed/time things can be built.
A country needs to figure out their TCO and the energy mix. Which means yeah, the volatility needs to be solved. Which means that there needs to be more than solar/wind. But at the same time, nobody wants to invest in nuclear. It isn't commercially viable. It is important to not have to high electricity prices. Wikipedia has quite a section on the newest nuclear power station in the UK and the kWh cost for consumers at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_.... The cost was initially estimated at £24 per MWh but could now be £92.5.
Nuclear power stations have crazy cost overruns. The initial estimations are far too low (except maybe in China because they have recent experience).
> And if you need to do that then you need either a bunch of alternative on demand sources of energy (UK is using LNG) or some big storage capacity (+overprovision to fill them when it is sunny/windy). Nuclear doesn't need that.
Nuclear doesn't need a backup? UK built nuclear and has LNG. It's not so black and white as you stated.