Here is a look at the topic that is not so fan-boy about it.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2015/05/01/why...
I find it fascinating, that, by 2017, there will be areas in Hawaii and Australia, in which you can make an argument that Solar Power is now less expensive that grid power.
What these authors seem to fail to recognize (or highlight) in their criticism - is that these lines are being crossed 10-15 years ahead of time. Nobody expected parity on these edge cases until at least 2025-2030, and we're going to see it in 2016.
And, what they also seem to fail to recognize, is that the curves for solar are going down. This is just the start.
"Deutsche Bank actually predicts that all 50 US states will be at grid parity by 2016 — that’s next year. (Note that it takes several years to build coal, natural gas, or nuclear power plants.)
Deutsche Bank also predicts that ~80% of the global electricity market will be at grid parity by 2017. This is why solar power is scaring coal companies, natural gas companies, and utilities so much, and why you see so many anti-solar myths out there being repeated over and over again… despite being several years out of date."
This article is about whether it makes sense to buy a tesla battery right now. It doesn't matter if solar will be half the cost in five years. If that's the case, just buy it then when the numbers make sense.
Let's say someone wrote an article reviewing a new apartment complex opening in the Tenderloin of SF. If they said that the crime there is terrible so people should look elsewhere, would you be complaining if they didn't provide in-depth projects of potential future crime rates in the same area?
Right now, Germany is charging ahead on solar. Their current peak record is 50.4% of total power from solar, on a sunny midsummer day with low power usage. Meanwhile, all of their neigbouring countries to the east are doing massive overhauls/reconfigurations of their power distribution grids just to be able to supply Germany with enough base power, mainly from nuclear.
From the perspective of watching trends back in 2005, this wasn't supposed to happen until 2025, so it's arriving 10 years early.
There's nothing that would prevent a good storage system + wind + power from supplying 100% of the power requirements reliably. You just need to scale your Storage system to handle the periods in which solar/wind aren't driving power.
Regarding the Germany Scenario - Let's see how much nuclear they are going to require after they add a few Terrawatt-Hours worth of battery storage to their grid.
Finally, commenting on your "so Serious Scientists" - there are a lot of them that have done the calculations and have come to the conclusion that only a solar solution will supply the world with the power it requires so that everyone can have an first-world lifestlye. In particular, check out Nate Lewis's introduction to Solar Energy - https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodca... ,He "provides a beginner's overview of the concepts behind solar energy generation as well as the current state of the art and its potential role in future energy production."
It's eye opening - even nuclear power plants don't stand a chance versus solar (which, to be honest, is just harvesting the output of a really, really, really big fusion generator)
The missing component has always been storage, and Elon has jumpstarted that conversation. The powerall is interesting, the gigafactory is more interesting, but the fact that he realizes Tesla is only going to be a tiny, tiny element of a much larger industrial transition, is, in my mind, the most important part of this story.
Nothing, except for costs. Those are going down and are becoming competitive for many parts of the world, but costs will be prohibitive for some climates for quite a while. For example, if you have lots of snow and strong winds in winter, you may need to have _weeks_ of power storage to get reliable power.
Keeping a grid connection for those cases will help, but if lots of people do this, the price of power in those peak periods may surge a lot as your electricity supplier will have to recoup the costs of keeping its plant on standby year round in a few weeks.
That seems fixable by connecting solar/wind systems over large distances, but we have to work on getting a grid that is fed by thousands of suppliers and in which the direction power flows can vary more.
But yes, I think solar and wind are the future and even the near future, even in the less sunny parts of the world.
And I don't believe we will ever be able to get the whole world up to current western consumption levels. More to the point, we really shouldn't, as current consumption levels in the west are clearly unsustainable.
The northern climates, then, are a challenge for solar, even with lots of storage. Fair point, and something to think about.
But, as to your second point, about how we shouldn't get the whole world up to current western consumption levels - I don't know about you, but I like hot water in the morning, air conditioning on a hot day, clean clothes from the washing machine, baked goods at home, and and a warm house on a cold winters day. I agree that efficiency is important (all of those things can be delivered more efficiently - same value with less energy), but I certainly wouldn't suggest that everyone in the world shouldn't have access to them, and more.
My point about not getting everyone up to western consumption levels isn't mainly about the things you mention. It's more about the use-and-throw-away culture, plus the general inability of people to make stuff themselves. Imagine the impact if people started mending stuff and clothes, cooking their own food, taking the bicycle with a trailer to the local market to do the weekly shopping, etc. Not just on reducing direct and (mainly) indirect energy consumption, but on public health and general happiness levels! There's so much of our energy consumption that doesn't improve our lives in any meaningful way.
Likewise, my Mountain Equipment Co-Op Backpack that I've had for 18 years - I've had that with me every single day for 19 years, it's my laptop case, my tool case, my document holder - In the Amazon Jungle, Luxembourg, and with Network Engineers in London, Dubai and Singapore. I've used the heck out of it - and it's still going strong.
So, I'm totally on board with having a very few things, that you take good care of, and last a long time.
But - this is a separate conversation (somewhat) from energy usage. Heat, Pumping/Processing water, cooling - they all have some physical minimum amounts of power. And even if you are living a hyper-efficient 40 gallons/day life style (Northern California, see http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/04/01/us/water-use-i... ) versus the rest of the world (See: http://www.data360.org/dsg.aspx?Data_Set_Group_Id=757) - there are some physical limits as to how little energy you can use and still maintain a comfortable lifestyle. We can only be efficient so far - eventually we're going to have to find a way to provide lots, and lots, and lots of power to everyone in the world, if they want to live a comfortable lifestyle.
Thankfully, much of that comes from having warm homes, and hot water - something that Solar does an admirable job of providing (bringing it all back to the original thread).
Taking your example - Oakland near Lake Merrit in 17th has some significant crime, but any writer worth their salt taking about it, would compare it to when I lived there, back in 1996-1998, to discuss how far it has come in the last 20 years, and what the general trend is.
Ration decisions rely on perfect knowledge.
If you run the numbers, the battery slightly decreases the payback time for that system to ~7 years vs 7.5 with the panels alone. However, once its paid off, it could save almost $1000 a year if you live in somewhere like Sydney. This does make the big assumption that you store the electricity and use it optimally, but it's not unreasonable.
I would argue that in this case, it's definitely worth buying.
http://www.eevblog.com/2015/03/16/eevblog-724-home-solar-pow...
Chris's main allegation seems to be that you have to have a hell of a lot of cash to even hope to make it worthwhile- and considering it's $5k for the cheapest battery setup, plus anywhere from $5-30k for your panels, I think he's not wrong, no matter what your electricity prices are.
Or cheap financing. Other examples of assets that are extremely useful that can be inexpensively financed would be housing or a car. Why would solar be different?
You can think of it as an investment which will take 5-10 years to mature with a secondary benefit of backup power if the grid goes down. Not everyone can afford it, but that's the nature of investment.
Also in Chris' scenario, he's using America as the model. Electricity costs there are just over half those in Australia.
But the economies break down slightly if you are not paying 10c/kWh for electricity. In Australia we pay more than double that, even taking currency exchange into account.
Also, we have to pay a 70-80c AUD "connection charge" for the privilege of paying them for electricity.
Basically, while prices are falling slightly, they won't forever.
I agree that letting others take the risk early on, and hopefully push the storage price down, is a good move though.
To add more to the energy debate, I haven't seen too many people talk about replacing ships fuel, since that accounts for ~20% of our CO2 pollution, from sources I read a few years back.
Maybe replacing our grid and all grids is a feasible goal which is why companies are tackling it now?
Trucks, ships, and rockets consume a lot of fuel and are horrible polluters. When we can replace perishables fuels with renewables we will finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.
No doubt battery technology is important for the management of the power grid of the future, but at this time the average homeowner should let the big power generation utilities take the risks and bear the costs of perfecting the technology."
cough .. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003 .. cough
Although the author has 'corrected' his numbers, he has not modified his conclusions. Someone who does that is not worth paying attention to.
I would like to read a sober and accurate accurate article on Tesla's powerwall, this one is not.