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The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months

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Re: The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months

#331

Post by CyberDildonics »

dragontamer wrote: post #138
krschultz wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Payback of 6 years with the new cost, even for your low electric bill.

Unlikely. Solar Panels don't replace all of your electricity costs. Naturally, you'll still run your refrigerator at night, right? And during the day, when you have peak-solar energy, you'll be at work and won't be taking advantage of it. You'll recoup some of the costs through net-metering, but you usually buy back at wholesale prices and not at retail prices. Finally, I'd expect utility companies to change their pr…

> you'll be at work and won't be taking advantage of it.

Most people don't work in the dark

Re: The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months

#332

Post by eru »

S_A_P wrote: post #229
coryfklein wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And that is why it is a huge problem for the power companies It is a problem, but not necessarily in the way you may be thinking. Peak residential power usage is in the evening when solar isn't available. Power companies therefore end up spinning down coal and natural gas during peak solar, then just spinning them back up again as the sun begins to set. [1] So you haven't replaced the coal and natural gas plants, y…

Can validate. The problem with electricity is that there is no large scale storage like there is for other forms of energy like NG and Crude. Until someone comes along and figures out how to store electricity, this will continue to cause grief to power companies. Power plants are really just options, if the price per kWh is at a certain point then it makes sense to spin up or take down a plant and generate power. Add…

Instead (or rather in addition) to storing power, we can also get better at coordinating demand.

There are already programs for industrial users to get electricity for much cheaper, if they can tolerate power cuts during peak demand. Those programs will become more and more rewarding to join and extend and automate as supply gets spikier.

Re: The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months

#334

Post by maxerickson »

ssmoot wrote: post #294
jobu wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When storing a kWh costs $0.10, and there's also adaptive pricing to match supply and demand better, these problems will melt away. If the math and assumptions in this article are correct, then that's exactly the (wholesale) price point Tesla is aiming for with the Powerwall: http://cleantechnica.com/2015/05/09/tesla-powerwall-powerblo... There are a couple other (not yet released) energy storage solutions mentione…

It'd take over 1 BILLION Powerwalls to store half the daily usage in the US (using old usage numbers off Wikipedia). I wonder if there's enough raw materials to make that realistic. And how to you manage recycling, repair, replacement, end-of-life concerns for all those batteries on that scale? Not asking a sarcastic hypothetical. Genuinely curious. It's hard to wrap my head around numbers that big. For reference I u…

Residential is only about 1/3 of consumption. I guess at least industrial won't be using Powerwalls to store backup power.

https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/browser/#/topic/5?agg=0...

It might not be possible to make all those batteries using lithium, but that doesn't really matter for stationary batteries.

Re: The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months

#335

Post by eru »

derefr wrote: post #275
pc2g4d wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Price electricity differently through the day according to its scarcity and people might eventually adjust their routines to reduce evening usage.

That seems backwards. The aggregate preferences and habits of humans should be seen as an incentivizing force for the creations of new technologies, not the other way around.

It's a two way street.

Aggregating the preferences via price will drive new technology and business models.

Re: The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months

#336

Post by eru »

epistasis wrote: post #317
derefr wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems backwards. The aggregate preferences and habits of humans should be seen as an incentivizing force for the creations of new technologies, not the other way around.

That's like saying market economies are backwards. We need to match resources to people somehow, and markets are a very popular way to do that fairly and efficiently. I'm not saying that markets should be unchecked but it's very strange to see such naked Marxism on this site.

I don't see any Marxism there. Marxism isn't just anti-market. It's a complex ideology.

Re: The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months

#337

Post by eru »

epistasis wrote: post #225
coryfklein wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And that is why it is a huge problem for the power companies It is a problem, but not necessarily in the way you may be thinking. Peak residential power usage is in the evening when solar isn't available. Power companies therefore end up spinning down coal and natural gas during peak solar, then just spinning them back up again as the sun begins to set. [1] So you haven't replaced the coal and natural gas plants, y…

Being a manager at a large power company for 30 years is both an advantage and a disadvantage. For the past 30 years, the energy industry has changed incredibly slowly, so ones expectations of what is possible in the way of innovation is far far lower than it should be. The "duck curve" that your friend is referring to will be solved in a variety of ways, from wind to storage to HVDC interconnects to the rest of the…

Nuclear could be made cheaper (even with Uranium) by updating regulations.

Fission plants are held to a much higher standards of safety in terms of eg decrease in quality adjusted life-years per Gigawatthour than any other form of producing electricity. Even solar.

(Though most deaths and injuries from solar come from people slipping off their roof when installing residential capacity. If memory serves right.)

Re: The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months

#338

Post by eru »

ssmoot wrote: post #330
toomuchtodo wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think about if Tesla vehicles were used instead of Powerwalls: https://i.imgur.com/oLBNeW4.png | https://i.imgur.com/pectzXn.png

Your car isn't at the house while solar is being produced though for many/most people right? This seems unrealistic.

A lot of cars sit in carparks during the day.

Re: The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months

#339

Post by eru »

manishsharan wrote: post #268
coryfklein wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And that is why it is a huge problem for the power companies It is a problem, but not necessarily in the way you may be thinking. Peak residential power usage is in the evening when solar isn't available. Power companies therefore end up spinning down coal and natural gas during peak solar, then just spinning them back up again as the sun begins to set. [1] So you haven't replaced the coal and natural gas plants, y…

I am clearly out of my depth here but what if we take the newly daytime unused/idle coal power or natural gas power for other endeavors like sea water desalination or just pumping up water into a watertower when daytime energy cost is low and adding increased hydro capacity in the evening when the energy cost is higher?

What you are talking about is demand shaping.

It's already happening, but I predict we'll see more of that in the future.

Eg lots of industrial applications like smelting aluminium can do with short-ish power cuts. In return, they get a steep rebate on their electricity bill.

Re: The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months

#340

Post by femto »

Analemma_ wrote: post #283
amenghra wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some countries store energy by pumping water up a dam. Seems efficient.

It's very efficient and it's a great solution overall; the only problem is there are only so many dams we can build, since each one requires drowning a valley.

Though you need less volume if it is only being used for overnight storage rather than long term rainfall storage. For example, to store enough energy to produce 1GW for 1 day (~10^5 seconds) with a head of 100m, use Pt=mgh to work out you need to store:

m = 10^9.10^5 / (10*100) = 10^11 kg of water. = 10^8 m^3

This is not a big reserviour, being 1/20th of the size of Warragamba dam's reserviour (in Sydney). One valley could provide 20GW for a day. Compare that with demand for where I live:

http://www.aemo.com.au/Electricity/Data/Price-and-Demand/Pri...

Peak demand for 7.5M people is 9GW, with an average closer to 7GW. One valley could provide overnight storage for over 20 million people, with first world demands (all of Australia). The limitation is transmission and generating/pumping capacity, rather than storage volume.

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