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Solar power is now the cheapest form of energy in almost 60 countries

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Re: Solar power is now the cheapest form of energy in almost 60 countries

#61

Post by QuercusMax »

thetruepickle wrote: post #33
oppositelock wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Clean power is clean power, regardless of what it's used for. The alternative is to make electricity expensive enough that people ration its usage, which will make us regress economically since the economy is effectively driven by energy. Electric cars are well on their way to becoming mainstream, if that happens, A/C power usage will be insignificant compared to cars, whose charging loads dwarf residential A/C.

If you were to draw a box around a air conditioner and measure the neat heat input/output, you would measure a net heat output. An air condition is a net heating device due to inefficiencies. Even if the power source is clean, excessive air conditioner usage has long term effects of adding heat to the atmosphere. An air conditioner is only one example. How it stacks up against global warming, I don't know, but it is…

I don't think you are correct. Take wind power: You're taking atmospheric energy, which comes from the sun originally, turning it into electricity, then turning that into heat (in the form of AC). You're merely moving the heat energy from the sun around; there's no net increase in heat.

Re: Solar power is now the cheapest form of energy in almost 60 countries

#62

Post by amelius »

floatrock wrote: post #38
amelius wrote: post #18

Question: how many solar panels would you need to power a large steel producing company?

This is a distracting red herring argument and you know it. Solar makes up less than 1% of the US energy supply. No one is saying we power our high-energy industrial consumers until we get up to say 50% renewable with all existing the low-hanging fruit out there. Energy is not an all-or-nothing proposition. You can still use the energy-dense sources where they're the best tool for the job while still decreasing our e…

You are looking for an argument that isn't there. I was asking because someone else brought up the question, and I still think it is interesting to know the answer.

Re: Solar power is now the cheapest form of energy in almost 60 countries

#63

Post by cpncrunch »

blargles wrote: post #6
cpncrunch wrote: post #5

More evidence (as if we needed it) of just how ridiculous Trump's promise to revive the US coal industry is. http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/22/trumps-big-plan-for-the-coal-...

I wouldn't count on Canadian ramp down, most of the coal power stations are in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Alberta's current government has been going on a green binge that most of the residents despise (approval rating for the government are quite low). As for the other provinces, the federal government unilaterally imposed those decisions without consulting the provinces which has caused issues.

Well, if you look at the bar graph, exports of coal from the USA to all the main users has dropped precipitously in 2016, so Alberta isn't going to make a huge difference.

Also, there are a lot of factors behind the decline in coal (particulate pollution, CO2, lowering cost of renewables, etc), so it seems highly unlikely that the downward trend is going to reverse itself.

Re: Solar power is now the cheapest form of energy in almost 60 countries

#64

Post by skybrian »

diafygi wrote: post #15
jgh wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know next to nothing about Solar so pardon my ignorance, but what do you suppose the solar industry is looking for from the software industry?

Thanks for the comment! Gotcha, yes, it does take quite a bit of understanding of the dynamics and incentives of the industry to see how important software is to the industry. Here's a rundown of the problems that software can solve. Front End and User Experience: Customer acquisition costs in the U.S. for distributed solar is extremely high. Think of cleantech sales like the insurance industry 20 years ago. Most of…

What's the selling point for residential rooftop solar versus buying industrial-scale solar from the power company?

Re: Solar power is now the cheapest form of energy in almost 60 countries

#65

Post by nathan_f77 »

amelius wrote: post #18

Question: how many solar panels would you need to power a large steel producing company?

If you just need a lot of heat, then you can use the sunlight directly by focusing it with mirrors:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_furnace

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEvbj3O_yt8

* http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/04/this-s...

Re: Solar power is now the cheapest form of energy in almost 60 countries

#66

Post by jcoffland »

These numbers don't take the cost of storage into account. It doesn't matter how many kilowatts you can produce at noon when you need them at midnight. Simply taking kilowatt hours produced and multiplying by the average market price is not a good estimate of the value produced by solar. Sure those numbers work now while solar is only providing a fraction of the total energy being consumed but if solar were to become the dominate energy source we would have to solve the storage problem and this will greatly increase production costs. Solar is still more expensive than the alternatives when considered at realistic scales.

Re: Solar power is now the cheapest form of energy in almost 60 countries

#67

Post by justin66 »

diafygi wrote: post #2

I work in solar, and here's my favorite climate change joke: "They say we won't act until it's too late... Luckily, it's too late!" Solar is no longer an experimental thing, and the industry is now focused on scaling. How can we deploy more solar faster? It's ridiculous how cheap panels have gotten, but a significant amount of the cost savings in the past few years is coming from soft cost (logistics, overhead, engin…

> What would convince you to start a cleantech software (i.e. cleanweb) startup?

Hire remote workers and advertise salaries for the positions you're trying to fill.

Re: Solar power is now the cheapest form of energy in almost 60 countries

#68

Post by diafygi »

skybrian wrote: post #64
diafygi wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the comment! Gotcha, yes, it does take quite a bit of understanding of the dynamics and incentives of the industry to see how important software is to the industry. Here's a rundown of the problems that software can solve. Front End and User Experience: Customer acquisition costs in the U.S. for distributed solar is extremely high. Think of cleantech sales like the insurance industry 20 years ago. Most of…

What's the selling point for residential rooftop solar versus buying industrial-scale solar from the power company?

Appetite, mostly.

Utilities want stable production so have been slow to embrace renewables at high penetration (even though the economics are there). The exception the U.S. is Texas with over 50% wind at night, because the utilities don't have much say in the production portfolio (it's heavily deregulated).

For distributed rooftop solar, consumers are much more swayed by the savings, so many solar companies find it easier to sell hundreds of systems directly to consumers instead of one system to utilities.

This is changing slowly, because the economics are getting too much for utilities to ignore, but unfortunately federal rules like the clean power plan will likely be made toothless soon, so many utilities will continue to be stuck in the mud.

Re: Solar power is now the cheapest form of energy in almost 60 countries

#69

Post by greglindahl »

skybrian wrote: post #64
diafygi wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the comment! Gotcha, yes, it does take quite a bit of understanding of the dynamics and incentives of the industry to see how important software is to the industry. Here's a rundown of the problems that software can solve. Front End and User Experience: Customer acquisition costs in the U.S. for distributed solar is extremely high. Think of cleantech sales like the insurance industry 20 years ago. Most of…

What's the selling point for residential rooftop solar versus buying industrial-scale solar from the power company?

Retail vs. wholesale pricing is one reason -- depending on how the rules are set in your part of the country, you can get a considerable boost in cost-effectiveness by having all of the energy you generate with a residential system save you paying retail for power from the grid.

Re: Solar power is now the cheapest form of energy in almost 60 countries

#70

Post by greglindahl »

iamgopal wrote: post #22
diafygi wrote: post #2

I work in solar, and here's my favorite climate change joke: "They say we won't act until it's too late... Luckily, it's too late!" Solar is no longer an experimental thing, and the industry is now focused on scaling. How can we deploy more solar faster? It's ridiculous how cheap panels have gotten, but a significant amount of the cost savings in the past few years is coming from soft cost (logistics, overhead, engin…

Err...then what elon musk is doing exactly? Is not he dreaming of wiping out whole big power plant industry from face of earth using only solar power. What more you are asking for ?

In addition to rooftop solar and residential-sized batteries, Tesla also sells grid-scale battery solutions. In fact, they say that 80%+ of their non-car battery business is grid-scale solutions, either utilities or large industrial users.
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