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The true price of solar is the price to produce reliable, continuous energy. That requires something to smooth out the signal and store the energy, most probably a battery. The solar + battery price is also going down, though not as fast as the solar only piece. But that's the metric we should be following. When that hits $30 per MWh, it'll be game over.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Molten salt batteries?
I remember hearing from Bill Nye about an idea to pump water to lift up pillars during the day to store potential energy, then release those pillars overnight. I wonder if that's being implemented anywhere.
https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?stor...
Slightly off topic... Interesting thing about solar in Utah (maybe everywhere? Not sure about the specifics): Utah gives every land owner pollution credits. They're allowed to pollute X units worth per year or something like that. Depending on certain criteria you're allotted a certain amount of credits. The problem is, these credits are transferable. So if I, for example, don't pollute, I can sell my credits off to…
You're forgetting the 'cap' part of cap-and-trade. The point is minimize the cost of reducing the total amount of greenhouse gas (or whatever) pollution across society. The reason for allowing people to sell their credits is that it reduces the economic cost of reducing pollution. It doesn't matter whether any given individual is polluting more or less, what matters is that total pollution is continually decreasing until we reach safe levels.
The true price of solar is the price to produce reliable, continuous energy. That requires something to smooth out the signal and store the energy, most probably a battery. The solar + battery price is also going down, though not as fast as the solar only piece. But that's the metric we should be following. When that hits $30 per MWh, it'll be game over.
Why can't existing energy infrastructure handle the gaps? Does it take too long to boot up a natural gas plant just for the night? Would still make a huge dent to energy needs and the existing infrastructure already in place.
The internal combustion engine seems to have been milked for all the efficiency our current materials can get out of it, while new materials and economies of scale in solar tech keep pushing prices lower. However, material science could also revolutionize the efficiency of engines and make them cost competitive with solar again. Solar-ification seems to be the trend, but it is not guaranteed.
That is not true. My new 2019 Mustang EcoBoost has 310hp and 350ft/lb of torque (key for acceleration) and is considered an entry-level mid-range vehicle. As recently as the early 2000s anything past 300hp was considered a race car. Advanced software (in modern automatic transmissions for example) and material advancements have made all the difference in the advancement of combustion engines in the past 15 years and…
The internal combustion engine seems to have been milked for all the efficiency our current materials can get out of it, while new materials and economies of scale in solar tech keep pushing prices lower. However, material science could also revolutionize the efficiency of engines and make them cost competitive with solar again. Solar-ification seems to be the trend, but it is not guaranteed.
I doubt it. We've passed peak oil and have resorted to expensive techniques like fracking to collect the scraps. Meanwhile, even if no advances in solar panels occur in the future, the price of power produced by solar will only go down as more panels are added to the grid.
The biggest hurdle now is getting cars with combustion engines off the road and replacing them with electric. I haven't seen much progress made on that front in the past few years.
Note the picture in the article is the Ivanpah concentrated solar thermal power facility in California (near Las Vegas, NV). The article concerns photovoltaic not concentrated solar. I drove by Ivanpah not long ago and it is a site to see, the towers look about as bright as the sun, but my understanding is concentrated solar is not as attractive economically as PV.
The true price of solar is the price to produce reliable, continuous energy. That requires something to smooth out the signal and store the energy, most probably a battery. The solar + battery price is also going down, though not as fast as the solar only piece. But that's the metric we should be following. When that hits $30 per MWh, it'll be game over.
Why can't existing energy infrastructure handle the gaps? Does it take too long to boot up a natural gas plant just for the night? Would still make a huge dent to energy needs and the existing infrastructure already in place.
How much does "existing infrastructure" charge to handle the gaps? This calculation differs wildly from as low as $6 to as high as $15, but I think $12 is the right answer.
So add $12 to solar only as a rough rule of thumb. Note that this $12 still comes with transmission issues, and environmental impact.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Molten salt batteries?
I remember hearing from Bill Nye about an idea to pump water to lift up pillars during the day to store potential energy, then release those pillars overnight. I wonder if that's being implemented anywhere.
https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?stor...
I'm of course a supporter of solar, and I don't want to be "that guy", but is there a strategy for handling solar power at night? In these areas that are mostly solar, how do they store the energy, or do they resort to natural gas or coal or something?