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Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

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Re: Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

#311

Post by cgdcraig »

Jedd wrote: post #226
thinkcontext wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need 1:1 storage for solar production but it is a real problem. Germany and California are both facing the problem of the solar "duck curve", that is, high solar production during the day when demand is low and high electric usage at the end of the day when people get home from work as solar production is tailing off. More than batteries they utilize gas peaker plants, inefficient, dirty and expensive plant…

> You don't need 1:1 storage for solar production... You seem to be referring exclusively to solar photovoltaic. Solar thermal generation has quite a different, evening-friendly, distribution curve.

Ish, solar thermal has its own set of problems and limitations; they don't work during cloudy weather and the storing the thermal energy is tricky because you need a lot of high quality thermal mass

Re: Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

#312

Post by ehnto »

inputcoffee wrote: post #153
jartelt wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment gets made in every single solar article put on HN. The true price of solar is what the market is willing to pay for it. If the solar was ruining the grid or was way more expensive than what it seems, we would not keep seeing solar installed at this pace and at these costs. We need to get out of the mindset that all power generators need to produce a steady amount of power 24/7. A flexible grid made of ma…

You misunderstand the sense of "true" here. The point is not that the "true" price in the sense of what it ought to be. It is the "true" price in the sense of what the market is actually paying for the service. When people put out the number $23, they compare it with the cost of power and wonder why, if it is so much lower, it doesn't already swamp the current solution. So the purpose of the comment is to explain tha…

You don't see it swamping thr competition for a bunch of reasons. You need capital in order to install solar, you also need to own your home and not be renting. A landlord has little incentive to install solar.

A state sized utility solar installation is non-trivial and that's why you don't yet see utilities providing solar themselves to the grid, and even if they did the price would be different.

So you don't see everyone using it because it's expensive to get started and because utility providers have yet to build solar plants capable of supplying a state. I don't think anyone has.

In time though, a combination of rooftop solar and utility scale battery/renewable systems to cover baseline load will probably be how we power the nation. Perhaps some gas or other generators will stick around to provide the baseline.

Re: Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

#313

Post by nikdaheratik »

inputcoffee wrote: post #71

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.

From the article:

“Three years ago you almost never saw batteries as part of a new solar or wind project,” Naam said. “In 2018, we’ve seen battery storage frequently show up as part of these bids. Energy storage is becoming the new normal with solar bids.”

So they are already working on it with some of the projects at least, and there's no reason to think they won't scale up and start becoming competitive before too long.

Re: Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

#314

Post by cgdcraig »

dragontamer wrote: post #216
rwcarlsen wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you do need storage and/or backup providers because not having air-conditioning run on cloudy days is not an option.

Cloudy days are usually cooler, and you still generate solar power on those days. True, you still need an alternative source of energy in those cases. But realistically, cloudy days reduces the sun, which usually leads to lower temperatures. --------------- Personally, I think that cold-energy storage (aka: run air-conditioners on overdrive to chill water. Then use chilled-water to cool your house) is the ideal. http…

Cold energy storage has always had the problem of utilization and capital cost. You need to buy the storage system and then that storage system may only be useful for 3-6 months of the year during 6 hours of the day. From a thermal efficiency perspective they're great but in general they get offed by the economics. For the price you'd end up gettinf better value off a battery storage system to do load shifting.

Re: Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

#316

Post by Kliment »

sokoloff wrote: post #241
matt4077 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's no different than data links, which have mostly worked without political interference.

In general, your data does not have value to me to steal it. Not so with power.

Data has plenty of value, and is often copied without authorization, but putting that aside, nobody would be stealing anyone's power. It gets produced in one region, used locally, and excess sold to the next region, where the same thing repeats. You already paid for the power entering your region so you can't steal it and you'll sell it on if it makes sense to do so. This is already how gas pipelines work for example. It's shit with gas because the flow is one way and shutting off the gas is often done for political reasons but with solar you'd have your own production ramping up a few hours later if the neighboring region either shuts it off or uses a higher percentage of what they produced. Either way the metering happens at regional boundaries so there's no stealing involved - both sides of the meter need to be in agreement before any power flows.

Re: Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

#317

Post by [deleted] »

paulddraper wrote: post #76
tombert wrote: post #69

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?

(1) Ideal: Big batteries (2) Pragmatic: Use on-demand power sources at night: fossil, nuclear, etc. Just as big as the storage issue, though, is distribution. Available solar power in the American Northwest is laughable compared to the American Southwest.

[deleted]

Re: Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

#318

Post by Kliment »

mrfusion wrote: post #175
neworbit wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your username suggests an option, but I shall hope you are focused on solar at the moment

Just solar but rethinking things into something you can start using without installing.

There's a local cooperative here in Germany (named Energiegewinner if you want to look them up) that acts as a facilitator for this. They're approaching this from all directions:

1. You can buy power from them at normal power company retail rates. You get power from the grid that they buy at wholesale rates, profits go into building out solar.

2. You can become a member by buying any number of shares. Capital gets used to fund solar buildout, profits go back to each shareholder. Each shareholder has one vote regardless of the number of shares they own to prevent buyouts.

3. You can rent them your roof space. You get paid, other people put cells on. You get reduced-rate power from your own roof's cells, excess goes to grid.

4. You can buy solar panels and rent them to the cooperative. For every large installation they make, they'll ask people to buy panels. You get paid a part of what the panels produce for 20 years, at a guaranteed rate, and at market rate after that.

5. You can have them act as a solar installer and set up panels on your property for your own use. They'll buy excess production and sell you grid power when you have insufficient production. In this case you finance the install yourself.

They have excellent economies of scale from standardizing installs and they allow people with capital but no roof space to connect with people with no capital but usable roof space. Because retail rates for power are high and they've centralized installation costs they're making an okay profit. Maybe something like this can work where you are?

Re: Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

#319

Post by opo »

mrb wrote: post #294
opo wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A weekly chart like that isn’t really granular enough to show that. This chart is a few years old, but it shows that the peak demand was in the early evening: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=830 The peak demand will also vary at different locations and times of year. As the wikipedia article states: >...It depends on the demography, the economy, the weather, the climate, the season, the day of the wee…

Your chart is even less granular than mine (hourly vs half-hourly), and it has a timezone conversion error. The source they use (ISO New England - https://www.iso-ne.com/isoexpress/ ) shows the peak of a typical October month to be between 3pm-4pm and not 6pm-7pm: https://i.imgur.com/5rWlnVO.png (the 3 hours difference is the timezone offset between east coast and west coast.) My chart, if you look closely, has a gra…

>Your chart is even less granular than mine (hourly vs half-hourly),

I think you might have posted the wrong image to imgur. You linked to: https://imgur.com/wTIt5tg

I am not sure how you are getting half hour indications on that weekly chart.

>...ISO New England data more clearly shows the peak to be between 2pm-3pm for a typical summer month:

Yes, that was why wikipedia says:

>...It depends on the demography, the economy, the weather, the climate, the season, the day of the week and other factors. For example, in industrialised regions of China or Germany, the peak demands mostly occur in day time, while solar photovoltaic system can help reduce it. However, in more service based economy such as Australia, the daily peak demands often occur in the late afternoon to early evening time (e.g. 4pm to 8pm).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_demand

The EIA web site was talking about October, not the summer months when air conditioning would be used.

As another data point, With PG&E pricing, the most expensive hours are noon to six:

https://www.pge.com/en_US/business/rate-plans/rate-plans/tim...

I think my point is that statements like "hat matters is peak grid usage (ie. residential+industrial) and it is actually mid-day—perfect for solar." can over simplify the problem. The amount of demand will vary in different areas at different times of the year and even when it is raining, there will still be demand.

Re: Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

#320

Post by Tepix »

volkl48 wrote: post #276
criddell wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've thought about adding solar to my home and can't see any reason why I should even consider a battery for storage. I'm in Texas and so I get plenty of sun and my peak energy demand happens to coincide with that sunlight (due to HVAC). Why should I worry about a complete solution?

The main reason I would consider a battery is for disaster recovery purposes. Being from the suburban NYC metro area, we've had multiple, multi-week power outages in the past decade. We have a moderate sized portable generator, but running off that for weeks becomes a very unpleasant experience. Certainly far better than not having power, but unpleasant. Driving 2 hours away to the nearest place we knew had unlimited…

> we've had multiple, multi-week power outages in the past decade

That's a crass state, what causes these outages? Is it a investment backlog of the power grid?

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