Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid • Hacker News Board

Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid

#201

Post by ajross » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 9:32 PM UTC

rossdavidh wrote: post #180

ajross wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cynically: to first approximation no one lives in Saudi Arabia. Even if it devolves to a Venezuela style anarchy, we'd still be more worried about Venezuela. Practically: Saudia Arabia is an oil source. Petroleum fuels are going to be with us forever. It's coal (first) and gas (eventually) which are being displaced by better electrical generation options. But if you want to fly an airplane, you really can't replace t…

You _can_, certainly. But I still have the suspicion that a good chunk of the political Left will be dissatisfied that the carbon emissions will plummet without any changes in political beliefs or policies being involved. As for Saudi Arabia: there's a lot more people living there, than did before there was oil. Yes, we will still use _some_ oil for many years, but if the oil revenue drops to, say, 50% of current lev…

> But I still have the suspicion that a good chunk of the political Left will be dissatisfied

Only in the somewhat specious sense that a good chunk of the political X is continually dissatisfied, for all values of X.

I'm on that mythical "Left" you're talking about. No one would be happier to see carbon emissions plumet than I, and for any reason. That doesn't mean that I don't think some kind of regulation is inappropriate or unnecessary, in particular because I don't see the revolution in the linked article as inevitable as we might hope.

Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid

#202

Post by caoilte » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 9:33 PM UTC

mattferderer wrote: post #120

I'm curious about the Mark Jacobson quote. Is getting rid of coal & natural gas possible without nuclear? I don't see how solar & wind can do it by themselves, even if you take the battery part out of the equation.

Why not? We have enough sunshine and wind to power the Earth many times over. If you take the battery part out of the equation there is no advantage left for nuclear and many many disadvantages,

- is hugely expensive to design, build and run (requiring eye watering government guarantees that encourage builders/operators to cut corners).

- takes longer than the climate can tolerate to build

- needs water for cooling that access to will be problematic once construction is finally complete (France is struggling to run it's reactors already, Britains will be under water in 50 years)

- byproducts we cannot deal with and haven't even figured out how to safely bury.

- insane de-commissioning costs that everyone pretends don't exist

- small risk that there will be an accident and Hollywood will make a shockingly inaccurate hit tv series about it

- huge geo-political risk that constrains use to countries that are not going to be de-stablised by global warming in 60 year life time of plant (name one...)

- build more than a few and we will struggle to supply the uranium (it's surprisingly hard to find in high enough concentrations for economic strip-mining)

And now that batteries are becoming affordable the last argument left for Nuclear is evaporating.

Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid

#203

Post by robocat » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 9:34 PM UTC

rmuesi wrote: post #84

I’ve always wondered about something, yet have never found anyone discussing it online. So maybe some smart people can help me out: a lot of people install solar on their rooftops. Much of the time this is done with the assumption that it will pay off financially because energy prices are currently at a certain rate and will continue to rise. But here’s my question: If its financially advantageous to install solar on…

Simply too expensive, and large scale can undercut: "We know that residential rooftop solar is much more expensive than grid-scale renewables. At least 4 times more expensive, according to Lazard estimates.", from "Does Rooftop Solar Help the Distribution System?" https://energyathaas.wordpress.com/2018/06/25/does-rooftop-s...

Also the home owner takes on the financial risk of the install. If a utility installed on homes they would need to have a lien on the home, legal costs, marketing costs, and they would still have other risks of default.

The article mentions one place it does make sense: "Cohen and company find capacity benefits exceeding $60 kilowatt-year in the top 1% of all locations. This is about 10 times what they find for average capacity benefits. It makes sense that, for example, certain circuits are very close to needing a capacity upgrade, and that benefits would be large in these places."

Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid

#204

Post by jillesvangurp » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 9:35 PM UTC

IshKebab wrote: post #169

> Last month, the energy research firm Wood Mackenzie estimated the cost to decarbonize the U.S. grid alone would be $4.5 trillion So 20% of the US military budget for 40 years. Doesn't sound impossible.

How independent are they? This number sounds ridiculously high. The right question to ask would be how expensive it would be to keep coal/gas going when it is clearly more expensive than just about anything else, even right now. It's a reason coal plants have been closing for several years now; and even some gas plants are shutting down way ahead of their projected end of life. They're just not viable anymore. It's not about the cost of decarbonizing but the cost of not doing that. There's a point where putting enough solar and batteries in your house gets cheaper than consuming coal produced electricity.

Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid

#205

Post by pjc50 » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 9:37 PM UTC

rmuesi wrote: post #84

I’ve always wondered about something, yet have never found anyone discussing it online. So maybe some smart people can help me out: a lot of people install solar on their rooftops. Much of the time this is done with the assumption that it will pay off financially because energy prices are currently at a certain rate and will continue to rise. But here’s my question: If its financially advantageous to install solar on…

In my case it was an easy decision: at the time I installed the panels I locked in 20 years of subsidy-fixed pricing for the electricity they produce.

But I'm up here at 56 degrees north, and the question is not so much power during the night as during the winter. I need the grid, and so does everyone else, and the stabilization services that go along with it. So that sets a price floor.

Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid

#206

Post by nexuist » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 9:39 PM UTC

torpfactory wrote: post #187

nexuist wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Localizing our entire energy dependence has got to have some serious national security benefits It would also cause extreme instability by shooting up unemployment, destroying large corporations that offered valuable careers with good benefits, and exacerbate polarization between those who believe in man made climate change and those who don't. Don't get me wrong - I think energy independence is the way to go - but…

I imagine that it would take a fair number of new workers to help burn that $4.5T. They wouldn't work for oil companies, but they might still be involved in energy production. Besides, it's not like we have some choice here. We can either decarbonize our world economy or perish. I'm awful sick of the 'but the jobs' arguments. We don't need jobs in outdated, polluting industries. That is outright theft of healthy ecos…

>We don't need jobs in outdated, polluting industries

Man, we don't need jobs at all. I want to live in an all-renewable automated world. But I realize that's not realistic in the short term, and it will take decades - perhaps even another century - until that desire is realized. Hence my reservation.

Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid

#207

Post by colechristensen » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 9:39 PM UTC

ourmandave wrote: post #81

Meanwhile in Iowa, Mid American Energy is well on their way to 100% renewal by 2021 with an endless array of wind farms. Their final phase of the project started in 2018 with a $922M investment. Iowa Public Radio toured one of the windmills back in January. https://www.iowapublicradio.org/post/skyscrapers-fields-wind...

I wonder how people would feel about ethanol plants fired by wind farms.

The one built near my family home is coal fired and the idea of growing crops to be turned into car fuel is ... less appealing.

But if you had electric or ethanol powered tractors growing biomass to ferment and distill into more ethanol with a plant fired with wind, maybe there are some different environmental considerations there.

For one it would be carbon negative or neutral if you considered that the fuel is all going to be returned to the atmosphere.

Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid

#208

Post by haroldp » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 9:39 PM UTC

DubiousPusher wrote: post #70

> the cost to decarbonize the U.S. grid alone would be $4.5 trillion They make this sound like a lot but that strikes me as actually pretty cheap. I don't think that number can be right. Edit: I mean seriously think. The F-35 has cost us 1.45 trillion dollars so far. That's roughly 1/3 of the price they're asserting here. Localizing our entire energy dependence has got to have some serious national security benefits.…

> Localizing our entire energy dependence has got to have some serious national security benefits.

It's estimated that we spent $6.8T between 1976 and 2007 on the US policy of always maintaining an Aircraft Carrier on station all day every day in the Persian Gulf, to insure the free flow of oil.

https://offiziere.ch/wp-content/uploads/US-miiltary-cost-of-...

Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid

#209

Post by PuffinBlue » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 9:41 PM UTC

thinkcontext wrote: post #191

rmuesi wrote: post #84

I’ve always wondered about something, yet have never found anyone discussing it online. So maybe some smart people can help me out: a lot of people install solar on their rooftops. Much of the time this is done with the assumption that it will pay off financially because energy prices are currently at a certain rate and will continue to rise. But here’s my question: If its financially advantageous to install solar on…

Can't believe all the comments so far and no one feels the need to justify their opinion with numbers. Drives me nuts. You are correct, according to National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL), rooftop solar is over twice as expensive as utility scale solar[0]. The NREL estimate is helpful in that it details the components of the cost. And, as you would expect, the hardware and labor costs are lower for utility scale becaus…

that report puts a 76,800 square foot foundation (so perhaps triple that for total land usage) at $250,000. Is that anywhere remotely in the realms of reality for an area that might actually get permitted and connected at the other assumptions they've made?

It wouldn't be in my country (UK).

Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid

#210

Post by tathougies » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 9:42 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #128

tathougies wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my area, the energy is generated by another company for 0.02/kwh, but PG&E charges a 'transmission charge' for use of their lines that brings the per-kwh price to their generation price. Okay, you think that that's their right, and transmission does cost money. However, if you decide to use their generation (dirty of course), they conveniently 'waive' the transmission fee. I spoke with my legislator about this and…

Get your neighbors to all talk though and things will change.

Meh, I'm moving out of the area, but if I weren't, I certainly would. I have mentioned it to a lot of people at church though, and they seemed to not care. Apathy is unfortunately all too common.