They are not.
Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid
221–230 of 432 posts
Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid
#222I’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…
You are correct but will talk about Australia.
Australian rooftop solar is less than half the US prices. A 6.6 kW system installed retails at(AUD 2700 /USD 1870) and yet we have some of the most expensive electricity in the world at USD 0.25 per kW-h. In many places, 1 in 3 houses having rooftop solar. We have over 9GW currently installed and increasing at 1.5GW per year.
All this new production is taking market share from existing generators. And if you add storage, the utilities are in trouble. Therefore, it would seem to make sense if the utilities own assets and continue to sell electricity to clients. But, it is not.
The three big electricity companies are vertically integrated. They own both generation and energy retailing. (aka Gen-tailers). If they started owning small scale PV they would be faced with devaluing their existing generation assets. Or worst the grid (poles and wires). As long as the gen-tailers can pretend that solar is "marginal" they can produce huge profits from worthless assets. Over the next few years, the companies will shut their old coal plants and go all-in on solar but the longer they delay it the more profits they make.
Eg the NSW Government sold an old coal-fired generator for $1 million, the company who purchased it revalued it for $720 million a few years later. Electricity prices rose and the Federal government removed a Carbon Tax making the plant highly profitable.
The Australian electricity market is broken and so people make rational decisions to use rooftop solar. But if the energy companies moved into rooftop solar, it would cause them problems in operations and Balance Sheet problems.
Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
So the thing is the economics of rooftop solar are a lot different than power station solar. The DOE has public data on how much utilities pay for electricity. In a market like mine, Southern California Edison isn’t an electricity generator, they buy power at about $0.02/kWh but then they sell it to the residential consumer for up to $0.32. So clearly it’s a very different calculation. Regardless of that generators a…
> they buy power at about $0.02/kWh but then they sell it to the residential consumer for up to $0.32. This is the most important factor in the whole discussion. The electricity retailers, which consist of a call centre and a two billing systems, accounts payable and accounts receivable, buy electricity for virtually nothing, $1.00 buys them 50kWh, that's about double what my houses uses per day with two adults. edit…
Wholesale price is definitely not “zero”. It fluctuates wildly, and if a retailer is exposed to the real time market at the flow date, they can expect to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars. RTM prices can easily spike from $50/MW to $8000/MW in an instant if a generator trips. So, retailers buy hedges to cover this risk, at price premiums that reflect the inherent exposure insurance.
Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid
#224Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid
#225> 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 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've got some bad news for you about what's going to happen to the economy when we have 3° C of warming because we didn't do this fast enough.
Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
So it works double as another layer of isolation. Seems obvious but I had not considered that before, interesting.
It's definitely one of those makes-sense-in-retrospect kind of things. I'm just surprised it never came up as a point in favor of the systems when discussing with the various solar sales reps- we spoke to several different companies, and not one mentioned it.
It's probably difficult to estimate these benefits. You don't want to come off as making shady (sorry) promises when selling something that expensive.
Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
> they buy power at about $0.02/kWh but then they sell it to the residential consumer for up to $0.32. This is the most important factor in the whole discussion. The electricity retailers, which consist of a call centre and a two billing systems, accounts payable and accounts receivable, buy electricity for virtually nothing, $1.00 buys them 50kWh, that's about double what my houses uses per day with two adults. edit…
Wholesale price is definitely not “zero”. It fluctuates wildly, and if a retailer is exposed to the real time market at the flow date, they can expect to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars. RTM prices can easily spike from $50/MW to $8000/MW in an instant if a generator trips. So, retailers buy hedges to cover this risk, at price premiums that reflect the inherent exposure insurance.
But what’s happening more and more now is that batteries are arbitraging those rate spike, and ultimately those spikes will disappear entirely.
Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid
#228I’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…
I'm a big fan of that study.
It suggests there may be an opportunity for a company to push rooftop solar for big strip malls and other large footprint single owner buildings - they aren't utility scale, but the install efficiencies make them pretty competitive.
The incentives would be tricky, since the owners are less likely to be paying for utilities than the leaseholders...
Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid
#229Good news: non-carbon energy sources will, faster than most of the world currently thinks, force carbon energy sources off the market. This has already started to happen with coal. Bad news: Well the Left may lament the fact that it will not be due to any change of heart or international cooperation, it will just be due to mercenary calculations of cost, and technology. But all of us have to consider what will (not m…
Is that actually true? I just can't believe it is, when there is no backup source of power for overcast/windless days. can you show that this is actually accurate? I can see where places with bad power supply currently, with the rolling brown and blackouts, might move to renewables, especially if 1st world countries subsidize it. "Oh, these are flaky and power is intermittent? So business as usual?" But is coal reall…
The turning point is quite rapid. I like to get my updates on renewable energy from oilprice.com, because I don't think it has the "rah-rah" excessively optimistic bias on renewables that some other online new sources can. If "oilprice.com" tells you renewable is starting to displace coal, it is likely true.
https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Renewable-Energy/Ren...
Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I'm a big fan of that study. It suggests there may be an opportunity for a company to push rooftop solar for big strip malls and other large footprint single owner buildings - they aren't utility scale, but the install efficiencies make them pretty competitive. The incentives would be tricky, since the owners are less likely to be paying for utilities than the leaseholders...
If a moderate sized location goes out of business would solar panels have decent resale value?