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

#241

Post by astanway » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 10:30 PM UTC

zaroth wrote: post #227

astanway wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Utility scale batteries are not yet a proven and deployed technology. Not to say there aren’t successes - Aliso Canyon and the AEMO installation in Australia have both been very well received by their respective system operators. But there’s a very long way to go before batteries will exist as a viable, general alternative to natural gas peaker plants.

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

#242

Post by elihu » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 10:30 PM UTC

StreamBright wrote: post #219

kragen wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amount of lithium available is not a limitation for several orders of magnitude more (at least until well after Kardashev Type 1), and the lithium is not consumed when you have to replace the batteries, a cost which is already included in these calculations.

Might be. Other sources claim it to be otherwise. "As of January 2010, the USGS estimated world total lithium reserves at 9.9×109 kg (economically extractable now) and identified lithium resources at 2.55 × 1010 kg (potentially economic). Most of the identified resources are in Bolivia and Chile (9 × 109 kg and 7.5 × 109 kg, respectively). World lithium production is currently on the order of 2 × 107 kg per year. If…

Another option would be to electrify the highways so that long-range batteries are rarely needed.

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

#243

Post by zizee » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 10:31 PM UTC

aussiegreenie wrote: post #222

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…

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 shar…

> A 6.6 kW system installed retails at(AUD 2700 /USD 1870)

That sounds too little to pay for a decent quality system which will last 20 years. For decent components, from a reputable supplier you'd be expecting to pay around twice that.

You're also discounting the need to have power after the sun goes down. If you compare roof top to mains, you really need to include the cost of a battery large enough to go off grid, which is at least another $10k, and quite a bit more if you don't want to have any lifestyle changes.

I have a 5.5 kw roof system that I am very happy with, but I won't pretend that it replaces mains power.

I also expect to be keeping mains for a long time yet. I have a desire to make my next car electric. I used to think that the grid would go into a death spiral inches batteries got cheap enough. Now I think electric cars will save it.

I think solar and storage are the future and really want that future now, and I think you do as well. But you do it a disservice by overselling the case.

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

#244

Post by zizee » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 10:33 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #174

johngalt wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are underestimating how much of your electricity bill is going to capital costs. It's possible that the cost of electricity consumption will drop, but only if it replaced with other costs to subsidize the cost of the various electrical infrastructure. Installing a small amount of solar to offset personal usage at the hottest part of the day is much different than ensuring that varied demands can be met across an…

Rooftop solar makes sense because cost of land is a sunk cost, and thus doesn't have to factor into the total cost of the install. This assumes that solar makes sense for the area though, some houses are shaded too much.

I think you'd be surprised how cheap land can get outside of cities.

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

#245

Post by geegoo » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 10:34 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…

I worked for a electric meter data analysis company that worked with local government owned utility companies. This is a complicated issue with a lot of potential reasons. My professional opinion is that yes, it often is cheaper to for municipalities to install solar in the long run, but there is a lot of uncertainty about the technology and the fragility of the proposed systems.

Depending on the energy generation, utility companies have long term fuel contracts which often work against long term investment in renewable energy generation. Local tax payers will have to pay for the deficit or potential contract penalties if the city reduces their energy generation requirements while still having a fuel purchase contract. That coupled with the investment cost of installing solar/wind generation infrastructure is a hard sell for elected officials who depend on short term impact to maintain their constituents happy.

There is also the question of legality, as some states have strict laws on who can generate electricity and who can store it/sell it. Typically the smaller and less progressive the region, the more likely they are to go towards the path of least resistance and just let the homeowner brunt the cost.

So some consumers install it for the long term gains without placing any bets on how local utilities will react, while others might do it as an investment on the property itself. These are just a few scenarios (without talking about commercial energy consumption) out of the hundreds being discussed.

It is becoming more common now for utilities to have energy surplus buy back programs that reduce the energy cost to the end user while they wait for the industry to progress past their latest infrastructure investment (a lot of local municipalities had huge infrastructure investments in the 90s / early 2000s that they are still paying for)

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

#246

Post by floatrock » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 10:36 PM UTC

brownbat wrote: post #228

thinkcontext wrote: post #191

Earlier 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...

https://www.wundercapital.com

The problem with commercial solar is the cost of the financing. Home solar is on par with a car loan, banks know how to do that with personal credit scores. Utility scale solar is the realm of private equity.

Something like a strip mall is a weird in-between that requires enough manual review that the cost to do all of the risk analysis that financing requires kinda outweighs the potential returns. Will that KMart or Costco keep that store open for the duration of the project? What happens when the tenancy changes?

I don't have any relation with Wunder, but from my understanding of them, they built some stuff to streamline all the financing and permitting required of commercial-scale to make those projects pencil out.

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

#247

Post by astanway » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 10:36 PM UTC

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #178

litany wrote: post #158

Earlier 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…

Most research suggests that net metering is underpaying the households that deliver it. This seems very counteri tuitive to people, but remember you're paying an average cost. Gas peakers can cost thousands of times that when load is high. If you use AC then solar and high demand are correlated. At the extremes that means building a whole new powerstation that might only be used for literally hours per year.

It’s overpaying if anything. Why should the utility be forced to pay retail RTM rates for power that they could have bought wholesale a month before if they actually needed it? Utility ratecase logic often has many ratepayer-unfriendly motivations but this line of reasoning is legitimate, imo.

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

#248

Post by pg_bot » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 10:38 PM UTC

I've done a bit of research on batteries and I haven't seen too many people mention vanadium redox flow batteries (VRFB) for grid storage. While lithium ion batteries have great energy density (necessary when you need to carry your energy) they deteriorate over time leading to continual capital expenditures. From what I've read, it seems like the VRFBs can basically run forever with minimal maintenance. If I were betting on large scale grid battery storage technologies I think this is where I would be interested in putting my money. While they are less energy dense, it doesn't really matter since most houses are stationary.

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

#249

Post by zizee » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 10:42 PM UTC

solotronics wrote: post #175

johngalt wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are underestimating how much of your electricity bill is going to capital costs. It's possible that the cost of electricity consumption will drop, but only if it replaced with other costs to subsidize the cost of the various electrical infrastructure. Installing a small amount of solar to offset personal usage at the hottest part of the day is much different than ensuring that varied demands can be met across an…

So if municipalities tracked the cost to install and maintain the utilities accurately they could split out the infrastructure rate from the kilowatt rate. Once you pay off the cost of your portion of infrastructure then you would only pay for maintenance. This would result in more efficient pricing for watts used of electricity.

If they charged the true cost of the grid and dropped kw pricing to the true cost, people would have little incentive to conserve the limited resource that is electricity generated.

It is more like the supply/demand has set a price for KWs and the margin the electricity companies make on it is used to subsidize the cost of the network.

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

#250

Post by nordsieck » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 10:42 PM UTC

zizee wrote: post #243

aussiegreenie wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 shar…

> A 6.6 kW system installed retails at(AUD 2700 /USD 1870) That sounds too little to pay for a decent quality system which will last 20 years. For decent components, from a reputable supplier you'd be expecting to pay around twice that. You're also discounting the need to have power after the sun goes down. If you compare roof top to mains, you really need to include the cost of a battery large enough to go off grid,…

> You're also discounting the need to have power after the sun goes down. If you compare roof top to mains, you really need to include the cost of a battery large enough to go off grid, which is at least another $10k, and quite a bit more if you don't want to have any lifestyle changes.

I don't think most people with solar are entertaining the possibility of going off grid. Rather they are comparing solar with net metering vs no solar. In that case, it is entirely appropriate to omit your suggested battery.