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

#251

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

asdkhadsj wrote: post #33

krferriter wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I'm renting a house in central NC and May-September our power bill skyrockets from AC. The windows are not insulated at all and we have a lot of them. Even the floors, walls, and ceilings leak heat like crazy, you can feel it just putting your hand close to the wall or ceiling. We run AC to get it down to 76F and it's still crazy expensive and using a lot of unnecessary power. We need to encourage insulation, es…

> The US needs to heavily encourage these sorts of improvements to buildings, it's good for everyone. Is it though? I imagine your landlord doesn't think it's good for them. It's not bad for them, but why would they spend hundreds or thousands of dollars improving your apartments insulation when it costs them nothing to keep the poor thermal in place. I too lived in rentals that had terrible thermal protection. It wa…

They can potentially raise the rent (for the next renter if there's rent control) by advertising "modern double pane windows" which offer sound insulation from outside noise, in addition to the thermal benefits.

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

#252

Post by bwb » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 10:47 PM UTC

floatrock wrote: post #246

brownbat wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 potenti…

Walmart is doing it in a lot of locations.

I've heard they also believe if electric cars get going they can offer free recharge with people buying xx dollars of groceries.

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

#253

Post by marcusverus » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 10:47 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.…

Your 1.45 trillion figure for the cost of the F-35 is the lifetime cost of the platform, including procurement and operations costs extending through the year 2070... the cost to date is nowhere near that figure.

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

#254

Post by zizee » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 10:51 PM UTC

ctack wrote: post #168

PuffinBlue wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You only need to think of the other things that solar requires in order to see where scale cost might arise - land and infrastructure. Labour is cheap. Solar needs space and it needs a way to export it's electricity to where it's needed, or to where it is stored. Places where space is cheap enough almost universally don't have infrastructure. So large scale solar does come with large capital costs. Contrast to home o…

I wonder if it would be cost effective for a solar power provider to line the streets with their panels such that they shade the pavement on either side to some extent. If they managed it, they’d save on transport losses and possibly in cost of space. They could possibly even host their batteries in the panel supports.

That sounds very difficult to maintain. Land outside cities is cheap, and the percentage of loss transmitting electricity long distances (at very high voltages) is usually overinflated in most people's minds.

Better to put them out in a big barren field, fairly low to the ground.

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

#255

Post by TheSpiceIsLife » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 10:54 PM UTC

astanway wrote: post #223

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #185

Earlier 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.

I didn't know this, thanks for clarifying. Further investigation for my local area:

Here's a link to the Australian wholesale spot price and peak price https://www.aemo.com.au/Electricity/National-Electricity-Mar...

Where I live, Tasmania, the average for 2019 is $147.91 / MWh and the peak is $163.

That works out to Au$0.163. I pay AU$0.26 / kWh, plus a daily supply charge of, if memory serves me correctly, $2.30 - this is to cover network operating costs.

That's actually a fairly reasonable mark up on the retails side of things.

That makes the other commenter's $0.02 / kWh seem fairly misleading. Maybe for some places some of the time.

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

#256

Post by _ph_ » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 10:56 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 principle, you are right, but in practise, there are a few differences:

- the homeowner gets the usage of the roof space for free

- anything you can do yourself is cheaper than paid work

- the calculation is different. The grid provides electricity 24/7. Your solar provides electricity, when the sun shines. Your solar is on your roof top, so no expensive lines are needed. And so on. So, if you can use your own solar electricity well, it is extremely cheap, as a lot of costs don't apply.

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

#257

Post by zizee » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 11:00 PM UTC

nordsieck wrote: post #250

zizee wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 me…

Please read my comment in the context that it was a reply to someone saying electricity companies in Australia are not moving into rooftop solar because it would undermine their current investments.

I am not arguing rooftop solar does not make sense to install. I have a system and it works for me. I think for a lot of people, especially Australian homeowners it is a sound economic and environmental investment.

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

#258

Post by cortesoft » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 11:04 PM UTC

rmuesi wrote: post #218

cortesoft wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As others have pointed out, wholesale energy cost is only about $0.02 per KW/H, yet retail is usually over $0.2 KW/H. Even if the wholesale cost of energy drops to $0, you are only dropping about 10% of the total cost of energy. Of course, this brings up another interesting question that has been a hot button issue; if power companies are supplying less and less power (since more and more people are getting their own…

>wholesale energy cost is only about $0.02 per KW/H Doesn’t this contradict the oft repeated news that solar is so much cheaper than our predominantly oil generated power?

Even a fraction of a penny drop in that price will mean a lot of value given how many KW/H our society consumes.

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

#259

Post by BenFrantzDale » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 11:05 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...

Wouldn’t one approach be for property managers to lease rooftop space too, making a place for businesses focused on leasing rooftop space, installing solar, and selling power?

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

#260

Post by cortesoft » Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 11:06 PM UTC

pilsetnieks wrote: post #197

cortesoft wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As others have pointed out, wholesale energy cost is only about $0.02 per KW/H, yet retail is usually over $0.2 KW/H. Even if the wholesale cost of energy drops to $0, you are only dropping about 10% of the total cost of energy. Of course, this brings up another interesting question that has been a hot button issue; if power companies are supplying less and less power (since more and more people are getting their own…

It's not that complicated. There are countries in Europe that, in addition to metered price per kWh used also have a fixed price for grid usage. If you feel you're completely self-sufficient and can survive without the grid, you can cut it off and pay nothing. If you use your own power but want to keep the grid connection for backup, you pay for grid access but nothing for power (or get a discount or a refund, or mon…

Except if we go that route, people who use very little power will get screwed, since the cost of the grid hookup might be a large percentage of their total power cost. This will disproportionally hurt poor people (who don't have a ton of gadgets using power, don't have the money to build solar, but still need some electricity)