Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

sciencemag.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 432 posts

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

#271

Post by haroldp »

boringg wrote: post #266
haroldp wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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-...

Oil and Gas indirect subsidies ;)

Very much so.

Or, somewhat less cynically, protecting our soft petro-underbelly from harm.

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

#272

Post by opportune »

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…

I am part of the political left. Not sure what kind of argument you are making, carbon emissions plummeting is good no matter what. If we can do it for cheap, even better.

In fact, mitigating climate change due to technological innovation and the free market is preferable than achieving it due to regulation and massive public spending programs. Why? Because unless you are able to enforce regulations on every country on Earth, what would happen is that energy-intensive industries would just shift to countries with lax regulations. It is not stable, in a game-theoretic sense, for every sovereign entity to have strict renewable energy standards, as any entity violating those standards has an immense competitive advantage over other entities.

The only thing I am dissatisfied about is the pace, because we are not transitioning fast enough to avoid some of the long-term effects of global climate change.

> if the oil revenue drops to, say, 50% of current levels, I think that there will be problems sooner rather than later.

They have a sovereign wealth fund to protect against this. Look to Qatar and the UAE to see where they want to go in the future.

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

#273

Post by namibj »

qserasera wrote: post #230
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...

If a moderate sized location goes out of business would solar panels have decent resale value?

Unless you need to demolish, you want to keep them in-place.

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

#274

Post by zaroth »

astanway wrote: post #241
zaroth wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I did not say that they are an alternative to natural gas peaker plants. I said that in markets where the spot price can spike to $8,000 per MWh, grid scale batteries are being deployed in order to serve those load spikes more economically.

There is about ~1GWh of grid scale battery storage already deployed in the US alone. 150MW was deployed in 2019 Q1 - which represents 232% growth YoY . ~5 GWh is projected to be installed annually by 2024. [1] I think that this qualifies as proven and deployed.

[1] - https://www.woodmac.com/research/products/power-and-renewabl...

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

#275

Post by namibj »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #255
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.

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 - t…

There are many things you can defer, even at home. Mostly A/C related, but stuff like a self-cleaning oven or a clothes dryer doesn't need to run in the instant, necessarily. The dryer might be able to wait a few hours once the clothes are a bit dry (due to mold and such), as it needs to be ready when you get to it in the morning/afternoon. Until then, it only needs to prevent the clothes from water damage.

The oven can maybe just wait a day or a week even to clean itself. It usually works fine even if partially dirty, and just causes some smell due to thermally decomposing food contamination (cheese drips from pizza, etc.).

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

#276

Post by anderspitman »

guntars wrote: post #264
bwb wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yep, I’ve seen their solar roofs covering the parking spots in Flagstaff, AZ. It’s a win, win - they get power and it keeps the cars cooler.

I saw a random magazine 10 years ago that claimed Flagstaff was one of the top 3 "greenest" cities in the US. Prescott (where I'm from) was top 3 skinniest.

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

#278

Post by diogenescynic »

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...

Owners of the malls would still hold the rights to the roof, not the occupants of stores, so you’d just have to pay them enough that it’s worthwhile for the owners. However, I like the idea of requiring it for new developments over X square footage.

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

#279

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

namibj wrote: post #275
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 - t…

There are many things you can defer, even at home. Mostly A/C related, but stuff like a self-cleaning oven or a clothes dryer doesn't need to run in the instant, necessarily. The dryer might be able to wait a few hours once the clothes are a bit dry (due to mold and such), as it needs to be ready when you get to it in the morning/afternoon. Until then, it only needs to prevent the clothes from water damage. The oven…

I don't need to defer anything, as I'm on a flat rate. I don't like peak metering, as it would forces me to micromanage things in a way that doesn't work for me.

I don't have a clothes dryer, they use too much energy. I just hand my clothes on an indoor clothes airer and blow a fan on them. I usually leave the heat pump set to 16 degrees C while I'm out, the combination of mild air temp and the fan dries most of my clothes over night anyway.

Hadn't even heard of a self cleaning over. I don't bake a lot, so there's that.

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

#280

Post by harry8 »

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…

Great post, thanks for the numbers link. I've never heard of land being referred to as a "soft cost" before!

I'm having trouble making sense of them in terms of the cost differential between something like (say) a coal fired electricity plant (and/or nuclear) including (say) 20 year running costs, vs a solar & battery power plant of equivalent scale including the cost of purchasing the land required to build each. There may be better comparison assumptions, maybe lives of plants are different for example but I think that would be a good place to start looking at a comparison. Is per watt DC the right measure? (Probably it is but I'd like to see the justification, given the use of high voltages at scale - again I'm not the expert to know.)

One would assume from there for a power generating utility company the cost of sales, marketing, billing, etc would all be the same regardless of how you generate it. Entirely separate to that one could estimate the additional goodwill available for solar over coal or nuclear in advertising "we're clean, we're green, just look at our stunningly beautiful field of photovoltaics." Which must have /some/ value.

I wonder if the sun-chasing required in choosing the location makes getting the power from the plant to the grid more expensive? Numbers would help.

I'm also having trouble making sense of the listed "soft cost" numbers for residential. Land is already purchased so cost is zero, use what you generate so sales also zero, zero tax, zero net profit and nobody values the overhead of their time for these things, for which assumptions are critical if you do (but definitely a nice saving on the power bill you pay with /after tax/ dollars) - These assumptions I just listed are obviously wrong in that chart but why??? No explanation for numbers that don't add up when you apply obvious assumptions about what you do know makes us all suspicious, right? They really should fix that so it's obviously right, clear, honest and direct in a field I think we can all agree is marred by a veritable mountain of BS and propaganda. I'm absolutely not saying this is BS, nor am I saying it's wrong or propaganda - just I don't understand the numbers on the chart and /can't/ from what is actually there. That sucks for me trying to understand it but maybe I'm not supposed to understand these numbers because they're designed for someone else who has the necessary context. Is providing that context too hard?

Post reply on HN