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

#341

Post by gregable » Sat, Jul 13, 2019, 6:23 AM UTC

Chirael wrote: post #117

asdkhadsj wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

If two or three tenants in a row move out and cite sky high power costs due to poor insulation as the reason, the landlord will notice and do something about it. One tenant is a fluke, several all saying the same thing over a few years is a problem that will get dealt with. Nothing costs a landlord money like high turnover. But departing tenants DO need to communicate that as the issue, otherwise the landlord would n…

Do tenants really decide like that? Moving is costly and insulation is hard to judge on a tour?

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

#342

Post by hnick » Sat, Jul 13, 2019, 6:28 AM UTC

austhrow743 wrote: post #325

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…

>If its financially advantageous to install solar on your roof, wouldn’t it be greatly more financially advantageous (given the main cost for solar installation is the labor) for energy companies to install solar at scale? This actually mirrors my thoughts on house ownership as an investment as well. Every house I've ever rented has been privately owned by an individual and either managed by them or a company that ma…

It's just a different risk profile. They see themselves as good at managing multiple properties for a steady income, rather than leveraging highly and managing just a few for an uncertain outcome (markets change for better or worse and they don't want to be left in the lurch).

Likewise, airlines use a lot of fuel. They could save money by buying fuel producing companies... but they're not in that business and don't want to worry about it. You can vertically integrate but you also have to recognise what you are good at and what you want to focus on.

There are REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts) by the way, but they did quite poorly during the GFC in Australia at least.

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

#343

Post by benj111 » Sat, Jul 13, 2019, 6:30 AM 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…

Do you think you'll ever be paying 2c/kwh daytime 3.3c/kwh night time including fixed fees?

I would guess not because you also need to pay for the grid, and call centres for when peoples power goes down and debt collection and taxes and all the other costs of business that you wouldn't have as a homeowner.

The actual answer depends on a lot of variables, are you staying on grid, what do you get paid for feeding electricity back to the grid, grants/ tax credits.

So I don't think its impossible that roof top solar ends up cheaper, I might go further, as in the medium term (10 years) theres going to be massive capital spending on the grid, so cost benefits are likely to be seen after that point.

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

#344

Post by thaumasiotes » Sat, Jul 13, 2019, 6:40 AM UTC

kragen wrote: post #322

floatrock wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

On the contrary, personal loans from banks routinely charge much higher interest rates than commercial paper. Think about the interest rate on a money market account, which consists of bonds. That's the rate PG&E is going to pay if they float a bond issue to build a solar power station. Large companies, particularly including electric generation utilities, can also get loans from banks at similarly low interest rates…

> This is precisely the genius of SolarCity: they were able to use the low interest rates banks would charge them to install solar power on people's houses at a much lower cost of capital than the same banks would have charged the same homeowners without SolarCity's intermediation.

That sounds like a pretty interesting pitch as a business model.

But if I recall correctly, SolarCity failed and had to be bailed out by, um, Tesla. Why? Was the free money just not enough?

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

#345

Post by m0zg » Sat, Jul 13, 2019, 6:42 AM UTC

stubish wrote: post #292

m0zg wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly I don't get why people install solar except in consistently sunny places like Hawaii, Arizona and some parts of California. Financially you're pretty much always better off paying utility rates. If you _really_ care about the environment, there's currently no cleaner tech than nuclear, even after you factor in things like nuclear waste and a couple of major disasters. If you only "woke" care about the environ…

Prices have changed in many parts of the world. People now buy solar with the expectation that it will pay for itself in under a decade, and any lifetime beyond that is profit. Financially you are not better off paying utility rates vs. other low risk investments like cash or bonds. Adoption has been driven by economics for a number of years, even now government subsidies are drying up in many (most?) regions.

I've done the math where I live, and concluded it'll never pay for itself even if I exclude maintenance and live in the same house for 30 years (the claimed lifespan of a solar installation). We have roughly the same amount of sunlight as Germany. Were it up to me, I'd rather have nuclear in our state. One of those new thorium reactors maybe. I'd even pay a little more for that, especially if they shut down the remaining coal/gas/oil power plants when nuclear comes online.

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

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Post by riffraff » Sat, Jul 13, 2019, 6:47 AM UTC

bartimus wrote: post #337

namibj wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why would we not want to move them elsewhere?

They would make the property more valuable when you sell it.

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

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Post by hokkos » Sat, Jul 13, 2019, 7:01 AM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #234

pilsetnieks wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The weird thing about fixed price grid attachment is that it encourages people to disconnect from the grid and to not install local solar to begin with. If you pay a fixed price for the grid then your price per kWh goes down and it makes less sense to put solar panels on your roof because they need to beat the lower price per kWh unless you can get entirely off the grid. But then you do have the incentive to get enti…

Almost nobody does that, because solar + batteries would need so much batteries for winter that it is completely unpratical. The only people that I know doing that are extreme ecologist in remote places. And grid access is so cheap like 10€/month.

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

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Post by StreamBright » Sat, Jul 13, 2019, 7:08 AM UTC

kragen wrote: post #318

StreamBright wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm assuming that you mean 9.9 × 10⁹ kg of economically-extractable-now reserves and 2.55 × 10¹⁰ kg of potentially economic reserves, not 2575.5 kg, which is what 2.55 × 1010 would work out to. The estimates of lithium abundance in the earth's crust have a low end of 20 ppm. The crust averages about 40 km thick and 3 g/cc in the 29% of the Earth that has continents, which works out to 1.5 × 10¹⁴ m², 5.9 × 10¹⁸ m³, 1.…

Yes, your calculations are correct. I was just wondering if we use all of that Li to store energy or we need it in car batteries, laptops, mobile phones, etc. You also leave out details about the production of batteries. Purely from the energy point of view you are right but what about the manufacturing and maintenance point of view? Would not be there some additional limitations?

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

#349

Post by tim333 » Sat, Jul 13, 2019, 7:13 AM UTC

StreamBright wrote: post #93

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.…

There are other limitations as well. Amount of lithium available, # of cycles before you have to replace the batteries, and so on.

There are other technologies coming along too. For example NantTech claim to have $100/kWh with Zinc Air https://www.engineering.com/ElectronicsDesign/ElectronicsDes...

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

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Post by benj111 » Sat, Jul 13, 2019, 7:14 AM UTC

boringg wrote: post #265

nimish wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the powerwall allows you to "buy" power at the opportunity cost of $0.02/kWh vs paying up to $0.32/kWh ? If you end up generating a lot of excess solar using a lot of grid power at peak times, it could pay for itself. But of course, you need to do the calculation for your situation.

I don't think powerwall has that functionality. At least original powerwalls only provided backup power. From a C&I perspective this is one of the sources of revenue for batteries - however there are many different ways for electricity charges to be passed on to customers. It isn't only kWh.

"I don't think powerwall has that functionality"

From wikipedia

"When originally announced in 2015, two models of Powerwall were planned: 10 kWh capacity for backup applications and 7 kWh capacity for daily cycle applications"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Powerwall

I take it the daily cycle applications include that functionality.