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

#361

Post by Tempest1981 » Sat, Jul 13, 2019, 9:10 AM UTC

state_less wrote: post #212

nexuist wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>At this point, I feel like the only reason fossil fuels are used anymore in new projects is inertia Solar might work for boats and trains, but can it work for a plane? What about drones? No renewable energy source can beat gasoline, sans nuclear power (which I think we should be transitioning to, along with the rest of the renewables). MIT built a gas powered drone that lasts 5 days (not minutes!) in the air[1] - th…

You might be interested in the sun seeker duo. It's in the ballpark for personal air travel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBA4XeMddMY In flight charging (refueling) could be a possibility too. The drone based solar planes can stay up longer than 5 days. I think the defense companies can keep them up for months.

Also cool, the adventure of circumnavigation on solar:

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

Captured on this Nova special: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/the-impossible-flight/

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

#362

Post by StreamBright » Sat, Jul 13, 2019, 9:14 AM UTC

hokkos wrote: post #351

kragen wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

But if we need from 8 to 16 weeks of batteries storage for long duration seasonal energy storage, this is not going to work out. https://static.clearpath.org/2018/04/EIRP-Deep-Decarb-Lit-Re...

Thanks for sharing this.

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

#363

Post by sfifs » Sat, Jul 13, 2019, 9:16 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…

This has mostly to do with martching age horizon of source of funds and utilisation of funds. Banks borrow short (from deposits of individuals and companies) and lend long which exposes them to a certain amount of financial risk. The big banks usually don't hold the paper and mitigate by securitizing the loans. Some smaller banks and merchant banks who know their customers better tend to hold the paper. Actually owning the property is a much longer time horizon activity than simply lending long - so the entities who do that are the ones who actually want to hold - ie. Individuals and families

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

#364

Post by geophertz » Sat, Jul 13, 2019, 9:18 AM 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.…

That's ignoring the fact that these 4.5 trillion won't be lost they will have just have shifted into the hands of the public.

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

#365

Post by pjc50 » Sat, Jul 13, 2019, 9:23 AM UTC

harry8 wrote: post #280

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…

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. Th…

To dig deeper, go to the PDF: https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy19osti/72399.pdf

> 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

Their basis: "We model a 6.2-kW residential rooftop system using 60-cell, multicrystalline, 17.2%-efficient modules from a Tier 1 supplier and a standard flush mount, pitched-roof racking system"

So what they've done is effectively get quotes for installing their sample system and then divide by its power output. Sales tax, profit etc are added to the bill the customer pays the installer. Other tables give a more detailed breakdown.

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

#366

Post by jabl » Sat, Jul 13, 2019, 9:39 AM UTC

PeterStuer wrote: post #334

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…

An undervalued aspect of distributed rooftop solar is the resilience of it in face of grid breakdown, either intentionally through targeted attack or as a result of systemic collapse.

Most rooftop solar installations don't work if the grid is down. Yes, it's doable but costs more so the vast majority of installations skip that part.

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

#367

Post by tim333 » Sat, Jul 13, 2019, 9:48 AM UTC

rossdavidh wrote: post #156

Good 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…

Venezuela's problems are very little to do with oil and very much to do with mad Marxist style economic policy. They still have perhaps the world's largest reserves and oil prices are high. Saudi without oil would probably be more like Appalachia without coal. Or maybe Dubai.

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

#368

Post by nachteilig » Sat, Jul 13, 2019, 10:27 AM UTC

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…

Hey, could you please point me at some stats relating to the costs being lower, especially in Germany? Very interesting topic for me and I couldn’t find it in the study. Thanks!

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

#369

Post by zizee » Sat, Jul 13, 2019, 11:34 AM UTC

ctack wrote: post #356

zizee wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Fair enough, that does make sense and sound cheaper. I guess the only thing going it vs your evaluation above would be the environmental impact. You wouldn’t need to affect that barren field, you’d be using already compromised land. But yes, the support structure costs would be prohibitive and possibly have a higher environmental impact in production vs just razing and sunblocking an unused by humans field. Also ther…

Thinking about this more, and extending/tweaking the kernel of your original idea of solar close to consumption, and providing shading: an ideal place for solar is to use it as shading in car parks. Underutilized land, demand in the nearby businesses and to charge parked cars.

Not really my idea by the way - I have seen a number of such projects underway on the web, and in real life.

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

#370

Post by Bayart » Sat, Jul 13, 2019, 11:56 AM UTC

roywiggins wrote: post #26

ausjke wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been wonder why can't we convert outside heat into indoor cooling naturally, i.e. in Texas can we convert summer heat to AC power in real time for at least each residence house?

Once you do that, you can then run a thermal generator on the resulting temperature differential, to generate even more energy, and now you've created a perpetual motion machine, oops. (without an existing cool place to dump heat, you can't generate energy, otherwise you could just extract heat from everything everywhere and cool it all down to absolute zero, solving both the energy problem and global warming with a…

We just need to make heatpipes all the way to space.