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

#401

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC » Sat, Jul 13, 2019, 3:09 PM UTC

m0zg wrote: post #345

stubish wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 remai…

> for 30 years (the claimed lifespan of a solar installation)

It should be noted, though, that this "lifespan" generally means a reduction of output by not more than 20%, not that you are left with a pile of trash. Depending on technological development, possibly replacing solar panels by then is the economically sensible thing to do, but there is no reason why you necessarily would have to throw away a solar installation after 30 years.

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

#402

Post by kragen » Sat, Jul 13, 2019, 3:34 PM UTC

cogman10 wrote: post #374

kragen wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm going to push back a bit. Interest rates can be favorable to a company but not money market fund favorable. That would be a better interest rate than a US treasury note. PG&E currently has 2.4% bonds out. Better than what you can get, but not lower than a mmf (usually less than a percent). As a rule of thumb, rates won't sink lower than ten year tnote rates. Nobody will purchase a bond from a company that has a l…

Thank you for the concrete numbers and the correction/additional information!

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

#403

Post by rebuilder » Sat, Jul 13, 2019, 3:53 PM UTC

soVeryTired wrote: post #371

rebuilder wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems odd that you worry about the energy a dryer uses, yet set your thermostat to 16 degrees when you're not even in.

Depends on whether they live somewhere hot or somewhere cold.

Youre Right! Parent is apparently from Tasmania, which I lumped together with the rest of Australia as "damn hot", while that apparently isn't the case at all.

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

#404

Post by rossdavidh » Sat, Jul 13, 2019, 3:55 PM UTC

opportune wrote: post #272

rossdavidh wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Qatar has done a considerably better job of diversifying their economy, perhaps because (since they are smaller), the central leader is able to shift the national direction better.

Glad to know that at least some on the left will be happy with a technological solution. Don't be surprised if your political "neighbors" turn negative on solar and wind as it becomes commercially big.

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

#405

Post by rossdavidh » Sat, Jul 13, 2019, 3:55 PM UTC

ajross wrote: post #201

rossdavidh wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> But I still have the suspicion that a good chunk of the political Left will be dissatisfied Only in the somewhat specious sense that a good chunk of the political X is continually dissatisfied, for all values of X. I'm on that mythical "Left" you're talking about. No one would be happier to see carbon emissions plumet than I, and for any reason. That doesn't mean that I don't think some kind of regulation is inappr…

Well you make a good point, it may just be the noisiest part of the left that will be dissatisfied, not necessarily the biggest part.

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

#406

Post by rossdavidh » Sat, Jul 13, 2019, 3:58 PM UTC

Faark wrote: post #317

rossdavidh wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> carbon emissions will plummet without any changes in [..] policies being involved. Wow, you really go as far as saying government was not involved? The only reason prices for renewables have gone down to where they are now is due to government policies that promote that tech. Details available on wiki [0]. This only happens if parties do care about environment & co. Here in germany it was actually done by a centre-…

Well there is no part of any industry without _some_ kind of government involvement, but solar has been dropping in price for 50 years, and that spans many different kinds of administrations, some of which were decidedly more or less favorable. Much of it is simply the fact that technology tends towards exponential decline in price as volume goes up, which feeds on itself. Commodities tends to go up as volume goes up, which makes more of an oscillatory effect.

Btw I don't dislike the Left, it's most of my friends.

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

#407

Post by mechagodzilla » Sat, Jul 13, 2019, 4:16 PM UTC

zhoujianfu wrote: post #315

spydum wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

|A 6.6 kW system installed retails at(AUD 2700 /USD 1870) Is that right? Pretty sure in the US most kits that size are literally 10x that cost?

Yeah, or 20x? In LA I just got exactly that size installed from Tesla and I think it was about $35K? That did include one powerwall (they tried to suggest two but I realized with net metering even one only made sense for the fun of it).

I just installed a 5kW system in NY, and after incentives it was about $6700.

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

#408

Post by mikorym » Sat, Jul 13, 2019, 4:30 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 can answer partially for the South African context.

Our state owned entity Eskom pushes the prices up every year and in theory this should make solar power both residential and large scale more attractive.

First off, battery theft in SA is a USD 100m business [1] and secondly, our utility infrastructure allows about 10–15% renewables [2] before drastic infrastructure changes are needed. Thirdly, the policital scene is quite a hotpot and most foreign businesses don't want to own non-movable assets here.

Despite these challenges, your observation seems to still be correct and I know of two large scale solar installations in the Northern Cape. We don't see a lot of people installing their own solar panels (despite all the load shedding) and I suspect that this is due to both the stalling economy and theft/procurement/etc issues.

I think that if that 10%–15% limitations can be overcome and if the political situation stabilises, solar power would explode here and we would rival Spain in homegrown solar technology. But I also think that air-to-fuel solutions (if not a pie in the sky) would take off very quickly.

[1] An unnamed engineer that builds large commercial buildings in SA. [2] A talk by the Stellenbosch solar research group. I don't understand fully how this works, but the intermittent supply of renewables and current infrastructure layout does play a roll. Interestingly, a virtual square of land in the Northern Cape that is less than 5% of the province area IIRC could power the whole country.

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

#409

Post by OrgNet » Sat, Jul 13, 2019, 5:29 PM UTC

ivanhoe wrote: post #18

Animats wrote: post #7

$0.02/Kwh for the solar part is pretty good. A reasonable short-term goal: get 100% of US peak air conditioning load south of 37° N on solar. That's the line from the Virginia/North Carolina border west to central California. Peak solar power output and peak air conditioning load line up pretty well, so that doesn't need storage. Storage is more of an issue for wind, which varies about 4:1 over a day over large areas…

There should be also more focus on proper thermal insulation of houses in warm climate, which is something that is not often mentioned. Lots of energy gets lost on AC simply because heat easily enters the houses.

Also, energy efficiency of the AC unit is very important... I halved my energy bill by switching to a new unit that is a lot more efficient.

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

#410

Post by jefftk » Sat, Jul 13, 2019, 5:40 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…

This is a great question! In our case, in MA, rooftop solar was only economically viable because of two subsides:

* New metering, where the power company has to act as our battery for free. Even if we produce more than we're using, which we do most afternoons when few of us are home, each kWh we send into the grid reduces our bill as the end of the month by one kWh.

* SREC II subsidies, where we just get money per kWh we produce.

Both of these are available to homeowners but not to commercial producers.

(We also got a tax credit, but it's possible that companies also get similar credits.)