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Solar’s Future is Insanely Cheap

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Re: Solar’s Future is Insanely Cheap

#151

Post by Scoundreller »

tialaramex wrote: post #133
Scoundreller wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just wish the negative electricity prices reached the non-industrial consumer. If it reached me, I'll have an Arduino controlled hot water heater, furnace and fridge/freezer dynamically turning on/off to take the most advantage of prices pronto.

In some areas you can buy electricity this way, but the other end of the deal bites you, so beware of that. When it seems like you might die from the heat but the price charged is $8.50 per kWh how much longer do you want to wait before switching on the AC? (If you live somewhere it never gets hot, figure on the same but for a midwinter freeze and deciding when to pay for your resistive circuit heat pump boost)

I figure it all averages out. But when I pay an average price, I have no incentive to lower demand when prices are high or raise demand when prices are low, contributing to even higher average prices.

Re: Solar’s Future is Insanely Cheap

#152

Post by peterwoerner »

pydry wrote: post #71
sephamorr wrote: post #28

Power markets are more complicated than most people realize. One thing to note is that solar power can be cheaper than gas, but still not be economic. The fact of the matter is that an intermittent kWh is not as valuable as an on-demand reliable kWh to a utility who's number 1 priority is reliability. Even as solar is acquired at lower and lower prices, if evening power is generated by expensive and inefficient gas t…

Intermittency and the unsuitability of grid storage batteries to compensate is heavily played up by the carbon industry. The future of low emissions energy production will be largely driven by overproduction and demand shifting, not banks of grid level batteries. This likely won't happen as soon in America, however, the economy is too tied in to fossil fuels and the appetite to upgrade the electric grid by utility co…

But the solution isn't batteries, it stored hydroelectric. Only works where you have mountains though.

Re: Solar’s Future is Insanely Cheap

#153

Post by karmakaze »

remmargorp64 wrote: post #73
sephamorr wrote: post #28

Power markets are more complicated than most people realize. One thing to note is that solar power can be cheaper than gas, but still not be economic. The fact of the matter is that an intermittent kWh is not as valuable as an on-demand reliable kWh to a utility who's number 1 priority is reliability. Even as solar is acquired at lower and lower prices, if evening power is generated by expensive and inefficient gas t…

All they need to do is build mechanical/hydraulic systems for storing solar power during the day and unleashing it at night. For example, use solar power during the day to pump fluid from a lower reservoir into a higher reservoir, and then harness the energy of the water flowing from the higher reservoir into the lower reservoir through turbines. As long as your output energy is always coming from the turbines, and a…

Yup, stacked concrete: https://qz.com/1355672/stacking-concrete-blocks-is-a-surpris...

Re: Solar’s Future is Insanely Cheap

#154

Post by anesmike »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #130
pfdietz wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing you listed there requires fossil fuels. If you think those activities require fossil fuels, you are basically saying industrial society is impossible after fossil fuels run out.

That problem with that guy is he hasn't done any math to back any of that up. When you run the numbers for say tractors, trains and mining trucks it pencils out just fine.

Confirmation bias is not good; one must look at other sources to firm up you belief and if you find other info contradicts your bias you must update your beliefs. For me ,Charles Hall's book Energy Return on Investment totally changed my mindset by reminding me thermodynamics from undergrad 46 years ago(oh shit!!1)

Re: Solar’s Future is Insanely Cheap

#155

Post by Scoundreller »

fredophile wrote: post #121
Scoundreller wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or just smarter appliances. Plenty of opportunities for thermal banking/battery banking. Most of my loads, on average, don't need to run that exact second . I don't mind if my hot water tank super-heats water in the middle of the day for the rest of the day. If electricity is really cheap, my freezer can jump into overdrive. I don't need my clothes to dry in the next hour, just over the next 8. I don't care if my fri…

You may want to look into phase change materials for home heat and ac.

The block of ice or refrigerant liquified in a tank serve as PCMs unless we want to get really fancy :)

Re: Solar’s Future is Insanely Cheap

#156

Post by acidburnNSA »

qaq wrote: post #14
maheart wrote: post #12

I recently watched the documentary "Planet of the Humans". For context, the writer of the documentary is an environmentalist. One of the stated points was that solar and wind cannot be relied upon 24/7 -- to account for the lack of reliability, you need to have a backup power generator (e.g. coal power plant) running. The thing about coal plants (does it apply to natural gas plants too?) is that if you "idle" them, t…

0? You can have utility scale storage and Nuclear as backup

Today's nuclear reactors run constantly because the fuel is so cheap compared to the rest of the operations. They want to be selling kWh as much as possible because kWh is money. To convince nuclear operators to do backup, there would have to be some kind of market for their on-demand carbon-free characteristics. This would require market changes.

Of course, it's very possible for nuclear reactors to load follow from a physical point of view. Naval reactors load follow into battle mode quite impressively, and power stations could do the same, again if there were a market for it.

Even traditional reactors can couple to some kind of thermal energy storage system to allow them to stay mostly at 100% while the whole system load follows very nicely.

There are many exciting possibilities in on-demand, low-footprint, low-carbon energy with nuclear technology.

Re: Solar’s Future is Insanely Cheap

#157

Post by hnick »

andy_ppp wrote: post #51
_-david-_ wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A hypothetical cheap ~30% efficient solar panel could add something like 40 miles of range per day to a car in ideal conditions. Does this take into consideration the increased weight of the solar panel and any additional equipment?

Could it not be built into the roof directly! This is a great idea as presumably people who don’t use their car a lot need not leave it charging permanently and if you run out of battery you can just wait (if it’s sunny enough).

I wonder how that would change the safety profile of the car (for driver and outsiders) and insurance costs. Panels are fairly cheap but you'd be adding a bit of value there.

Re: Solar’s Future is Insanely Cheap

#158

Post by discordance »

Scoundreller wrote: post #63
ph0rque wrote: post #44

This tells me that until fossil plants are mostly shut down (and perhaps afterward), we will continue to have negative electricity prices at times. It might be a profitable idea to buy extra energy storage capacity to get paid for storing energy at certain times, then sell it when it is high demand.

I just wish the negative electricity prices reached the non-industrial consumer. If it reached me, I'll have an Arduino controlled hot water heater, furnace and fridge/freezer dynamically turning on/off to take the most advantage of prices pronto.

There’s an Australian startup that sells electricity at wholesale prices to consumers

https://www.amberelectric.com.au/

Re: Solar’s Future is Insanely Cheap

#159

Post by [deleted] »

sephamorr wrote: post #20
maheart wrote: post #12

I recently watched the documentary "Planet of the Humans". For context, the writer of the documentary is an environmentalist. One of the stated points was that solar and wind cannot be relied upon 24/7 -- to account for the lack of reliability, you need to have a backup power generator (e.g. coal power plant) running. The thing about coal plants (does it apply to natural gas plants too?) is that if you "idle" them, t…

This is a relatively good point. In the California electricity market, the increase in renewables results in a very large power-ramp rate in the late afternoon (nothing unique to California). In general, more-efficient power plants either cannot, or lose efficiency, when changing operating power levels. A ~60% efficient combined-cycle gas plant cannot ramp power very much, which results in the grid building and runni…

[deleted]

Re: Solar’s Future is Insanely Cheap

#160

Post by Scoundreller »

dub4u wrote: post #127
Scoundreller wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or just smarter appliances. Plenty of opportunities for thermal banking/battery banking. Most of my loads, on average, don't need to run that exact second . I don't mind if my hot water tank super-heats water in the middle of the day for the rest of the day. If electricity is really cheap, my freezer can jump into overdrive. I don't need my clothes to dry in the next hour, just over the next 8. I don't care if my fri…

> I don't need my clothes to dry in the next hour, just over the next 8. Then why not just hang them up for drying? Zero power consumption and they will dry in eight hours, maybe not under all conditions but under many.

I'm usually with you on that.

I'd even go a step ahead: dryers ruin clothes.

A bit diff in a humid area, or where the A/C would need to condense the added humidity (if dried indoors), or the furnace would have to counter-act the cooling from evaporation, but HVAC is usually more efficient than the dryer.

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