The Germans paid for it creating the market/industry. Vast amounts. Then the Chinese thought it looked like a good industry to be in and threw unbelievable money at developing manufacturing capacity. If the Germans keep voting green and being parsimonious savers then we may yet get cheap batteries and survive.
Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?
61–70 of 642 posts
Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
I live in Finland next to a hydroelectric dam. Electricity is, at worst, like 200 bucks a month. More than half the cost is transport. The dam is less than 15km out. What a ripoff. Privatizing the electric grid would make electricity cheaper, they said.
Even though you're 15km from a primary source, the network is built to provide you electricity even if that source is down. That requires connections to generators much further away. It's the uptime that adds costs.
Here in Norway it's because we sell our cheap hydro overseas, so that we can buy back more expensive energy when hydro is low. The owners make a ton of cash, and us consumers can only say "thank you".
Sure something something more reliable, but don't come here and say the cash they skim isn't a strong motivation in this equation.
At least a lot of the hydro is owned by local municipalities and counties, so most of it goes back into the local communities. But not all.
Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?
#63The article says the world relies on fossil fuel for energy because it's cheaper. That's true. It doesn't mention that the world relies on it because it's reliable. It doesn't disappear for 6 months of the year, or stop producing for 3 out of 5 days or during peak demand periods. Make renewables cheaper and more reliable and they will replace fossil fuels in a snap. Cheaper is not enough if it doesn't do the job.
Related question: what's the spot price for solar power at 1am? How cheap is it then?
Assuming no or minimal congestion or losses, the LMP (locational marginal price) or nodal price is basically the same everywhere. So the question is what is the MEC (marginal energy component) of the nodal price which is shared by everyone. In general, prices in the spot market are pretty low that early in the morning. It depends on the RTO/ISO region, but maybe ~$10/MWh?
Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?
#64The Germans paid for it creating the market/industry. Vast amounts. Then the Chinese thought it looked like a good industry to be in and threw unbelievable money at developing manufacturing capacity. If the Germans keep voting green and being parsimonious savers then we may yet get cheap batteries and survive.
The Germans had this really clever scheme where they tied the price they pay for solar power to the price from fossil fueled power. That really incentivized people to create more efficient solar and thus increase their profit margins.
Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, solar is even older, with plants and other organisms on the forefront of energy production and development. It is kind of an untapped source of renewable energy.
If we are going to include organisms here... ALL of our energy production is or was at some point solar, with the exception of geothermal and nuclear. Coal? Solar. Wood burning? Solar. The food you eat? Solar. Wind? Solar. Gasoline? Solar too.
That's why I talked about wind power, which was being used to directly power mechanical things- without any intermediate biology- long before anyone used fossil fuels to do it.
Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?
#66This is the source they are using: https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-... Does lazard include subsidies in their numbers or not? I can't figure it out. I'm having trouble making sense of the lazard report, but to me it seems that it does, and ourworldindata.org is using their numbers while claiming they are without subsidies.
I don't have time to check that report in particular, but past Lazard studies have included both subsidized and unsubsidized figures side by side.
And as Bryan says in the sibling comment, there's not a large gap between the prices. Residential solar was heavily subsidized in many countries but wind and utility scale solar aren't as much, and they're also the cheap ones.
If they're not clearly marked, you may need to hunt down another with more detail.
Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Running a power cable across the Pacific is going to be rife with expensive engineering problems, but sure, you could send electrons from Three Gorges to Google at some cost. I wouldn't call it cheaper, though.
In the spirit of "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway." I wonder if shipping big piles of fully charged batteries around has any chance of being a practical power distribution method?
Well, this is technically true, and already being done today with gas and petroleum.
Converting it back-and-forth to electricity isn't easy nor very efficient, though. Hydrogen is a bit easier, although still lossy. I'd say it's doable, and not as bad as it sounds, if you really have excess production.
inb4 compressed air supertankers.
That said, it will in most cases be less expensive to use it as close to the originating point as possible if you can find a need for it.
Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?
#68The Germans paid for it creating the market/industry. Vast amounts. Then the Chinese thought it looked like a good industry to be in and threw unbelievable money at developing manufacturing capacity. If the Germans keep voting green and being parsimonious savers then we may yet get cheap batteries and survive.
Is Germany's experience a success or failure?
What is the counter to this article:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/09/05...
Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?
#69The article says the world relies on fossil fuel for energy because it's cheaper. That's true. It doesn't mention that the world relies on it because it's reliable. It doesn't disappear for 6 months of the year, or stop producing for 3 out of 5 days or during peak demand periods. Make renewables cheaper and more reliable and they will replace fossil fuels in a snap. Cheaper is not enough if it doesn't do the job.
Also, unfortunately for our climate, fossil fuels are easy to store, even for decades (potentially forever, they don't decay) and transport and require no advanced technology to be useful, you simply need a way to set them on fire.
There was a discussion few days ago about fossil fuels bootstrapping the industrial revolution(s), one of the theories is that without them we wouldn't be talking about renewable energy at all (except in very basic ways like running a watermill)
Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?
#70The Germans paid for it creating the market/industry. Vast amounts. Then the Chinese thought it looked like a good industry to be in and threw unbelievable money at developing manufacturing capacity. If the Germans keep voting green and being parsimonious savers then we may yet get cheap batteries and survive.
Is Germany's experience a success or failure? What is the counter to this article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/09/05...
"What is the counter to this article?" does not deserve downvotes.