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Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

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Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#71

Post by Ma8ee »

jes5199 wrote: post #41
bregma wrote: post #12

The 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.

in the past they were cheaper. Now renewables are cheaper. Right now, intermittent renewables actually drives up the cost of fossil fuels! Renewables do wacky things to the spot price of power - sometimes electricity is free or even has negative value, sometimes it's expensive. Ideally fossil fuel plants would only spin up when they could sell power at a profit, but they can't dispatch so quickly, so they end up sell…

I think we’ll start using more ways to store the energy. In the scenarios you describe, when the energy price fluctuate so wildly, the processes don’t have to be efficient. There’s not really a problem if 70% is lost in the process if the energy we started with is free. Pumping water to higher elevation or hydrogen production is suddenly reasonable.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#72

Post by WalterBright »

davidwitt415 wrote: post #59
bregma wrote: post #12

The 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.

RTFA: Batteries and electricity storage follow learning curves too One of the downsides of renewable sources is their intermittent supply cycle. The sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow. Technologies like batteries that store electric power are key to balance the changing supply from renewables with the inflexible demand for electricity. Fortunately electricity storage technologies are also among…

We already have cheap "batteries" in our homes. Run the electric water heater when the power is cheap. Water in the tank stays hot for a couple days.

The only piece missing here is an internet-connected thermostat for the tank that inquires about the spot price for electricity and turns on when it's cheap.

The same thing applies to your HVAC system.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#73

Post by WalterBright »

marshray wrote: post #52
shoguning wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that is mentioned as "one of the downsides of renewables". That is like saying, "one of the downsides of using a cooked noodle as a fork is that it doesn't hold its shape". It's disqualifying until that issue is sorted. The value of solar right now is that it provides energy at the hottest, most energy use part of the day. But there is a tipping point where marginal solar is not really valuable for a grid anymo…

> But there is a tipping point where marginal solar is not really valuable for a grid anymore. And that is a very good problem to have. There are any number of industrial processes that could easily put that excessively cheap energy to use. Aluminum smelting, for example.

electrolysis, bitcoin mining (!), electric car recharging, etc.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#75

Post by manfredo »

BurningFrog wrote: post #25
bregma wrote: post #19

Earlier 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?

Not even remotely. Batteries have some of the worst energy density both by unit of volume and mass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#/media/File:Ene....

Not to mention global annual battery production amounts to less than 1 hour of the USA's national electricity usage.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#76

Post by WalterBright »

romanoderoma wrote: post #69
bregma wrote: post #12

The 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…

That's why it's highly unlikely there was a civilization on the Earth before ours.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#77

Post by WalterBright »

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #28
albertop wrote: post #5

Too bad that low cost is invisible for the consumers. California has one of the most, if not the most, expensive electricity in spite of years of investment in renewables.

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.

Privatizing the grid isn't enough to make it cheaper. The regulatory environment has to be set up to allow competition. It's competition that lowers prices, not simply being privately owned.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#78

Post by marvin »

magicalhippo wrote: post #62
jpollock wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Norway's system of municipal hydropower ownership combined with export of surplus hydropower, effectively converts the (basically mandatory) electricity bill into a tax. Reducing the need for other forms of local government taxation, given that the municipality is well-run and not corrupt.

Beneficial side effects are incentivizing power efficiency, since capital-intensive efforts like insulating your house and installing a heat exchanger are only profitable if electricity prices are high.

Another dramatically undersold benefit is that Norwegian municipalities are effectively well-paid pumped storage operators when continental European power prices are low or negative, which effectively reduces the effective "synthetic" power bill taxation, while retaining its income to the municipalities.

Authorities and publicly owned power companies have really screwed the pooch on explaining these benefits to the public.

Given these benefits, retaining ownership of the hydropower companies in the hands of the public is super important. If they're sold to private owners, it's basically tantamount to allowing private owners to purchase tax collection rights. And honestly, screw that.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#79

Post by alliao »

jes5199 wrote: post #41
bregma wrote: post #12

The 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.

in the past they were cheaper. Now renewables are cheaper. Right now, intermittent renewables actually drives up the cost of fossil fuels! Renewables do wacky things to the spot price of power - sometimes electricity is free or even has negative value, sometimes it's expensive. Ideally fossil fuel plants would only spin up when they could sell power at a profit, but they can't dispatch so quickly, so they end up sell…

isn't that the game plan for hydrogen powered vehicles? so they can build a plan to absorb all these excess from over provisioning at a lower rate to produce hydrogen for their fleet

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#80

Post by throwaway201103 »

WalterBright wrote: post #72
davidwitt415 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RTFA: Batteries and electricity storage follow learning curves too One of the downsides of renewable sources is their intermittent supply cycle. The sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow. Technologies like batteries that store electric power are key to balance the changing supply from renewables with the inflexible demand for electricity. Fortunately electricity storage technologies are also among…

We already have cheap "batteries" in our homes. Run the electric water heater when the power is cheap. Water in the tank stays hot for a couple days. The only piece missing here is an internet-connected thermostat for the tank that inquires about the spot price for electricity and turns on when it's cheap. The same thing applies to your HVAC system.

You're exaggerating a bit. Water heater will stay hot for a day or so, but will rapidly cool when you start using it and cold water flows in. House will be uncomfortably cold after a few hours in the wintertime if the heat is not running, and it's not really practical to overheat it when electric rates are low/free because you can only go maybe 10 degrees before it's really too warm for comfort. You'd need a heat tank of some sort which complicates the system and as a practical matter homes don't have that and might not have space for.

Finally aside from all that I heat my water and my home with natural gas.

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