Why did renewables become so cheap so fast? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#151

Post by blake1 » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 12:19 AM UTC

eldaisfish wrote: post #112

jes5199 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Now renewables are cheaper. Yes, provided you ignore the cost of balancing an increasingly volatile grid, a volatility that is created by renewables. Also provided you ignore the cost to provide energy when said renewables aren't generating any. Claims to back up your statment, such as from Lazard, are horribly flawed because they use the metric of LCOE - levelised cost of energy - to claim that renewable energy is…

That volatility can be dealt with by distributing the renewables geographically. It’ll be sunny or windy somewhere. This requires overbuilding, which is currently cheaper that storage, and the average generation is highly predictable for day-ahead or hour-ahead trading. My rule of thumb is you can supply 70% of demand economically today without long distance transmission.

Search for “overbuilding renewables,” e.g. https://energycentral.com/c/em/overbuilding-curtailing-renew...

This still leaves room for hydro and nuclear.

The negative costs are borne by the owners of generating units that generate excess power when net demand falls. Solar can ramp down in milliseconds, windmills in minutes, CCGT can take hours, and nuclear takes days.

But what if we did add long distance transmission? Look at the US west of the Mississippi. I once estimated the capital cost of powering today’s demand using 100% renewables without storage.

That’s approximately $200bn in generation + $100bn for overcapacity.

The transmission system was mainly built to serve the legacy coal generators, but that’s often not where the best renewable resources are located. I estimated $40-80 billion for transmission.

That sounds like a lot, but 25% of the generation has already been spent. The cost of fuel for the gas generators, which is part of the LCOE, is on par with those numbers.

My biggest criticism of the Lazard study you mention is that it understates the cost of hedging fuel volatility costs.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#152

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 12:20 AM UTC

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?

[deleted]

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#153

Post by spenrose » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 12:23 AM UTC

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.

California has high rates, like the Northeast[1], primarily because it pulls some externalities onto the bill. Red-state residents not paying for the cost of pollution doesn't eliminate the cost! But California has moderate bills due to decades of work on efficiency. (Climate helps somewhat, but there is a huge AC load in 30m-inhabitant SoCal.)

[1] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#154

Post by Schiendelman » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 12:23 AM UTC

rossdavidh wrote: post #145

All true, but I think they're missing the real issue here. Renewables (esp. solar and wind) are, yes, dropping in cost exponentially, and this means they are currently zooming past fossil fuels in terms of affordability. There's an issue in regards to batteries, but that also seems to be on a learning curve that makes it better every year, so that won't buy fossil fuels much more time. Now, instead of rooting for tha…

It’s always better to force us to make that plan sooner than later. The later we get, the worse the consequences are. Nobody’s going to prepare for any of this.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#155

Post by Retric » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 12:24 AM UTC

mrDmrTmrJ wrote: post #148

rossdavidh wrote: post #145

All true, but I think they're missing the real issue here. Renewables (esp. solar and wind) are, yes, dropping in cost exponentially, and this means they are currently zooming past fossil fuels in terms of affordability. There's an issue in regards to batteries, but that also seems to be on a learning curve that makes it better every year, so that won't buy fossil fuels much more time. Now, instead of rooting for tha…

Here's an article worth your time on this topic: https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/10/05/climate-geopolitics-pet...

That’s a surprisingly short term article about the future. The question isn’t really about what happens in 15 years but rather the next 50. The inertia of existing infrastructure is going to have a massive impact in the short term, but change is only accelerating.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#156

Post by robocat » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 12:28 AM UTC

xyzzyz wrote: post #128

Ma8ee wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Pumped storage is great, but it's simply not viable at a large scale. There are very few places where natural landscape allows it, and making more artificial ones would require flooding vast areas. Considering how difficult it often is to build solar plants on deserts (e.g. consider Ivanpah solar plant, which almost did not get build due to its impact on habitat of desert tortoises, which ended up getting relocated a…

Existing hydro lakes can act as storage (within the constraints of how much inflow there is and minimum outflow rates).

Decrease lake outflow when solar and wind are producing power. Increase lake outflow when they are not.

https://www.hydro.org/waterpower/why-hydro/available/

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#157

Post by amznthrwaway » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 12:29 AM UTC

cbmuser wrote: post #136

gandalfian wrote: post #61

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.

That’s rather inaccurate. German electricity prices are so high because renewables need backup power plants and German law mandates that these plants (mostly coal and gas) are not allowed to operate unless wind and solar are unable to provide sufficient electricity. Also, Germany‘s energy sector still accounts to 350 million tons CO2 emissions annually while France only accounts for 50 million tons CO2 p.a. That’s th…

Germany emits less than half the CO2 per capita than the US, and their per-capita CO2 emissions have been going down steadily (more than 50%!) for more than a decade. France's are lower, but Germany's decarbonization is working well.

It is also incorrect to assert that the majority of Germany's power costs are due to the extra power plants. The majority of the costs are taxes and fees which have nothing to do with the extra power plants.

You have numerous falsehoods in your post, your analysis is incorrect, and your conclusions are false.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#158

Post by Reason077 » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 12:29 AM UTC

cbmuser wrote: post #144

Ma8ee wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is no reasonable and economic way to store Terawatthours of electricity. Even huge hydrostorage plants have only a few GWh.

Huh? Norway alone has 85 TWh of hydrologic storage.

New Zealand has about 4 TWh, but they are considering adding an additional 5-12 TWh with one single storage project:

https://www.odt.co.nz/regions/central-otago/scientific-thoug...

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#159

Post by dsr_ » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 12:29 AM UTC

rossdavidh wrote: post #145

All true, but I think they're missing the real issue here. Renewables (esp. solar and wind) are, yes, dropping in cost exponentially, and this means they are currently zooming past fossil fuels in terms of affordability. There's an issue in regards to batteries, but that also seems to be on a learning curve that makes it better every year, so that won't buy fossil fuels much more time. Now, instead of rooting for tha…

The House of Saud has a plan. It isn't going quite as well as they had hoped, but it's going. Aramco was IPO'd. They wanted a trillion dollar valuation, and didn't get it.

The next step is to sell that stock before the oil market collapses, preferably leaving themselves with a lot of cash and a minority stake in a much smaller company.

Cash is going into technology stocks, venture funds, and international real estate.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#160

Post by robocat » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 12:30 AM UTC

adrianmonk wrote: post #138

jes5199 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Ideally fossil fuel plants would only spin up when they could sell power at a profit Another effect is it makes these plants sit idle for periods of time. It costs a lot of money to build a power plant. Every hour it sits idle is an hour you're not getting any benefit out of the investment you made. So it takes longer to break even on your investment. (Possibly, as a consolation, the plant lasts longer or has lower…

Peaker plants can get paid fees to be ready to deliver power, even without actually running. I think there are plants that get built, paid for as a pure peaker plant, and never run because the peaker is not required.