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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?

#201

Post by vbezhenar »

sxates wrote: post #125

Personal anecdote - my house has two sets of solar panels on the roof - the first was installed in 2017, the second was just installed last month. In 2017 my 6kw system cost $24,000 before any incentives (by SolarCity). In 2020 my 7.8kw system cost $15,000 before any incentives (by Tesla). Of that $15k, $4.3k was for the panels themselves, $2k for the inverter, $1k for mounting hardware, and $8k for installation. It'…

From my perspective those costs are massive. I'm considering building a whole house from bricks which will cost $30-$40k. I probably won't spend $15k for electricity for all of my life. I don't understand western economy. You've got extremely costly electricity and you're claiming that solar power is good. It might be true for you, but it won't ever come to me at those prices. I'm paying $0.03 for kW⋅h. I'm spending around 200 kW⋅h per month, so that's $6 per month. I would need to live 208 years to save $15k.

Solar panels might be fine in some distant places where you're forced to use diesel generators. Diesel is not cheap. But where electrical grid is already in place, I just don't see it working.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#202

Post by disown »

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 inevitable; fossil fuels are on the way out.

It's not on the way out. Fossil fuel use is increasing and projected to increase for the next 3 decades at least.

solar/wind/etc account for pretty much nothing today.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-energy-substitutio...

And the 2050 projection shows that petroleum and natural gas use will increase and that even coal will rebound by 2050.

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=41433

Also, that huge spike for "renewables" is mostly dams. Not wind or solar.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#203

Post by lucideer »

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…

Original comment:

> The Germans paid for it creating the market/industry. Vast amounts. [...] If the Germans keep voting green [...]

Your reply:

> That’s rather inaccurate. [...] German electricity prices are so high because [...] German law mandates that these plants are not allowed to operate unless wind and solar are unable to provide sufficient electricity

So what you're saying is, German lawmakers mandated the Germans pay for it...

Your comment seems to be making some odd argument about the expense, as if it should be cheap? The original commenter was pointing out exactly that: it costs. "The Germans paid..."

> .

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#204

Post by adamredwoods »

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…

For reference, list of large power plants and their output: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_power_stations

The largest solar plant is at about 2000 MW and requires a lot of land. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhadla_Solar_Park

The largest wind farm is not being used as efficiently as it could: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gansu_Wind_Farm

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#205

Post by p1mrx »

nordsieck wrote: post #186
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 means that countries which rely on fossil fuels for their economy, are going to see the same kind of crushing economic decline that, say, the UK coal industry has. > What do you suppose happens when, for example, Saudi Arabia can no longer feed itself? It just peacefully and gently starves to death? First, I think you have to segregate between different kinds of fossil fuels. Coal is the worst. From what I under…

> In theory, naval propulsion is more amenable to electrification than aviation, but that'll be tricky to do economically

Unless batteries get a lot lighter, ships are more likely to be powered by liquid hydrogen or ammonia, which are relatively straightforward to produce from renewable energy.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#206

Post by epistasis »

xyzzyz wrote: post #135
WalterBright wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had power outages for a week more than once, and can vouch for it staying warm enough for a comfortable shower for a couple days. For HVAC, you can heat/cool it at a minimum to the edge of the comfort range, which will make a big difference. You can take it much further by heating/cooling some thermal mass, and drawing on that mass when the electricity is cheaper. That mass can simply be a pile of stones in a bo…

Water has really good thermal mass already. I think that adding huge water tanks in basements would be pretty beneficial: if the water in those tanks is operated in closed cycle, minerals from water wouldn't accumulate, and if we used rust proof materials, they tanks could last for the lifetime of the house. Then, we could use them to store heat in winter and cold in summer, when electricity is cheap.

District heating already deploys rather large thermal storage in surprisingly compact volumes. The picture here is 2GWh:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_heating#Heat_accumula...

When powered by heat pumps, I imagine this could be used for cooling in the summer as well.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#207

Post by Trisell »

munk-a wrote: post #182
dsr_ wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Just to preempt the other obvious reply (Okay - so that's good for the House of Saud but what about the rest of the country?). If they're wise and invest that money into education they could just convert their current rather highly skilled resource economy into an economy focused on service, finances or defense.

The issue is that most Saudis don’t work. Most of the work done in that country is done by “lower classes” of non Saudis. So when the tap dries up and they all have to work. What do they do?

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#208

Post by fomine3 »

willis936 wrote: post #174
dsr_ wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Who is going to buy a trillion dollar stake in a shrinking market?

Index funds

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#209

Post by jhloa2 »

vbezhenar wrote: post #201
sxates wrote: post #125

Personal anecdote - my house has two sets of solar panels on the roof - the first was installed in 2017, the second was just installed last month. In 2017 my 6kw system cost $24,000 before any incentives (by SolarCity). In 2020 my 7.8kw system cost $15,000 before any incentives (by Tesla). Of that $15k, $4.3k was for the panels themselves, $2k for the inverter, $1k for mounting hardware, and $8k for installation. It'…

From my perspective those costs are massive. I'm considering building a whole house from bricks which will cost $30-$40k. I probably won't spend $15k for electricity for all of my life. I don't understand western economy. You've got extremely costly electricity and you're claiming that solar power is good. It might be true for you, but it won't ever come to me at those prices. I'm paying $0.03 for kW⋅h. I'm spending…

The average cost of residential electricity in the US is just under $0.12/kWh. A $6/mo electricity bill is pretty much unheard of around here. My electricity bill is around $50/mo and we only have 2 people living in the house. It would still take me ~25 years at my current rates and usages to break even, but the economics might work out better if you have a higher occupancy residence.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#210

Post by epistasis »

shoguning wrote: post #38
BurningFrog wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does mention this briefly in the Batteries and electricity storage follow learning curves too section.

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…

It's certainly not disqualifying until we are at far far far higher levels of renewables on the grid. Getting to 80% generation would take very little storage.

And people overestimate how much storage costs. In Texas, even with super cheap natural gas, there are more GW of storage in the interconnection queue than there are of natural gas plants. That's at today's prices, in a market where everybody competes on their own costs!

https://rmi.org/clean-energy-is-canceling-gas-plants/

And greater than 95% of new solar projects in California include storage, and something like 25% of projects outside of California include storage along with the renewables.

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/hybrid-power-pl...

We don't absolutely need to deploy storage right now, but independent agents are still doing it, because they make money by deploying storage at current costs.

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