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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?

#241

Post by dalbasal »

arjun-menon wrote: post #235
discordance wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"My grandfather rode a camel, my father rode a camel, I drive a Mercedes, my son drives a Land Rover, his son will drive a Land Rover, but his son will ride a camel" - Saeed Al Maktoum

The quote is actually likely from a member of Dubai Royal Family. An interesting fact here is that the UAE will never become poor . The UAE has saved up over 1.3 million USD dollars per citizen [a]. And this is just the government’s savings. Obviously, there’s immense private wealth on top of that as well. Even if with investment returns as low as 4% per year drawn out, that would translate to $52,000 per citizen . T…

Idk if a monarchy where citizens are a small minority can be thought of this way.

It's like saying a company has lots of money saved. Doesn't matter much if the operation aren't profitable.

Economic activity ceasing is still what it is.

...in any case, gulf oil will likely be the last well abandoned. It's so cheap to produce that production can continue at very low oil prices. The last half of any adoption curve is long, and people will still consume some oil and gas for several more decades.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#242

Post by girvo »

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…

I don’t see where the comment you replied to said that it was cheap. You’re putting words in their mouth.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#243

Post by _carbyau_ »

bawolff wrote: post #193
_carbyau_ wrote: post #187

The issue for me is that it doesn't matter how cheap they are. Australian government approach is largely to subsidize homeowners to put solar panels on their roof. (They do do other things too! But billions in home owner subsidies...) The main incentive of course is they then have cheaper power bills for not much outlay. If you rent, nearly nothing. You'd have to have a generous landlord or luck out on a house someon…

There's lots of people in the world with lots of different situations. If you only fund things that benefit every single person equally, you won't fund anything, because there are no initiaves that benefit every single member of society equally.

I agree with your first sentence. But you lost me after that.

I never asked for benefit to every single person perfectly equally.

For society, having the quite significant proportion of people who are renters and apartment dwellers getting more than an insignificant benefit from our own government should be a thing.

I am not asking for handouts. But for the handouts to those people wealthy enough (not rich per se but wealthy enough) to own their own standalone home to stop. And for that money to benefit all via society wide infrastructure such as a powerstation/energy storage/grid costs and upgrades.

It'd benefit the standalone homeowners still. But everyone else too.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#244

Post by wolfretcrap »

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…

I live in India where equation is similar. Power is cheap.

But when I factor in power outage which happens a lot, the solar is much better deal.

I've had 24/7 power sine we moved to solar.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#245

Post by ezzaf »

mrfusion wrote: post #179

I hate the argument that we’re just waiting for batteries now. I think if we had variable pricing that matched the availability of renewables, consumers would shift quickly. Say something like power costs .02/kWh while the sun is shining and .30 when it’s not. I’d charge my car at work. I’d put a timer on my dryer to turn on at 10am. They probably come out with a hot water heater that goes really hot during the day a…

This already exist in some places (for example Amber and Powerclub in Australia).

The issue is it's more effort than most people are happy to exert. They are used to flicking a switch having the appliance on whenever they want it. To change that will either involve much higher prices, a substantial shift in the way we think about energy, or an improvement in technology to allow the load shifting to happen in the background without the user noticing.

We turn to batteries instead because it's easier to build something than it is to change behaviour.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#246

Post by m463 »

discordance wrote: post #196
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…

"My grandfather rode a camel, my father rode a camel, I drive a Mercedes, my son drives a Land Rover, his son will drive a Land Rover, but his son will ride a camel" - Saeed Al Maktoum

> ...his son will ride a camel

I wonder if in the future, camels will be owned and/or ridden only by very wealthy individuals.

(like many horses nowadays)

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#247

Post by vbezhenar »

anonuser123456 wrote: post #218
vbezhenar wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Where do you live that you pay $0.03/kWh?

Kazakhstan.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#248

Post by [deleted] »

girvo wrote: post #238
nordsieck wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I hope coal burning goes away; but that will have a pretty outsized impact on my country (Australia), and the fact that we don’t tax the mining companies enough means our government could end up lacking the means to invest in things to help us transition away from being a mining focused country. It worries me.

[deleted]

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#249

Post by ineedasername »

mrfusion wrote: post #179

I hate the argument that we’re just waiting for batteries now. I think if we had variable pricing that matched the availability of renewables, consumers would shift quickly. Say something like power costs .02/kWh while the sun is shining and .30 when it’s not. I’d charge my car at work. I’d put a timer on my dryer to turn on at 10am. They probably come out with a hot water heater that goes really hot during the day a…

I think the best thing we could do if we went to pricing like that is to have a meter next to your thermostat that tells you have much you're paying for electricity right now. That would make the mental equation much less abstract and immediate, further push people towards the behaviors you mention. But on those specifics:

1) Unfortunately most workplaces don't have a place to charge your car. That should change

2) Laundry is problematic for households with 2 adults & a few kids. Multiple loads can't be automated that way, so not running laundry after 5:00 pm isn't an option many days.

3) You can can have a high-efficiency on-demand hot water heater with an external tank to hold X amount of hot water for use throughout the day. Heating your home is more problematic: the hot water loses about 5-10 degrees per cycle through the house & back to the boiler, so you'd still need to run the unit on cold nights.

4) Fridge/Freezer: I like the idea, but it could be a food safety risk... I'd rather see units designed with that particular use case & required insulation in mind to ensure food was always kept at safe temperatures, even if it meant paying the .30 for short spurts over night.

5) AC: I wish everyone would do this sort of thing already with thermostat timers. If you have a small apartment with window units, timers at outlets should automatically shutoff living/dining units. Bedroom should have a high temp (though comfortable enough to sleep through) set for the cutoff since you're sleeping anyway. If your home needs more than 3 window units, it's generally more energy efficient to get central air (though upfront costs are high) and you can get multi-zones to only cool the areas needed, further improving efficiency.

Basically, I think a lot of the things we'd do to deal with variable pricing could already be done to reduce usage.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#250

Post by nicoburns »

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…

> 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.

If we're taking into account those kind of costs, shouldn't we also account for the cost emitting CO2?

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