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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?

#341

Post by lacker »

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…

Saudi Arabia has a decent plan, to IPO Saudi Aramco and reinvest the proceeds to hedge against a decline in the oil industry. It seems like a good idea, but a political question if they can stick to it. Similar idea to Norway’s sovereign wealth fund.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#342

Post by mjewkes »

biren34 wrote: post #333

I have real problem with this discussion of "cheap" when it comes to wind and solar. 1. The marginal cost per kWh is calculated based on amortizing upfront costs over 20+ years, and those schedules have often proven to be quite optimistic. 2. The marginal cost per kWh is only a small piece of the puzzle when it comes to intermittent power sources. The proper cost needs to attribute the cost of matching supply and dem…

>3. The renewables industry likes to downplay the sheer volume of fossil fuels required to manufacture the parts. The energy ROI on this is quite poor, and in many cases, we would have been better off skipping the intermediate step and burning the oil and gas directly.

I'm assuming you're referring to Ferroni and Hopkirk (2016) which claimed ERORI of ~0.8-1.7.

You should be aware that their work has been pretty thoroughly picked apart - the rebuttal produced immediately after the above, by 27 international scholars, suggests a ERORI of 7-8. It has likely improved since that time.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142151...

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#343

Post by xyzzyz »

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…

> Tesla has shown quite readily that batteries are probably better than peaker plants for most cases.

Where and how it shown that?

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#344

Post by biren34 »

graeme wrote: post #334
biren34 wrote: post #333

I have real problem with this discussion of "cheap" when it comes to wind and solar. 1. The marginal cost per kWh is calculated based on amortizing upfront costs over 20+ years, and those schedules have often proven to be quite optimistic. 2. The marginal cost per kWh is only a small piece of the puzzle when it comes to intermittent power sources. The proper cost needs to attribute the cost of matching supply and dem…

> The renewables industry likes to downplay the sheer volume of fossil fuels required to manufacture the parts. The energy ROI on this is quite poor, and in many cases, we would have been better off skipping the intermediate step and burning the oil and gas directly. Is this from electricity (which could be renewable in future), or is there an actual hard requirement for carbon in terms of burning very hot materials…

Some of it is in base materials and some of it in smelting requirements (though I'm not 100% sure how much of that could be replaced by electricity).

Most of it is in the mining, refining, and transport of the massive quantities of metals needed to manufacture and install the combination of generation, transport, transformation, and storage equipment + the second/third order equipment to manufacture the electrical equipment.

Our supply chains are dependent on fossil fuels for all of this, and we're a long long way off from replicating even a fraction of it with a purely electrical version.

If we do choose to pursue that goal (which I think is worthwhile), the renewables still lack the energy ROI to make it feasible. We can do it, but it pretty much requires wide scale adoption of nuclear for the thermodynamics to work out.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#345

Post by jes5199 »

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…

if you wanna talk externalities, let’s price in the damage done by climate change into fossil fuel costs, and see which one is cheaper

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#346

Post by sitkack »

badestrand wrote: post #184
vlovich123 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn’t the 2009 Recovery Act that Obama spearheaded also have a heavily invest in renewables? [1] Over 10 years it averaged to about 9 billion per year. I seem to recall that this investment push was twofold: investment in American renewable tech and rebates to spur demand. China heavily cut solar prices to undercut those solar investments (leading to Solyndra’s bankruptcy) but that had the effect of lowering prices…

Germany started in the year 2000 with guaranteed, high prices to providers of solar/wind energy and that their feeding into the electrical grid has preference over other providers. Additionally they employed grants for citizens deploying solar on their roofs. That massively raised the electricity prices, resulting in the world's costliest electricity. Around 24% (!) of the German electricity price is a Renewable Surc…

So smart! Things are cheaper on the past, best time to plant a tree. They absolutely did the right thing for themselves and the whole world.

Thank you Germany!

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#347

Post by sitkack »

mrDmrTmrJ wrote: post #141
dragonwriter wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> PG&E is a monopoly combined with an inadvertent domestic terrorist organization. You can't be an inadvertent terrorist organization. Not everyone who is responsible for multiple lethal felonies is a terrorist.

Yes, "inadvertent terrorist" would normally be a contradiction in terms, as 'terrorism is the act of killing innocent people to spread terror and extort a body politic to make a political change'. So this can't be inadvertent. Yet, PG&E 1) kills innocent people 2) demands more money from the population it kills 3) is unable to stop killing people 4) covers up their malfeasance in court 5) repeatedly sets my state on…

You need your own animated show. Brilliant stuff.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#348

Post by anonuser123456 »

vbezhenar wrote: post #247
anonuser123456 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Kazakhstan.

Interesting. I looked it up and that sounds about right for domestic users.

The cost of solar in the US is highly dependent on labor costs and the regulatory process. So OPs system would cost less in Kazakhstan based on lower labor costs.

Residential solar is also an expensive way to produce solar. In the US we have industrial scale plants that produce at $0.018-0.024/kWh.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#349

Post by hinkley »

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 hate the argument that we’re just waiting for batteries now.

Hopefully it’s not that simple. If the existing renewables output of an area is high, is it a good idea for me to build more capacity? I could just saturate the market and be stuck with low margins.

But if storage is coming, that could tilt the playing field a bit. I’d I do decide to gamble on it, now there’s even more reason to build storage, whether I build it or someone else does. In fact if I do both, I may be able to buy someone else’s surplus at a discount to resell and as a hedge against outages in my farm.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#350

Post by biren34 »

mjewkes wrote: post #342
biren34 wrote: post #333

I have real problem with this discussion of "cheap" when it comes to wind and solar. 1. The marginal cost per kWh is calculated based on amortizing upfront costs over 20+ years, and those schedules have often proven to be quite optimistic. 2. The marginal cost per kWh is only a small piece of the puzzle when it comes to intermittent power sources. The proper cost needs to attribute the cost of matching supply and dem…

>3. The renewables industry likes to downplay the sheer volume of fossil fuels required to manufacture the parts. The energy ROI on this is quite poor, and in many cases, we would have been better off skipping the intermediate step and burning the oil and gas directly. I'm assuming you're referring to Ferroni and Hopkirk (2016) which claimed ERORI of ~0.8-1.7. You should be aware that their work has been pretty thoro…

I'll have to take a look. Thanks!
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