Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

ourworldindata.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 642 posts

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#441

Post by imtringued »

SulfurHexaFluri wrote: post #355
gwbas1c wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think if we had variable pricing that matched the availability of renewables, consumers would shift quickly. If you dig around enough, you'll find plenty of stories of variable electricity costs. From what I understand, it's more common for business customers instead of residential. (Apparently chillers that freeze water overnight with cheap electricity to run daytime air conditioning is a thing.) But anyway, I h…

A coworker recently showed me that they have a non commercial power plan/contract where they get hourly prices based on market rate. In South Australia where the sun is pretty intense, his power prices literally go negative for a few hours. Now if you had variable loads or a battery you could schedule them to buy and sell power based on the market rate. Since very few people have the ability to do this, you can const…

>Since very few people have the ability to do this, you can constantly beat the market on an almost daily basis.

That's incorrect usage of terminology because energy is not an investment. Nobody buys a kWh of energy expecting it to net a return year over year. It's used as a consumable like food or water. If you buy low and sell high you are engaging in trading, not investment.

Trading is about providing liquidity and the maximum liquidity a market needs depends on its size, not the number of traders. Those traders basically have to share a market and if there are too many traders then the profit per trader will go down. This is the biggest reason why trading (not investment) is zero sum. At some point enough is enough but this isn't necessarily as bad as many people portray.

A lot of industries are like this. Once everyone got a smartphone or PC the only way to grow faster is to displace a competitor. Trading in the stock market is usually a poor choice because there are plenty of professional businesses that are already providing enough liquidity.

Trading in the energy market can be a good choice precisely because the market isn't crowded as you said.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#442

Post by cik »

fakedang wrote: post #384
sabalaba wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not impossible (more like highly likely) for that trust to go the same way of the Nauru Phosphate Royalties Trust. Administrative burden and corruption. Mismanagement. Exponential growth can’t go on forever. It’s interesting that UAE is doing the same thing that Nauru did except on a larger scale with petrochemicals instead of phosphate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nauru_Phosphate_Royalties_Trus...

I've worked with the UAE's SWF, and imo, they'll never collapse. Corruption is nonexistent nearly in the investment authorities, since they are highly regulated and treated essentially as defacto Western companies listed in the NYSE or something. If they collapse, we would have far bigger problems by that time, since they're invested heavily into the modern global economy. This is not oil wealth, but actual invested…

I came to share exactly this. The UAE is the most forward thinking, of any of the Gulf states. Economic planning literally spans 100 years and multiple scenarios. They're using oil wealth to actively invest in finance, tourism, technology, high-yield agri-tech, and medical research. They also have the most vibrant (by far) tech scene of the Arab world, and are working only to hyper-accelerate that.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#443

Post by stale2002 »

ako wrote: post #401
freewilly1040 wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point it seems demand for oil will run out before supply

We'll still need oil, not for energy, but as a raw material for production of plastics and many other products.

> We'll still need oil

Sure, but not nearly in as large of quantities.

If the value of saudi arabian oil plummets to 1/4th its value, then they are still screwed, even though "oil is still used as raw materials" and it has non-zero value.

Owning something that is almost worthless isn't really much better than owning something that is literally worthless.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#444

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#445

Post by yazaddaruvala »

pmiller2 wrote: post #421
freewilly1040 wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point it seems demand for oil will run out before supply

I hope so, but then I look around at all the less developed countries out there and all I see is a massive demand for oil. :/

As per the article, renewables will be significantly cheaper than oil.

Why would a poor country not purchase the cheaper option?

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#446

Post by Rapzid »

pmiller2 wrote: post #421
freewilly1040 wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point it seems demand for oil will run out before supply

I hope so, but then I look around at all the less developed countries out there and all I see is a massive demand for oil. :/

But not so much whale oil.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#447

Post by imtringued »

renewiltord wrote: post #91
dmurray wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that very close to how a normal electricity marketplace would work? The consumer mostly doesn't care if they got their electricity from renewables or not, so they pay the same price.

No, a normal electricity marketplace would eat up the profits from getting more efficient renewables. e.g. If fossil is $4/kW and wind is $2/kW then normal market buys all the wind at $2/kW. Here, government will pay $2/kW premium on the wind. That means every cost gain on wind goes to the provider.

Unfortunately you can't instantly turn off fossil fuel plants. Those coal plants will still get their $4/kW and the turned off renewables also get their $2/kW because we want to subsidize them. It would be foolish to punish renewables for the failures of fossil fuels. So in the end you pay $6/kW. A carbon tax would turn off the coal plants for good and replace them with something that can throttle faster. Ironically this means carbon taxes make energy cheaper.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#448

Post by ncmncm »

manfredo wrote: post #213
integer42 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclears not some secret unexplored concept at this point. If it were competitive it would be competing. Its costs are too high, not due to regulations due to the sheer amount of resources involved in mining, refining, and operating. Not to mention initial construction.

It's doing much better in terms of actually being used as a large portion of countries electricity generation, as I demonstrated above. But more importantly, the reality is that nuclear isn't competing against renewables it's competing against a fossil fuel grid that's supplemented by renewables. Germany, the poster child for renewables, still emits 10x the carbon dioxide per watt of electricity as France. Let me put…

Batteries are only the most expensive of a wide array of storage choices that today vie for which will end up cheapest, overall. Pumped hydro is mature, but underground and underwater compressed air are being proven; mine-shaft gravitic similarly; low-pressure LH2 is newly practical with aerogel insulation; carbon-captured LCH4, likewise; catalytic ammonia; and even powdered iron. None of these require any theoretical breakthroughs, just workaday engineering. In some cases combining them makes sense, such as mineshaft gravitics and compressed air in the same mineshaft. In other cases the storage medium is itself directly useful, as for example LH2 as aircraft fuel, and ammonia as both fertilizer and fuel.

Some depend on geography, particularly pumped hydro and mineshaft gravitic, and to a lesser degree compressed air. Catalytic improvements will bring rapid cost decline in LH2 and ammonia production. And, finally, battery technology, still the most immediately practical for home systems, is still improving fast. Any breakthroughs not anticipated only improve the picture.

The cost for utility-scale solar is many times less than roof-mounted, battery-backed home systems, but in places where distribution is expensive (rural) or unreliable (3rd world and California) it has strong appeal.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#449

Post by yazaddaruvala »

disown wrote: post #379
ozborn wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EIA projections are garbage and have been for years, go look at their own old projections if you want to verify this. World coal consumption peaked in 2013, not sure why you believe it is coming back in 2050?! Most of the new global energy production brought online is renewables, and has been for the last 4 years...The renewable fraction is also increasing. Not sure why you believe fossil fuel use will increase for t…

> EIA projections are garbage and have been for years, go look at their own old projections if you want to verify this. Okay. > World coal consumption peaked in 2013, not sure why you believe it is coming back in 2050?! Because more than half the world's population has yet to industrialize. > Most of the new global energy production brought online is renewables, and has been for the last 4 years.. Okay. > Not sure wh…

> Because more than half the world's population has yet to industrialize.

This was true when the projections were that renewables would be more expensive than fossil fuels, but “developed” countries would invest in CO2 reduction “for the greater good”.

However, as per the article, renewables (including batteries) are going to become significantly cheaper than fossil fuels.

Any reason to believe countries “looking to industrialize” will opt for the more expensive fossil fuel option?

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#450

Post by leoedin »

imtringued wrote: post #441
SulfurHexaFluri wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A coworker recently showed me that they have a non commercial power plan/contract where they get hourly prices based on market rate. In South Australia where the sun is pretty intense, his power prices literally go negative for a few hours. Now if you had variable loads or a battery you could schedule them to buy and sell power based on the market rate. Since very few people have the ability to do this, you can const…

>Since very few people have the ability to do this, you can constantly beat the market on an almost daily basis. That's incorrect usage of terminology because energy is not an investment. Nobody buys a kWh of energy expecting it to net a return year over year. It's used as a consumable like food or water. If you buy low and sell high you are engaging in trading, not investment. Trading is about providing liquidity an…

The scale of the required liquidity of the energy market is growing constantly. Every time a solar panel or wind turbine is installed, the need for variable power sources goes up. If we're going to go anywhere near the net zero target that many western nations have set, we're going to need _a lot_ of liquidity.
Post reply on HN