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

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#471

Post by pydry » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 10:20 AM UTC

ezzaf wrote: post #245

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 back…

For low level residential use batteries might be cheaper. For industrial and commercial use where the scales are higher, demand shifting is probably cheaper.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#472

Post by yipbub » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 10:20 AM UTC

brazzy wrote: post #428

oa335 wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely a sea change happening. I’ve noticed a proliferation of “village life” YouTube channels from Pakistan... it seems that cheap solar power, cellular internet, and cheap smartphones is bringing a whole new class of people online and enriching their lives both materially and culturally.

Unfortunately, it also sometimes results in lynch mobs: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-44856910

That article is about WhatsApp being used to coordinate a lynch mob in India (a villager suspected them of being kidnappers). Tragic, but not relevant

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#473

Post by imtringued » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 10:25 AM UTC

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…

You know there is a fatal flaw in your third argument. Maximum resource cost is bounded by the cost of the renewables. Yet their cost is going down despite producing the same or even more energy. This is completely incompatible with your premise of ERORI always staying below 1.

If burning oil and gas directly was more efficient then it would be impossible for costs to go down beyond a certain point and subsidies would have to grow over time as more and more renewables are deployed.

The reality is that the opposite happened. Countries jumped onto renewables as they became cheaper [0] and subsidies are shrinking across the board.

So whatever your source is, it either had an agenda or it is simply incompetent.

[0] please don't tell me that they didn't become cheaper when the submission article is entirely about renewables becoming cheaper

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#474

Post by Ma8ee » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 10:27 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…

There are probably not one general solution that will work everywhere. But for example in Sweden where about half of the electricity already is from hydropower, it will work well to even out seasonal variations, from for example getting very little sun in the winter. But say for California, where there’s enough sun most days of the year, generating hydrogen might work better to even out the electricity generation between night and day.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#475

Post by ivan_gammel » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 10:28 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…

Carbon will not be completely phased out. It’s still used in chemistry and lower prices may help finding another use of it. The countries which manage their carbon income well will be fine. The others usually go bust no matter how big or low price is - see Venesuela. Saudi Arabia is somewhere in between, but they already adjust.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#476

Post by ppf » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 10:32 AM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #473

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…

You know there is a fatal flaw in your third argument. Maximum resource cost is bounded by the cost of the renewables. Yet their cost is going down despite producing the same or even more energy. This is completely incompatible with your premise of ERORI always staying below 1. If burning oil and gas directly was more efficient then it would be impossible for costs to go down beyond a certain point and subsidies woul…

You're ignoring the differing resource costs. China can freely consume domestic, brown coal for manufacturing purposes, in a significantly cheaper way than any Western country.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#477

Post by Ma8ee » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 10:34 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…

And considering solar power, there’s no shortage of available space. There’s plenty of roofs to cover with panels. Or line the sides of, say, Interstate 5 with a wall of vertical panels that also helps keep wild animals from the road and reduce noise pollution.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#478

Post by Reason077 » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 10:41 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…

> "What is needed today for a low-carbon future is nuclear and hydro."

Hydro is great if you have the terrain for it, but much of the world is not geographically suited for extensive hydro. Nuclear is extraordinarily expensive and often takes decades to plan and build.

Renewables can be built far cheaper and far more quickly. On grids that still have gas & coal fired power stations, every GWh of electricity produced from renewables displaces a GWh that would otherwise be produced from fossil fuels.

Or, to put it another way, every dollar spent on renewables will result in a significantly larger and faster reduction of carbon emissions than if that same dollar were spent on nuclear.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#479

Post by imtringued » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 10:45 AM UTC

inglor_cz wrote: post #37

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.

AFAIK even getting solar electricity from Sahara to European part of the Mediterranean basin would be extremely expensive, and this is peanuts compared to the cost of sending electricity over the Pacific. Unless there are massive improvements in superconductive materials, of course.

Couldn't they invest into hydrogen electrolysis? Hydrogen will grow in importance as an industrial energy input.

If saharan electricity is the cheapest then nobody else can compete in hydrogen production.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#480

Post by dkarp » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 10:49 AM UTC

jhallenworld wrote: post #191

You know what's amazing? Farmers in rural Pakistan choosing to prefer solar to irrigate their crops (panels + VFD/inverter + 10 HP 3-phase motor): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfNgF0WTeCM Or grinding wheat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_G2evJOiU9I The comments in these video are all about how much does it cost, what is your contact number, etc. Clearly this is a sea-change. Also amazing that they all have cell…

I really appreciate the practical engineering of that first video. Winding a stick to tighten the belt is the sort of elegant solution that I wouldn't have thought of