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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?

#611

Post by fakedang »

pmiller2 wrote: post #562
marcosdumay wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are missong that it's the large fossil fuel plants that need long distance transmission. Wind and solar (the ones getting cheaper) need storage, not transmission.

Fair enough, but then you're just substituting gigantic batteries, such as the Tesla Megapack, for the vast transmission networks necessary to make oil, coal, and nuclear practical. These are also not trivial problems to solve for a poor country, without assistance from more developed nations. So, the question is: is there the political will in the developed world to help the developing world bootstrap renewable ener…

Lithium is vastly abundant though. Lots of lithium in the land itself, and even more in the sea.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#612

Post by KuhlMensch »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #382
KuhlMensch wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you install your own panels, you can of course simply sell back to the electricity company. In South Australia, a few roof panels, gets you enough credits to essentially run the AC without needing to consider the power cost.

That depends, full AC draws 5kw for me, so you'd need probably a 10kw system to get coverage for most of the day, and that's a big one, I think requiring a 3 phase connection. I dare say unless you have a fortunate roof shape (all flat or pointing all the right way) you wont be able to fit that on either..

Ah yes, I was being too loose in my language. I should have said: "gets my father enough credits, so HE does not worry about the costs of running the AC", which upon reflection might only be during and and the evenings"

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#613

Post by cik »

arjun-menon wrote: post #587
scottmcf wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't they often take their passports and prevent them from leaving?

Who do you mean by “they”? Unscrupulous private companies with criminal managers that break the law? A company taking a person’s passport is explicitly illegal in the UAE: https://dubaihow.com/holding-passport-employee-uae/ It carries a criminal prison sentence and a fine. And there’s a big push by the UAE government to go after, and prosecute employers who break this law. I don’t know why people in Western countries…

You're spot on, as an Israeli I wanted to thank you for highlighting this. There are individuals in every country who perform illegal acts, that should not reflect on the country as a whole. Shukran ya habibi.

In Israel we have a lot of love for the UAE. Together, we're already sharing agra-tech, water-tech, and finance. Israel is looking forward to learning about some of the construction methods being pioneered in building up the desert. This is an unbelievably warm peace.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#614

Post by machiaweliczny »

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…

You seems to have very cheap energy, here in Poland it's ~0.1$ but coupled with ability to store excess to grid it's quite practical and there's big rush with people installing solar panels. As you can use this extra elecricity for heating in winter which typically is 500$ to $1K per year (coal vs gas) + 500$ for elecricity per year, this means it pays for itself quite fast (not installed it yet for myself, want to be proven on durability of panels). If you don't have heating/AC need then it's probably less economical yet.

Building house here also starts around $50K (not counting land price). BTW land prices rose from 500$ to $500K on nice terrain when asphalt roads where build (in like 15 years span). I am happy that solar panels + storage are getting cheaper as building house anywhere will become possibile. Probably will contribute to faster development of poorer countries/regions with bad infrastructure.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#615

Post by LunaSea »

xbmcuser wrote: post #534
LunaSea wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's impossible to charge electric vehicles on solar panels. You charge at night when the panels don't produce and the panels don't have enough capacity to charge the vehicle completely. So you need huge batteries that will be even more expensive.

Battery prices are also falling 18-20% every 2 years a tesla powerwall costs around $7k now $11k with installation. You dont need to top up your electric vehicle 100Kwh every night looking at avg car use most people would need to top up 7-8Kwh only so the battery cost wont be extremely expensive no need to install 100Kwh battries just 12-15Kwh would be enough.

7 to 8 Kwh is already more than half the production of an average standalone house. Which means that the rest of the house has to somehow do without half it's production.

Also, outside of cost, batteries and solar panels have a huge environment cost during production and are still terribly difficult to recycle.

Windmill blades are often buried underground for example.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#616

Post by bregma »

BurningFrog wrote: post #25
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.

In the spirit of "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway." I wonder if shipping big piles of fully charged batteries around has any chance of being a practical power distribution method?

Remember, lithium ion batteries are demonstrably effective bombs. Shipping big piles of bombs around is a well-established power distribution method, although not usually electrical power.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#617

Post by ikerdanzel »

fakedang wrote: post #565
ben_w wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> imo, they'll never collapse Things can change surprisingly fast. My grandmother was born close to the peak of the British Empire, within a few years (plus or minus) of Irish independence; by the time my older brother was born the Empire was reduced to about 5 million people outside the UK, and by the time I was born the UK had humiliated itself by managing to lose a naval dispute with Iceland despite the entire pop…

Again, read my last line. The SWF is responsible for all the subsidies in the UAE, and if they collapse, it would mean we have far bigger problems. The SWF invests in all major indices across all major markets, and even in multiple private equity firms (including my old firm, which was one of the biggest in the world). The collapse of $1.1T worth of investments would be the signal of a global collapse. Imagine if Bla…

You making an assumption UAE will never dip their hand into their golden goose. Money come and go. Just go ask Rothschild and Rockefeller when they had wealth beyond imagination back then. I wouldn't put too much faith in SWF. Nokia gone. Lehman gone. They take along a lot of billionaire money too. So SWF will have to be incredibily lucky like Buffet to keep their wealth. Let just say in 50 years, it will be very different than what you praised about SWF today.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#618

Post by ben_w »

thu2111 wrote: post #455
pjc50 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more or less impossible for there to be no wind over a large area at the same time - low wind areas are surrounded by circulating air in a cyclonic structure.

I think you must have missed this event from just a few weeks ago: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/blackout-alert-from-natio... Last week, National Grid issued two electricity margin notices, the most serious security-of-supply alerts since 2016, both citing low wind farm output among the causes and urgently appealing for more power plants. To keep the lights on, Britain burnt coal in polluting old power stations…

I guess you and pjc50 have a different idea of “a large area”. The UK is about half the size of California.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#619

Post by ben_w »

Budabellly wrote: post #278
epistasis wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Energy storage is already cheap enough to provide this for a few hours in the evening, as long as it's guaranteed that the battery get to discharge (and get paid) daily. In the ERCOT market, one of the markets that's most open to new, independent entrants reusing to make money, the interconnection queue has more GW of storage than natural gas. The much trickier problem is storage that's only needed once a week, once…

Gravity batteries! Basically a hunk of concrete that uses spare grid power to be hoisted, and then converts the gravitational energy when its dropped. Seems like there are only a few companies giving it a real go. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_battery

Low energy density though — a fully charged 1kg LiIon battery has enough energy to raise its own weight by a height of about 50 km.

Wikipedia says energy density of 0.36-0.875 MJ/kg; assuming 0.5 MJ/kg and putting it into PE = mgh -> 0.5 MJ/kg * 1kg = 1kg * g * h -> h = (0.5 MJ/kg)/g = ~51 km

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%280.5%20MJ%2Fkg%29%2Fg...

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#620

Post by ben_w »

manfredo wrote: post #75
BurningFrog wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the spirit of "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway." I wonder if shipping big piles of fully charged batteries around has any chance of being a practical power distribution method?

Not even remotely. Batteries have some of the worst energy density both by unit of volume and mass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#/media/File:Ene... . Not to mention global annual battery production amounts to less than 1 hour of the USA's national electricity usage.

Your first point is valid, but I think the second is using the wrong measure — as batteries are rechargeable, surely the measure should be total existent batteries not annual production of batteries?

(I would be surprised if this was viable even with my suggested measure, no argument there!)

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