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Solar Is Cheapest Electricity in History, U.S. DOE Aims to Cut Costs 60% by 2030

cleantechnica.com

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Re: Solar Is Cheapest Electricity in History, U.S. DOE Aims to Cut Costs 60% by 2030

#71

Post by someperson »

zizee wrote: post #49
briga wrote: post #2

This is good to hear. I assume location must play a large part in this? Solar must be more cost-effective in, say, the Mojave desert, than it is in Alaska. I sometimes wonder if the widespread adoption of solar is going to have an environmental impact that isn't immediately apparent. Every solar panel you put on the ground is going to take up solar energy that could otherwise be absorbed by a plant, which in turn mea…

> Solar must be more cost-effective in, say, the Mojave desert, than it is in Alaska. I don't think this was your intention, but this reminded me of something I see in so many of these conversations. In discussions about solar (and electric cars) there are always people who say "well this won't work in situation X", with an unsaid implication of "this is not the solution". It is unlikely that we will find a single so…

You may be interested in the video The LED Traffic Light and the Danger of "But Sometimes!" by Technology Connections: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiYO1TObNz8

Re: Solar Is Cheapest Electricity in History, U.S. DOE Aims to Cut Costs 60% by 2030

#72

Post by E-Reverance »

An additional benefit of solar is that it is the most politically stable energy source since it can be deployed off-grid. This is important because the more unstable regions of the world can sometimes be seen as hopeless because investments require high upfront costs and can't be trusted with being properly maintained. Therefore solar can enable growth and be deployed during periods of unrest/conflict.

Re: Solar Is Cheapest Electricity in History, U.S. DOE Aims to Cut Costs 60% by 2030

#74

Post by gruez »

zizee wrote: post #41

I think the future will be robust national/international grids, with a mixture of storage options (batteries/pumped hydro) to smooth out the intermittent nature of wind and solar. Cynics always talk about the amount of energy storage required for solar as if you need to store 24 hours of energy for solar/wind to be viable. I'd like to see numbers on having 1 hour of storage for peak demand, a robust national grid, an…

>international grids

Europe didn't want to act when russia invaded crimea, because russia supplied all the gas. Being dependent on your neighbors for your electricity supply and having no backup would only make this problem worse.

Re: Solar Is Cheapest Electricity in History, U.S. DOE Aims to Cut Costs 60% by 2030

#75

Post by lutorm »

ch4s3 wrote: post #68
jeffbee wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody needs 1 full day of storage.

One could imagine a series of cloudy windless days in the northern latitudes during the winter. Perhaps a large enough gird solves that problem? I have no clue.

But the key is that if you're averaging globally, the solar power probably doesn't change much. You'll need a way to transport the energy instead, obviously.

Re: Solar Is Cheapest Electricity in History, U.S. DOE Aims to Cut Costs 60% by 2030

#76

Post by psadri »

manfredo wrote: post #53
zizee wrote: post #41

I think the future will be robust national/international grids, with a mixture of storage options (batteries/pumped hydro) to smooth out the intermittent nature of wind and solar. Cynics always talk about the amount of energy storage required for solar as if you need to store 24 hours of energy for solar/wind to be viable. I'd like to see numbers on having 1 hour of storage for peak demand, a robust national grid, an…

Even achieving just one hour of storage globally amounts to 2.5 TWh of storage. By comparison the entire world produces ~300 GWh worth of lithium ion battery annually. That leaves geographically limited options like pumped hydroelectricity, and solutions not yet deployed at any significant scale like hydrogen fuel cells, synthetic methane, thermal batteries, flywheels, etc. Realistically we should saturate daytime en…

We could use day time electricity to generate fuels to burn at night. As long as it’s net-zero wrt to CO2 emissions, it will be fine.

Re: Solar Is Cheapest Electricity in History, U.S. DOE Aims to Cut Costs 60% by 2030

#77

Post by meepmorp »

gruez wrote: post #74
zizee wrote: post #41

I think the future will be robust national/international grids, with a mixture of storage options (batteries/pumped hydro) to smooth out the intermittent nature of wind and solar. Cynics always talk about the amount of energy storage required for solar as if you need to store 24 hours of energy for solar/wind to be viable. I'd like to see numbers on having 1 hour of storage for peak demand, a robust national grid, an…

>international grids Europe didn't want to act when russia invaded crimea, because russia supplied all the gas. Being dependent on your neighbors for your electricity supply and having no backup would only make this problem worse.

Isn't that an argument for greater integration, to provide redundant sources of energy?

Re: Solar Is Cheapest Electricity in History, U.S. DOE Aims to Cut Costs 60% by 2030

#78

Post by chrisco255 »

marvin wrote: post #47
chrisco255 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have to dam a river to store energy in this way? Can they just build water towers that pull water from underground up into a tank and release it via gravity to generate power when needed?

Not enough energy. Hydropower reservoirs are typically many square kilometers of water surface, depth > 10 meters on average and a height differential on the order of 100 meters or more. Vary parameters according to geography, but it's not something that can be built without using geology for support.

Yeah but in this case, the hydropower is being used for power generation, not as a battery supplement for solar/wind, right? Does it need to be so massive to act as a replacement/alternative for Lithium battery banks?

Re: Solar Is Cheapest Electricity in History, U.S. DOE Aims to Cut Costs 60% by 2030

#79

Post by jeremysalwen »

manfredo wrote: post #54
jxidjhdhdhdhfhf wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't car battery packs under $100/KWh? Is there some other factor which drives up the price for grid level storage?

The factor that drives up price for grid level storage is scale. Only ~300 GWh worth of batteries is produced globally each year. The world uses 2.5 TWh of electricity each hour. If anyone tries to install battery storage at a significant scale, demand will vastly outstrip supply and drive prices up.

Assuming there aren't economies of scale. Demand for solar had gone way up in recent decades (e.g. in germany, before it was cheap), and the price subsequently went down.

Re: Solar Is Cheapest Electricity in History, U.S. DOE Aims to Cut Costs 60% by 2030

#80

Post by mgolawala »

manfredo wrote: post #53
zizee wrote: post #41

I think the future will be robust national/international grids, with a mixture of storage options (batteries/pumped hydro) to smooth out the intermittent nature of wind and solar. Cynics always talk about the amount of energy storage required for solar as if you need to store 24 hours of energy for solar/wind to be viable. I'd like to see numbers on having 1 hour of storage for peak demand, a robust national grid, an…

Even achieving just one hour of storage globally amounts to 2.5 TWh of storage. By comparison the entire world produces ~300 GWh worth of lithium ion battery annually. That leaves geographically limited options like pumped hydroelectricity, and solutions not yet deployed at any significant scale like hydrogen fuel cells, synthetic methane, thermal batteries, flywheels, etc. Realistically we should saturate daytime en…

Why would we use lithium ion batteries?

I would imagine the approach to store the energy would be to use the energy from solar panels to do work that can be used to produce electricity later.

For example, you could use solar energy to pump water back uphill to flow down through a hydro electric dam later.

Even if it isn't the most efficient, in the long run it would likely provide the best scalability and least long term environmental impact. Once you have the facility in place, the same water could be pumped uphill to flow back down a million times over with the only overhead replacing water lost through evaporation and maintaining the facility.

Am I missing something that makes such an approach unfeasible?

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