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

‘Insanely cheap energy’: solar power continues to shock the world

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 339 posts

Re: ‘Insanely cheap energy’: solar power continues to shock the world

#21

Post by irrational »

zaroth wrote: post #5
toomuchtodo wrote: post #2

Relevant quote: "Every time you double producing capacity, you reduce the cost of PV solar by 28%." Current worldwide PV manufacturing capacity is roughly 165 GW [1] [2], with a utility scale price close to $0.01/kWh [3]. Manufacturing capacity is doubling every ~4 years. Global PV capacity in service is ~600 GW. IEA Average global annual capacity additions in main and accelerated cases, 2023-2025: https://www.iea.or…

Fusion power you can install on your roof. Throw in a little storage and a decent climate and the power companies are on track to be thoroughly screwed.

You don't even need a decent climate. I live in Portland Oregon where it is cloudy for 9 months out of the year. In Portland, anything we generate beyond what we can use is fed back into the grid and given to us as a credit. We generate enough solar power credits that we don't pay anything for electricity year round other than a $12 monthly fee to be tied into the grid.

Re: ‘Insanely cheap energy’: solar power continues to shock the world

#22

Post by hh3k0 »

edhelas wrote: post #12
toomuchtodo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the solar is almost free, you can shift investment to storage, transmission, demand response, and other (more expensive) low carbon generation. One would expect a similar cost decline curve for batteries [1] once every automaker is required to buy batteries when they can only sell EVs. [1] https://news.mit.edu/2021/lithium-ion-battery-costs-0323

Please do the math, check how much you'll need to cover the consumption of a small city for a night. Just an idea, you have ~500kg of lithium-battery in an average EV for a few hundred km of autonomy. 95% of stored electricity today is water pumped behind dam. You want to store electricity, build dam. There is only a few decades of lithium left to be extracted by the way.

> Please do the math, check how much you'll need to cover the consumption of a small city for a night.

It sure would be nice if we had a transnational energy infrastructure, as the sun is always shining somewhere. Think DESERTEC and Gobitec but for the whole planet.

Re: ‘Insanely cheap energy’: solar power continues to shock the world

#23

Post by lbotos »

edhelas wrote: post #12
toomuchtodo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the solar is almost free, you can shift investment to storage, transmission, demand response, and other (more expensive) low carbon generation. One would expect a similar cost decline curve for batteries [1] once every automaker is required to buy batteries when they can only sell EVs. [1] https://news.mit.edu/2021/lithium-ion-battery-costs-0323

Please do the math, check how much you'll need to cover the consumption of a small city for a night. Just an idea, you have ~500kg of lithium-battery in an average EV for a few hundred km of autonomy. 95% of stored electricity today is water pumped behind dam. You want to store electricity, build dam. There is only a few decades of lithium left to be extracted by the way.

I was interested in what it takes to recycle a Li-ion cell and this was a pretty good overview for others:

https://cen.acs.org/materials/energy-storage/time-serious-re...

It's expensive now to recycle, and according to the article, the costs don't drop to recycle because if it's cheaper to dig up ore vs. recycle, well, the business doesn't exist.

Re: ‘Insanely cheap energy’: solar power continues to shock the world

#24

Post by toomuchtodo »

lbotos wrote: post #23
edhelas wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please do the math, check how much you'll need to cover the consumption of a small city for a night. Just an idea, you have ~500kg of lithium-battery in an average EV for a few hundred km of autonomy. 95% of stored electricity today is water pumped behind dam. You want to store electricity, build dam. There is only a few decades of lithium left to be extracted by the way.

I was interested in what it takes to recycle a Li-ion cell and this was a pretty good overview for others: https://cen.acs.org/materials/energy-storage/time-serious-re... It's expensive now to recycle, and according to the article, the costs don't drop to recycle because if it's cheaper to dig up ore vs. recycle, well, the business doesn't exist.

Redwood Materials, founded by JB Straubel (Tesla co-founder and previously CTO), is working on this problem.

https://www.redwoodmaterials.com/

Re: ‘Insanely cheap energy’: solar power continues to shock the world

#25

Post by edhelas »

hh3k0 wrote: post #22
edhelas wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please do the math, check how much you'll need to cover the consumption of a small city for a night. Just an idea, you have ~500kg of lithium-battery in an average EV for a few hundred km of autonomy. 95% of stored electricity today is water pumped behind dam. You want to store electricity, build dam. There is only a few decades of lithium left to be extracted by the way.

> Please do the math, check how much you'll need to cover the consumption of a small city for a night. It sure would be nice if we had a transnational energy infrastructure, as the sun is always shining somewhere. Think DESERTEC and Gobitec but for the whole planet.

Oh yes, thousands of km of high power copper cables.

Crossing west-to-east Europe with electricity is already loosing 30% of it. Let's transport electricity from Australia to India !

And for wind, it's the same issue, when there is wind in Finland, there is wind in Spain. So you can't "balance thing" between countries.

Re: ‘Insanely cheap energy’: solar power continues to shock the world

#26

Post by pridkett »

edhelas wrote: post #9

All this energy ! Can't be stored (don't tell me about lithium, please do the math…), and it's not there at night.

It’s not as far off as you might think - even for individual homeowners. I’ve got a far from ideal house with a 8.4KWh solar array on my roof and 3x Tesla Powerwalls in my basement. Yesterday I produced 43KWh of electricity and exported 27KWh to the grid. The only reason I’ve needed grid connectivity in the last nine days has been to export power. In essence, I’m largely off grid from March through October.

Now, this wasn’t cheap (thankfully incentives made it more affordable and Eversource provides the most expensive electricity in the United States), after incentives it was about $22000. That’s a lot, but it’s not hard to imagine this becoming scalable in the near future for climates with better solar potential than Connecticut.

Re: ‘Insanely cheap energy’: solar power continues to shock the world

#27

Post by ggm »

edhelas wrote: post #12
toomuchtodo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the solar is almost free, you can shift investment to storage, transmission, demand response, and other (more expensive) low carbon generation. One would expect a similar cost decline curve for batteries [1] once every automaker is required to buy batteries when they can only sell EVs. [1] https://news.mit.edu/2021/lithium-ion-battery-costs-0323

Please do the math, check how much you'll need to cover the consumption of a small city for a night. Just an idea, you have ~500kg of lithium-battery in an average EV for a few hundred km of autonomy. 95% of stored electricity today is water pumped behind dam. You want to store electricity, build dam. There is only a few decades of lithium left to be extracted by the way.

> There is only a few decades of lithium left to be extracted by the way.

Julian Simon's bet with Paul Ehrlich. You're not apparently aware of the amount of lithium worldwide, it's availability or its price trajectory. All minerals are significantly more abundant than people think, supply chain dynamics in mining do no equate to scarcity on earth, they relate to the economics of exploration and extraction and shipping.

I'll make an exception for pink diamonds. Lithium is not in 10 year decline. Lithium is also not the only battery mineral of interest and battery tech is not stand and die on lithium for either cost, or energy density, or recharge speed.

Re: ‘Insanely cheap energy’: solar power continues to shock the world

#28

Post by edhelas »

ggm wrote: post #27
edhelas wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please do the math, check how much you'll need to cover the consumption of a small city for a night. Just an idea, you have ~500kg of lithium-battery in an average EV for a few hundred km of autonomy. 95% of stored electricity today is water pumped behind dam. You want to store electricity, build dam. There is only a few decades of lithium left to be extracted by the way.

> There is only a few decades of lithium left to be extracted by the way. Julian Simon's bet with Paul Ehrlich. You're not apparently aware of the amount of lithium worldwide, it's availability or its price trajectory. All minerals are significantly more abundant than people think, supply chain dynamics in mining do no equate to scarcity on earth, they relate to the economics of exploration and extraction and shippin…

Sure, we have plenty of minerals left ! But where and how much energy you need to extract them.

In France we have lithium in Alsace, we could dig-it-up, but it's really not worth it energy wise and environmentally wise.

Re: ‘Insanely cheap energy’: solar power continues to shock the world

#29

Post by hh3k0 »

edhelas wrote: post #25
hh3k0 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Please do the math, check how much you'll need to cover the consumption of a small city for a night. It sure would be nice if we had a transnational energy infrastructure, as the sun is always shining somewhere. Think DESERTEC and Gobitec but for the whole planet.

Oh yes, thousands of km of high power copper cables. Crossing west-to-east Europe with electricity is already loosing 30% of it. Let's transport electricity from Australia to India ! And for wind, it's the same issue, when there is wind in Finland, there is wind in Spain. So you can't "balance thing" between countries.

> Crossing west-to-east Europe with electricity is already loosing 30% of it. Let's transport electricity from Australia to India !

From the DESERTEC website:

> For long transmission distances direct current transmission is superior to alternating current. Alternating current has high losses due to capacitive and inductive resistance, which do not occur in direct current transmission. With that technology, a 3000 km line (for example Cairo to Munich) has losses lower than 10%.

Re: ‘Insanely cheap energy’: solar power continues to shock the world

#30

Post by richwater »

sxates wrote: post #8
edent wrote: post #6

One of the best things about this tech is how effective it is at domestic scale. My small roof in London generated 26kWh of electricity today. About 3X what we consumed. https://twitter.com/edent_solar

My house in California is peaking around 70kWh this time of year (April, 14kw system), well more than we're using. I can charge my tesla during the day and still be exporting to the grid. Most afternoons my house is probably powering every house on my street.

How much was your system?
Post reply on HN