‘Insanely cheap energy’: solar power continues to shock the world • Hacker News Board

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

#111

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 24, 2021, 11:56 PM UTC

lumost wrote: post #63

edhelas wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that you don't see how much land you actually need. Maybe in America there is plenty of space, but in Europe it's way more difficult. To replace one nuclear reactor, you need ~ half of Paris in solar panel. And still need energy "at night". Yes heating water, or cooling places are nice. But your trains ain't gonna work "only when there is sun". If you need backup at one moment, you need 0C0² backup and basica…

I don't think much thought has been given to the cost structure of nuclear peak plants. A nuclear facility which only generated power part of the time should have a longer service life and generate less waste per unit time. Meaning the high capex decommissioning process may be pushed back decades or more.

[deleted]

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

#112

Post by zdragnar » Sat, Apr 24, 2021, 11:59 PM UTC

koolba wrote: post #78

puranjay wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think researchers underestimated how much solar simply “makes sense” to the average person. Once the price is reasonable enough, people are very easily able to latch onto the idea of using what they already know and feel - the sun’s heat. Whenever I mention the solar panels in my parents house, the first question is always about the price. When I tell them they will break even in a few years, their next question is…

Where are we at in 2021 for pay off period? Does it vary by region?

My area has a payoff roughly in line with the lifetime of the panels themselves, or half that if you believe the local companies absurd projections of future energy prices.

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

#113

Post by StavrosK » Sat, Apr 24, 2021, 11:59 PM UTC

anonuser123456 wrote: post #77

Is there a way to invest directly in solar to offset your personal use, without installing it directly on your house/land? My existing house isn’t particularly suitable from a cost perspective to install solar on (clay tile roof, a good 20 years left at least). I also don’t really want to manage an installation project, nor own the maintenance and risk. But I would pay to directly offset my consumption. Something lik…

My power provider has a scheme (I forget the name) where basically your entire electricity bill goes to "green" electricity producers. The logic is that you can't control where your electricity comes from, but you can easily control where your money goes.

That way, no matter where you get your power from, all your money goes to green sources.

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

#114

Post by vvanders » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 12:00 AM UTC

anonuser123456 wrote: post #77

Is there a way to invest directly in solar to offset your personal use, without installing it directly on your house/land? My existing house isn’t particularly suitable from a cost perspective to install solar on (clay tile roof, a good 20 years left at least). I also don’t really want to manage an installation project, nor own the maintenance and risk. But I would pay to directly offset my consumption. Something lik…

Look into community solar in your local area. It's utility scale solar and you usually get an offset or pays back to shares depending on how it is structured.

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

#115

Post by zamadatix » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 12:02 AM UTC

jacobolus wrote: post #70

> "[in 2000] Shi agreed and ended up settling in the small city of Wuxi" A bit of a tangent, but it’s always strange to me when people describe Chinese or Indian cities with millions of residents as "small". Wuxi had >1 million people in 2000, and today has like 3.5 million (6.5 million in the prefecture). This article makes it sound like a minor town in a remote province, but Jiangsu has about the same population as…

There's also the confounding matter of physical size - a prefecture level "city" like Wuxi is going to be nearly 20x the physical area of Birmingham (10x the size including the surrounding area) so holding a million people at the time doesn't mean it's necessarily a big population center even before comparing to what's "normal" in the country.

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

#116

Post by flgb » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 12:05 AM UTC

itsoktocry wrote: post #84

zaroth wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> power companies are on track to be thoroughly screwed. I have a hard time making sense of this. I log into HN and see comment after comment about how solar is taking over, then I read articles like this[0], that state that countries heavily invested in renewables, like wind a solar, are going backwards . They are now trying to label natural gas as "green investment" in Germany, otherwise they won't have energy capa…

Concerns about Germany’s energy system transition and the question of whether power companies are “screwed” are kind of orthogonal.

There are different kinds of power companies.

Utilities with a regulated asset base that get to socialize all of their costs across rate payers aren’t screwed.

Asset-light energy suppliers/retailers in competitive deregulated markets aren’t screwed.

Asset-heavy power generators in competitive deregulated markets might be screwed .. if they have a large portfolio of legacy assets.

Solar PV creates two problems for them.

Firstly, distributed solar reduces the load available to them to serve.

Secondly, centralized and distributed solar depress wholesale energy prices in the middle of the day (and causes increasing frequency of negative-price events).

Together these reduce the volume of sales, reduce profitability, and can increase running costs, because many legacy generators weren’t originally designed to be flexible with the ability to ramp up and down every day.

While solar PV isn’t good for some power companies, it’s generally good for consumers.

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

#117

Post by jjoonathan » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 12:07 AM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #39

makomk wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they're crediting you for that energy at anything close to the retail electricity rate you're effectively getting a really generous subsidy. Because solar is so cheap but only produces electricity sometimes and at pretty much the same time everywhere in the region, the actual cost of electricity when your solar panels are producing heavily and feeding back into the grid is much, much lower than when they're not pr…

These fallacies against net metering have been disproven. See the linked citation for details. “Nevertheless, by the end of 2015, regulators in at least 10 states had conducted studies to develop methodologies to value distributed generation and net metering, while other states conducted less formal inquiries, ranging from direct rate design or net-metering policy changes to general education of decisionmakers and th…

That link of yours states again and again and again that net metering doesn't cost shift as if this were a general principle, but if you look at its sub resources you see support for very different conclusions, namely:

* Solar doesn't yet have enough market penetration for the duck curve to be a problem. We're still in the early days where cutting peak usage benefits everyone.

* Social good rationalizes the cost shifting

"It hasn't happened yet" and "it's for the best" are VERY different arguments from "it won't happen." Why the deception? Shifting the grid's role from generation to storage is not impossible. Barring that, distributed storage is not impossible. Making PV panels cheap was a huge but tractable step that is now behind us. Figuring out storage is the second huge but tractable step and it's well on the way to being solved. In the meantime, it absolutely makes sense to deploy PV at least until it starts cutting into base load, and from that point the economic case for storage becomes clear and obvious. The facts are on our side, so why lie?

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

#118

Post by dane-pgp » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 12:10 AM UTC

puranjay wrote: post #71

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…

I think researchers underestimated how much solar simply “makes sense” to the average person. Once the price is reasonable enough, people are very easily able to latch onto the idea of using what they already know and feel - the sun’s heat. Whenever I mention the solar panels in my parents house, the first question is always about the price. When I tell them they will break even in a few years, their next question is…

> I tell them they will break even in a few years

Then why don't more companies offer to become your electricity provider and install the solar panels for free?

They could say "We promise that your energy bills will be cheaper this year than last year (as long as you don't use more energy), and within a few years you'll own the panels and can switch to a different electricity provider."

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

#119

Post by quink » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 12:13 AM UTC

jacobolus wrote: post #70

> "[in 2000] Shi agreed and ended up settling in the small city of Wuxi" A bit of a tangent, but it’s always strange to me when people describe Chinese or Indian cities with millions of residents as "small". Wuxi had >1 million people in 2000, and today has like 3.5 million (6.5 million in the prefecture). This article makes it sound like a minor town in a remote province, but Jiangsu has about the same population as…

Just a tiny bit of clarification, Shanghai isn’t part of Jiangsu, but just to the southeast of it. It does act as a major port for much of Jiangsu though, together with Suzhou in Jiangsu, right next to Shanghai.

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

#120

Post by gwicks56 » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 12:15 AM UTC

koolba wrote: post #78

puranjay wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think researchers underestimated how much solar simply “makes sense” to the average person. Once the price is reasonable enough, people are very easily able to latch onto the idea of using what they already know and feel - the sun’s heat. Whenever I mention the solar panels in my parents house, the first question is always about the price. When I tell them they will break even in a few years, their next question is…

Where are we at in 2021 for pay off period? Does it vary by region?

In Australia, after a $2500 .gov subsidy, mine will pay for themselves in 4.5 years. LG Panels with 25 Year output guarantee. 6.6kw System. Financially speaking it's a complete no brainer. One thing I did notice when I was living in the USA though, was how expensive it was over there compared to Australia. Installation costs are 3x the price, I have no idea why. My system before the subsidy was $11k, and that was for top of the line panels and inverter. Cheap panels would have been around $7k

Electricity costs are ~ $0.2 per kwh, AUD