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Renewables remain cheapest, but cost reductions on hold

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Re: Renewables remain cheapest, but cost reductions on hold

#41

Post by Denvercoder9 »

sendfoods wrote: post #5

* Does this study only look at generation costs? What about storage costs? * Does this study look at the fact that the "traditional" grid and energy production technologies will always be necessary, because renewable energy production can drop to zero? This is what increases energy prices in countries that have both renewable and fossil fuel energy production. You are paying for two grids, so to speak

> because renewable energy production can drop to zero

On a small scale, yes, but on a large enough scale that's not the case. There's always wind or sunshine somewhere. You do need to have good transport and interconnections to take advantage of that, though.

Re: Renewables remain cheapest, but cost reductions on hold

#42

Post by mepiethree »

asdefghyk wrote: post #35

However I say the amount of storage would need to be capable of supply several days in a row (because of no renewable energy ) We have just come out of a rainy period where it rained or overcast every day for a few weeks in SE QLD region I'm skeptical that the amount of storage and transmission capacity has been included to handle such extended periods of no renewable generation.

Form Energy is a unicorn company that exists specifically to solve this problem with their multi-day iron air battery. I’m sure there are other companies working on this as well..

Re: Renewables remain cheapest, but cost reductions on hold

#43

Post by Brometheus »

helloguillecl wrote: post #24
londons_explore wrote: post #12

I want to see a "solar dispenser" that can drive very slowly across open land, leaving behind a trail of solar panels. Installation costs are a big part of current solar farms, and a big part of that is the labour to assemble frames, do up all the bolts, connect all the wires, etc. If we could make a single truck drive along at 0.5 mph leaving a trail of installed panels, it would really make installation far cheaper…

I’d want the same but to place them on top of unused rail tracks. This way we would have a solid base to have them installed and possibly a lot of land available. The machine would need to support different gaugages.

Deutsche Bahn (German Rails) is doing this right now with tracks in use

Re: Renewables remain cheapest, but cost reductions on hold

#44

Post by Brometheus »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #6

Future cost reductions predicted to possibly be on hold for 12 months, before resuming. Actual real factual prices still reduced in the last 12 months.

I don't know who you are, but you brighten my day whenever I stumble upon your posts :D

Re: Renewables remain cheapest, but cost reductions on hold

#45

Post by 7952 »

oldgradstudent wrote: post #10

Great, we can stop all incentives for renewable energy now that it is the cheapest way to generate energy. More seriously, where's the catch?

Setting prices in advance can still be good sense as it could be used to guarantee prices lower than wholesale prices when oil becomes expensive.

Re: Renewables remain cheapest, but cost reductions on hold

#46

Post by defrost »

Gwypaas wrote: post #39
defrost wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're specifically signalling an interest in Small Nuclear Power Reactors [1] which are less accident prone, deferring cost analysis until Dec 2024 [2], and looking for more of a global uptake to bring costs down [3] [1] https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fu... [2] https://www.iaea.org/projects/crp/i12007 [3] "Achieving the lower end of the nuclear SMR range requires that SMR is deployed glob…

> which are less accident prone. All nuclear powerplants are cheap and free from accidents when they only exist as Powerpoint reactors. Reality has had a tendency to change that.

Ditto all technology - Bhopal disaster, collapsed dams, Texas power grid failures, etc. etc. etc.

Not all reactor designs are Chernobyl, Fukishima killed far fewer than the Tsunami that triggered it.

Small reactors have a long less than public reactor in submarines and elsewhere and have failure modes that are less destructive than larger scale early generation nuclear plants.

Re: Renewables remain cheapest, but cost reductions on hold

#47

Post by ben_w »

grapeskin wrote: post #28
helloguillecl wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d want the same but to place them on top of unused rail tracks. This way we would have a solid base to have them installed and possibly a lot of land available. The machine would need to support different gaugages.

Place them on basically any commercially unusable and economically “worthless” space. Instead of mowing down forests to lay them 5 inches off the ground, put them on highway noise barriers, build ceilings over commercial walkways (Europe is full of these but without solar panels), spread them out and put them high over parks to provide shaded areas that allow for greenery to grow underneath, and so on. The way solar…

I think you'll be pleased to learn about Flugplatz Brandenburg-Briest.

I've been wondering for a decade or so, why building codes almost everywhere don't yet require the entire roof of new buildings (not counting ceiling windows) to be covered in PV?

Re: Renewables remain cheapest, but cost reductions on hold

#48

Post by scythe »

mepiethree wrote: post #42
asdefghyk wrote: post #35

However I say the amount of storage would need to be capable of supply several days in a row (because of no renewable energy ) We have just come out of a rainy period where it rained or overcast every day for a few weeks in SE QLD region I'm skeptical that the amount of storage and transmission capacity has been included to handle such extended periods of no renewable generation.

Form Energy is a unicorn company that exists specifically to solve this problem with their multi-day iron air battery. I’m sure there are other companies working on this as well..

Oh no, it's another pie-in-the-sky battery company with no papers. I'm serious: running a search for their Chief Science Officer, Yet-Ming Chiang, with 'iron battery' provides no relevant results:

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C47&q=yet...

And of course YM Chiang is the only remotely chemistry-related official on their Team page:

https://formenergy.com/team/

There's a serious plausibility problem with an "iron-air battery": the electrolytic reduction of iron oxide has been a holy grail of steelmaking roughly since we learned what electricity is. If you could reduce iron oxide at room temperature with electricity, you would revolutionize the steel industry and rapidly eliminate ~4% of global GHG emissions. See e.g.:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30348046

Oddly, this is the second scammy iron battery company I've heard about in less than two months:

https://news.ycombinator.com/favorites?id=scythe&comments=t

Meanwhile, real companies with real technology like Gelion [1] and EOS [2] are making real batteries and not getting attention they deserve. Gelion's lead researcher actually worked on the technology they're selling [3] and EOS mentions 21 patents on their technology page, and they're willing to tell you which ones [4]. This is what real science looks like: they want to show you how it works.

1: https://gelion.com/gelion-endure-battery/

2: https://eosenergystorage.com/products-technology/

3: https://www.sydney.edu.au/nano/industry-partners/case-studie...

4: https://eosenergystorage.com/patents/

Re: Renewables remain cheapest, but cost reductions on hold

#49

Post by dzhiurgis »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #6

Future cost reductions predicted to possibly be on hold for 12 months, before resuming. Actual real factual prices still reduced in the last 12 months.

> Actual real factual prices still reduced in the last 12 month

Ahhh the bright side of housing and cost of living doubling up!

Re: Renewables remain cheapest, but cost reductions on hold

#50

Post by dispat0r »

Denvercoder9 wrote: post #41
sendfoods wrote: post #5

* Does this study only look at generation costs? What about storage costs? * Does this study look at the fact that the "traditional" grid and energy production technologies will always be necessary, because renewable energy production can drop to zero? This is what increases energy prices in countries that have both renewable and fossil fuel energy production. You are paying for two grids, so to speak

> because renewable energy production can drop to zero On a small scale, yes, but on a large enough scale that's not the case. There's always wind or sunshine somewhere. You do need to have good transport and interconnections to take advantage of that, though.

Nobody has built to that scale, and you would need a global energy grid which all countries share. Sounds like a pipe dream.
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