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

Solar will supply almost all growth in U.S. electricity generation through 2025

cleantechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 231 posts

Re: Solar will supply almost all growth in U.S. electricity generation through 2025

#21

Post by dylan604 »

dfxm12 wrote: post #13
tallowen wrote: post #2

I found this podcast with Jesse Jenkins to be a really helpful start to understand non fixed energy resources. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/what-the-sun-isnt-alwa... I thought that the most cost effective way to supply energy would require a certain amount of base load. It seems like this is a misunderstanding because of how much cheaper and more available these non fixed resources are than fixed resources.…

We're already incentivized to do things like running the dishwasher in the evening do to costs, no? Or is the implication that it would be considerably even more cheap?

This is where I'm really intrigued of all-house battery packs like the Tesla Powerwall (it's the only name of one I'm familiar to call out). I like the idea that it charges at night during the lower rates, and during the day the house is powered from the battery. Just haven't seen any longevity reports on them in general vs brochure data.

Re: Solar will supply almost all growth in U.S. electricity generation through 2025

#22

Post by intrasight »

zardo wrote: post #11
intrasight wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why sad?

Getting the wrong ratio of installed green power generation means less CO2 reduction per dollar invested.

Markets are imperfect - even more so when government subsidies play a major role. Wind will play a growing role.

Re: Solar will supply almost all growth in U.S. electricity generation through 2025

#24

Post by morsch »

dralley wrote: post #19
verisimi wrote: post #15

I don't get why solar is so popular. In more northern regions, you get much less light in the winter. You effectively can only generate around one tenth of the energy you can in the summer - this is from experience talking to others who monitor their solar installations. But, you need more energy in the winter. People are in more, using electricity for heat cos it's colder. I'm pointing out that there is a supply/dem…

>But, you need more energy in the winter. People are in more, using electricity for heat cos it's colder. I'm pointing out that there is a supply/demand reversal. Sure there are sweet spots in spring and autumn, but when you really need energy, you have less. Northern areas tend to use fossil fuels for heating at higher rates, and less heat pumps.

Let me introduce you to Scandinavia... https://www.euronews.com/green/2023/10/30/do-heat-pumps-work...

Re: Solar will supply almost all growth in U.S. electricity generation through 2025

#25

Post by megaman821 »

verisimi wrote: post #15

I don't get why solar is so popular. In more northern regions, you get much less light in the winter. You effectively can only generate around one tenth of the energy you can in the summer - this is from experience talking to others who monitor their solar installations. But, you need more energy in the winter. People are in more, using electricity for heat cos it's colder. I'm pointing out that there is a supply/dem…

The answer is a bit simple. Only a small amount of Earth's population lives at north European latitudes (https://engaging-data.com/population-latitude-longitude/). Solar is quite effective for the majority of the population, so its adoption rate will have the biggest impact on further climate change.

Re: Solar will supply almost all growth in U.S. electricity generation through 2025

#26

Post by ragebol »

verisimi wrote: post #15

I don't get why solar is so popular. In more northern regions, you get much less light in the winter. You effectively can only generate around one tenth of the energy you can in the summer - this is from experience talking to others who monitor their solar installations. But, you need more energy in the winter. People are in more, using electricity for heat cos it's colder. I'm pointing out that there is a supply/dem…

In my native Netherlands, in the summertime there's solar, in winter there's is wind.

I have a dynamic energy contract, I pay spot prices + taxes and markup. What solar energy I sell in the summer, I can buy in the winter. With our heat pump, I need to generate about twice as much as I did before we had the heat pump, to match it in money (summer is cheaper than winter at the moment). Watt for watt is not a useful measurement IMO, since I can't store Watts, but I can store euros.

Re: Solar will supply almost all growth in U.S. electricity generation through 2025

#27

Post by tallowen »

dfxm12 wrote: post #13
tallowen wrote: post #2

I found this podcast with Jesse Jenkins to be a really helpful start to understand non fixed energy resources. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/what-the-sun-isnt-alwa... I thought that the most cost effective way to supply energy would require a certain amount of base load. It seems like this is a misunderstanding because of how much cheaper and more available these non fixed resources are than fixed resources.…

We're already incentivized to do things like running the dishwasher in the evening do to costs, no? Or is the implication that it would be considerably even more cheap?

I think the implication is that we'll see a further split around pricing.

One thing that stood out to me is that in the case of thermal loads (perhaps your dishwasher but more realistically a hotwater heater). It will become more worthwhile for that system to know when high and low electricity prices are and store more heat (i.e. hotwater) at low electricity prices and wait until prices fall again to refill it. In this sense, a heater would be operating like a battery.

In a world where energy prices are stable throughout the day, it doesn't make sense to manufacture, for example, a price aware water heater with extra storage capacity. It seems like that calculus is changing with solar and other renewables creating an incentive for variable rates compared to traditional fixed rate alternatives.

Re: Solar will supply almost all growth in U.S. electricity generation through 2025

#28

Post by toomuchtodo »

dylan604 wrote: post #21
dfxm12 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're already incentivized to do things like running the dishwasher in the evening do to costs, no? Or is the implication that it would be considerably even more cheap?

This is where I'm really intrigued of all-house battery packs like the Tesla Powerwall (it's the only name of one I'm familiar to call out). I like the idea that it charges at night during the lower rates, and during the day the house is powered from the battery. Just haven't seen any longevity reports on them in general vs brochure data.

Tesla warranties the Powerwall for 10 years, 15 years if part of one of their virtual power plants (orchestrated by Autobidder [1]). Look into the 30% federal tax credit for it, as well as state, local, and utility incentives.

If you don't yet have solar and your site is favorable, I strongly recommend considering it if you can have it installed at a reasonable cost.

[1] https://www.tesla.com/support/energy/tesla-software/autobidd...

Re: Solar will supply almost all growth in U.S. electricity generation through 2025

#29

Post by Retric »

7thaccount wrote: post #18
specialist wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and: I appreciated Jenkins' explanation of the different variability time scales. "Base load" is folk understanding and not especially helpful for planning our future green energy grid. IIRC, seconds, minutes, hours-days (diurnal), and months-years (seasonal). Meaning there's huge opportunity for all sorts of novel energy storage (and demand shifting) systems. Dynamic load balancing might use modestly sized of Li…

Yes, but please keep things in context. We're transitioning away from baseload, but it's a major endeavor and not going to happen over night. I think the HN crowd is a little overzealous in this area. NERC is reporting the potential for energy shortages in many regions in the United States. This was once virtually unheard of. Solar alone isn't going to fix this in the next few years and many regions still have only t…

The ramp up is inherently slow, we’re still generally seeing cheaper nighttime rates than daytime rates even after years of ‘heavy’ investment in solar.

Solar’s impact on prices is going to remain fairly trivial for the next few years. But start looking 20 years out and a great deal of nighttime load will shift, which dramatically reduces the need for storage even as decades of X0 GW per year adds up.

Aka it’s not just one trend you need to follow but several.

Re: Solar will supply almost all growth in U.S. electricity generation through 2025

#30

Post by apsec112 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #10
epistasis wrote: post #3

The EIA (and the IEA) have historically underpredicted solar deploys, to a comical level. They need 2-4 years of spot on predictions before they can regain credibility on their projections, IMHO. So I would put these projections as a bare minimum floor on how much solar will get installed. The true number is likely quite a bit higher.

> would put these projections as a bare minimum floor on how much solar will get installed Is there evidence they haven't fixed this bias? The EIA and IEA are in general credible forecasters. Assuming past errors will persist doesn't sound like a good strategy unless you have methodological clues that they haven't made adjustments.

This isn't like trying to beat the stock market. There's no intrinsic reason why their predictions should be any good, and in fact they've been comically bad, coming in too low every year for 21 consecutive years:

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2018/10/09/iea-low-balls-solar-g...

(this is from 2018, but the same trend has continued up through 2023)

Post reply on HN