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

cleantechnica.com

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

#41

Post by Nick87633 »

tallowen wrote: post #27
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?

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 th…

This is an interesting thought. There are already some energy meters you can add to monitor all of the circuits in your house. It's a short step from there to have smart breakers or switches to help retrofit old-fashioned heaters, radiant systems, etc as thermal storage. Electric buffer tanks may become a cost effective installation when paired with an on-demand water heater and time-of-use electric pricing.

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

#42

Post by renewiltord »

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.

Well, we could try something with skin in the game. We could test our strategies. $1k to a charity of our choice 1:1? I'll say their best predictions today for capacity 2 years from now will be under the capacity 2 years from now.

If you're in SF, I'll send someone to make a deal with you. It's not on Kalshi or we could have some fun.

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

#43

Post by jjoonathan »

ragebol wrote: post #26
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 me…

This just assumes someone else fixes the storage/overprovision problem, otherwise energy will get cheaper in the summer and more expensive in the winter until storing euros does not work.

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

#44

Post by JumpCrisscross »

apsec112 wrote: post #30
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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)

> no intrinsic reason why their predictions should be any good

This is where the "generaly credible" bit comes in. They're good forecasters in other domains. Part of being a good forecaster is adjusting as you make errors. So we'd need a hypothesis for why they wouldn't be making those adjustments.

As a trivial example, Hoekstra's chart shows the WEO serially predicting false plateaus between 2006 and 2018. Those plateaus are no longer the case for the IEA's solar predictions [1].

Again, not rejecting that this may be undershooting reality. But if your only evidence is past performance, that's likely oversimplistic.

[1] https://www.iea.org/reports/renewable-energy-market-update-j...

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

#45

Post by JohnFen »

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?

> We're already incentivized to do things like running the dishwasher in the evening do to costs, no?

Not where I live. Electricity costs the same here no matter what day or time of day it is.

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

#46

Post by JumpCrisscross »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #28
dylan604 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-sof…

Can you submit a residential battery to Autobidder?

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

#47

Post by axus »

dpkirchner wrote: post #16
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?

Depends on where you live -- where I'm at, there's no time of day based savings (unless you're a big industrial user, IIUC).

In my area, summer "peak hours" often make up half my electricity usage. The off-peak hours are the other half. The price at peak times is more than double the flat rate, but only 30% cheaper for off-peak. I'm already reducing my energy use as much as is comfortable, if I want to maintain that I'd be paying more money than the flat rate.

The scheme only saves energy if its not optional.

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

#48

Post by cycomanic »

tallowen wrote: post #27
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?

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 th…

This is how things are done in NZ already. Most electricity company have contracts with two tarrifs (sometimes even more), one normal one and a second significantly cheaper one where the circuit is controlled by the power company and they can turn off things when there is hight demand. Typically you'd put your water heater, electric car and other things on this circuit.

I the more long term, exchanging resistive water heaters with heat pumps is the way to go (and already done throughout Scandinavia)

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

#49

Post by phh »

jakewins wrote: post #40
tallowen wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

Recall your entire house is a thermal battery too! In fact, all the four major energy loads in a house - Heating/Cooling, Water heating, EV Charging, House Battery - are extremely flexible. But we're still lacking good standards for reliable control. Today we do stuff like tell your HVAC to stop via vendor X's cloud API. What happens if your router dies after we send a "stop" command in the middle of the winter? For…

French's "fil pilote" to control electrical radiators is quite bullet proof in this regard: No power on command wire = comfort thermostat, full power = "eco" thermostat, and there are other more convoluted signaling for various modes (send only positive voltage, only negative, only a third of the phase) , including simple anti freeze mode. There is an off command as well, but you really can't send it accidently.

If your IoT dies, you'll most likely get to the comfort mode.

Only nit is that in 2023 the default mode would probably be "eco" rather than "comfort"

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

#50

Post by orenlindsey »

We really shouldn't have waited this long to start transitioning to clean energy. If 2050 really is the point of no return (somewhere around then, from what I've heard), we'll have to replace over a century of infrastructure in about 20 years. And scaling is the hardest part. (we've already done some scaling, but renewables only account for ~20% of US energy, so we have to 5x that) Then, there's less developed countries, which can't fund subsidies and have unstable governments making it less likely for big infrastructure projects to get started anyways.

Not to mention oil-based economies. Many of them are just sticking their heads in the sand pretending oil will hold up their economy forever. This will be disastrous for them, and I'm sure many will lobby to stop clean energy (which will only make things worse for the planet). Only Saudi Arabia is really trying to diversify. As I said, we really should have started sooner so we could get the politics out of the way and we could just be focusing on deployment at scale today.

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