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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

#81

Post by bruce511 »

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 had a solar system installed last year. During the day, from around 8am til around 5pm we are "off grid" in the sense that we can generate more than we use.

I've already switched hot water and pool pump to daytime rather than night. The dishwasher now runs in the morning, not after dinner. Washing and drying, Aircon/ heating mostly happened during the day anyway.

Overall our use of grid power has dropped to 20%, and I think we can get it down to 10% (at least I summer time.)

So yes, in the sense that the daytime cost is now a -lot- cheaper (think free) I'm seeing how we are heavily incentivised to change our usage patterns.

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

#82

Post by klabb3 »

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.…

> Energy this cheap gives us a huge incentive to change our energy use patterns to match power abundance rather than to take energy demand as a constant.

I have not listened to the podcast, but I know for a fact that’s much harder than it sounds. Parking spaces, highways, factories, offices, parks, beaches, hiking trails, skiing, museums, stadiums, even grocery stores have an extreme variability in demand. Almost all demand comes from human activity, and like all other animals that activity is highly variable and intermittent. Yes, there are a few exceptions: batteries, some household appliances like washers, and perhaps certain factories/refineries that could be run with minimal operations at night. Incentives don’t even work to suppress leisure: people go through massive traffic, no parking and crowds to get to the beach on sunny weekends. Imagine chores or even actual needs: like keeping the heat or AC on. Electricity is survival-critical in many parts of the world.

In short, I think the incentives needed to alter fundamental human behavior are less like cute coupons and more like a gun to your head. In most places, there won’t be enough political lunacy to push that through, and instead the glorious green energy programs will be stalled, delayed and eventually scrapped. I can’t think of a better outcome for fossil fuel companies.

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

#83

Post by tomohawk »

This makes me sad, as it means the industrialization of non-urban lands that will get covered with panels. Croplands. Wild lands. If subsidies were only provided for panels that cover existing urban hardscapes, it would be much better.

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

#84

Post by ZeroGravitas »

olyjohn wrote: post #61
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.

Does this reduce your energy usage though? You're still using the same amount of power during the day. So it saves you money, and takes some load off the grid during peak usage. What does that do to reduce emissions from power generation? Without solar, you're still charging off the same infrastructure.

On a modern grid, off-peak, cheaper energy coincides with low carbon.

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

#85

Post by zackmorris »

Just so we have some numbers:

$0.41 per watt utility-scale solar panel cost in 2020 ($0.17-$0.30 by 2030): https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/articles/2030-solar-cost-t...

Cost projections (note the 2019 upswing where market forces and installation costs exceeded solar panel cost): https://www.solar.com/learn/solar-panel-cost/

$480/kWh utility-scale battery cost (falling by 32% to $326/kwH by 2030): https://www.energy-storage.news/li-ion-bess-costs-could-fall...

Solar energy will likely be stored in low-cost sodium ion residential and high-temperature sodium sulphur utility-scale batteries. This is probably a solved problem in the lab but will take 5-10 years to roll out at scale.

To put this in perspective, Bonneville Power in the northwest supplies some of the cheapest electricity in the US due to its installed hydroelectric base. But it is no longer able to compete with renewables, as solar and wind prices have fallen below its $35/MWh wholesale price:

https://www.bpa.gov/energy-and-services/rate-and-tariff-proc...

http://www.bluefish.org/notobase.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity

Now the cost-benefit of dams is being examined due to their environmental impact on fish runs (like salmon) and the starvation of wildlife like killer whales near estuaries.

Meaning that since solar is scalable, it has made nuclear the most expensive form of electricity today in terms of levelized cost. That doesn't mean that newer thorium and pebble bed reactors aren't worth exploring for high-power use cases, but that there's no way to build, fuel and decommission a nuclear reactor more cheaply than operating an existing dam which is already more expensive than solar.

The smart investment today is in energy storage and AC/DC transformers. Photovoltaics are second to that because they are a saturated market, but there could be opportunities in thinner and disposable panels, especially for electric vehicles.

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

#86

Post by cycomanic »

specialist wrote: post #12
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.…

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…

Others and myself have been arguing against the baseload myth on HN and other places for ages, but it just persists.

The thing is, while we are still ramping up renewables wind and solar compete with the traditional "base load" large nuclear and coal plants, they are not replacing load following gas turbines until much later. Even Wikipedia says that variable supply like wind and solar are one of the sources to supply base load.

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

#87

Post by bilsbie »

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.…

I’ve always said this! Make daytime energy 100x cheaper and the market will respond.

Appliances will start building in batteries, behaviors will change , and who knows what else the market will come up with.

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

#88

Post by cycomanic »

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…

> 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.

What do you mean? Do you recall Enron? Also when I was living in Tennessee for a year in the 90s brown outs occurred at least a couple of times and some of my US friends tell me about interrupted power happening quite regularly still. I'd call that energy shortage.

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

#89

Post by megaman821 »

switchbak wrote: post #77
megaman821 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I get that it's a great solution for much of the world - and that is fantastic. But they were asking about its effectiveness in northern climates during winter (which I also live in). It sounds like your answer is: "it doesn't work there". If so, that's fine, we can focus on other approaches in such climates. What seems like an emerging shortsighted opinion (on HN at least) is: "it's so cheap, just use more". That do…

There are solutions that are carbon-free; wind, enhanced geothermal (if fracking was legal in Europe), and nuclear. Solar electricity imports out of Spain or Morocco seems more feasible that solar situated in northern Europe.

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

#90

Post by antisthenes »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #60
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.

One thing to consider is that if that's profitable to do at house scale, then it's probably even more profitable to do at grid scale and you'll likely be out-competed by utility companies. Edit: Unless you're taking advantage of tax incentives to do it at house scale. Its hard to beat the economics of just being handed free money.

> One thing to consider is that if that's profitable to do at house scale, then it's probably even more profitable to do at grid scale and you'll likely be out-competed by utility companies.

Depends. It may be more profitable for utility companies, but they keep the profit of the economies of scale. It is almost never passed on to the customer.

If you DIY your own energy system, you're free to keep all the surplus generated by it through the life of the system.

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