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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

#111

Post by 7thaccount »

cycomanic wrote: post #88
7thaccount wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Enron was a special case when California first started their electricity market and made many mistakes in not having processes to take care of market manipulation. An entity deliberately and unethically putting a generator on outage to drive prices up is not what I'm referring to. I'm saying the reserve margins of baseload generation have shrunk.

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

#112

Post by epistasis »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #44
apsec112 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pla…

If they are specifically bad in an area, with a very strong reputation, why should we assume that specific reputation would change to match the general reputation?

Also, I'm not familiar with any projections that are generally good. Collecting existing data? Sure they are good at that. But projection is an entirely different skill set and I have not ever heard somebody cite great projections from EIA.

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

#113

Post by pydry »

recursive wrote: post #9
KptMarchewa wrote: post #5

Sadly, wind has much better capacity factor, and works during nights and winter.

There's room for both. Solar works when the wind is calm. It's probably good to be diversified.

They actually anticorrelate, significantly reducing the amount of storage required when paired.

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

#116

Post by blackbeans »

robotnikman wrote: post #58
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…

One thing I've thought about, how hard would it be to set up a lot of solar panels in a region with 99% good weather (like Arizona) and then supply some of the energy to areas with less favorable weather? Though that would be putting all your eggs in one basket.

It is possible but traditional power grid lines have quite some losses over longer distances. An expensive HVDC connection would be more efficient.

Furthermore Arizona could be too hot and dusty to be ideal. Solar panels work best when they are unobstructed and not too hot.

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

#117

Post by AnthonyMouse »

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.

Utility companies have to pay for distribution networks, and generally pass that cost on in the price per kWh. Which you avoid the less you use the grid -- and which then become a higher proportion of the prices the utility has to charge the more people do that.

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

#118

Post by sigilis »

jjoonathan wrote: post #43
ragebol wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That’s what markets are for: someone else will fix the problem because there’s money in it. It’s generally something you can rely on, that someone will try to get their hands on stored euros.

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

#119

Post by Retric »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #53
Retric wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ju…

3400GW of solar nameplate is expected to be built from 2023 to 2028 globally, which is maybe 40% of all existing global electrical generation. So I don’t think “20 years” is the right time period to be thinking in.

US produced ~4% of its electricity from solar in 2023 and it’s predicted to hit 5.6% in 2024 and 7.0% in 2025. So ~4 years to break 10% of total generation which still doesn’t offset higher daytime demand.

Thus for the next few years we’ll see higher daytime rates than nighttime outside of specific regions and specific times of the year.

Beyond that you need to consider increasing EV adoption, energy storage etc. Cheaper daytime rates is going to happen faster than people realize, but not fast.

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

#120

Post by AnthonyMouse »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #102
antisthenes wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ge…

Only if they let you by giving you a big price discount to charge

Their alternative is to find some way to generate a lot more cheap electricity after sunset. If whatever they're doing can't beat the cost of solar panels on your roof + batteries and a small generator to top them up in exceptional circumstances, people will just stop paying them altogether.
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