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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

#131

Post by anthomtb »

bruce511 wrote: post #81
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 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%, an…

I moved to a house with a solar system in October. I now make a point to run the dishwasher and dryer during day time hours. And avoid using the dryer on cloudy days.

It doesn't really matter when I run these appliances. Between fixed rate electricity and net metering, the cost will be the same even if they run at night. But I get weird satisfaction knowing that the sun is providing the power.

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

#132

Post by [deleted] »

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.…

[deleted]

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

#133

Post by danans »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #128
klabb3 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

You can replace a significant proportion of the grid with intermittent generation without any trouble. Using solar for the air conditioning load in the summer is perfect. Use whatever you want to charge electric car batteries because they're batteries and most cars are parked >90% of the time. You can can't shift 100% of the load based on time of day through pricing, but you can do a non-trivial amount. Then you pick…

> Then you pick the low-hanging fruit and start trying to find a solution to power heat pumps in the winter at night and it's... not as easy.

But it's also not impossible, especially as heat pump efficiency keeps marching up in colder conditions and stationary battery prices keep going down with new chemistries that trade off energy density for cost.

Heck, if batteries are still too expensive, we could even use residential hydrogen fuel cells in that situation, which could easily power a heat pump.

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

#134

Post by VintageCool »

ren_engineer wrote: post #64

I love having our energy grid being reliant on a geopolitical rival. I'm sure this won't end in disaster >China makes 80% of global solar panels >controls 95% of overall supply chain for solar https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/energy/china-to-dominate...

If China stops selling us solar panels, the ones we already have will keep producing power and we'll be just fine.

I feel like you're making an analogy here to 1973 when Saudi Arabia cut off the supply of oil or 2022 when Russia cut off the supply of fossil gas, but the analogy doesn't work.

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

#135

Post by matthewdgreen »

Retric wrote: post #119
matthewdgreen wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Che…

Looking to the US to be on the cutting edge of the energy transition is like looking to the US to be on the cutting edge of steam engine development during the early Industrial Revolution. In a global sense, prices are going to change rapidly and huge amounts of industry will adapt to intermittent sources. The US will catch up a decade later, adopting whatever ideas worked overseas.

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

#136

Post by AnthonyMouse »

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…

> In fact, all the four major energy loads in a house - Heating/Cooling, Water heating, EV Charging, House Battery - are extremely flexible.

The dominant energy load in existing houses is heating. EV charging is 100% new generation capacity and doesn't take any of the existing load off the power grid. House Battery isn't a load, it's the expensive thing you suffer when the actual loads are inflexible.

Heating is slightly flexible, you can lower your thermostat at night, but it's also colder at night. And most existing heating is fossil fuels. Converting that to electricity is going to require more electricity consumption at night than we have now.

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

#137

Post by dylan604 »

itsoktocry wrote: post #126
dylan604 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As if someone trying to save money is such a ridiculous thing to do? WTF? I subscribe to a power company that produces power via wind. So my money is supporting green energy generation. So yeah, it would still be doing plenty. Not really sure why you gotta be so negative about something

Do you even actually save money, accounting for the financing and installation of the solar panels? A while back there was a thread on the SolarCity subreddit linked from HN where the OP discussed his savings thanks to nice weather, but still figured he had a 20 year payback period on his setup. That is crazy.

I never even suggested solar. I just want a battery pack that charges when grid prices are cheap, and powers off battery when grid prices are high. Complicating it with solar is beyond the scope of the original intent.

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

#138

Post by collinmcnulty »

londons_explore wrote: post #57

The real question is will growth of solar push electricity prices down enough that fossil plants get decommissioned early because they are no longer sufficiently profitable?

Almost certainly, assuming the growth of solar occurs as stated. The real tipping point is the fuel-only operating cost of a given plant, which is a function of the plant's efficiency and the price of its fuel.

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

#139

Post by AnthonyMouse »

stcredzero wrote: post #129
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can replace a significant proportion of the grid with intermittent generation without any trouble. Using solar for the air conditioning load in the summer is perfect. Use whatever you want to charge electric car batteries because they're batteries and most cars are parked >90% of the time. You can can't shift 100% of the load based on time of day through pricing, but you can do a non-trivial amount. Then you pick…

Using solar for the air conditioning load in the summer is perfect. Ish. They don't completely correspond.

It's close enough that you can compensate by setting a lower indoor temperature during daylight and letting it rise a few degrees around sunset before the outdoor temperature declines.

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

#140

Post by dylan604 »

rstuart4133 wrote: post #127
Ajedi32 wrote: post #60

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. 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.

> if that's profitable to do at house scale, then it's probably even more profitable to do at grid scale There is a reason home generation wins. It's because retail prices are 3 times what the generator is paid. (That's true where I live). So yes, in absolute terms power generated by home solar costs more than a utility generating it. But it's not 3 times more, so if you install home solar and use the power, it's alw…

> it's always a big win

AFTER you finish paying off the financing of the source of home generation. so maybe it'll be a big win for the people in your location after you're gone???

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