solar is 10x cheaper than nuclear generation, but storage is 100x more expensive than nuclear. Need a massive change in our understanding of storage costs to go 100% renewable.
It doesn't have to be batteries, hydrogen gas can be generated from solar at 80% efficiency, and storing hydrogen is way cheaper than batteries. Certainly way cheaper than nuclear.
Round-trip efficiency of hydrogen storage is at best around 40% though. But with abundant and cheap renewables, this might not be much of an issue.
What? The entire premise was that it is cheaper at night. Thanks for jumping into the middle of the convo though and trying to jerk the wheel.
Settle down. A lot of the U.S. doesn't have time-differentiated rates.
And that has precisely squat to do with my intrigue into looking at a system like this. If it didn't make sense, I wouldn't be interested. So what's your point exactly?
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.
And don't forget the ultimate flexible load: electric vehicles. In 2023 near half of my (relatively well insulated all electric home) energy use was charging my EV at home.
That's in the game plan for 2024, no question. My new home came at the cost of doubling my commute distance. An EV charged by my own rooftop would be better for both the planet and my own bottom line.
Edit: Any chance you're in the US? If so, what EV are you driving?
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.
That seems like it would be hard to ever make a financial return. Say a battery costs $10k and a home uses $100/ month electricity. If you assume electricity is free at night to fully charge the battery and meet energy demand, that’s 100 months (8 years) to break even. Real world costs are going to make it quite a bit worse than that.
As they say, "location location location". In a Texas summer, it is easily 3x that per month for 4 months out of the year for a house. So, that's 12 months in one quarter based on your math. The vast majority of that is just running the A/C. So again, this makes much more sense when you look at the nuances vs just some lame internet posting of using averages. If it makes no sense for you, that's too bad, but to come out with broad brush comments alluding to it not making sense ever is just naive.
> But it turns out people don’t care and didn’t bother with enough load shifting to cover the cost. This doesn't surprise me a great deal. Personally, the price difference would have to be very high in order for it to affect my usage patterns. It would have to exceed the cost of having yet another complication for me to keep track of.
Some of it is mispricing. We’re getting the kids version of market pricing, but when you give people real market pricing without cross-subsidization, they tend to get confused/angry/bankrupt. I still think they could do real-time pricing with some kind of cap that gets balanced out amongst all users, but the uptake still may not be there. It averages out for those that treat it as noise and still not a lot of equipme…
I checked my electric provider and although I said in an earlier comment that they don't do this sort of differential pricing, I was incorrect. They've been doing it for years now -- but it's optional and you have to opt in to it.
They say that the percentage of users who actually do this is somewhere around 10%.
Personally, I value having electric prices being stable very highly. I'd prefer pay higher rates (up to a point) to keep that stability.
In a lot of urban locations, it is not legal to have a residence that is not connected to the grid. If you have home generation capabilities and storage that means you take the least amount from the grid provider, you can be technically still connected to the grid without using any power. If this continues, I would not put it past the grid provider to come up with a minimum monthly bill so it is impossible to have a…
Large minimum monthly fee + required to buy service seems like the kind of thing that would piss off voters.
Ah, I see where you strayed from reality. Your comment seems to be based on a premise that voters are rational.
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.
How is daytime energy supposed to get 100x cheaper and still allow solar, which only generates during the daytime, to recover its costs? Unless you mean for the nighttime price to increase by a huge factor, but then how would that out-compete existing technologies for generation at night?
You get a larger market share of the total energy consumption/payments to be during the day. E.g. because solar is cheaper, I shift my usage so that all of my energy costs are during the day, and if a majority of people do that, there will be enough money to keep the businesses afloat.
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?
They've already majorly affected what sort of plants get built. For example, most of the new build plants are natural gas based and designed to be started quickly to supplement the current production of power.
It doesn't have to be batteries, hydrogen gas can be generated from solar at 80% efficiency, and storing hydrogen is way cheaper than batteries. Certainly way cheaper than nuclear.
Round-trip efficiency of hydrogen storage is at best around 40% though. But with abundant and cheap renewables, this might not be much of an issue.