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In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

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Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#81

Post by kieranmaine »

ricardo81 wrote: post #29
testing22321 wrote: post #4

Solar prices in the US are criminal, protecting oil and gas who bought all the politicians. Canada here. 7.6kw on our roof for $0 out of pocket thanks to $5k grant and $8k interest free loan. It makes 7.72Mwh per year, worth $1000. Tight valley, tons of snow. We put that on the loan for 8 years, then get $1000 per year free money for 20 years or so. Biggest no brainer of all time. Dad in Victoria Australia just got 1…

Canada is blessed with cheap energy, the abundance of hydro surely helps to bridge any intermittency other renewables have. I lived there 10 years back, your energy is less than half the cost of mine in Scotland. In Scotland's case we're part of the UK and the rest of the UK is less blessed with the geography for hydro. The incumbent Scottish government also has an anti stance to nuclear. I hope the incentives for cl…

Related to UK energy I read this interesting article on transmission congestion between Scotland and England and how this is increasing energy costs due to curtailment of renewables.

https://ukerc.ac.uk/news/transmission-network-unavailability...

TL;DR - Until new interconnectors between Scotland and England are finished in 2029, there will be significant curtailment of Scottish wind power which increases costs.

This is also an interesting site for seeing curtailment per wind farm - https://windtable.co.uk/data?farm=Seagreen

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#82

Post by p0pularopinion »

altern8 wrote: post #52

Well, OK--but at what cost? Electricity/heating and gasoline in the EU is many times more expensive than in the U.S., and as a result EVERYTHING is more expensive. Mix that with lower buying power and taxes and we spend 2-3 times for stuff. I would think that most people would happily choose lower prices over clean energy and paper straws. Our companies are also less and less competitive because of these initiatives,…

> Electricity/heating and gasoline in the EU is many times more expensive than in the U.S.

Maybe because Europe as a whole has little to no signifcant oil reserves ready for extraction? Very much unlike the US.

> I would think that most people would happily choose lower prices over clean energy and paper straws.

The US does have plenty of cheap energy and yet its industrial output is dwarfed by Chinas, which is increasingly relying on domestically products green tech. Also, people seem to be not very concerned with energy prices. If they were, they would not act as irrational when it comes to topics like heatpumps or electric vehicles.

> that it almost makes you think that politicians are being bought by Chinese companies/government.

Looking at the energy policy of some countries (Germany specifically), it seems vastly more likely that politicans are bought by oil companies.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#83

Post by jnovek »

DetectDefect wrote: post #59
boringg wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not supporting OP because I think hes backwards on the matter. However in Canada the electricity that is being burned isn't coal based - so you need to compare the actual grid not some hypothetical grid.

[flagged]

You are being very aggressive and confrontational in your comments and people are responding in kind.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#84

Post by [deleted] »

DetectDefect wrote: post #44
adrianN wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Panels have warranties of over twenty years now. They pay for themselves much earlier. You probably have to replace the inverter earlier, but that’s not a huge expense. I don’t know anybody who lives in a place where it rains who cleans the panels on their roof.

Oh, okay. Does a warranty cover sweeping snow off your panels and washing them many times throughout the years? I guess if one does not value time, then solar panels could be considered "free" - but this is a bizarre sacrifice.

[deleted]

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#85

Post by aclatuts »

boringg wrote: post #38
testing22321 wrote: post #4

Solar prices in the US are criminal, protecting oil and gas who bought all the politicians. Canada here. 7.6kw on our roof for $0 out of pocket thanks to $5k grant and $8k interest free loan. It makes 7.72Mwh per year, worth $1000. Tight valley, tons of snow. We put that on the loan for 8 years, then get $1000 per year free money for 20 years or so. Biggest no brainer of all time. Dad in Victoria Australia just got 1…

What? No Canada isn't cheap solar power -- last I checked rooftop ballasted solar is a 12-14 year payback on avoided costs. Inverter will go beforehand and that excludes any op costs. 8k$ free loan doesn't really provide as much value as you would think. FWIW - I am all for solar but selling rooftop solar in canada as cheap and no-brainer is false. 3-4 year payback would be a no brainer. 8-13 year payback with an inv…

Anything under $2.25/watt would put it within under a 4 year payback period, Alberta has good rates for solar. Rooftop solar doesn't have operating costs that I can think of unless you want to clean them and clear snow which is optional. And inverters usually have a 20-25 year warranty.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#86

Post by slavik81 »

boringg wrote: post #48
testing22321 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New panels are much less impacted by shade. Friends out of town just installed the same setup as ours, didn’t want to cut down three monster Doug firs shading their roof in summer. Made 6.9Mwh in 2025, only just less than ours with no shade at all.

I mean physics would dictate that shade impacts performance but if you are able to break the laws of physics I am impressed!

Shade on older solar systems would impact energy production disproportionally. You would typically see dramatic reductions like 50%-80% reduced output due to 10-20% shade. New shade-tolerant solar systems are closer to being proportional.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#87

Post by rsynnott »

DetectDefect wrote: post #44
adrianN wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Panels have warranties of over twenty years now. They pay for themselves much earlier. You probably have to replace the inverter earlier, but that’s not a huge expense. I don’t know anybody who lives in a place where it rains who cleans the panels on their roof.

Oh, okay. Does a warranty cover sweeping snow off your panels and washing them many times throughout the years? I guess if one does not value time, then solar panels could be considered "free" - but this is a bizarre sacrifice.

Washing solar panels _at all_ would be fairly unusual, and arguably pretty pointless, particularly given they're so cheap now; you're looking at, optimistically, a 5% efficiency improvement, but many studies say more like 1% in practice.

If you're in a place that gets significant snowfall such that they're often covered then production during winter is likely to be fairly marginal anyway, so may not be worth your while.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#88

Post by p0pularopinion »

I'm curious as to how this will shift once the shift towards more electrification continues. This is only about electricity generation, not total power consumption.

Nowadays, for very energy intenive things like heating or driving a car, fossil fuels still are more prevalent than electric alternatives. Once demand shifts in favor of the electrified alternatives, electricity demand is continuing to raise (although not as steep as the drop in demand for the fossil fuels will be). Particularly in heating, where peak demand is in times with very little solar generation, it seems like this will be challenging.

While the prices of energy storage have come down significantly and are projected to continue to drop, there is still a noteable lack of cost effective long term storage solutions.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#89

Post by toomuchtodo »

testing22321 wrote: post #71
Tepix wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

450W-500W solar panels are as low as 52€ here in Germany if you buy a couple of them. Batteries are also very affordable and I look forward to them getting a lot cheaper soon, thanks to Sodium-Ion.

The price of panels is falling so fast I don’t think anyone truly understands. I paid nearly double that for our 450w panels 18 months ago.

They are cheaper than fencing material, and will continue to decline in price.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#90

Post by EB-Barrington »

EdiX wrote: post #43
flexie wrote: post #6

But Trump explained to us yesterday, how wind and solar is for losers. Surely, we should be looking in to how we can transition back to fossils.

Declining industrially and demographically, no innovation, soaring energy prices, and our share of the world economy has shrunk for ten years straight and is projected to continue shrinking in the future. By all metrics us europeans are losers.

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