Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

e360.yale.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 809 posts

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#391

Post by epolanski »

dataviz1000 wrote: post #119
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…

> Solar prices in the US are criminal, protecting oil and gas who bought all the politicians. It would be worth including control of the people who vote for the politicians by direct investment such as when the oil producing Saudis bought the second largest stake in NewCorps which controls FoxNews controlling the content that influences voters. And, less than ethical control using bots on social media by Russia. A lo…

I'm kinda tired of the argument where we only focus on some bad actors when it comes to online influencing.

Our countries absolutely do the same if not more to influence voters both here and in these other countries, especially online.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#392

Post by testing22321 »

boringg wrote: post #245
testing22321 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, when I was researching my system and if it would be worthwhile there were literally dozens and dozens of people who were adamant it couldn’t work here. Too much snow, too tight a valley, electricity already kinda cheap. I went ahead anyway because I’m a “I’d rather have hard numbers than speculation“ person, and it was literally $0 of my money. Here we are 18 months later. I have all the hard data, numbers…

Talking about hard numbers without a real "hard number" in your comment. 0$ upfront - how much did you pay for the system / what is the size of the system / whats your azimuth and what are you paying for electricity currently. Its super easy to run the math on this stuff - not rocket science - theres even a free to use API that generates your monthly production estimates. I run energy modeling - I ran the numbers las…

The numbers are in my original post.

We got 7.6kw installed for $13,000 CAD. I ordered everything myself, had a local installer do it on his weekend, paid an electrician $180 to pull permits and actually wire it into the main house panel. All inspections complete and legal. $5000 grant $8000 interest free loan.

The system makes 7.76Mwh per calendar year. Electricity here is 0.13/kwh, and already pre-approved go up minimum 5% per year. It just went up 6% for 2026, 16% for those out of town.

So the system makes right on $1000 of power every year that I don’t have to buy. We’ll put that onto the loan for 7-8 years , then get at least $1000 a year for the 20 or so years remaining of the system life.

I’m nothing out of pocket, and I’m just putting the same into the loan for 7-8 years that I would have paid in electricity anyway, so no difference.

No brainer.

My house now uses net zero energy ( disconnected natural gas entirely)

I have no idea where you’re getting a quote for so high. Even the highest I got was ~$20k, and that was over 18 months ago.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#393

Post by prometheus76 »

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…

Another impact on solar adoption in the United States is that many home insurance companies are refusing to pay on claims against roof damage from poor installs. And there are a lot of poor installs, which has led to this problem. So now the homeowners are taking all of the risk on a solar install that already has an 8-10 year ROI.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#395

Post by JuniperMesos »

alex_young wrote: post #255
ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm a renter, been all my life, I'd be happy to pay more in taxes if it means more solar panels for everyone except me. But I also feel the same about elder care, health care and a bunch of other things, do you feel the same for those things too, or this is specifically about solar or owning vs renting? There's an alternative, and almost certainly cheaper per watt with cost of scale, where your tax dollars go to a n…

Everyone can take advantage of rooftop solar. The power goes into the grid. This isn’t a zero sum game. We need both.

It's not zero sum but different physical layouts of energy generation do have different captial and operating costs. Rooftop solar power goes into the grid but maybe not at the most ideal time and scale for the grid operators, which justifiably affects what price they're willing to pay for that power, which justifiably affects the ROI for homeowners with rooftop solar panels.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#396

Post by IshKebab »

pranavj wrote: post #113

The most underreported part of this story is the battery piece at the end. Batteries are beginning to displace natural gas in evening peak hours - that's the exact window where solar critics have long argued renewables fall short. If this trend accelerates (and battery prices are dropping faster than most models predicted), the "intermittency problem" starts looking more like a solvable engineering challenge than a f…

The problem with solar isn't the night. Getting enough batteries to cover that is totally doable. The issue is the winter. And not even because of fewer daylight hours - on sunny winter days there is usually still a good amount of solar.

The problem is its often very cloudy in the winter. In the UK in winter we regularly have periods of 5 cloudy days in a row where solar output is virtually zero.

I don't know what the answer to that is. In a calm cloudy winter week all renewables and battery storage are totally screwed. Space based solar is a scam. Maybe we just have to live with it until fusion works (if it ever does).

(But it's still academic at the moment because we're still far from the point where building more renewables is a bad idea.)

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#397

Post by pstuart »

JuniperMesos wrote: post #358
vondur wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in California, they drastically cut back on the price that you get for solar powered electricity from homeowners. It used to be around $0.30/kWh at any time of day and now it's can drop to $0.00-$0.05/kWh during the day when the state is sunny. If you can afford to have a battery installed, the rates are far better as you can either run off the battery when rates are the highest in the evening, or you can export…

The price is signaling that additional solar power production during the day isn't very useful; and additonal solar power production in the early evening when demand is high and the sun isn't shining and you need a battery system to have already been accumulating energy during the day is useful, albeit more expensive and complicated to build and run.

With falling battery prices this should be an addressable problem. Soak up the locally generated excess energy and sell it later in the day when the need is there. Electrical arbitrage seems like a win/win solution for the utilities their customers.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#398

Post by testing22321 »

WheatMillington wrote: post #329
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…

It's criminal to not hand huge subsidies to people like you who are already likely well-off, so you can generate passive income for the rest of your life?

A few things

If enough people adopt solar, it gets cheaper, and everyone get cheaper power, or even free like Australia.

Tax dollars could be spent on new coal or nuke plants, or to incentivize solar installs. Which one is the right future? Do new coal and nuke plants result in free power like Australia?

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#399

Post by [deleted] »

epolanski wrote: post #391
dataviz1000 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Solar prices in the US are criminal, protecting oil and gas who bought all the politicians. It would be worth including control of the people who vote for the politicians by direct investment such as when the oil producing Saudis bought the second largest stake in NewCorps which controls FoxNews controlling the content that influences voters. And, less than ethical control using bots on social media by Russia. A lo…

I'm kinda tired of the argument where we only focus on some bad actors when it comes to online influencing. Our countries absolutely do the same if not more to influence voters both here and in these other countries, especially online.

[deleted]

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#400

Post by epolanski »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #152
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…

>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. This very well may be true, but taken at face value Canada seems to be paying you around $7k to install solar panels on your roof (that's 8k interest free loan is losing out to inflation + any interest it would have earned). D…

Your last argument could apply to anything really.

Why should I subsidize farmers if they can't compete?

Why do I have subsidize our own manufacturing companies if they can't compete so their workers have a job, at my expense?

Why do I need to subsidize car owners to have yet another lane but can't get a decent train instead?

Here in Poland suddenly all miners pretend to be subsidized by the state, even if they work for private companies.

Why do I need to subsidize them if the companies they work for can't turn a profit, or when they did for decades chose to pay dividends and do buybacks instead of investing? And now I pay the bill?

I mean, at some point you need to cope with the fact that money has to be spent and circulate in some fashion to promote economic activity and projects.

You could argue that subsidizing solar brings energy prices down in any case.

Post reply on HN