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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

#421

Post by KaiserPro »

doublerabbit wrote: post #34
mekdoonggi wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered that what you're paying for isn't just energy now, but energy security in the future?

I don't see any energy security for the future for the UK unfortunately. We sold ourselves short during the GW/Blair Neo-labour era. Scotland maybe, they have wind-farms but the UK likes to tax that. We've just started the era of paying for the cost of Brexit. It's hitting hard. My weekly supermarket shop for the basic essentials (cheese, eggs, flour, vegetables) now come to around $60/80 a trip. Parmesan Cheese is a…

> compared to the US $7–$24+ per kg.

thats per pound (lb).

Given that you can't make parmesan in the UK AND its historically expensive (see samual peypes) it seems an odd choice to pin your argument on.

> We sold ourselves short during the GW/Blair Neo-labour era.

I mean we really didn't it was a period of great productivity and a massive boost in living standards almost universally.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#422

Post by evan_a_a »

bee_rider wrote: post #381
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…

Intermittence really has always had the flavor of an engineering problem instead of a physics problem (it is about putting the energy when/where humans want it, rather than having enough of it). IMO load shifting seems like a cleverer and more engineer-y solution. Imagine a giant smart system where all of our appliances talk to each-other and can optimize the timings of their workloads. It’s a magnificent society-wid…

In engineering the simple solution is often the best solution. Creating a demand-side network of devices is not that.

Plus, such a system would provide even more ways for nefarious actors to sabotage the grid, by influencing the demand side. For example, setting every appliance to run its load at the same time. The grid would be fucked.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#423

Post by phil21 »

embedding-shape wrote: post #179
ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

> Definitely a great deal if you own a home, if I was a renter/condo owner I'd be annoyed that everyone is subsidizing your free solar however. What kind of selfish point of view is this? Don't you want people to use energy sources that are better for our entire world, even if it costs you like $10 more in taxes per year? Seems like a no brainer deal if you like "the outside" and you want it to still be there. I'm a…

> What kind of selfish point of view is this? Don't you want people to use energy sources that are better for our entire world, even if it costs you like $10 more in taxes per year?

Only if those who make the same or more than me are paying that same tax. After their subsidies of course.

Rich folks getting even richer off the backs of poor folks is bad. Even if it's dressed up as good for the environment or whatever justification you want to come up with.

As a homeowner, I would not take these subsidies as I find them to be immoral. Doesn't mean I won't be installing solar, but I'm doing it for far different reasons than saving money.

By your logic, shouldn't homeowners stop being selfish and just pay for these things themselves in order to make the world a better place? Why do they need renters, other taxpayers, and other ratepayers to subsidize them?

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#424

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

bluGill wrote: post #414
margalabargala wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You absolutely do not want them sharing the excess with neighbors during a power outage, this is how you get dead linemen. Solar panel grid tied inverters generally will refuse to function if there's no external power coming in. The benefit from the distributed generation means that if your local area has large loads added you don't necessarily need to upgrade the HVDC lines from the power plant to accommodate.

This is not as big a problem as it sounds - you cannot provides enough power for you neighbors and so your breakers (fuses) will cut power long before the lineman gets there. though linemen are trained that they are working on a live line unless they have personally shorted it out. There are many other ways a seemingly dead line can be live so they don't take a chance.

> This is not as big a problem as it sounds - you cannot provides enough power for you neighbors and so your breakers (fuses) will cut power long before the lineman gets there.

The load side (your neighbors) cannot pull more power than is being generated. My 7kW array can generate 7kW and no more. No breakers will trip in a hypothetical scenario where my inverter fails to shut down during an outage, and my neighbors are trying to drawing 10kW.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#425

Post by volkl48 »

GuB-42 wrote: post #64
munk-a wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that on-roof-solar helps (as it becomes widespread) mitigate the growing need for additional grid capacity. Canada is a big country and, outside the major cities, upgrading grid capacity is quite expensive per capita. It's a win-win in Canada, investing in self-sufficiency while reducing the maintenance burden of infrastructure.

If there is no in-house storage to match, how does it help the grid? It is still needed for cold winter nights, where demand is high and solar panels produce nothing. Hydro can provide the power, but the grid will be running at full load.

Depends on your system constraints.

As an example:

I live in New England. We do not have enough natural gas pipeline capacity to meet demand in long periods of very cold weather, and have very limited natural gas storage that can't buffer that for as long as a cold spell can last.

In these periods of time the grid traditionally keeps the lights on by switching over a significant portion of the grid to burning oil for power, and/or with the occasional LNG tanker load into Everett MA. These are both....pretty terrible and expensive solutions.

Burning less natural gas during the day still helps at night/at peak, because it means there's been less draw-down of our limited storage/more refill of it during the day, so we don't have to turn to worse options as heavily at night.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#426

Post by philistine »

apercu wrote: post #130
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 agree wholeheartedly, and the technocrats are complicit with the GOP here. It's funny how “free markets” keep producing the most expensive solar prices in the developed world. Don't get me started on Healthcare (I just moved back to the U.S. a couple years ago after 18 years in Canada, what a cluster*ck). Oil and gas buy politicians, foreign oil money buys media influence, and social-media bots keep voters angry at…

When you can influence the citizens of Rome for dimes on the dollar, why not steer the empire in the direction that benefits you?

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#427

Post by rfrey »

coryrc wrote: post #389
rfrey wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should cyclists be charged a special tax for bike lane construction and maintenance? What about sidewalks, should you need a pedestrian pass?

1. As soon as the roads are all paying best-possible-use property tax for the space they take up and it's completely paid by automobiles, in addition to all maintenance, we should try to proportionally assign dedicated bicycle infrastructure costs toward bicycle users, now and anticipated. 2. Everyone is a pedestrian.

People accuse communists of being unrealistic idealists, but they have nothing on the libertarians.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#428

Post by kieranmaine »

KaiserPro wrote: post #411
IshKebab wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

> In the UK in winter we regularly have periods of 5 cloudy days True, but then for the UK solar power isn't the right thing for winter, hence why we need a massive mix of other stuff. Also we have the advantage that france isn't that far away. In the UK battery is about grid stabilisation, as in making sure that it hums at 50hz rather than 49.

Battery revenues are shifting away from stabilisation now from https://cn-cob.com/info-detail/2026-uk-energy-storage-market...:

> the focus of energy storage has shifted from frequency services to energy arbitrage. Due to market saturation, the share of frequency services in the revenue stack has significantly declined, from 80% in 2022 to just 20% in 2024. Looking ahead to 2030, we expect energy arbitrage to dominate the revenue stack, with most revenue coming from participation in the balancing mechanism.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#429

Post by phil21 »

jvergeldedios wrote: post #343
SamPatt wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly my point. They're making decisions based on their economic reality not sacrificing for environmental principles like the above commenter. Solar is great. It can stand on its own without subsidies.

There is line that connects gov't subsidies in wealthy countries for the last 50 years funding private R&D to poorer countries being able to afford it. Arguably the poorer countries don't get to make the "decisions based on economic reality" in favor of solar without the subsidies in wealthy countries happening first. There is also an argument to be made that the R&D isn't finished and it still makes sense to subsidi…

> There is also an argument to be made that the R&D isn't finished and it still makes sense to subsidize it to drive the cost down further.

Maybe there is an argument to be made, but it sounds like a very poor one if poor countries are now putting up solar panels because it's the cheapest form of energy production. Sounds like subsidizing the same panels going up on houses is a bit silly now that the costs have shifted so much.

The argument can probably be made for direct subsidies of R&D for bleeding edge solar tech, and perhaps even battery installations to get volume up. Or maybe even subsidizing local production vs. buying everything from China.

The arguments for wealthy countries to subsidize their wealthiest citizens to install solar for personal gain seems rather weak at this point in the game. It certainly made sense 20 years ago, but in most areas where it makes economic sense to begin with solar penetration has hit a tipping point.

Re: In Europe, wind and solar overtake fossil fuels

#430

Post by throwworhtthrow »

Analemma_ wrote: post #420
throwworhtthrow wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, existing installations get 20 years of grandfathered rates [1]. Which makes it more of a ladder pull than a rug pull... [1] https://www.sce.com/clean-energy-efficiency/solar-generating...

The first round of people paid way more for their solar panels though, and those higher prices helped bootstrap the industry. Should people who paid much less for panels get the same reward? I'm having trouble getting outraged about this, it seems to be incentives working exactly as they should.

I agree, and maybe my "ladder pull" comment comes off as too negative. Most early solar buyers were either in it for environmental reasons or for a modest return on investment. I don't think many were expecting a windfall.
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