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Analysis finds anytime electricity from solar available as battery costs plummet

pv-magazine-usa.com

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Re: Analysis finds anytime electricity from solar available as battery costs plummet

#101

Post by epistasis »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #24
codersfocus wrote: post #21

Does anyone know whether it makes sense to setup solar arrays closer to users or to concentrate them in sunny places and send them throughout the country? e.g. an analysis of whether we should setup all the solar farms in Nevada for the whole country... set them up in the general south and transmit north... or will each state have their own farms?

High voltage transmission lines are really quite efficient, and concentrating generation is usually the right choice. That said, it doesn't make sense to have just a single place for the entire country, as there are multiple grids in the US (primarily East, West, and Texas), and with very long transmission you can get into phase issues.

Concentrating generation made sense when transmission was cheap in comparison.

But one effect of ever cheaper solar is that transmission costs start to dominate generation costs, because transmission is not getting cheaper.

Cheap solar and storage requires rethinking every aspect and all conventional wisdom about the grid. Storage in particular is a massive game changer on a scale that few in the industry understand.

Re: Analysis finds anytime electricity from solar available as battery costs plummet

#102

Post by calvinmorrison »

ak217 wrote: post #35
state_less wrote: post #16

The scaling up of battery manufacturing for EVs and now solar storage has lead to prices I would have never imagined I'd see in my lifetime. It's one of the success stories that, having lived through it, has been a real joy. I know that folks might have been able to point to a graph years ago and said we'd be here eventually, but I had my doubts given the scale required and hacking through all the lobbying efforts we…

Alas is right, China is poised to dominate battery, solar, and EV technology and to translate it to military technology as well. Meanwhile the Republicans are blowing up US alliances and sabotaging the battery/EV industrial development policy that was actually making progress in giving the US hope in catching up.

good. maybe we can copy some shit for cheap and leap frog a few generations instead of leading the world!

Re: Analysis finds anytime electricity from solar available as battery costs plummet

#103

Post by lukan »

codersfocus wrote: post #21

Does anyone know whether it makes sense to setup solar arrays closer to users or to concentrate them in sunny places and send them throughout the country? e.g. an analysis of whether we should setup all the solar farms in Nevada for the whole country... set them up in the general south and transmit north... or will each state have their own farms?

If you would have a high voltage DC transmission line already, linking the dessert and the clouded cities far away, then it makes sense. I think it is worth building them, but it is a big investment. Many lines are proposed, some already build, but with the current US administration I don't think it is a priority.

So decentral is the current way to go.

That is the current state in the US

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HVDC_projects#/map/3

Re: Analysis finds anytime electricity from solar available as battery costs plummet

#104

Post by jack_tripper »

api wrote: post #95
jack_tripper wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I really felt like Trump’s 2024 election was the moment it became the Chinese century. You must have been asleep at the wheel or living under a rock to have mised China's rise over the last decades. They didn't wait for Trump to get elected in 2024 and then flipped a switch from third world country to global superpower. "Damn, this hot cup of coffee burned my tongue. Why would Trump do this?" -HN comments

No I saw it. I just felt like that was the moment it tipped.

[flagged]

Re: Analysis finds anytime electricity from solar available as battery costs plummet

#106

Post by antonvs »

ak217 wrote: post #35
state_less wrote: post #16

The scaling up of battery manufacturing for EVs and now solar storage has lead to prices I would have never imagined I'd see in my lifetime. It's one of the success stories that, having lived through it, has been a real joy. I know that folks might have been able to point to a graph years ago and said we'd be here eventually, but I had my doubts given the scale required and hacking through all the lobbying efforts we…

Alas is right, China is poised to dominate battery, solar, and EV technology and to translate it to military technology as well. Meanwhile the Republicans are blowing up US alliances and sabotaging the battery/EV industrial development policy that was actually making progress in giving the US hope in catching up.

> Alas is right, China is poised to dominate …

Are you saying “alas for citizens of the US who see things in competitive nationalist terms”?

Seems like a win for everyone else, no? What happened to “competition”, or is that something that’s only supposed to be beneficial within the US?

Re: Analysis finds anytime electricity from solar available as battery costs plummet

#107

Post by epistasis »

api wrote: post #95
jack_tripper wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I really felt like Trump’s 2024 election was the moment it became the Chinese century. You must have been asleep at the wheel or living under a rock to have mised China's rise over the last decades. They didn't wait for Trump to get elected in 2024 and then flipped a switch from third world country to global superpower. "Damn, this hot cup of coffee burned my tongue. Why would Trump do this?" -HN comments

No I saw it. I just felt like that was the moment it tipped.

This is exactly right, IMHO. We were in a course to counter China's momentum, we had handled COVID so much better, our industry had a huuuuuuge investment in it and was poised to take tiff.

And then it was all killed. And we are killing off our other competitive edges over China, the way we attract all the world's best science and tech talent to build here in the US rather than in their own countries. We have sat back scientific research 2-5 years by drastically cutting grants in nonsensical ways and stopping and decimating a class of grad students.

We were the most admired country in the world, and in a short amount of time we have destroyed decades of hard work building a good reputation.

We won't get that back in a year or two, it's going to be decades of work.

Re: Analysis finds anytime electricity from solar available as battery costs plummet

#108

Post by ksec »

api wrote: post #77
ak217 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alas is right, China is poised to dominate battery, solar, and EV technology and to translate it to military technology as well. Meanwhile the Republicans are blowing up US alliances and sabotaging the battery/EV industrial development policy that was actually making progress in giving the US hope in catching up.

It’s the innovators dilemma. We have so much not just technical but cultural and political sunk cost in fossil fuels and traditional industrial era infrastructure. The Chinese are just developing now and don’t have so much of that sunk cost. So they can think like it’s the future. We are stuck in the past. Eventually there may come a day when it’s China that is stuck in the past, looking back to the early 21st centur…

May be it is not of an innovators dilemma?

Chinese CCP are willing to scarifies whatever traditional industrial era infrastructure in order for things to move forward and gain a global advantage. Especially when they are not the one paying for the scarifies.

Re: Analysis finds anytime electricity from solar available as battery costs plummet

#109

Post by apexalpha »

buckle8017 wrote: post #50

Ok now shift summer sun into winter.

A very large part of the people on this planet have (almost) no winters.

We could start with those ~3 billion people.

Also wind has proven to be a very good supplement to pv.

Re: Analysis finds anytime electricity from solar available as battery costs plummet

#110

Post by epistasis »

empiricus wrote: post #48

All nice and beautiful, but I don't understand how will this work in the winter in the temperate areas. You maintain parallel natural gas installations and ramp them up in the winter? Does this doubles the cost?

Not having to burn gas is cheaper than burning gas. There will be a decade or two of transition with rarely used gas turbines getting their yearly packet in a short amount of time. Eventually other tech will take over, or the gas infrastructure will pare down and be cost optimized for its new role or rare usage.

Europe, and Germany and the UK in particular, are really poorly suited to take advantage of this new cheap technology. If these countries don't figure out alternatives, the countries with better and cheaper energy resources will take over energy intensive industries.

This is not a problem for solar and storage to solve, it's a problem that countries with poor resources need to solve if they want to compete in global industry.

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