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Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

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Re: Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

#111

Post by rsynnott »

tombert wrote: post #69

I'm of course a supporter of solar, and I don't want to be "that guy", but is there a strategy for handling solar power at night? In these areas that are mostly solar, how do they store the energy, or do they resort to natural gas or coal or something?

Currently, typically, you ramp up gas production. This is obviously still better than using the gas throughout the day and night. In the future, improvements in storage technology may make that more viable; there are already experiments in this direction, with 1GWh-scale flow battery storage facilities to be completed in Germany and China in the next year.

Power usage is typically lower at night, of course. And wind generation tends to be a bit higher at night in most places.

Re: Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

#112

Post by jartelt »

tombert wrote: post #69

I'm of course a supporter of solar, and I don't want to be "that guy", but is there a strategy for handling solar power at night? In these areas that are mostly solar, how do they store the energy, or do they resort to natural gas or coal or something?

You still get wind power at night in most areas. You can also ramp up natural gas plants at night to pick up demand. You can store energy as well using pumped hydro or batteries. We are not yet in a situation where large-scale storage is totally necessary though. The grid managers are able to make everything work using the flexible resources already on the grid today.

Re: Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

#113

Post by rsynnott »

rescripting wrote: post #79
tombert wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember hearing from Bill Nye about an idea to pump water to lift up pillars during the day to store potential energy, then release those pillars overnight. I wonder if that's being implemented anywhere.

Something like Pumped Storage Hydroelectricity? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricit... There are several of these facilities in the US, although no new ones have been built in quite some time. I believe that as the price of solar goes down, more of these styles of facilities will open.

The trouble with pumped storage is that it's usually only economical to do where you have suitable geography which can be economically connected to the grid. It's by no means useless, but other storage mechanisms are needed.

Re: Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

#114

Post by epistasis »

swebs wrote: post #73
rb808 wrote: post #11

There is an interesting part about solar generating electricity when its sunny - it will help population move to warmer climes. If you live in Ohio heating in winter is a problem, solar isn't going to keep you warm on a cold night (ok batteries can help but they're expensive). If you live in the South West though its perfect as Winter nights dont require much heat and the biggest loads are AC at the times when there…

We've built oil pipelines, why not "electricity pipelines" made of refrigerated, super conducting cable?

The technology that's being deployed right now for this is high-voltage DC:

https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2018/07/09/eia-examines-hvdc-for...

It's an infrastructure investment that would pay dividends, but requires getting through a quagmire of politics.

Re: Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

#115

Post by craftyguy »

eigenvector wrote: post #54
xahrepap wrote: post #45

Slightly off topic... Interesting thing about solar in Utah (maybe everywhere? Not sure about the specifics): Utah gives every land owner pollution credits. They're allowed to pollute X units worth per year or something like that. Depending on certain criteria you're allotted a certain amount of credits. The problem is, these credits are transferable. So if I, for example, don't pollute, I can sell my credits off to…

It's not net zero impact to pollution, because polluters are forced to buy credits, which increases the costs of their pollution and incentivizes them to reduce it, while non-polluting technologies are subsidized by the income they can get from selling unused credits. The key is how many total credits you allocate to begin with - they should be sufficiently scarce that large emitters need to buy credits - and continu…

> which increases the costs of their pollution and incentivizes them to reduce it

Or, they pass the cost to the very consumers that sold them the credits.

Re: Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

#116

Post by jankeymeulen »

swebs wrote: post #73
rb808 wrote: post #11

There is an interesting part about solar generating electricity when its sunny - it will help population move to warmer climes. If you live in Ohio heating in winter is a problem, solar isn't going to keep you warm on a cold night (ok batteries can help but they're expensive). If you live in the South West though its perfect as Winter nights dont require much heat and the biggest loads are AC at the times when there…

We've built oil pipelines, why not "electricity pipelines" made of refrigerated, super conducting cable?

At 3% loss per 1000 km (625 miles) HVDC is already good enough I'd say.

Re: Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

#117

Post by rsynnott »

rb808 wrote: post #11

There is an interesting part about solar generating electricity when its sunny - it will help population move to warmer climes. If you live in Ohio heating in winter is a problem, solar isn't going to keep you warm on a cold night (ok batteries can help but they're expensive). If you live in the South West though its perfect as Winter nights dont require much heat and the biggest loads are AC at the times when there…

> If you live in Ohio heating in winter is a problem, solar isn't going to keep you warm on a cold night.

(a) In any realistic scenarios where a grid goes mostly-solar, you'd expect that it would have adequate storage.

(b) Storage heaters are a thing (and far more economical than batteries).

(c) Modern "passive houses" and similar standards require surprisingly small energy input to heat, even when it's very cold outside. For whatever reason these mostly haven't been adopted in the US, but are becoming common in parts of Europe.

Re: Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

#118

Post by willismichael »

neworbit wrote: post #105
mrfusion wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an idea for a product to solve this if anyone is interested in chatting. I just don’t have the capital or hardware knowledge to get it going.

Your username suggests an option, but I shall hope you are focused on solar at the moment

Solar is fusion, right?

Re: Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

#119

Post by CuriousSkeptic »

xahrepap wrote: post #45

Slightly off topic... Interesting thing about solar in Utah (maybe everywhere? Not sure about the specifics): Utah gives every land owner pollution credits. They're allowed to pollute X units worth per year or something like that. Depending on certain criteria you're allotted a certain amount of credits. The problem is, these credits are transferable. So if I, for example, don't pollute, I can sell my credits off to…

Seems a bit unfair to single out land owners. One would think even non-landowers should have claim to the air.

Re: Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

#120

Post by rsynnott »

philipkglass wrote: post #68
sharkmerry wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is the expense of desalinization the electricity? Which would go down with adoption of solar?

This is a decade old, but I think that the proportions are still about right: https://desline.com/Geneva/Banat.pdf See the slide "Cost composition for a typical seawater RO (reverse osmosis) plant" Fixed charges (primarily capital cost): 31% Energy: 26% Maintenance and parts: 14% Membrane replacement: 13% Supervision and labor: 9% Chemicals: 7% Really cheap solar electricity could reduce the second largest expense (e…

That's reverse osmosis. In a scenario where energy is very cheap (even if only for part of the day) there are other processes which require less maintenance, but more energy.
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