121–130 of 166 posts
This seems highly doubtful. If solar saves money, why does Germany (with a lot of solar) have higher rather than lower energy prices?
Er... No? Electricity prices in Germany are lower than last year. https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/energiemonitor-strompreis-gas...
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> Partly because they still use coal, which is heavily taxed under the emissions trading scheme ... and solar is heavily subsidized, which could outweigh this effect. So this doesn't explain the high energy prices. > partly because of the way electricity auctions work in most of Europe, namely every participant sells at the price offered by the highest bidder. This doesn't explain why Germany has so high electricity…
> This doesn't explain why Germany has so high electricity prices. It's the main thing which does. Say you have two energy sources, Alice Electric can deliver at €0.03/kWh but only up to 10% of your demand, while Bob Energy can deliver 200% of your demand but all units will cost €0.5/kWh. The net result of the electricity auction, as described, is that the consumers pay Alice and Bob €0.5/kWh each, which gives Alice…
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>I installed a solar system at my home in Massachusetts for 17k last year (after tax credits), 7.82 kw. This is the problem still in the US. Even at ~$0.23/kwh delivered in the northeast, you're looking at an ROI of nearly five years. Fine if you can float that kind of cash to feel better about yourself, but the economics just aren't there for most people, especially in cheaper parts of the country where rates are ~$…
Is a 5 year ROI really that crazy? Seems very reasonable considering lifespan of solar is more like 15-20 years (or more).
In the real world panels that old are putting out 85%
Just installed my plug-and-play panel this week in my small garden. 400W so not enough to power all my appliances. But I'm happy that I'm at least a little hedged against the negative geopolitical developments we're going through.
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Is anyone else manufacturing it at comparable prices yet?
It's hard to compete with slave wages
Going forward, a big factor in (lack of) "made in Europe" isn't high wages. It's that a) much manufacturing capacity was lost because it was offshored decades ago. It takes ages to restore that. And b) "how many jobs does it provide?" has traditionally weighed heavily in policy decisions.
Once robotization kicks in bigtime, it doesn't matter where labor is cheap. It matters where energy or raw materials are cheap. Or supply lines are short.
Like it or not, China is way ahead on that curve.
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Batteries help, but they still cost way more than direct solar and wind. We still need way more solar and wind to use directly.
Costing less than the most expensive thing they replace is the interesting threshold. That's evening peaker gas plants in most places. After batteries push gas out of that market they go on to morning peaks and so on.
The UK for example basically doesn't have "peakers". Right now it's early evening, demand is high as people cook evening meals but haven't yet retired to bed where they stop using electricity, but renewable generation is reduced as the sun approaches the horizon. So there's 8GW of combined cycle gas power plant production, but only about 100MW of "peakers" and it might grow to 200MW or so at absolute peak.
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Er... No? Electricity prices in Germany are lower than last year. https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/energiemonitor-strompreis-gas...
I mean higher than in other countries with less solar energy, like France, which has mostly nuclear.
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> This doesn't explain why Germany has so high electricity prices. It's the main thing which does. Say you have two energy sources, Alice Electric can deliver at €0.03/kWh but only up to 10% of your demand, while Bob Energy can deliver 200% of your demand but all units will cost €0.5/kWh. The net result of the electricity auction, as described, is that the consumers pay Alice and Bob €0.5/kWh each, which gives Alice…
This doesn't explain why energy costs are higher in Germany. You have to replace the words "Alice" and "Bob" with something that is relevant to the topic at hand.
Bob is not one single concrete thing, it's the abstract concept, anthropomorphised.
Germany's energy is expensive because the marginal generator is so expensive.
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Did you consider that Germany has solar because of high energy prices?
Do you have any evidence that this is true?
Once you've determined you need new electricity generation, the cheapest source tends to get built. Right now that's solar; that's an objective fact.