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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

#151

Post by wrsh07 »

DamonHD wrote: post #114
wrsh07 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Casey Handmer is a huge solar bull and his estimate is that solar becomes cheaper than any other form of electricity even when generated from northern states by 2030 (likely sooner) Iirc solar is meaningfully more efficient (30-50%) in southern states, so it will likely make sense to place energy intensive workloads in locations with more direct sun. However, the cost of transmitting additional power is interesting a…

IMHO "efficient" isn't really the right term in your second para. The PV generation per W incoming is actually a little lower at higher ambient temperatures, but is otherwise fairly constant. I assume that you mean higher kWh/y/kWp, ie you get more generation out of a given solar panel in the south each year.

I meant kw h/m^2/d I think, but I'm not sure what the simplest way to say that is

I think you and I are saying the same thing though!

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

#152

Post by hammock »

kgwgk wrote: post #15
hammock wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just read the subhead. It explains everything. Ember’s report outlines how falling battery capital expenditures and improved performance metrics have lowered the levelized cost of storage, making dispatchable solar a competitive, anytime electricity option globally.

I.e. making it a viable option.

Well they are two different words with two different meanings. Both are true in this case. “Available” in the sense “obtainable,” “ready for use,” “suitable for a purpose” or perhaps “available to investors”

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

#153

Post by lossolo »

ak217 wrote: post #145
lossolo wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is oversimplified view of the world and China. China being powerful is not something new, it was the world's largest economy for 18 of the past 20 centuries (with exceptions being parts of the 19th and 20th centuries, when Western Europe and then the US surged ahead after the industrial revolution). > is politically stable only as long as it continues to suppress free speech and free trade. Your analysis is thro…

Yeah. I have also been to China myself, and have first hand experience walking around Hong Kong with people who later found themselves in jail, or riding the subway getting bombarded with saturation level jingoistic propaganda urging attack against the capitalist aggressors, or getting a tour of Beijing from a friend who worked as a photojournalist and found himself followed by the security services and had to leave…

Then you've had a very different experience than I have. If you don't mind me asking, where exactly were you in mainland China, and for how long?

Hong Kong isn't representative of China. I've been there and honestly, it felt like a post colonial UK dump. Going directly from Shenzhen to Hong Kong felt like going from a first world country to a third world one, but I digress.

I also talked with Hong Kongers (this year), and they told me a different story, one that isn't so black and white as the worldview you're projecting onto others.

> or getting a tour of Beijing from a friend who worked as a photojournalist and found himself followed by the security services and had to leave and seek asylum with his family.

That's another interesting anecdote. I actually know a photo blogger and a local journalist from China, neither of them is being followed by the security services, and neither has sought asylum anywhere. What was so unique about your friend?

> But the Chinese people love freedom like the rest of us - you don't need to go far to disprove your entire narrative, Taiwan and Singapore are right there.

You know Singapore isn't exactly a "free" country either, right? And Singaporeans are generally fine with that and accept the trade off. So who's disproving whose narrative here?

Different cultures have different systems and trade offs, different value systems and philosophies of life. But some people seem not to understand that and view everything through the lens of their own values, convincing themselves there's only one "right" way to live and that everything else is evil. The Holy Crusades had similar vibes.

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

#154

Post by algo_trader »

gpm wrote: post #137
pfdietz wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point being made is that if smoothing over time becomes sufficiently cheap then smoothing over space is supplanted. It would be nice if this happened before the next Carrington Event (or the next nuclear war with orbital EMP weapons.)

I get that, I'm just disagreeing that we should be looking forwards to storage becoming that cheap. Particularly when our cheap energy sources (solar, wind) have a lot of location specific variability over time. With some exceptions for sufficiently remote (or sufficiently always-sunny and not too dense) places that local grids themselves are no longer worth it

The original report by Ember [1] is decent but clearly biased.

They assume each battery cycles entirely EVERY day - even in winter. They also assume PV is never curtailed - not even in summer. They of course ignore multi-day weather anomalies. Like wise for weekend/holiday demand variations. etc.

The best part of the report are real world bids of 2025 ESS projects.

[1] https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/how-cheap-is-batter...

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

#155

Post by JoeAltmaier »

toss1 wrote: post #86
luqtas wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Non-renewable energy is simply inferior, and will only become more so. you simply can't say this. despite the lobby against it, solar and wind energy have lifespans of around 20 years and afterwards, it's a freaking mess to deal with recycling and often times, garbage we don't know what to do. not even counting the amount of NASTY chemicals going into the production of solar panels. these are sometimes permanent an…

Sure, and none of that amounts to even close to the damage from stripping vast areas of the earth to dig up coal, grinding and transporting it to power plants, then setting it on fire, and releasing tons of CO2, and then disposing of tons of unburnt waste full of NASTY chemicals. And having to do all that continuously, every day, for the life of the plant. In every single solution you can point out problems. Complain…

It can be viewed as stripping vast areas of the earth, to put them in the shadow of a solar farm. That utterly disrupts the ecosystem underneath, though in a different way. That's usually hand-waved away.

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

#156

Post by pfdietz »

apexalpha wrote: post #105

It’s somewhat humbling that this is essentially entirely done by one country. For all their faults, I am in awe of the scale and success of their industrial policy.

They have a new kind of R&D organization that may be worth emulating.

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/china-has-invented-a-whole-new...

(partially behind paywall, sorry)

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

#157

Post by throwaway-11-1 »

antonvs wrote: post #133
nutjob2 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's alas for everyone but China. Who wants to be dependent on an aggressive totalitarian state? You can't compete fairly with China because the government applies massive subsidies and is coercive with both imports and exports. Right behind Russia, China is the biggest threat to global order and peace. It's no accident they are in cahoots.

Where do you place the United States under the Trump administration in that list? I’m getting a strong sense of denial in this thread.

For real. I think there's a type of American that would rather hype up the evils of china than admit the distance the US has fallen from its purported ideals. This year I've seen students deported for criticizing Israel, mobs of poorly trained militarized federal police roaming neighborhoods violently disappearing people without trial, the number of homeless grow to 700,000, food kitchens with lines around the block and a president straight up selling pardons to drug dealers.

Chinese totalitarianism just doesn't seem like such a huge contrast as it once did. At least they get an increase in quality of life for the tradeoff. Also a lot of this reeks of Sinophobia tbh

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

#158

Post by pfdietz »

DamonHD wrote: post #114
wrsh07 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Casey Handmer is a huge solar bull and his estimate is that solar becomes cheaper than any other form of electricity even when generated from northern states by 2030 (likely sooner) Iirc solar is meaningfully more efficient (30-50%) in southern states, so it will likely make sense to place energy intensive workloads in locations with more direct sun. However, the cost of transmitting additional power is interesting a…

IMHO "efficient" isn't really the right term in your second para. The PV generation per W incoming is actually a little lower at higher ambient temperatures, but is otherwise fairly constant. I assume that you mean higher kWh/y/kWp, ie you get more generation out of a given solar panel in the south each year.

"Effective" might be the better word.

It's unfortunate that "efficiency" has both engineering and economic definitions.

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

#159

Post by pfdietz »

onraglanroad wrote: post #61
Nextgrid wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem with Lithium ones is that they tend to be quite flammable. Lead acid is mostly inert I believe?

Weirdly, none of the many phones, tablets and laptops I've owned have ever caught on fire. I guess I've just been lucky.

I've had laptop batteries swell up, which is disconcerting to say the least.

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

#160

Post by pfdietz »

xbmcuser wrote: post #11
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #3

$33 per MWh for solar. What is it for coal or natural gas? Maybe half that?

$100+ meh for natural gas. Solar and battery is so cheap that arab countries are now building large solar and battery systems to save money instead of burning oil and gas. Where as in the US the other big oil and gas producer wholesale electricity prices for Natural Gas is around $100-150 mwh which is cheaper than coal and the major reason coal got pushed out. Then we have China and India where coal is around $40-50…

When we get to the point where resistive heat from PV is cheaper than burning fossil fuels, the revolution will truly shift into high gear.
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