$33 per MWh for solar. What is it for coal or natural gas? Maybe half that?
Curious, where do you get your news? What gives you the impression that coal or gas would possibly be cheaper than solar?
Analysis finds anytime electricity from solar available as battery costs plummet
161–170 of 226 posts
Re: Analysis finds anytime electricity from solar available as battery costs plummet
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> Also a lot of this reeks of Sinophobia tbh
Re: Analysis finds anytime electricity from solar available as battery costs plummet
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
China is governed by the CCP, which holds the world record for the number of people murdered by the state, feeds its citizens militaristic propaganda at scale, is currently controlled by a guy who fancies himself a dictator, and is politically stable only as long as it continues to suppress free speech and free trade. It takes a dangerous kind of willful naivete to just ignore that fact.
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…
This and your other comment in this thread reads exactly like propaganda paid for by the CCP.
Re: Analysis finds anytime electricity from solar available as battery costs plummet
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
A self inflicted wound. Europe keeps entering into spot gas supply contracts and paying through the nose instead of signing longer-term contracts for lower prices. The Russians have always been reliable suppliers even after sanctions took place, and calls from some hotheads to use gas as leverage was never seriously followed through by the real decision makers. And Habeck is an idiot. Lately Germany has not been buyi…
Europe Locks In Endgame for Russian Gas And Oil - https://finance.yahoo.com/news/europe-locks-endgame-russian-... - December 9th, 2025
Thanks for the link. I think the facts are correct but the conclusions are wrong. Yamal gas will be redirected to Asian markets by 2030, and Europe will keep losing its manufacturing base to locations with cheaper energy (e.g. the US).
But something tells me von der Leyen will not have trouble heating her own home.
Re: Analysis finds anytime electricity from solar available as battery costs plummet
#165Ok 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.
Those people already use almost no energy compared to everybody else.
Re: Analysis finds anytime electricity from solar available as battery costs plummet
#166Ok now shift summer sun into winter.
Just build more solar. You generate excess electricity in summer and enough in winter. This isn't a problem.
The over build causes these rosey projections about power prices from solar to turn on their heads.
6.5 cents/kWh is pretty good, 65 cents though is terrible.
Actually difference is more than 10:1 too
Re: Analysis finds anytime electricity from solar available as battery costs plummet
#167Earlier 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…
This and your other comment in this thread reads exactly like propaganda paid for by the CCP.
That's a funny meta comment, where are you from? Are you consuming a lot of US based content? I ask because I mainly see Americans here writing about the "CCP" based on what they regularly hear from government officials and certain news outlets. It's rarely framed as "China" it's usually "the Chinese Communist Party" emphasizing "Communist" because that word carries negative connotations in the US given its history and in the EU. But maybe framing is similar in your country.
So just to clarify, I'm from the EU, and I'm not paid for anything I write here. Maybe your world model is influenced by propaganda? The world isn't black and white.
I also encourage people to read more about the history and culture of other countries, especially the ones they have strong opinions about, which they often haven't formed themselves (In my experience, this is often lacking in US education, people learn a lot about US history, but not as much about the rest of the world).
Reading more philosophy can also broaden your perspective. In particular, I recommend learning about Singapore, its history, Lee Kuan Yew, and why many highly educated people there willingly accept restrictions on individual freedom. If you understand that, you can then start reading about China, its culture, and its history.
Re: Analysis finds anytime electricity from solar available as battery costs plummet
#168Does 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?
technically or politically?
Don't know about either of those? But militarily, it's suicide to set up all your generation in one area.
Always overwhelm the enemy when possible. Even when he's planning.
Re: Analysis finds anytime electricity from solar available as battery costs plummet
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
This probably depends a lot on how close you are to the equator. Here in Germany output of solar in winter is negligible, and if there is no wind, which can happen for several consecutive weeks, we need a backup. No utilities company will build a fossil power plant that will be used only a few weeks per year, so our government will have to step in to make sure this happens. On top of this you have very high costs for…
Here are some numbers: January 2025, the output of solar was ~1500 GWh, it peaked in June at 10500 GWh. So the lowest output was about 15% of the maximum, this year. https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&... https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&... Looking at wind, the ratio between min and max per week is about 1:5 (~1200 vs ~6000 GWh). Just as there is always some solar…
How do you interpret these numbers? If your point is that we can simply overprovision photovoltaik arrays by a factor of 6.67, then that would make solar the most expensive power generation method by far.
And it only gets worse the more households transition to heatpumps, because the consumption in winter is so lopsided. For example, I heat my home with a heatpump, and I have 10 kWp of solar arrays on my roof. In the last week of July, we consumed 84 kWh and generated 230 kWh (273 %). In the last week of November, we consumed 341 khW and generated 40 kWh (11 %). This means we'd need roughly 10 times as much PV area to match demand (10 roofs?), and huge batteries because most of that consumption is in the evening, at night, and in the morning.
Of course, utility-scale and residential solar behave a bit differently, and it becomes more complicated if wind is factored in. But it shows that you can't just overprovision PV a little to fix the main problem of solar power: that it is most abundant in summer, and most in demand in winter.
Re: Analysis finds anytime electricity from solar available as battery costs plummet
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wind power. Mix with emergency reserves running on open cycle gas turbines, if deemed necessary, preferably running on with carbon neutral fuel. Optimize for lowest possible CAPEX. That is contingent on that we’re not wasting money and opportunity cost that could have larger impact decarbonizing agriculture, construction, aviation, maritime shipping etc.
The next hot thing (pun intended) is geothermal. The tech to drill deep enough opens up the possibility of extracting geothermal energy in most of the world. The tech exists and is deployed. Scaling is not yet proven but is very plausible. Geothermal runs 24/7 and can be clean base load power.
It’s not just drilling deep enough, it’s whether they can keep the wells open and flowing long enough to make the whole thing economic.
Some deep geothermal projects have failed because the wells wouldn’t stay open. Maybe this generation of companies have solved this problem; let’s wait and see.