Analysis finds anytime electricity from solar available as battery costs plummet • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by jasondigitized » Sun, Dec 14, 2025, 4:16 PM UTC

alexose wrote: post #39

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…

In addition to coming so far down in price, it's amazing to me how good the technology has gotten. Batteries that can easily discharge 5C in cold weather, cycle 10000 times, survive harsh conditions with zero maintenance. Panels that last for decades. Which is why it makes me especially angry that the current US government is throwing away this gift in order to appease a bunch of aging leaders of petro-states. Litera…

I take solace in the invisible hand which, in the longer term, ultimately directs greedy capitalists. Water finds its level, etc. etc.

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

#192

Post by tim333 » Sun, Dec 14, 2025, 4:40 PM UTC

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?

Possible things are to over provision solar, and set it up further south with a high voltage dc cable. We almost had a Morocco - UK power setup but the current government said no to it.

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

#193

Post by ndsipa_pomu » Sun, Dec 14, 2025, 5:25 PM UTC

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…

Certainly sounds like a sunk cost dilemma.

Just because a country has previously invested in fossil fuels, it doesn't follow that they can't get the benefit of solar with future investment. However, there's a lot of powerful money/people/corporations that depend on fossil fuels for making billions - that's the real problem as that skews the market and politics of energy production/distribution.

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

#194

Post by ndsipa_pomu » Sun, Dec 14, 2025, 5:30 PM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #185

jmward01 wrote: post #71

Batteries are probably going to kill long-range transmission lines and open up remote generation at a scale never thought possible. Desert solar, remote hydro, etc etc. As the price continues to fall and the density continues to rise the economics of transmission completely change and will decouple the location of power generation from the use of that power dramatically. This decoupling of location and use will drast…

> Batteries are probably going to kill long-range transmission lines and open up remote generation at a scale never thought possible. Not at current power densities. The bandwidth of a station wagon filled with hard drives is quite high; the power delivery of station wagon filled with batteries is on the low side compared to a wire made from the same material as that station wagon and buried under the road the wagon…

Surely batteries will be used in conjunction with solar, and as solar is already distributed (except for high latitudes), the need for power distribution will diminish as once you're setup with solar and batteries, you only really need the transmission lines to sell any excess power. Presumably, once solar is rolled out at scale, there will be little demand for purchasing excess power.

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

#195

Post by toss1 » Sun, Dec 14, 2025, 6:04 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #155

toss1 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you actually read any of the reports of current research, you would find that combining solar with agriculture improves both the health of the flock and/or crops being produced, and increases output. More shade for the fauna, and better moisture profile for the flora, for starters.

Similar effects can also be created in currently wild areas that does NOT disrupt the ecosystem, but augments it. For starters, in very dry areas which are ideal for solar deployment, the typical constraint on the ecosystem is lack of shade and moisture preservation, which is mitigated by solar deployment

There are also VAST areas of already populated or in-use areas that are ripe for deployment of solar panels, rooftops, parking areas, canals, reservoirs, and more, and ALL of them are a net improvement with solar panels

So, nobody is stripping anything from the earth, and there is no continuous transportation of materials to set them on fire. The fact that it is already CHEAPER to produce electricity by tearing down a coal plant and installing the same solar capacity shows how crazy it is.

Just because something was the best way we had to do something three technology generations ago does not mean it is still best, or even viable or recommended. Stunning to see such unscientific backwards attitudes on a site focused on science and technology.

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

#196

Post by api » Sun, Dec 14, 2025, 6:05 PM UTC

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #193

api wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Certainly sounds like a sunk cost dilemma. Just because a country has previously invested in fossil fuels, it doesn't follow that they can't get the benefit of solar with future investment. However, there's a lot of powerful money/people/corporations that depend on fossil fuels for making billions - that's the real problem as that skews the market and politics of energy production/distribution.

That political sunk cost is why the innovators dilemma happens. It happens in companies too where managers, executives, and top employees will have their careers built around a certain way of doing things. Change threatens that so they will resist change and double down.

Basically success creates the preconditions for this failure mode in the future.

It might be thought of as a form of overfitting. Success results in overfitting to a local maximum.

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

#197

Post by ben_w » Sun, Dec 14, 2025, 6:34 PM UTC

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #194

ben_w wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Batteries are probably going to kill long-range transmission lines and open up remote generation at a scale never thought possible. Not at current power densities. The bandwidth of a station wagon filled with hard drives is quite high; the power delivery of station wagon filled with batteries is on the low side compared to a wire made from the same material as that station wagon and buried under the road the wagon…

Surely batteries will be used in conjunction with solar, and as solar is already distributed (except for high latitudes), the need for power distribution will diminish as once you're setup with solar and batteries, you only really need the transmission lines to sell any excess power. Presumably, once solar is rolled out at scale, there will be little demand for purchasing excess power.

Heavily depends on the details.

Extreme case sometimes used to argue against PV is the Arctic circle. Anywhere in the Artctic circle has to choose between enough batteries to cope with entire days when the sun's below the horizon *or* a transmission line further south where the sun's still up.

Or a different renewable, or nuclear, my point here isn't any particular answer just that there's cases where you might go for something other than PV+battery, and my point before is just about yeeting batteries around.

That said, re-reading the comment I was originally responding too, I may have inferred too much from:

> Right now is likely the time to buy sunny land in the middle of nowhere but near train tracks.

And the previously quoted words "remote generation".

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

#198

Post by dinfinity » Sun, Dec 14, 2025, 6:54 PM UTC

jmward01 wrote: post #150

gpm wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think long range transmission remains a thing anywhere having a local grid remains a thing (which will be most places for other reasons). Load-balancing the area having a cloudy few days and the area having a sunny days and the area having a windy few days and so on will remain extremely valuable. It lets you install a lot less batteries and isn't that much infrastructure given that the last mile problems are dealt…

I think there is a calculation that makes the point a little clearer. There is some distance, x, where it is cheaper to transport the electrons mechanically than it is to push them over a wire. Every month that distance gets shorter as battery prices drop. This gets even more advantageous for batteries when you start talking about variable use and generation since it is easier to change the destination or source of a…

> My main point is that that distance x is going to rapidly get towards just a few miles away from point of use very shortly.

That seems physically unlikely to me. Sure, burying and maintaining cables costs money, but other than that transferring energy in a very fundamental and solid state way is going to be much easier than packaging it up and transporting it with heavy machinery.

This is definitely a case where your argument only works if it is supported by the actual calculation.

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

#199

Post by dinfinity » Sun, Dec 14, 2025, 7:06 PM UTC

adwn wrote: post #187

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just a slighty more sophisticated version of the "solar doesn't work at night" trope. The implications of bringing it up is that these silly hippies haven't even thought of this basic fact so how can we trust them with our energy system. Meanwhile, actual energy experts have been aware of the concept of winter for at least a few years now. If you want to critique their plans for dealing with it, you'd need to…

I don't see you countering my argument, only attempting to ridicule it ("slighty more sophisticated", "trope", "these silly hippies", "been aware of the concept of winter", "existence of winter as a gotcha"). That sucks, man :-( > If you want to critique their plans for dealing with it […] There are many ideas for seasonal storage of PV-generated electricity, but so far there is no concrete plan that's both scalable…

> 5x to 10x overprovisioning would turn solar from one of the cheaper into the by far most expensive power generation method out there.

This is trivially false if the cost of solar generation (and battery storage) further drops by 5x to 10x.

Additionally that implies the overprovisioned power is worthless in the summer, which does not have to be the case. It might make certain processes viable due to very low cost of energy during those months. Not trivial as those industries would have to leave the equipment using the power unused during winter months, but the economics could still work for certain cases.

Some of the cases might even specifically be those that store energy for use in winter (although then we're not looking at the 'pure' overprovisioning solution anymore).

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

#200

Post by luqtas » Mon, Dec 15, 2025, 4:15 AM UTC

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…

> Complaining that "X isn't perfect" is the easiest and laziest thing in the world to do. Assessing the ACTUAL costs and damages IN PROPORTION is more difficult, but actually yields good results.

no one here typed that photovoltaics shouldn't be on play. but the way it's being paraphrase, feels like a panacea. the OP telling other skeptical opinions against mass substitution to photovoltaics is 'a shame on a tech oriented forum' probably don't even know that regulations and deals of these ballparks have a bunch of regulamentations and considerations that even needs to look for the security/reliability of the grid agaisnt (cyber)terrorism and war...

they then bring a cute little article of people producing tomatoes under laboratory settings being shaded by solar panels. we are chatting about mass production and distribution of energy. if you think it's economically viable to dismantle coal stations and substitute them for solar only shows ignorancy from a multitude of fields... as if energy was easy as comparing output of CO2/$ per watt produced! they even were ironic agaisnt (underdeveloped yet more sane than photovoltaics in the long-term for a vast majority of cases) nuclear technology :D we may shall dismiss the discussion of hooking up batteries on wind/solar, as current prices don't make recycling (batteries) any sense in a large scale that will be decentralized due the geo-location of wind/solar requirements. or do you think transporting these batteries to be recycled in specific areas is just a matter of building cargo-drones powered by solar energy and AI vision? we may also dismiss ecology on the amount of area and damaged species by exchanging any power plant to wind/solar because it's cheap. even group of populations agaisnt visual pollution coming from wind turbines, for example. we also should dismiss the amount of thrash burried by thousands and thousands of multi kilo tons wind turbines after 25 years etc. /s