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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

#221

Post by adwn »

dinfinity wrote: post #217
adwn wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is trivially false if the cost of solar generation (and battery storage) further drops by 5x to 10x. That's a huge "if". The cost of PV panels has come down by a factor of 10 in the last 13 years or so, that's true. I doubt another 10x decrease is possible, because at some point you run into material costs. But the real issue is that price of the panels themselves is already only about 35% of the total install…

> But the real issue is that price of the panels themselves is already only about 35% of the total installation cost of utility-scale PV. This means that even if the panels were free, it would only reduce the cost by a factor of 1.5. 1. Do the other costs scale with the number of panels? Because if the sites are 5 times the scale of the current ones I would imagine there are considerable scale based cost efficiencies…

> 1. Do the other costs scale with the number of panels?

Mostly yes. Once you're at utility-scale, installation and maintainance should scale 1:1 with number of panels. Inverters and balancing systems should also scale 1:1, although you might be able to save a bit here if you're willing to "waste" power during peak insolation.

But think about it this way: If it was possible to reduce non-panel costs by a factor of 5 simply by building 5x larger solar plants, the operating companies would already be doing this. With non-panel costs around 65%, this would result in 65% * (1 - 1/5) = 52% savings and give them a huge advantage over the competition.

> 2. Vertically mounted bifacial PV […] 3. Battery […] costs are dropping

I agree that intra-day fluctuations will be solved by cheaper panels and cheaper batteries, especially once sodium-ion battery costs fall significantly. But I'm specifically talking about seasonal storage here.

> Also, please address the matter of using the overprovisioned power in summer.

I'm quite pessimistic about that. Chemical plants tend to be extremely capital-intensive and quickly become non-profitable if they're effectively idle during half of the year. Underground thermal storage would require huge infrastructure investments into distribution, since most places don't already have district heating.

Sorry, very busy today so I can't go into all details, but I still wanted to give you an answer.

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

#222

Post by ben_w »

adwn wrote: post #203
dinfinity wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> This is trivially false if the cost of solar generation (and battery storage) further drops by 5x to 10x. That's a huge "if". The cost of PV panels has come down by a factor of 10 in the last 13 years or so, that's true. I doubt another 10x decrease is possible, because at some point you run into material costs. But the real issue is that price of the panels themselves is already only about 35% of the total install…

> That's a huge "if". The cost of PV panels has come down by a factor of 10 in the last 13 years or so, that's true. I doubt another 10x decrease is possible, because at some point you run into material costs.

A factor of 5 is certainly within the realms of physics, given the numbers I've seen floating around. Note that prices are changing rapidly and any old price may not be current: around these parts, they're already so cheap they're worth it as fencing material even if you don't bother to power anything with them.

> But the real issue is that price of the panels themselves is already only about 35% of the total installation cost of utility-scale PV. This means that even if the panels were free, it would only reduce the cost by a factor of 1.5.

This should have changed your opinion, because it shows how the material costs are not the most important factor: we can get up to a 3x cost reduction by improving automation of construction of utility-scale PV plants.

I think I've seen some HN startups with this as their pitch, I've definitely seen some IRL with this pitch.

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

#223

Post by ben_w »

adwn wrote: post #206
adrianN wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What amounts to „concrete plan“? Right now we’re still in the state where building more generation is the best use of our money with batteries for load shifting a few hours ramping up. So it’s entirely expected that there is no infrastructure for seasonal storage yet. However the maths for storing energy as hydrogen and heat looks quite favorable and the necessary technology exists already.

"Concrete plan" means a technology which satisfies all of these requirements: 1) demonstrated ability in a utility-scale plant 2) already economically viable, or projected to be economically viable within 2 years by actual process engineers with experience in scaling up chemical/electrical plants to industrial size Yes, that's hard to meet. But the thing is, we've seemingly heard of hundreds of revolutionary storage…

> 2) already economically viable, or projected to be economically viable within 2 years by actual process engineers with experience in scaling up chemical/electrical plants to industrial size

Why 2 years?

Even though I'm expecting the current approximately-exponential growths of both PV and wind to continue until they supply at least 50% of global electrical demand between them, I expect that to happen in the early 2030s, not by the end of 2027.

(I expect global battery capacity to be between a day and a week at that point, still not "seasonal" for sure).

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

#224

Post by adwn »

ben_w wrote: post #223
adwn wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Concrete plan" means a technology which satisfies all of these requirements: 1) demonstrated ability in a utility-scale plant 2) already economically viable, or projected to be economically viable within 2 years by actual process engineers with experience in scaling up chemical/electrical plants to industrial size Yes, that's hard to meet. But the thing is, we've seemingly heard of hundreds of revolutionary storage…

> 2) already economically viable, or projected to be economically viable within 2 years by actual process engineers with experience in scaling up chemical/electrical plants to industrial size Why 2 years? Even though I'm expecting the current approximately-exponential growths of both PV and wind to continue until they supply at least 50% of global electrical demand between them, I expect that to happen in the early 2…

> Why 2 years?

Significantly longer than that and you go from prediction to speculation, and it is unwise to base a country's energy policy on speculation.

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

#225

Post by alsetmusic »

nutjob2 wrote: post #132
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.

It's amazing what you can achieve when you control everything in a nation and can execute anyone who disagrees.

Name checks out.

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

#226

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]
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