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Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

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Re: Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

#321

Post by jillesvangurp »

kyoob wrote: post #8

This is truly good news, but is it really worth calling out that a record was broken when it's been trending down regularly over time?

True, but calling out the milestone of beating operational cost of state of the art coal/gas plants is worth doing.

If you extrapolate the downward trend, it's very obvious that anything you build right now that burns fossil fuel is going to be a problem in terms of being able to compete throughout its projected life span. Prices are trending to the point where it will become economical to shut down existing and operational plants in favor of replacing them with solar or wind.

The next milestone will be when existing coal/gas plants will start getting decommissioned. This will start with the older ones but very soon after may be followed by the new and shiny ones Trump is trying to build right now. That is if he manages to get investors to back that at all. It would be kind of a dumb investment given the above.

And to preempt the battery comment, batteries were included with this bid, as is common these days.

Re: Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

#322

Post by 8bitsrule »

No mining, no drilling, no transportation, no wastes. Huh, I bet that's why solar and wind are cheap.

As a decades-long solar and wind advocate (the term 'renewable' has been spun too much to be useful) I'm sad to say... too bad they made it take so long. And there still isn't nearly enough of it.

As for storage, there are literally dozens of solutions. Yeah, they can be expensive. So's the alternative ... to everybody. (How'd that nuclear thing work out for the Japanese? ... who had centuries of quakes and tsunamis to learn from? ...who have a nearly limitless supply of offshore winds. Ooops.)

As for selling to the power company (they're resistant for multiple reasons ... can see the writing on the wall, and will find ways to cheat you ... sell to your neighbors at cost instead.

This HAS to be the future, kids. The sooner, and the cheaper, the bettter. Time to sell the buggy whips.

Re: Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

#323

Post by ksec »

Correct me if any of the maths below are wrong.

Eagle Solar Mountain Solar Farm ( 300 MW ) will have an annual production capacity of over 900 million kilowatt hours (kWh) once completed. The Moapa Band of Paiutes has become a national clean energy leader and will host in excess of 600 MW of solar on the 72,000-acre reservation. [1]

For example, the Topaz Solar Farm [3] has an annual production capacity of 1200 million kWh on 25km2. Around ~6200 acre.

This seems an awful a lot of space for low capacity generation? I know it is reserved, but that is like 10x the size difference, why aren't they building more?

US annual electricity consumption is 4,015 billion kilowatt hours in 2017, 60% coming from fossil fuel [2].

For solar energy to replace that 60% energy consumption; 2409 billion kWh, it would require 2000 Topaz Solar Farm, or 50,000 km2, or slightly less the fifth of Nevada area.

The cost of the 300MW Eagle Solar Mountain Solar Farm is roughly $2B, assuming it would cost $3.6B to build the size of Topaz Solar Farm which is 550MW, it would take $7.2 trillion to build a 60% US needed solar farm, ignoring the benefits of Economy of scale, and any improved efficacy of solar panel.

Given all the benefits of Solar, being cheaper then Coal, I am surprise it is still only 1.6% of US electricity generation. Why is that?

[1]https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180531006155/en/8mi...

[2] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topaz_Solar_Farm

Re: Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

#324

Post by olau »

tshannon wrote: post #190
samcheng wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar is quite location (and latitude) dependent. Duluth gets about half of the annual Global Horizontal Irradiance that Tuscon does, and that's before accounting for the fact that snow will sometimes cover the panels. In addition, Minnesota has significantly lower electricity prices than the big coastal states (partially due to the great wind resource in the SW corner of the state, partially due to political reasons…

I've always wondered if it makes any sense (if you have the property) to setup a windmill instead of solar panels. I don't think there's much market in smaller / single home windmill installations and so the costs are probably much, much higher.

Small wind turbines are usually not terribly practical (noisy and highly visible), and also ineffective because of low hub height and wind shade in residential areas.

The multi MW giants that are erected these days on tall towers just make so much more sense.

Re: Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

#325

Post by andygates »

mulmen wrote: post #203

It is my understanding that we are already past or very near a point of no return w.r.t greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. Talk of peak power and renewable excess leads to discussion about the need to store that excess. Could we also expend that energy to do something like scrub CO2? Is this even feasible at a scale that could make a difference?

Tipping points are contentious - some seem to have happened already, and they're only clear in hindsight.

But we are approaching peak global emisisons, at last (a human and good tipping point)!, and cheap solar is a big chunk of that.

Atmospheric scrubbing doesn't scale so good.

Re: Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

#326

Post by sokoloff »

Kliment wrote: post #316
sokoloff wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general, your data does not have value to me to steal it. Not so with power.

Data has plenty of value, and is often copied without authorization, but putting that aside, nobody would be stealing anyone's power. It gets produced in one region, used locally, and excess sold to the next region, where the same thing repeats. You already paid for the power entering your region so you can't steal it and you'll sell it on if it makes sense to do so. This is already how gas pipelines work for example…

> Either way the metering happens at regional boundaries so there's no stealing involved - both sides of the meter need to be in agreement before any power flows.

Play that out a bit. Suppose you have a 500MW or 1000MW transmission line. It normally has a 1% loss. Today, you notice that it has 1.25% loss. Maybe someone's stealing power. What do you do? Shut off the transmission line entirely?

Re: Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

#327

Post by jpitz »

Tepix wrote: post #320
volkl48 wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main reason I would consider a battery is for disaster recovery purposes. Being from the suburban NYC metro area, we've had multiple, multi-week power outages in the past decade. We have a moderate sized portable generator, but running off that for weeks becomes a very unpleasant experience. Certainly far better than not having power, but unpleasant. Driving 2 hours away to the nearest place we knew had unlimited…

> we've had multiple, multi-week power outages in the past decade That's a crass state, what causes these outages? Is it a investment backlog of the power grid?

Might have something to do with being in a very dense area with some very old infrastructure.

Re: Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

#328

Post by EADGBE »

duxup wrote: post #157

My house faces south westish. I have a lot of roof on the back side that I think would be good for solar but all the automated online stuff seem to indicate it was be expensive and not pay off for a LONG while. At least around here in MN there's not a lot of residential push for it. Hopefully as prices drop it becomes more viable.

Same situation as you. It does seem expensive, and my cost of energy in MO is really quite cheap.

I'm looking at DIY solutions. At least I can scale it as I have a few hundred at a time instead of trying to make $20k work in a budget.

Re: Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

#329

Post by EADGBE »

tshannon wrote: post #190
samcheng wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar is quite location (and latitude) dependent. Duluth gets about half of the annual Global Horizontal Irradiance that Tuscon does, and that's before accounting for the fact that snow will sometimes cover the panels. In addition, Minnesota has significantly lower electricity prices than the big coastal states (partially due to the great wind resource in the SW corner of the state, partially due to political reasons…

I've always wondered if it makes any sense (if you have the property) to setup a windmill instead of solar panels. I don't think there's much market in smaller / single home windmill installations and so the costs are probably much, much higher.

There's some talk of combined solar/wind residential use.

Here's a video I found of a comparison of residential wind turbines, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opP13e-TvHM&t=1402s. This is a DIY resource, though.

Re: Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

#330

Post by EADGBE »

Brakenshire wrote: post #262
coryfklein wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Solar does line up with peak consumption. Not true according to [1], which shows peak consumption around 19:00, just as solar production drops to 0. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_curve

Looks like a fantastic opportunity to install a.c. which draws its energy in the middle of the day, hell you could probably just set the house to stay cold through the day and save.

If the cost of energy is free (PV source already paid for); there's no point in programmable thermostats.
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