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Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid

sciencemag.org

391–400 of 432 posts

Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid

#391
post #84

I’ve always wondered about something, yet have never found anyone discussing it online. So maybe some smart people can help me out: a lot of people install solar on their rooftops. Much of the time this is done with the assumption that it will pay off financially because energy prices are currently at a certain rate and will continue to rise. But here’s my question: If its financially advantageous to install solar on…

> But here’s my question: If its financially advantageous to install solar on your roof, wouldn’t it be greatly more financially advantageous (given the main cost for solar installation is the labor) for energy companies to install solar at scale?

No, because the law in many markets requires energy companies to buy the net product of customer-premises solar at retail price whether or not they need it, so building more production capacity with the same basic output profile as the rooftop solar that has been deployed because of government subsidies, customer environmental concerns, and expectations of future retail price moves (and soon government mandates) would be counterproductive.

Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid

#392

I know someone who has gone fully off the grid via sailboat and is currently on his way around the world. He converted his sailboat to a hybrid setup (electric engines powered by the same batteries that power his stovetop, refrigerator, etc.). His power sources keeping those batteries charged are solar (1200W) and sail regeneration [0]. He has an 18kw diesel generator as a safety measure. His story is particularly in…

>At this point, I feel like the only reason fossil fuels are used anymore in new projects is inertia Solar might work for boats and trains, but can it work for a plane? What about drones? No renewable energy source can beat gasoline, sans nuclear power (which I think we should be transitioning to, along with the rest of the renewables). MIT built a gas powered drone that lasts 5 days (not minutes!) in the air[1] - th…

Planes will be decarbonized later. We can start with the low hanging fruit, coal, peaker plants, and preventing new coal in growing nations. Batteries are improving every year, Teslas costs suggest they will have thr density in 10 or 15 years to displace the lower range flights. We could also utilize hybrid tech in planes, we can add a small amount of electric power just for takeoff and regen it during descent. But still, planes and certain industry will be decarbonized last.

Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid

#393
post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rooftop solar makes sense because cost of land is a sunk cost, and thus doesn't have to factor into the total cost of the install. This assumes that solar makes sense for the area though, some houses are shaded too much.

I think you'd be surprised how cheap land can get outside of cities.

But then you get increased losses when transporting the energy into the city, plus the costs for the distribution infrastructure. Rooftop solar tied to the grid can be used by your neighbours when you aren't using it, which means almost no transport loss, not even crossing a transformer.

Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid

#394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right...I've got an availability bias that has limited my thinking. Any application where energy density is paramount will be dominated by fossil fuels for quite a while. I'm curious to see what comes first: batteries that match the energy density of fossil fuels, or cost effective synthetic fuels created via renewable methods.

Perhaps this could be a good application for fuel cells?

One great one is machinery in factories. Faster recharge time, zero emissions.

Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid

#395
post #84

I’ve always wondered about something, yet have never found anyone discussing it online. So maybe some smart people can help me out: a lot of people install solar on their rooftops. Much of the time this is done with the assumption that it will pay off financially because energy prices are currently at a certain rate and will continue to rise. But here’s my question: If its financially advantageous to install solar on…

As others have pointed out, wholesale energy cost is only about $0.02 per KW/H, yet retail is usually over $0.2 KW/H. Even if the wholesale cost of energy drops to $0, you are only dropping about 10% of the total cost of energy. Of course, this brings up another interesting question that has been a hot button issue; if power companies are supplying less and less power (since more and more people are getting their own…

If wholesale energy cost goes up because of reduced demand, wouldn't that financial impact fall mostly to people below the poverty line? IE, those people who cannot afford to install solar/wind/alternative power sources and only have the grid as an option - those people would be forced to pay higher and higher rates(widening their financial gap to ever get off the grid).

Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid

#396
post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you do that, you can then run a thermal generator on the resulting temperature differential, to generate even more energy, and now you've created a perpetual motion machine, oops. (without an existing cool place to dump heat, you can't generate energy, otherwise you could just extract heat from everything everywhere and cool it all down to absolute zero, solving both the energy problem and global warming with a…

We just need to make heatpipes all the way to space.

It's been considered!

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608840/a-material-that-th...

Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid

#397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't know this, thanks for clarifying. Further investigation for my local area: Here's a link to the Australian wholesale spot price and peak price https://www.aemo.com.au/Electricity/National-Electricity-Mar... Where I live, Tasmania, the average for 2019 is $147.91 / MWh and the peak is $163. That works out to Au$0.163. I pay AU$0.26 / kWh, plus a daily supply charge of, if memory serves me correctly, $2.30 - t…

That seems very odd to me. Maybe Australian regulations or trade situation is different and makes the math different, but in my area (SoCal), TCO for my rooftop solar installation was $0.08/KWh using a Net Present Value calculation, and utility solar is more than 2x cheaper than that. It’s very odd to hear wholesale prices above 10c when rooftop is so cheap.

Not really addressing your point, but a sidenote on the topic of Australian regulations -- Due to some subsidies/incentive schemes which came through in some states about 10 years ago, some residential Australian rooftop solar installations are selling any excess into the grid at a rate of 0.44/KWh and will be until (from memory) 2024.

Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid

#398
post #84

I’ve always wondered about something, yet have never found anyone discussing it online. So maybe some smart people can help me out: a lot of people install solar on their rooftops. Much of the time this is done with the assumption that it will pay off financially because energy prices are currently at a certain rate and will continue to rise. But here’s my question: If its financially advantageous to install solar on…

> wouldn’t the energy companies eventually do this, which, given macro market laws of supply and demand, would eventually cause the price of electricity to go dramatically down for their end consumer, thus eliminating the financial benefit of privately installed roof top solar for homeowners?

No, because your local utility is a monopoly, albeit a regulated one. Local utilities may be interested in solar if it generates supply at lower cost compared to legacy sources, but the cost of supply is completely independent from the question of retail pricing. Utilities are not required to pass savings onto consumers; in markets, pressure to do so is caused by competition, which is non-existent here because the utilities are monopolies.

So the question you're really asking is whether governments will use their regulatory power over utilities to pressure them into dropping prices as their costs go down. An optimist will answer you yes, political pressure will force regulators to force the utilities to pass savings along to the customers. A pessimist will answer you no, the utilities will come up with whatever reason du jour why they can't drop prices - rising labor costs, infrastructure maintenance costs, administrative costs, expansion costs, building up a warchest, whatever, and regulators will permit them to pocket the difference. A realist will answer you with a question: given that you have a stable price on achieving certainty / stability (the cost of a rooftop installation), would you rather pay the price to get stability or take a bet and risk losing some multiple of the initial outlay in the difference over the years you'll be a homeowner?

Given that homeowners are statistically more likely to prefer stability (comes with the commitment of signing multi-decade mortgages), it doesn't take much to understand why rooftop solar is popular among homeowners. Stop wondering about how people make rational decisions and start understanding that most people make emotional decisions and then use the online calculators etc. to justify the emotional decision they made.

Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid

#399
post #84

I’ve always wondered about something, yet have never found anyone discussing it online. So maybe some smart people can help me out: a lot of people install solar on their rooftops. Much of the time this is done with the assumption that it will pay off financially because energy prices are currently at a certain rate and will continue to rise. But here’s my question: If its financially advantageous to install solar on…

If you lock your money in any asset, whether solar panels or a house, you're taking a bet on the future value of the asset. That, naturally, is a downside. As compared to investing in a fund of some kind that invests in a diversified manner across different forms of renewable energy like solar and wind. Then, if solar prices go down in peak hours, your investment in wind will protect against that to some extent, as opposed to putting all your eggs in one basket.

Re: Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid

#400
post #58
post #7

$0.02/Kwh for the solar part is pretty good. A reasonable short-term goal: get 100% of US peak air conditioning load south of 37° N on solar. That's the line from the Virginia/North Carolina border west to central California. Peak solar power output and peak air conditioning load line up pretty well, so that doesn't need storage. Storage is more of an issue for wind, which varies about 4:1 over a day over large areas…

> Peak solar power output and peak air conditioning load line up pretty well, so that doesn't need storage. In general, yes, but if you look for a term called the duck curve which characterizes that frequently the load comes up after peak output, or even after sunset. For coastal CA wind often helps fill that offset as winds frequently come up near sunset, but it's not always a guaranteed thing. So there does need to…

How does solar thermal fare compared to solar PV, once you factor in the cost of the batteries?
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