Why did renewables become so cheap so fast? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#451

Post by Razengan » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 9:46 AM UTC

rossdavidh wrote: post #145

All true, but I think they're missing the real issue here. Renewables (esp. solar and wind) are, yes, dropping in cost exponentially, and this means they are currently zooming past fossil fuels in terms of affordability. There's an issue in regards to batteries, but that also seems to be on a learning curve that makes it better every year, so that won't buy fossil fuels much more time. Now, instead of rooting for tha…

> But, do we really have a plan for the consequences, not only in Saudi Arabia but also every other nation that's dependent on oil?

Those countries have had plenty of time to diversify their economies, but instead of funneling some of that oil money into uplifting their nation, it went into the pockets of the elite few and dick-waving contests of tall buildings and tacky tourist traps.

They chose to not even provide basic human freedoms to many of their citizens, or allowed women to pursue higher education and jobs in their lives beyond marriage. Fostering free thinking among their populace would have produced at least some individuals with enough ideas to prepare for a post-oil world.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#452

Post by fenk85 » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 9:46 AM UTC

Krasnol wrote: post #393

puranjay wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hear hear. We need a massive pro-nuclear public campaign. When people think of "nuclear power", they just think of Chernobyl. In hindsight, Chernobyl might have done more harm to the planet than we thought - it single handedly turned public opinion against nuclear power, and all the clean energy it provides. One wonders if we would have any of our current climate issues if we had adopted nuclear power en masse in the…

When political decision makers and investors think of "nuclear power", they just think of overdue and over budget projects that may be finished in a decade. In a decade renewables will be so far ahead that it would be plain stupid to push nuclear. This is why it's not happening outside a lobby group from the industry who try to push shady people like Michael Shellenberger.

If you read the linked article you would see that renewables went down because of economies of scale and repeatability

same could be done for nuclear fission plants, especially efforts around miniaturisation and modularity with fail safes build in.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#453

Post by hectormalot » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 9:47 AM UTC

disown wrote: post #326

hectormalot wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope they (EIA) are off the mark. If the predictions from the EIA a will materialize, we’re going to have a huge carbon problem. However, I think there also are reasons to believe things will be better: 1) the EIA forecasts linear growth of renewables, while its been behaving exponentially over the last 5-10 years. That gives me hope they’ve underestimated the long term growth rate. (It would be interesting to comp…

> I hope they (EIA) are off the mark. If the predictions from the EIA a will materialize, we’re going to have a huge carbon problem. The only way EIA will be off the mark is if we get something like fusion. Currently the major geopolitical issue is natural gas pipelines. Major nations wouldn't be fighting over gas pipelines if people believed fossil fuels were over. > 1) the EIA forecasts linear growth of renewables,…

> The only way EIA will be off the mark is if we get something like fusion. Currently the major geopolitical issue is natural gas pipelines. Major nations wouldn't be fighting over gas pipelines if people believed fossil fuels were over.

I'll point out that the EIA has been off the mark wrt renewables in the past. For example: in 2010 [1], the EIA predicted renewables to grow by 30 Quadrillion BTUs in the next 20 years (2010-2030), that took only 8 years instead of 20. In their latest report they had to update that to a growth of 120 Quadrillion BTOs over the same timespan (2010-2030) (i.e. they were off by a factor of 4x).

As a thought experiment: The world doubled renewables in the last 10 years. If we maintain that CAGR until 2050, that would mean growth from ±100 Quadrillion BTU in 2020 to 200 in 2030, 400 in 2040 and 800 in 2050. If the totals from the EIA in 2050 are correct (±900 Qd BTU), then that would cover almost 90% of primary energy consumption globally.

Note: I realise this is oversimplified. We'd run into dampening factors (e.g. intermittency of solar/wind) far before we reach 90%. Nonetheless, based on the current growth I'm happy to argue that the EIA is underestimating growth potential of renewables.

> Right... One of the biggest per capita producer of oil is norway. > The 2nd largest oil company in the world is a anglo-dutch company.

The present doesn't have to describe the future:

- Shell is still huge company. Yet, had you invested in Shell 5 years ago, your stocks would be 33% lower today (-47% for Exxon). Had you invested in some of the established renewable energy players e.g. Orsted, Vesta, or Iberdrola, you'd be up between 75 and 350%.

- Same in the US: Nextera (US Wind and Solar player) is currently valued higher than BP, Total or Shell. ($147 bln), and doubled market cap in the last 5 years.

The Dutch version of the FT ran an article yesterday on how investors are increasingly wary of investing in fossil fuels, and moving more into renewables. They made the comparison to how it suddenly became undesirable to invest in e.g. Tobacco. [2]

[1]: http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2010/ph240/riley2/docs/EIA...

[2]: https://fd.nl/ondernemen/1366175/beleggers-draaien-van-fossi...

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#454

Post by imtringued » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 9:47 AM UTC

vbezhenar wrote: post #201

sxates wrote: post #125

Personal anecdote - my house has two sets of solar panels on the roof - the first was installed in 2017, the second was just installed last month. In 2017 my 6kw system cost $24,000 before any incentives (by SolarCity). In 2020 my 7.8kw system cost $15,000 before any incentives (by Tesla). Of that $15k, $4.3k was for the panels themselves, $2k for the inverter, $1k for mounting hardware, and $8k for installation. It'…

From my perspective those costs are massive. I'm considering building a whole house from bricks which will cost $30-$40k. I probably won't spend $15k for electricity for all of my life. I don't understand western economy. You've got extremely costly electricity and you're claiming that solar power is good. It might be true for you, but it won't ever come to me at those prices. I'm paying $0.03 for kW⋅h. I'm spending…

The installation cost is probably cheaper in your country so I will ignore it.

Assuming a 16% capacity factor that system will generate $328 worth of electricity a year at $0.03 per kWh. It would break even after 22 years. That's incredibly far away from the 208 years you have quoted.

The flaw in your thinking is that this setup wasn't chosen for you. It wasn't build in your country nor was it built by you so why would you compare it to your own needs? If you had to build your own solar system you would get a smaller one (which would decrease the breakeven duration according to your weird criteria despite not meaningfully changing the system) and you would probably install it yourself.

The reality is that wherever that solar system was built electricity costs more than $0.03 and the person needs more energy or feeds the the energy into the grid.

It's like complaining about a family of five getting a Volkswagen Sharan when you are just fine in your Citroen Ami. It's not about you.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#455

Post by thu2111 » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 9:47 AM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #134

the_economist wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's still the problem of what to do between 4pm and 8 am on a day without wind, which means we won't be able to shut down too many power plants until cheap energy storage exists.

It's more or less impossible for there to be no wind over a large area at the same time - low wind areas are surrounded by circulating air in a cyclonic structure.

I think you must have missed this event from just a few weeks ago:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/blackout-alert-from-natio...

Last week, National Grid issued two electricity margin notices, the most serious security-of-supply alerts since 2016, both citing low wind farm output among the causes and urgently appealing for more power plants. To keep the lights on, Britain burnt coal in polluting old power stations that are due to close within a few years.

“Unusually low wind output coinciding with a number of generator outages means the cushion of spare capacity we operate the system with has been reduced,” it said last month, warning of “tight margins” on Britain’s power grid in the days to come.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#456

Post by ncmncm » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 9:49 AM UTC

alliao wrote: post #79

jes5199 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in the past they were cheaper. Now renewables are cheaper. Right now, intermittent renewables actually drives up the cost of fossil fuels! Renewables do wacky things to the spot price of power - sometimes electricity is free or even has negative value, sometimes it's expensive. Ideally fossil fuel plants would only spin up when they could sell power at a profit, but they can't dispatch so quickly, so they end up sell…

isn't that the game plan for hydrogen powered vehicles? so they can build a plan to absorb all these excess from over provisioning at a lower rate to produce hydrogen for their fleet

This is especially attractive for aircraft, but it will take awhile to happen. We probably need new aircraft.

Hopefully civilization will not collapse first, from refugees driving fascist governments into power, and former democracies self-surveilling themselves into locked-in dictatorships.

On the upside, collapsed civilization will have lower energy demands, and will find carbon extraction and transport harder to organize.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#457

Post by goodcanadian » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 9:54 AM UTC

birdsbirdsbirds wrote: post #406

jussij wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I probably won't spend $15k for electricity for all of my life Living in a two bedroom unit in Sydney my last quarterly electricity bill was over $500.00 which comes to over $2000.00 a year. Basically here in Sydney we have high electricity prices and my washer, drier and air conditioner love to chew up electricity.

Where does the heat of you drier go? Into the room to be moved again by the air conditioner, or directly to the outside?

I'm not the person you replied to, but dryers are typically vented outside.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#458

Post by plater » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 9:57 AM UTC

rossdavidh wrote: post #145

All true, but I think they're missing the real issue here. Renewables (esp. solar and wind) are, yes, dropping in cost exponentially, and this means they are currently zooming past fossil fuels in terms of affordability. There's an issue in regards to batteries, but that also seems to be on a learning curve that makes it better every year, so that won't buy fossil fuels much more time. Now, instead of rooting for tha…

What is the problem? This is great for Saudi Arabia and great for the world.

Saudi Arabia has a lot of sun and they have a lot of cash. If they invest it in producing electricity using solar they can still be an exporter of energy.

Secondly, most wars in the Arabic regions and all the meddling from the USA and other countries in this region is due to the oil. Without the rest of the world's need for oil we would get peace in this region.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#459

Post by addicted » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 9:58 AM UTC

rossdavidh wrote: post #145

All true, but I think they're missing the real issue here. Renewables (esp. solar and wind) are, yes, dropping in cost exponentially, and this means they are currently zooming past fossil fuels in terms of affordability. There's an issue in regards to batteries, but that also seems to be on a learning curve that makes it better every year, so that won't buy fossil fuels much more time. Now, instead of rooting for tha…

Nations that depend on oil for their economy are already almost universally terrible states.

Reducing their oil income will mean they are terrible states with less money to fund their terrible activities across the entire world.

If Saudi Arabia runs out of oil money, the only things that will happen is their population will shrink dramatically as the vast majority of the population, who are immigrants from the rest of the world go back to the far more populous countries they come from, and they will have less money to fund Islamic terrorism across the world, and especially in Asia, probably greatly reducing whatever efficacy these organizations currently have.

Re: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?

#460

Post by Kliment » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 9:59 AM UTC

aivisol wrote: post #433

jhallenworld wrote: post #191

You know what's amazing? Farmers in rural Pakistan choosing to prefer solar to irrigate their crops (panels + VFD/inverter + 10 HP 3-phase motor): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfNgF0WTeCM Or grinding wheat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_G2evJOiU9I The comments in these video are all about how much does it cost, what is your contact number, etc. Clearly this is a sea-change. Also amazing that they all have cell…

Please help me with maths in the first video. The motor is 10 HP which is approx 7.5 kW powered by 18 x 320 W = 5760 W solar panels. Inverter and cable loss are not even accounted. How its gonna run on a cloudy day?

You don't have to run it at full power, and you run it when the sun shines.