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CogentHedgehog | 5 years ago
Residential solar is expensive because you don't have the same economy of scale you see in utility-scale deployments. Also something like 1/3 of the cost is "soft costs" such as marketing and the crazy red tape associated with permitting.
The latest academic modelling shows that we can meet 70-80% of energy demand from renewable energy alone, even without storage. All it requires is building a modest excess of capacity and a 50/50 wind/solar mix. When it comes time to add storage, battery storage costs have been plummeting and already dropped 75% over the last 6 years: https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/report-levelize...
StillBored|5 years ago
Energy is sufficiently deregulated in enough of the US that they will sell to the areas that aren't, just like France was doing with all its "old dirty" nukes, to the countries around it building "green".
I can't tell from your graph, but I saw an actual cost estimate a couple months ago that points out what has been true for the past 10 years of "wind is cheaper" metrics.
Which is that its not, because its not continuous (or controllable) power delivery. Nor does it account for the fact that it also needs to be overbuilt if its going to supply an energy storage system either. Nor does it account for the energy storage costs.
So, yes in absolute KW produced its cheaper, but that does little but create an oversupply problem. Which is why in places like TX the power costs frequently go to zero when the wind is blowing and spike at other times. Making cheap power when you don't need it doesn't help. What TX needs is lots of power at 3PM (when in theory solar would be useful, but the existing smaller plants aren't making money either).
The net result in TX has been lots of wind install, but even more gas install. Because the gas plants are actually making money. If big battery plants are economically workable then we would also see a lot of companies arbitraging the free wind energy into $ when the price spikes but we don't see that either.
So its not a simple/sure bet like is being claimed.
(for those that don't know, TX is one of the largest green energy systems in the world https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Texas)
epistasis|5 years ago
For example, in Ohio several state legislators were purchased, and passed regulation claiming to "save" nuclear but what it really did was bail out coal and prevent the cheapest source of energy from competing in the market. The most surprising is that this corruption is actually resulting in prosecutions, and the top regulator has now resigned too:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-20/firstener...
Funny you should bring up Texas, it actually is installing massive batteries, with 17GW in the pipeline last time I heard. And natural gas is dwindling to nothing, getting replaced with solar. ERCOT is one of the very very very few places where cheapest cost can actually win, and it's where we are going to see natural gas die first because of that.
CogentHedgehog|5 years ago
I mean, the International Panel on Climate Change certainly thinks renewable energy is a core part of solving carbon emissions. Their special Report on 1.5C AKA SR15 (https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/spm/) says:
> In 1.5°C pathways with no or limited overshoot, renewables are projected to supply 70–85% (interquartile range) of electricity in 2050 (high confidence).
For the 3 scenarios where we achieve needed emissions reductions, renewables are 48-60% of electricity generation in 2030, and 63-77% in 2050.
> Energy is sufficiently deregulated in enough of the US that they will sell to the areas that aren't
In the US in 2020 the majority of new generating capacity being added is from solar or wind: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42495# -- and if you do the math for capacity factors (around 40% for wind, 25%ish for solar, 60% is for natural gas) then you'll find that solar and wind capacity generates more electricity than the gas.
If the US grid operators and utilities are building all this renewable energy capacity, perhaps they know something...??
> in places like TX the power costs frequently go to zero when the wind is blowing and spike at other times.
Isn't that what a free market is supposed to do -- respond to supply and demand? Last I checked, we don't say that the stock market is broken because it goes up and down.
> that does little but create an oversupply problem
Are you saying free excess power is a BAD thing? I can think of a TON of ways to take advantage of a temporary oversupply; capturing it in storage is only one of them.
> If big battery plants are economically workable then we would also see a lot of companies arbitraging the free wind energy into $ when the price spikes but we don't see that either
Hold your horses -- they're literally starting to do this in Australia. Batteries were pretty expensive up until a couple years ago: https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/10/us-grid-battery-cost...
Now we're seeing a race to install batteries. Energy arbitrage is only one of the possible income streams -- grid services such as frequency regulation are an even bigger source of funds. The "Big Battery" in Australia has already paid for itself after just a couple year and they've already increased capacity by 50% and are installing a second one in Victoria.
> balancing with gas
In the US, gas capacity is mostly replacing dirtier, more expensive coal powerplants. I don't see a problem with using spare gas capacity to help balance the grid while storage gets ramped up -- the renewable generation is directly replacing fossil fuels except when they need an extra boost.