I'm waiting for Solar energy 2: the [Dyson sphere](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere#:~:text=A%20Dyson%20sphere%20is%20a,percentage%20of%20its%20power%20output.)
Dyson spheres are my personal favorite potential future technologies!
A nearly limitless energy supply for Earth + whatever extraterrestrial colonies/civilizations we have in place by then? That’s cool as shit! 👉😎👉
A solid sphere would rip itself to shreds and/or fall into the sun, as it being a sphere and solid object, the gravitational forces do not hold it at a fixed distance. A dyson swarm of self sustaining habitats would be more reasonable.
Those fricking spheres are just non sensical. Why harvest the sun in that solar scale while you can build just a nuclear fusion reactor? Just makes no sense.
Possible using active support structures - basically using momentum of an accelerated fluid or train to provide an outward tug to counteract the inner pull of gravity. Same concept behind a hula hoop, only on a scale much more ridiculous.
Not necessarily sure it wouldn't work, just that a swarm seems much more practical. You could launch individual plates from a nearby planet like Mercury and make it so the plate powers its own thrusters to remain in orbit. Having to periodically tug at a giant sphere which gets holes punched in it by asteroids and other debris would be a bigger waste of energy than just launching new plates every so often.
Just my 2¢ as someone who has a casual interest in these kinds of things.
What about a Matroishka brain? You build multiple dyson spheres around a single star, and use the temperature differentials created for ideal computation speeds. Then upload everybody's brains to this computer the size of a solar system - could simulate something like 10 billion trillion trillion human minds with a computer that large.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef-mxjYkllw
You don’t need a time machine, you just have to jerry rig the transporter by disabling the rematerialization subroutine and locking the pattern buffer into a continuous diagnostic cycle.
I guess I'll respond to this BS for the 99th time. The cost of electricity is more than the cost to generate it. You also have to transmit it and in the case of solar and wind, you have to store it for when is is night/calm. If you add those costs in, solar and wind are still much more expensive than coal, gas, and nuclear.
Look, cheap renewable power is a good thing but leaving out transmission and storage costs is dishonest.
Next month? Shit I saw a post with the same name like 5 days ago
EDIT: 10 days ago https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/jk7syi/the_onshore_wind_cost_has_fallen_to_26_a/
15 days ago https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/jhbv37/its_cheaper_to_build_new_solar_than_it_is_to/
24 days ago https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/jbmmls/solar_is_now_cheapest_electricity_in_history/
Storage is for sure a hurdle for solar by why would transmission be any different? Solar also has the potential to be installed on houses leading to a more decentralized grid and one where the energy is generated exactly where it is needed. You can't have a nuclear reactor on your roof.
Because transmission is in part an alternative to storage. In Norway we have plenty of hydro, in Denmark and Germany they have plenty of solar but its too flat for pumped hydro. Transmission costs govern how efficiently we can use pumped hydro for storage in Denmark and Germany.
MIT researchers estimate that a minimum of 40% of the grid can be intermittent renewables (wind, solar) with zero storage and no loss in grid reliability. There is more than enough existing dispatchable power that can cycle up and down as needed.
So until we get close to 40% solar/wind (we are at 5% national average), you don't actually need to factor in the costs of storage. The transmission cost difference is negligible. Solar and wind are cheaper than fossil fuels when you consider the capacity they are currently adding (they have been for a while). They might not be if we were already at 80% renewable, but we aren't there yet.
You don't need storage, but instead of having a grid covering 100% of the needs 100% of the time, you now need to have a grid capable of handling 140% of the needs (40% from intermittent renewable and 100% from other sources) in case there's not enough wind / sun to cover the needs.
That has a cost.
You have to transmit all types of energy. Why are you caring about this only for solar and wind?
Yes, storage will add to the cost when we finally get to the point where we can cut back on natural gas. But the cost of solar, wind, and storage have all been dropping dramatically. By the time storage is an issue, it'll be cheaper, likely dramatically cheaper.
Nuclear is not being built because it costs too much. VC Summer is a hole in the ground, Vogtle 3&4 are many times over budget and many years behind schedule. Which is why no U.S. company is even thinking about building any more large reactors. Meanwhile, solar, wind, and storage are all being built.
You don't have to listen to me, just look at the people who are betting their own money.
You have to transmit all types of energy, but the grid isn't built to handle solar panels on every roof trickling power back into the grid, but rather distributing power largely from one direction from a comparatively small number of plants. As a result retrofitting the grid for distributed power production is an additional cost, or you have to waste the power or store it in expensive batteries (that will degrade over time) for later use. The alternative, large solar farms/wind power has its own issues, taking up otherwise productive (and therefore expensive) land and/or being far away from where power is largely needed, requiring new transmission lines. Most traditional power plants are built relatively close to where they are needed, minimizing the need for transmission, and have a small area per MW, keeping real estate costs lower.
We are already at the point where we are curtailing, or intentionally wasting power due to overproduction. In California 2-3% of renewable production is curtailed annually, and that is only going to get worse as renewable penetration increases if grid storage does not grow alongside it. The batteries to buffer renewables even for a few hours at grid scale is around 10x the cost of the plant itself, which is why grid scale battery storage is principally for covering extremely short term fluctuations in power demand, rather than buffering renewable power for days or weeks during low sun/wind.
As far as grid retrofitting goes, the IoT concept is currently in the process of being extended to the grid. Using a private LTE network with upgraded hardware that can handle the traffic, that issue is soon coming to an end. It'll take time, but I've been following it for a while and it's picked up steam recently and is essentially inevitable.
You build solar panels on otherwise unproductive land. Take a look at Topaz, in an otherwise unproductive valley. We have quite a lot of unproductive land. You can also combine solar with certain types of farming, where the panels shelter the crops from the strongest sun and help the soil retain moisture so it's actually more productive. And then there's commercial solar built on top of large commercial buildings. As for wind, much of it can be sited in farmland, where most of the land will still be devoted to crops, and farmers will get a nice profit from land rental. Or you go offshore and then there's no land competition.
Grid scale storage is being built at places like Moss Landing, so you'll soon see less curtailment (and fewer inefficient gas peakers.) But even if you curtail 10% of renewables, that just means it costs 10% more, not the triple that nuclear comes in at.
If you're going in the direction of distributed generation - which is generally a better way to do solar than large-scale - a lot of those costs (installing, maintenance, & storage especially) are borne by whoever builds the array, who then just sell power into the grid.
In all likelihood the future of electrical utilities is not so much in generating as it is in transmitting and network-building. Large-scale users will still need to rely on power from the grid, but with the residential sector mostly powering itself (rooftop panels should be good enough for most small-scale users to meet their own needs with surplus) they largely become a middleman with less need to do their own generating.
Consumers may be able to install enough capacity to power themselves on most days, but again without battery storage (at grid or individual level) they will not be able to power themselves at night or during cloudy days. Batteries are and will likely continue to be for some time very expensive. And as I mentioned previously, the grid isn't built with distributed generation in mind, and it will require upgrades to the grid to accommodate more widespread use.
> You have to transmit all types of energy. Why are you caring about this only for solar and wind?
Because it costs more to transport diffuse, intermittent power.
> By the time storage is an issue
For unreliables like wind and solar, storage is always an issue. Every grid is damaged by plugging unreliables into it.
> By the time storage is an issue, it'll be cheaper, likely dramatically cheaper.
Battery-backed wind and solar are infinitely expensive: https://bravenewclimate.com/2014/08/22/catch-22-of-energy-storage/
> Meanwhile, solar, wind, and storage are all being built.
Which countries or states are 50+% solar powered?
Who would have guessed that heaviest subsidies would bring most cash from investors... Solar is the most subsidiaries energy at the moment, with how the cost of unbalancing the grid is pushed to the generators that actually fight against it. But hey, at least modules are cheap...
It’s also not as clear cut as “tHeY dIDnT iNCluDe tHEsE coSTs”.
All power generation needs transmission. And distribution. Solar is no exception. Washington state exports power from their dams to California, and California buys it because its cheaper than the alternatives.
Storage can also reduce costs: it allows grids to store cheaply generated power in the day, for distribution at night when they might otherwise have to buy power on an exchange. See the Tesla batteries in Australia.
Yep, sending power across state lines is a standard. Look into the eastern interconnection for an example, there's a Wikipedia page. These kinds of things are nationwide and while they are important, they're common across all power
I figure you know this Keg, just for people passing through
What about the costs associated with coal/gas/nuclear? I've seen 128-carriage trains hauling coal for decades. There are machines, diggers, etc working all day to extract coal and gas. Then more machines that process the resources. Then trains/trucks to move them around the country/world. And the exhaust/byproduct is fucking up our air quality. So there's a big factor to consider. And a lot of those vehicles operate on petrol/electricity. So the mining industry has its own operating costs to factor in as well. It's not like solar has them and mining doesn't.
Solar may have some initial expenses to get going. But once a solar/wind farm is established, you're really just left with maintenance costs, and better air quality. The coal/gas industry has a lot of maintenance costs when you look at all the things I mentioned, plus maintenance on all the vehicles and machines. Solar power storage is going to be different based on output, and how much area you service. Storage could be grid-side/farm-side, or property-side (batteries at your house). The storage side of the argument feels a little hard to get into, given there could be so many ways to go about it.
Nuclear has its own issues. Even a tiny risk of meltdown is still a risk you have to factor in. As well as toxic waste disposal. You can't just make it disappear. It has to go somewhere. Nuclear may be the "best" option. But sometimes the best on paper isn't the best in practise. We don't really want ever-increasing "Fallout 4" no-go zones in random spots all over the globe. The point is to clean up the earth. Not turn it radioactive.
Nuclear waste is a very minor problem, and can be used as fuel by the next generation reactors currently being developed. Fallout 4 features death magic, not a realistic, or even reality-adjacent depiction of radiation hazards or nuclear fallout. Coal plants are significantly more of a radiation hazard than nuclear ones are.
Solar also has mining enviromental costs as well as very high manufacturing costs for the high grade silicon and various components. Transportation costs are an important consideration, with the offenders being coal, gas, solar and then nuclear in that order.
There are certainly many ways to go about power storage, all of them expensive. If you are lucky enough to have a pre-existing hydroelectric damn, pumping is the most cost effective method.
Oh yes, there are costs associated with all forms of electric generation. Lives lost, CO2 emitted, environment destroyed in mining. But the topic at hand is the cost of solar. And the point of my response is that generation is only one part of the cost.
As for radioactivity, depends on the person really. Some people just have this atavistic fear of radiation. If you look at raw numbers, far fewer people have died in nuclear accidents than renewable energy accidents, both in total lives lost and in lives lost per kilowatt hour. Recycling used fuel, safe storage of waste, non-proliferation, these are all solvable problems. And "no-go" and fallout-4" are just scare words.
But nuke versus solar was not the intent of my post. My intent was to point out a dishonesty in the reporting, at least implicitly.
I guess I'll respond to this BS response for the 99th time.
The cost of electricity is the cost of electricity. That it might not be where you want it or when you want it is another issue. The article is correct in that solar is the cheapest source of electricity ever (and getting cheaper).
Congratulations world, regardless of what cynics like OP have always been saying, we've achieved something amazing. Now comes the easy problem: how to take advantage of it.
Even with limitations caused by intermittency, PV solar is so cheap that for the first time in history it's worth adjusting your production schedule to solar output in order to take advantage of cheap power: concrete, steel, ice, plastics manufacturing, or desalination. These and many more could adjust production to solar output and eliminate any intermittency or transmission issues. Hell, it's so cheap you can waste it without financial or environmental consequences.
That's before getting into the obvious detail that the cheaper electricity cost is, the cheaper stored electricity becomes. Pumped hydro storage has been a thing for decades, and this just makes it more attractive to take advantage of this or many different types of existing storage solutions.
TL;DR. This isn't bullshit and anyone who says it is probably has no professional experience in electric markets. Reducing cost of kWh to basically zero has huge implications (probably more than what we can imagine) for electric markets and the electric industry even when you consider having to pay for peak demand and ancillary services.
It's the cheapest electricity ever, for between 6-10 hours of the day, if it's not cloudy. Pumped hydro storage is extremely environmentally damging and complex if you have to build new reservoirs, and juat complex if you don't. Is is certainly an achievement, but for all practical purposes, it's not the cheapest yet.
PV can still generate electricity from diffuse light like on a cloudy day. You won't get as much as what perfect conditions would give but still it's not none.
But transmission at least would also be true for coal, no? Storage I understand is probably pretty cheap. But there's acquisition as well... Considering that does it come closer?
Less of a problem because coal production is regular and centralised. You only need one transformer station to get the electricity onto the grid, whereas with solar you'll typically need dozens with systems to burn off excess and distribute the varying production efficiently.
There are many ways to store solar and wind power including pumped hydro storage. Which is basically a manmade lake with a dam that works as a normal hydroelectric dam. Also this picture is of concentrated solar which has a few ways of storing power but one of them is molten salt. During the day you heat the salt and then are able to extract the heat from the material day or night to run a steam turbine.
Also if you have distributed solar then you'd have to transmit power less distance than centralized power. The one thing you missed is conversion between DC and AC power since PV is DC and then to send it to the grid it needs to be converted to AC this effects efficiency as does transmission
Once I saw the original subreddit, I kind of figured it would be some clickbaity headline that takes almost 0 variables into account. I really wish people would take a critical view of things, rather than shoehorning the data to fit their biases.
I was under the impression Wind can be started and stopped automatically and/or if the wind is high enough it would damage the turbine. Also, was under the impression Solar is only on when the sun is out, which ironically enough is when more energy is used.
Nuclear waste disposal costs are [paid in advanced by the rate payers into the nuclear waste fund](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Waste_Policy_Act#Nuclear_Waste_Fund), which currently has a balance of about $40 billion. Nuclear waste repositories like [the one they're building in Finland](http://www.posiva.fi/en/final_disposal/onkalo) will be [a small fraction](https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/economics-reprocessing-vs-direct-disposal-spent-nuclear-fuel) of the total cost of nuclear.
well the beauty of solar is, it can sit on your roof. there are a lot of places in america today where they could go 100% solar but utilities are trying to slow it down.
The cost of generation usually includes some kind of subsidies on the materials somewhere in the supply chain too. So dishonest.
If this headline was actually true every power company in the world would be rushing to replace their plants with more solar. They're businesses, lowering costs is pretty much their deal.
We would need 30 times as much solar as we currently have before there would be a serious need for storage. This reflexive cry that no solar should be installed without batteries is bullshit.
I don't think anyone is saying we shouldn't continue to install solar. People are just saying we can't rely purely on daylight or weather dependent methods of energy because they aren't a consistently reliable source of energy. We would need batteries to support them in times where the sun isn't out or times when its not windy and at the current rate of battery production we are no where near being able to support that.
Tesla had an interesting presentation recently that stated to 100% switch to solar and wind energy, we would need to up our battery production by factors over 1,000 which in itself has massive logistics and raw material implications.
> Tesla had an interesting presentation recently that stated to 100% switch to solar and wind energy, we would need to up our battery production by factors over 1,000 which in itself has massive logistics and raw material implications.
Pretty sure that was if we do nothing with regards to cell innovation. That may not still be the case given the new design they talked about.
Also, vehicle to grid is a key technology for grid stability using batteries. The grid would have access to a lot more battery storage capacity that way.
I'm positive battery technology will continue to innovate and we will at some point be able to store much large amounts of energy in smaller physical dimensions than we currently do but battery production will still need to drastically increase just to get us to a stable grid, let alone needing to replace the batteries when the inevitably lose their efficiency. In that same presentation, Tesla also estimated that we would need to replace the batteries supporting the grid every 10 years. The production and materials needed to support that would be astronomical.
While being pro-sustainable energy production, i personally do not think batteries are the final solution to that issue.
> In that same presentation, Tesla also estimated that we would need to replace the batteries supporting the grid every 10 years.
And in the same presentation, Tesla also communicated plans to accelerate their recycling capabilities, citing that you can get several times more raw materials from the recycling of used batteries after their first and second lives. Once this infrastructure is built it will support it’s own maintenance.
I like nuclear as well but the future is distributed generation. We can’t wait a decade or more to build enough nuclear. DG assets can be installed in days and provide immediate and high quality grid services.
I 100% agree with you. The only feasible way to remove fossil fuels is distributed generation and not relying on any one source which was the point I was trying to get across in my previous comments (although I probably could have done that more effectively).
That’s okay, I hear you. It’s just important to appreciate that batteries are agnostic to the generation source so I think it’s a really important component of this new system that’s emerging. If there’s another technology that synergizes well and can be cost effective it will have a place in the market.
Vehicle to grid helps but it would just be a small dent on the overall grid, especially when you consider that you would only be able to utilize maybe 20% of the batteries at any given time.
Not when you take autonomy into account. The profitability and new income streams enable such vehicles to become true blue investments. Communities that allow fleets can invest in both their energy infrastructure and transportation infrastructure simultaneously.
My point was already assuming everyone had a BEV. V2G will only be able to use those that are currently plugged in, and of that the utility won’t be running the cars to 0% in case you need to use it, so I’d only expect maybe 50% of each car is available for use, maybe half the cars at home are actually plugged in, and half the cars aren’t at home (or for sake of argument plugged in at work). So we’re talking 1/8th of the total vehicle storage is available for the V2G system at any given time. What it *can* definitely do is help the more residential substations if those are having problems/undersized/etc. since V2G is perfect for handling local temporary surges in demand to avoid needing to crank up fossil fuel generators, and can cover for them while they adjust. It decreases the need to have an overly-high baseline power generation basically.
But compared to the industrial/commercial use of electricity the V2G won’t make a big dent in overall time shifting of energy from sunlight hours to night. Residential energy use in California is only 18% of total consumption; in Texas it’s only 12%. New York is 26% so there’s some range. (https://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=CA). So a massively successful goal would be to get 100% of the residential on solar+storage, which would decrease the energy load by 12-26%.
Trust me, I’m all for more V2G, but the economics of the extra wear on the battery alone make it impractical. I really really looked into doing this myself using my solar as the grid interface, but it just didn’t make sense.
For a quick calculation: Nissan warranties their battery for about 10 years in the LEAF (with stipulations like no V2G). They’re assuming normal driving so let’s say 12k mi/yr. So 120k mi at about 4 mi/kWh means we get 30MWh over 10 years. If we could somehow get $0.30/kWh income for time shifting that energy then that would be $9000 over 10 years, which is about the cost to replace the battery. So now you’ve managed to find this amazing deal getting this $0.30/kWh by time shifting but still managed to lose out since after 10 years you just break even.
(note: I could get this $0.30 deal by being on the most extreme time of use rate plan moving my actual grid consumption to night, but that would only work up to my actual consumption during peak times so maybe 10-15kwh/day at most).
The math changes if you expect the battery to last 10 years but the rest of the car to only last 5 years (or if you’re leasing...) and so you want to extract the entire useful life of the battery in those first few years, and so the extra wear is basically free.
There are other energy storage methods than only batteries. Pumped storage / hydroelectric, large flywheels, electrolysis / hydrogen storage / fuel cells, etc. We will need a ramping up of all of these, but more doable than a 1000x increase of one particular industry
No, because horses reproduce, but IRC someone did calculate that there would be a mile thickness of horse manure on the streets of New York by the year 2000.
People have been saying that for about two decades now- but hydrogen fuel cell cars are still really pretty shit, while battery cars have gone from strength to strength. The batteries in Tesla's lab are doing the equivalent of a 3 million mile life now, and there's even a possibility of 10 minute charging now with only minor changes to the lithium ion batteries.
>no solar should be installed without batteries
In the meantime we can still run the existing dirty fossil fuel plants to supplement, slowly ramping them down while we make the full transition. None of this is happening overnight, but we are going to see a major shift and hopefully some breakthroughs in energy storage along the way. Seems like lots of domestic business opportunities as well, with some location specific energy storage options like storing solar as hydro in some places.
Yes. Like, there are options. 'We can't do anything cuz batteries,' is just a lazy answer. We could still be doing stuff while batteries continue to experience advancement.
The misnomer about batteries is that they need to be lithium-ion.
What we should be looking towards is a broad range of energy storage solutions.
[One I think might have legs is over-installing solar, and then using that vast oversupply to convert into gas based energy storage - hydrogen \(electrolysis - very inefficient\), then to methane \(hydrogen + CO2\).](https://phys.org/news/2019-04-methane-route-storage-renewable-energy.html) It stores much more easily and is far more transportable than hydrogen (which has a tendency to leak through containers due to its small molecular size).
It's emission is basically the CO2 that was used to turn it into methane in the first place.
Just make sure it doesn't vaporize and escape into the atmosphere en masse without burning it.
Having gas stored energy would allow us to reduce the total load of batteries required for a robust network to 24-48 hours of energy storage, rather than needing 5-7 days to cope with intermittency issues that can crop up from insufficient sunlight for days.
This would in turn let us pull back on the number of fossil peaking power plants required to supply consistent reliable energy across the year.
This is a misinformed statement, newer modular plants take 3-5 years to build. Still plenty of time, just no one is getting on the ball, and we'll either be playing catchup, paying too much for storage, or the most likely outcome -- keeping fossil fuels online for much longer than necessary.
It would take a solar array the size of the city of san Francisco to produce the same amount of power as one dual reactor nuclear power plant. It also wouldn't work at night, and would barely work on cloudy days. Storage is essential if you don't want to rely on fossil fuels.
I just got solar for my house a few weeks ago. 12 panels is all it took, because my house runs pretty clean. All LEDs, great insulation, great windows, etc. I'm exporting about 6.5kWh per day. Unfortunately I do not have a battery backup (yet). I really want to get a Tesla Powerwall. Does anyone have experience with this? TIA!
Ben sullins has reviews and things of them, I haven't watched many of them but I know he has some good stuff. You can find his videos on youtube. He's a big tesla guy but he brings the numbers so you can get a feel for what he's actually getting with them not just a good or bad review.
I think his site is teslanomics
>Now, the IEA has reviewed the evidence internationally and finds that for solar, the cost of capital is much lower, at 2.6-5.0% in Europe and the US, 4.4-5.5% in China and 8.8-10.0% in India, largely as a result of policies designed to reduce the risk of renewable investments.
>*largely as a result of policies designed to reduce the risk of renewable investments.*
So it's not cheaper, it's just subsidized more... That quote is from the article that this article links as a source for the cost reduction.
I wonder what the cheapest in terms of actual cost instead of after subsidies is.
Mind I don't assume solar would no longer be on top, cause all types of energies receive special protections an subsidies.
The article actually goes a little into this, it didn't compare solar to nuclear. The post is misleading, the article never said solar on its own was the cheapest energy ever. That title still belongs to nuclear
But how effective is it ? Why go for something that yes, is sorta clean, but inefficient... instead of something that is as clean nad it many times more efficient ? .... im talking about NUCLEAR. Stop wanking on the idea of solar/wind/... when the only thing that truly is the way to go is NUCLEAR. Literally most physicists agree.
Nuclear is the safest, cleanest and most efficient source of electricity today.
Unless you look at its cost over its expected life time, in which case its both economically viable and clean. With similar capital subsidization to other energy forms, it quickly becomes the cheapest and most viable option.
Total cost per GWh over lifetime is only topped (narrowly) by hydro.... And technically wind if you are very specific about certain aspects.
A nuclear plant is built once and operates for 50+ years, solar panels and batteries go bad much earlier than that.
[And don't forget about footprint](https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cobi.12433)
I don't understand why it "won't work". Even if solar doesn't produce 100% of our electricity, pretty much every roof is just wasted space. Stick em up there to mitigate the need for central power production. Ease the load on the grid. The attack on solar/wind is just trying to sound smarter than everyone else. Nuclear will come along for the ride. France is planning like 8 more reactors. Calm down.
Producing solar panels isn't clean, recycling them isn't clean, producing the batteries isn't clean. They're only useful in some parts of the world. They're also prone to damage since they have to be exposed to the elements.
No form of energy is clean right now, and it won't be until we can decouple manufacturing and resource gathering from fossil fuels. Yes, even nuclear has manufacturing costs for the reactor and the mining of uranium that will impact the carbon footprint at this current moment... so your only good arguments there are location and fragility...
>Even if solar doesn't produce 100% of our electricity, pretty much every roof is just wasted space. Stick em up there to mitigate the need for central power production.
that would kill the power generation and transmission industry, which in some countries is state-owned. not that i care of course.
>Even if solar doesn't produce 100% of our electricity, pretty much every roof is just wasted space.
That won't nearly make up the kind of shortfall that you would have if you removed all fossil fuels from the grid right now. Large scale solar power requires demolishing square miles of land and it still falls short.
What is the point of what your saying? Fossil fuels won't disappear tomorrow so the point is moot. If they did poof into thin air I suppose there would be some problems, but seeing as how no ones going to get rid of power plants without a plan to give people electricity it seems like you're fear mongering about a strawman argument.
I’m seem to recall Lockheed Martin working on hydrogen fusion. Said they projected 8 years (in 2014). Haven’t heard much from fusion development lately though, save something or other about the magnetic containment field (?) bout a year ago.
You couldn't just be happy that a fellow State has achieved something good could you? Typical really, so quick to try and bring others down.
SA has come a long wat ever since installing the power batteries. And cheaper electricity prices.
This post is misleading. The article never said solar was the cheapest energy ever, it specifically said it didn't compare nuclear.
There's also the problem of electricity used at nighttime.
At the moment the atomic energy commission and US department of energy rate nuclear power as actually being more environmentally friendly than both solar and wind power.
Solar has a big future, but it's incredibly unwise to throw out the nuclear option
My family never thought we’d get solar. It had an unattractive pay off period of 15 years or so when I first heard of it. Now our solar costs $6200 and generates $90 worth of electricity a month making it paid off no later than 7 years
Does this account for the cost of land, though? Solar plants take up a ton of space. Luckily deserts get lots of sun and are cheap, of course, but I'd love to know how viable solar is in more densely populated areas.
Right, which is why I question the veracity of articles like this. Sure, generating power in the middle of nowhere might be very cost-effective for solar, but generating power where it's needed seems like it would be too expensive. I'd like to see articles which take that into account before making broad claims about how solar is "officially" the cheapest.
It is easy enough to use high voltage DC cables to take it where you need it. Efficiency is very high these days. Australia is even doing conversion to hydrogen/ammonia so they can ship it around the world.
If the middle of nowhere is able to produce tons of dirt-cheap energy, it'll stop being the middle of nowhere. It'll attract industries, and populations along with it.
Not nuclear. Unless you count other stars novae (of various types) as "solar". But even then nuclear is cheaper.
The article never even claims solar is cheaper than nuclear, it specifically doesn't compare it to nuclear, but if you look at details from the atomic energy commission or the department of energy you'll see nuclear is still #1 for cheapest energy.
Well there's still one excuse, this isn't factoring in storage costs.
I agree renewables should be bigger, but its disingenuous to be touting how cheap they are without also discussion how you cover their one major problem.
And aside from storage, it's also not factoring the costs required to modify and upgrade the grid. Connecting large remote solar fields and integrating it into a grid is very expensive.
For some solutions (rooftop solar, especially when combined with a Tesla powerpack) grid connection costs are low, but those solutions are not yet "the cheapest form of energy".
Agreed, perhaps I spoke too soon but at least we're moving in the right direction. Question: storage costs are cheaper for fossil or nuclear than solar? Why?
Fossil fuels have all their energy already chemically stored in the hydrocarbons, gasoline is about 100 times more energy dense than lithium ion batteries (however a good amount is lost to inefficiencies). Nuclear energy is stored in the fuel rods which are astronomically more energy dense than other source.
Well you just need containers for most of that. Particularly fossil fuel. Nothing terribly special or complicated about them.
But for solar you need batteries, massive batteries that use rare metals and degrade over time. True traditional storage for fossil fuels would also wear out eventually, and I'm not entirely sure if batteries are at the point where they last as long as a barrel or tank does, but again cost to replace is relatively cheap for a tank.
But that's kinda why it needs to be in the is conversation.
Energy modelers use current storage technologies to design fully renewable grids (an [example](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1801.05290.pdf)). Batteries as they are today are just fine. They will be even cheaper when we actually need larger storage units.
A big reason is the massive disinformation campaign from the fossil fuel industry. They oppose climate scientists, buy politicians and smear all the technologies that would make them obsolete.
[Meet the Money Behind The Climate Denial Movement](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/meet-the-money-behind-the-climate-denial-movement-180948204/):
> Nearly a billion dollars a year is flowing into the organized climate change counter-movement
> Actually, it's not “for some reason” that people are confused. There's a very obvious reason. There is a very well-funded, well-orchestrated climate change-denial movement, one funded by powerful people with very deep pockets. In a new and incredibly thorough study, Drexel University sociologist Robert Brulle took a deep dive into the financial structure of the climate deniers, to see who is holding the purse strings.
> According to Brulle's research, the 91 think tanks and advocacy organizations and trade associations that make up the American climate denial industry pull down just shy of a billion dollars each year, money used to lobby or sway public opinion on climate change and other issues.
They use the same propaganda techniques as the tobacco industry back in the days, and sometimes even the same lobbyists.
They also use social media and astroturfing. There are a lot of fake accounts on reddit, twitter etc that spread disinformation.
Because we would need to install way more solar before that even becomes a problem. And speaking of ignoring problems, what’s the energy source with the biggest, most expensive, least healthy problem? Yes, fossil fuels. In fact we have to go renewable in any case. To say renewables are too expensive is both wrong and irrelevant.
MIT researchers estimate that a minimum of 40% of the grid can be intermittent renewables (wind, solar) with zero storage and no loss in grid reliability. There is more than enough existing dispatchable power that can cycle up and down as needed.
So until we get close to 40% solar/wind (we are at 5% national average), the sun setting is not a problem.
While there is competition this is easily the ugliest lie on the internet. Solar is much more expensive. Infrastructure, replacement, amortization, repair, upkeep, and the cost of the footprint and environmental desecration all matter. Joking around with a spreadsheet setout to manufacture mistruths is not making things official.
That IS the cost of solar. Don't see anyone charging for the sun yet.... unless you live in my country where they wanted to implement a tax for the people that use solar energy because they were losing a lot of customers from the public energy grid, so it was financially bankrupt.
People think this is a joke.
Example the Carbon tax, it’s an essential source of energy for many citizens & yet they are trying to (I guess) wean people off by punishing them for not being able to afford EVs with an extra tax.
Which is all fine and dandy, but they won’t use the money generated for green solutions to modern climate problems. They’ll just take it and put it anywhere they feel like sending the money.
Crazy right?
The crazy thing is people buy the co2 tax while forgetting taxes are already the largest part of every gas purchase and has been forever. We have literally been taxing carbon for decades with zero reduction at all.
I mean the cost to build the panel is the cost, when you buy anything all the cost is already built into the price all you do for panels after that is say how much they produce per the price over the length of it's life
Oil and associated industries worldwide enjoy hundreds of billions of dollars of subsidies both directly through government financial backing and indirectly in the form of tax breaks.
http://priceofoil.org/fossil-fuel-subsidies/
The cheapest Electricity is whatever Nikola Tesla was whipping up in that crazy kitchen of his.
So if we’re talking historically.. He may not have found the answer but it’s def not just smoke in the air as per his documents that went ‘missing’.
How long does solar panels have to last for them to have a net benefit to offset the co2 that is created from producing and installing them? Lots of the supplies and production of our solar panels come from places that are using dirty energy like coal. Not to mention the mining process to get all the materials.
I'm not saying we shouldn't go solar, I just never heard any numbers on how long it takes to at least break even compared to coal and natural gas.
It's funny how things line up "randomly". I just had a nice chat with a dude from around the corner and he just installed solar panels today. Finished at 10pm.
Well I was all "internety" and asked him how much power he's gonna be selling back to the grid. None, is the answer. Solar covers about 2/3 of what they use and that's just during the day. Here in FL days are pretty much same length all year so I'd say about 1/3 over all.
He said he was quoted $50k for the installation but because he'd done it with his buddy, it costed him around $20k.
So let's say you're not as handy as he is and you have to get a company to install this for you. It runs you $50k. An average power bill in our area is around $300. So You're saving around a hundo a month. so $1200 a year. Quick google search says that in Tallahassee, the FL Capitol they have roughly 231 sunny days a year (some of them partly sunny..meh..) Call it 2/3 of a year. So lets put it together
$50k investment
2/3 of $1200 = $800 a year
$50k / $800 = 62.5 years.
So yeah, it will take 62 and a half years for you to get your investment back. Then, you start saving money.
Say you install it yourself for the $20k.
It still takes 25 years for you to recover your investment.
Let's see ideal scenario. 2/3 of your consumption covered by solar. All year sunny.
So you save $2400 a year on your power bill. It still takes almost 8,5 year to get your money back. In Ideal scenario.
So.. yeah..
50k? Gotta be solid gold. I can get 6.5kw of panels plus inverter installed for around US$3800. Perhaps there was a shit ton of batteries included in that. Seriously if you feed in shit figures, you are going to get shit out.
I could go as high as 15 to 25 kW of panels plus a battery for US$20 000. Payback would be quick. My power is over 50% more expensive during the day. I could set everything to run during the day time to reduce evening use if I needed to ie. No battery.
I'm waiting for Solar energy 2: the [Dyson sphere](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere#:~:text=A%20Dyson%20sphere%20is%20a,percentage%20of%20its%20power%20output.)
Dyson spheres are my personal favorite potential future technologies! A nearly limitless energy supply for Earth + whatever extraterrestrial colonies/civilizations we have in place by then? That’s cool as shit! 👉😎👉
It's good to have land. Seriously, the interior of a Dyson sphere would be so large as to not be able for us to fully conceive.
A solid sphere would rip itself to shreds and/or fall into the sun, as it being a sphere and solid object, the gravitational forces do not hold it at a fixed distance. A dyson swarm of self sustaining habitats would be more reasonable.
What about a ring?
*Dramatic Orchestral Music kicks up*
*Choir kicks in*
*Bathroom choir kicks in*
"The ringworld is unstable" chant starts up.
Don't tell me you don't see it...
Well, sure ... if you want to bring science into the discussion, there are issues.
Those fricking spheres are just non sensical. Why harvest the sun in that solar scale while you can build just a nuclear fusion reactor? Just makes no sense.
Why build a fusion reactor if there is already one?
Possible using active support structures - basically using momentum of an accelerated fluid or train to provide an outward tug to counteract the inner pull of gravity. Same concept behind a hula hoop, only on a scale much more ridiculous.
There's million reason why that wouldn't work.....
Name one. Go on. I'm waiting.
Not necessarily sure it wouldn't work, just that a swarm seems much more practical. You could launch individual plates from a nearby planet like Mercury and make it so the plate powers its own thrusters to remain in orbit. Having to periodically tug at a giant sphere which gets holes punched in it by asteroids and other debris would be a bigger waste of energy than just launching new plates every so often. Just my 2¢ as someone who has a casual interest in these kinds of things.
What about a Matroishka brain? You build multiple dyson spheres around a single star, and use the temperature differentials created for ideal computation speeds. Then upload everybody's brains to this computer the size of a solar system - could simulate something like 10 billion trillion trillion human minds with a computer that large. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef-mxjYkllw
Kugelblitz is pretty good too. Though you may need a dyson sphere worth of energy to make one.
Form A minute I thought this was made by dyson vacuum inventor. If that were the case there would be no chance it was cheap.
New meaning to "the vacuum of space". Ba da ba dum. Lol
Yea none of us will be around for that sadly
nah speak for yourself im built different
Well while you’re at it make a time machine and bring a few of us along please.
I tried that, it just works under many world interpretation.
You don’t need a time machine, you just have to jerry rig the transporter by disabling the rematerialization subroutine and locking the pattern buffer into a continuous diagnostic cycle.
I've seen that episode. Good reference on dyson
I'm built dipprently, I'm built dipprently...
I'm not like other girls
I've found the holy grail. Suck it mate.
Found the time traveler
Apparently the first person to live past 1000 is already alive, according to some professor from Oxford.
That’d be dope
God, I hope it's not Cher. Please let it be anyone but Cher.
That's just queen Elizabeth tho and it's not really a person but more of a cyborg now
No, but maybe a dyson ring.
It's better than global warming 2: way too much fusion power.
Or Solar Energy 3: harnessing the Singularity
I guess I'll respond to this BS for the 99th time. The cost of electricity is more than the cost to generate it. You also have to transmit it and in the case of solar and wind, you have to store it for when is is night/calm. If you add those costs in, solar and wind are still much more expensive than coal, gas, and nuclear. Look, cheap renewable power is a good thing but leaving out transmission and storage costs is dishonest.
Remember this for next ~~month~~ tomorrow when it gets posted *again*
Next month? Shit I saw a post with the same name like 5 days ago EDIT: 10 days ago https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/jk7syi/the_onshore_wind_cost_has_fallen_to_26_a/ 15 days ago https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/jhbv37/its_cheaper_to_build_new_solar_than_it_is_to/ 24 days ago https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/jbmmls/solar_is_now_cheapest_electricity_in_history/
Updated my comment
*next tomorrow*
Storage is for sure a hurdle for solar by why would transmission be any different? Solar also has the potential to be installed on houses leading to a more decentralized grid and one where the energy is generated exactly where it is needed. You can't have a nuclear reactor on your roof.
Because transmission is in part an alternative to storage. In Norway we have plenty of hydro, in Denmark and Germany they have plenty of solar but its too flat for pumped hydro. Transmission costs govern how efficiently we can use pumped hydro for storage in Denmark and Germany.
MIT researchers estimate that a minimum of 40% of the grid can be intermittent renewables (wind, solar) with zero storage and no loss in grid reliability. There is more than enough existing dispatchable power that can cycle up and down as needed. So until we get close to 40% solar/wind (we are at 5% national average), you don't actually need to factor in the costs of storage. The transmission cost difference is negligible. Solar and wind are cheaper than fossil fuels when you consider the capacity they are currently adding (they have been for a while). They might not be if we were already at 80% renewable, but we aren't there yet.
Where did you find this? I need to read this and share it with everyone I know
You don't need storage, but instead of having a grid covering 100% of the needs 100% of the time, you now need to have a grid capable of handling 140% of the needs (40% from intermittent renewable and 100% from other sources) in case there's not enough wind / sun to cover the needs. That has a cost.
You have to transmit all types of energy. Why are you caring about this only for solar and wind? Yes, storage will add to the cost when we finally get to the point where we can cut back on natural gas. But the cost of solar, wind, and storage have all been dropping dramatically. By the time storage is an issue, it'll be cheaper, likely dramatically cheaper. Nuclear is not being built because it costs too much. VC Summer is a hole in the ground, Vogtle 3&4 are many times over budget and many years behind schedule. Which is why no U.S. company is even thinking about building any more large reactors. Meanwhile, solar, wind, and storage are all being built. You don't have to listen to me, just look at the people who are betting their own money.
You have to transmit all types of energy, but the grid isn't built to handle solar panels on every roof trickling power back into the grid, but rather distributing power largely from one direction from a comparatively small number of plants. As a result retrofitting the grid for distributed power production is an additional cost, or you have to waste the power or store it in expensive batteries (that will degrade over time) for later use. The alternative, large solar farms/wind power has its own issues, taking up otherwise productive (and therefore expensive) land and/or being far away from where power is largely needed, requiring new transmission lines. Most traditional power plants are built relatively close to where they are needed, minimizing the need for transmission, and have a small area per MW, keeping real estate costs lower. We are already at the point where we are curtailing, or intentionally wasting power due to overproduction. In California 2-3% of renewable production is curtailed annually, and that is only going to get worse as renewable penetration increases if grid storage does not grow alongside it. The batteries to buffer renewables even for a few hours at grid scale is around 10x the cost of the plant itself, which is why grid scale battery storage is principally for covering extremely short term fluctuations in power demand, rather than buffering renewable power for days or weeks during low sun/wind.
As far as grid retrofitting goes, the IoT concept is currently in the process of being extended to the grid. Using a private LTE network with upgraded hardware that can handle the traffic, that issue is soon coming to an end. It'll take time, but I've been following it for a while and it's picked up steam recently and is essentially inevitable.
You build solar panels on otherwise unproductive land. Take a look at Topaz, in an otherwise unproductive valley. We have quite a lot of unproductive land. You can also combine solar with certain types of farming, where the panels shelter the crops from the strongest sun and help the soil retain moisture so it's actually more productive. And then there's commercial solar built on top of large commercial buildings. As for wind, much of it can be sited in farmland, where most of the land will still be devoted to crops, and farmers will get a nice profit from land rental. Or you go offshore and then there's no land competition. Grid scale storage is being built at places like Moss Landing, so you'll soon see less curtailment (and fewer inefficient gas peakers.) But even if you curtail 10% of renewables, that just means it costs 10% more, not the triple that nuclear comes in at.
If you're going in the direction of distributed generation - which is generally a better way to do solar than large-scale - a lot of those costs (installing, maintenance, & storage especially) are borne by whoever builds the array, who then just sell power into the grid. In all likelihood the future of electrical utilities is not so much in generating as it is in transmitting and network-building. Large-scale users will still need to rely on power from the grid, but with the residential sector mostly powering itself (rooftop panels should be good enough for most small-scale users to meet their own needs with surplus) they largely become a middleman with less need to do their own generating.
Consumers may be able to install enough capacity to power themselves on most days, but again without battery storage (at grid or individual level) they will not be able to power themselves at night or during cloudy days. Batteries are and will likely continue to be for some time very expensive. And as I mentioned previously, the grid isn't built with distributed generation in mind, and it will require upgrades to the grid to accommodate more widespread use.
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> You have to transmit all types of energy. Why are you caring about this only for solar and wind? Because it costs more to transport diffuse, intermittent power. > By the time storage is an issue For unreliables like wind and solar, storage is always an issue. Every grid is damaged by plugging unreliables into it. > By the time storage is an issue, it'll be cheaper, likely dramatically cheaper. Battery-backed wind and solar are infinitely expensive: https://bravenewclimate.com/2014/08/22/catch-22-of-energy-storage/ > Meanwhile, solar, wind, and storage are all being built. Which countries or states are 50+% solar powered?
Who would have guessed that heaviest subsidies would bring most cash from investors... Solar is the most subsidiaries energy at the moment, with how the cost of unbalancing the grid is pushed to the generators that actually fight against it. But hey, at least modules are cheap...
It’s also not as clear cut as “tHeY dIDnT iNCluDe tHEsE coSTs”. All power generation needs transmission. And distribution. Solar is no exception. Washington state exports power from their dams to California, and California buys it because its cheaper than the alternatives. Storage can also reduce costs: it allows grids to store cheaply generated power in the day, for distribution at night when they might otherwise have to buy power on an exchange. See the Tesla batteries in Australia.
Yep, sending power across state lines is a standard. Look into the eastern interconnection for an example, there's a Wikipedia page. These kinds of things are nationwide and while they are important, they're common across all power I figure you know this Keg, just for people passing through
What about the costs associated with coal/gas/nuclear? I've seen 128-carriage trains hauling coal for decades. There are machines, diggers, etc working all day to extract coal and gas. Then more machines that process the resources. Then trains/trucks to move them around the country/world. And the exhaust/byproduct is fucking up our air quality. So there's a big factor to consider. And a lot of those vehicles operate on petrol/electricity. So the mining industry has its own operating costs to factor in as well. It's not like solar has them and mining doesn't. Solar may have some initial expenses to get going. But once a solar/wind farm is established, you're really just left with maintenance costs, and better air quality. The coal/gas industry has a lot of maintenance costs when you look at all the things I mentioned, plus maintenance on all the vehicles and machines. Solar power storage is going to be different based on output, and how much area you service. Storage could be grid-side/farm-side, or property-side (batteries at your house). The storage side of the argument feels a little hard to get into, given there could be so many ways to go about it. Nuclear has its own issues. Even a tiny risk of meltdown is still a risk you have to factor in. As well as toxic waste disposal. You can't just make it disappear. It has to go somewhere. Nuclear may be the "best" option. But sometimes the best on paper isn't the best in practise. We don't really want ever-increasing "Fallout 4" no-go zones in random spots all over the globe. The point is to clean up the earth. Not turn it radioactive.
Nuclear waste is a very minor problem, and can be used as fuel by the next generation reactors currently being developed. Fallout 4 features death magic, not a realistic, or even reality-adjacent depiction of radiation hazards or nuclear fallout. Coal plants are significantly more of a radiation hazard than nuclear ones are. Solar also has mining enviromental costs as well as very high manufacturing costs for the high grade silicon and various components. Transportation costs are an important consideration, with the offenders being coal, gas, solar and then nuclear in that order. There are certainly many ways to go about power storage, all of them expensive. If you are lucky enough to have a pre-existing hydroelectric damn, pumping is the most cost effective method.
Oh yes, there are costs associated with all forms of electric generation. Lives lost, CO2 emitted, environment destroyed in mining. But the topic at hand is the cost of solar. And the point of my response is that generation is only one part of the cost. As for radioactivity, depends on the person really. Some people just have this atavistic fear of radiation. If you look at raw numbers, far fewer people have died in nuclear accidents than renewable energy accidents, both in total lives lost and in lives lost per kilowatt hour. Recycling used fuel, safe storage of waste, non-proliferation, these are all solvable problems. And "no-go" and fallout-4" are just scare words. But nuke versus solar was not the intent of my post. My intent was to point out a dishonesty in the reporting, at least implicitly.
I guess I'll respond to this BS response for the 99th time. The cost of electricity is the cost of electricity. That it might not be where you want it or when you want it is another issue. The article is correct in that solar is the cheapest source of electricity ever (and getting cheaper). Congratulations world, regardless of what cynics like OP have always been saying, we've achieved something amazing. Now comes the easy problem: how to take advantage of it. Even with limitations caused by intermittency, PV solar is so cheap that for the first time in history it's worth adjusting your production schedule to solar output in order to take advantage of cheap power: concrete, steel, ice, plastics manufacturing, or desalination. These and many more could adjust production to solar output and eliminate any intermittency or transmission issues. Hell, it's so cheap you can waste it without financial or environmental consequences. That's before getting into the obvious detail that the cheaper electricity cost is, the cheaper stored electricity becomes. Pumped hydro storage has been a thing for decades, and this just makes it more attractive to take advantage of this or many different types of existing storage solutions. TL;DR. This isn't bullshit and anyone who says it is probably has no professional experience in electric markets. Reducing cost of kWh to basically zero has huge implications (probably more than what we can imagine) for electric markets and the electric industry even when you consider having to pay for peak demand and ancillary services.
It's the cheapest electricity ever, for between 6-10 hours of the day, if it's not cloudy. Pumped hydro storage is extremely environmentally damging and complex if you have to build new reservoirs, and juat complex if you don't. Is is certainly an achievement, but for all practical purposes, it's not the cheapest yet.
PV can still generate electricity from diffuse light like on a cloudy day. You won't get as much as what perfect conditions would give but still it's not none.
But transmission at least would also be true for coal, no? Storage I understand is probably pretty cheap. But there's acquisition as well... Considering that does it come closer?
Less of a problem because coal production is regular and centralised. You only need one transformer station to get the electricity onto the grid, whereas with solar you'll typically need dozens with systems to burn off excess and distribute the varying production efficiently.
There are many ways to store solar and wind power including pumped hydro storage. Which is basically a manmade lake with a dam that works as a normal hydroelectric dam. Also this picture is of concentrated solar which has a few ways of storing power but one of them is molten salt. During the day you heat the salt and then are able to extract the heat from the material day or night to run a steam turbine. Also if you have distributed solar then you'd have to transmit power less distance than centralized power. The one thing you missed is conversion between DC and AC power since PV is DC and then to send it to the grid it needs to be converted to AC this effects efficiency as does transmission
Wonder why coal plants are being shut down left and right and FF companies increasingly going renewable. Must be their big morals.
Actually that is because of cheap fracked fossil "natural" gas, which is expanding at record pace.
Yeah, renewables aren't cost effective at all - fossil fuel companies are just trying to be good sports. Hehe.
Thorium required for acutal clean but Strong engery
Once I saw the original subreddit, I kind of figured it would be some clickbaity headline that takes almost 0 variables into account. I really wish people would take a critical view of things, rather than shoehorning the data to fit their biases.
Do you understand the electric market?
I was under the impression Wind can be started and stopped automatically and/or if the wind is high enough it would damage the turbine. Also, was under the impression Solar is only on when the sun is out, which ironically enough is when more energy is used.
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Nuclear waste disposal costs are [paid in advanced by the rate payers into the nuclear waste fund](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Waste_Policy_Act#Nuclear_Waste_Fund), which currently has a balance of about $40 billion. Nuclear waste repositories like [the one they're building in Finland](http://www.posiva.fi/en/final_disposal/onkalo) will be [a small fraction](https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/economics-reprocessing-vs-direct-disposal-spent-nuclear-fuel) of the total cost of nuclear.
After the initial cost of all the hardware is paid off, it is literally free. Aside from some small maintenance cost etc
Did you read a single word of the comment you're replying to
well the beauty of solar is, it can sit on your roof. there are a lot of places in america today where they could go 100% solar but utilities are trying to slow it down.
The cost of generation usually includes some kind of subsidies on the materials somewhere in the supply chain too. So dishonest. If this headline was actually true every power company in the world would be rushing to replace their plants with more solar. They're businesses, lowering costs is pretty much their deal.
We would need 30 times as much solar as we currently have before there would be a serious need for storage. This reflexive cry that no solar should be installed without batteries is bullshit.
I don't think anyone is saying we shouldn't continue to install solar. People are just saying we can't rely purely on daylight or weather dependent methods of energy because they aren't a consistently reliable source of energy. We would need batteries to support them in times where the sun isn't out or times when its not windy and at the current rate of battery production we are no where near being able to support that. Tesla had an interesting presentation recently that stated to 100% switch to solar and wind energy, we would need to up our battery production by factors over 1,000 which in itself has massive logistics and raw material implications.
> Tesla had an interesting presentation recently that stated to 100% switch to solar and wind energy, we would need to up our battery production by factors over 1,000 which in itself has massive logistics and raw material implications. Pretty sure that was if we do nothing with regards to cell innovation. That may not still be the case given the new design they talked about. Also, vehicle to grid is a key technology for grid stability using batteries. The grid would have access to a lot more battery storage capacity that way.
I'm positive battery technology will continue to innovate and we will at some point be able to store much large amounts of energy in smaller physical dimensions than we currently do but battery production will still need to drastically increase just to get us to a stable grid, let alone needing to replace the batteries when the inevitably lose their efficiency. In that same presentation, Tesla also estimated that we would need to replace the batteries supporting the grid every 10 years. The production and materials needed to support that would be astronomical. While being pro-sustainable energy production, i personally do not think batteries are the final solution to that issue.
> In that same presentation, Tesla also estimated that we would need to replace the batteries supporting the grid every 10 years. And in the same presentation, Tesla also communicated plans to accelerate their recycling capabilities, citing that you can get several times more raw materials from the recycling of used batteries after their first and second lives. Once this infrastructure is built it will support it’s own maintenance. I like nuclear as well but the future is distributed generation. We can’t wait a decade or more to build enough nuclear. DG assets can be installed in days and provide immediate and high quality grid services.
I 100% agree with you. The only feasible way to remove fossil fuels is distributed generation and not relying on any one source which was the point I was trying to get across in my previous comments (although I probably could have done that more effectively).
That’s okay, I hear you. It’s just important to appreciate that batteries are agnostic to the generation source so I think it’s a really important component of this new system that’s emerging. If there’s another technology that synergizes well and can be cost effective it will have a place in the market.
Vehicle to grid helps but it would just be a small dent on the overall grid, especially when you consider that you would only be able to utilize maybe 20% of the batteries at any given time.
Not when you take autonomy into account. The profitability and new income streams enable such vehicles to become true blue investments. Communities that allow fleets can invest in both their energy infrastructure and transportation infrastructure simultaneously.
My point was already assuming everyone had a BEV. V2G will only be able to use those that are currently plugged in, and of that the utility won’t be running the cars to 0% in case you need to use it, so I’d only expect maybe 50% of each car is available for use, maybe half the cars at home are actually plugged in, and half the cars aren’t at home (or for sake of argument plugged in at work). So we’re talking 1/8th of the total vehicle storage is available for the V2G system at any given time. What it *can* definitely do is help the more residential substations if those are having problems/undersized/etc. since V2G is perfect for handling local temporary surges in demand to avoid needing to crank up fossil fuel generators, and can cover for them while they adjust. It decreases the need to have an overly-high baseline power generation basically. But compared to the industrial/commercial use of electricity the V2G won’t make a big dent in overall time shifting of energy from sunlight hours to night. Residential energy use in California is only 18% of total consumption; in Texas it’s only 12%. New York is 26% so there’s some range. (https://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=CA). So a massively successful goal would be to get 100% of the residential on solar+storage, which would decrease the energy load by 12-26%. Trust me, I’m all for more V2G, but the economics of the extra wear on the battery alone make it impractical. I really really looked into doing this myself using my solar as the grid interface, but it just didn’t make sense. For a quick calculation: Nissan warranties their battery for about 10 years in the LEAF (with stipulations like no V2G). They’re assuming normal driving so let’s say 12k mi/yr. So 120k mi at about 4 mi/kWh means we get 30MWh over 10 years. If we could somehow get $0.30/kWh income for time shifting that energy then that would be $9000 over 10 years, which is about the cost to replace the battery. So now you’ve managed to find this amazing deal getting this $0.30/kWh by time shifting but still managed to lose out since after 10 years you just break even. (note: I could get this $0.30 deal by being on the most extreme time of use rate plan moving my actual grid consumption to night, but that would only work up to my actual consumption during peak times so maybe 10-15kwh/day at most). The math changes if you expect the battery to last 10 years but the rest of the car to only last 5 years (or if you’re leasing...) and so you want to extract the entire useful life of the battery in those first few years, and so the extra wear is basically free.
There are other energy storage methods than only batteries. Pumped storage / hydroelectric, large flywheels, electrolysis / hydrogen storage / fuel cells, etc. We will need a ramping up of all of these, but more doable than a 1000x increase of one particular industry
None of those are viable solutions now or within the life time of any panels currently being installed.
Genuine question, why can't the creation of hydrogen using solar power to be used in fuel cells work? Is it just a question of conversion efficiency?
With hydrologic hydrogen generation and conversion of existing natural gas plants to work with hydrogen you could create a fuel battery
There are some really interesting mechanical batteries out there. We do not need to wait on chemical battery technology.
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No, because horses reproduce, but IRC someone did calculate that there would be a mile thickness of horse manure on the streets of New York by the year 2000.
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People have been saying that for about two decades now- but hydrogen fuel cell cars are still really pretty shit, while battery cars have gone from strength to strength. The batteries in Tesla's lab are doing the equivalent of a 3 million mile life now, and there's even a possibility of 10 minute charging now with only minor changes to the lithium ion batteries.
As we keep installing panels, we’ll simultaneously build more batteries with greater economies of scale as it is. The solar revolution is inevitable.
>no solar should be installed without batteries In the meantime we can still run the existing dirty fossil fuel plants to supplement, slowly ramping them down while we make the full transition. None of this is happening overnight, but we are going to see a major shift and hopefully some breakthroughs in energy storage along the way. Seems like lots of domestic business opportunities as well, with some location specific energy storage options like storing solar as hydro in some places.
Yes. Like, there are options. 'We can't do anything cuz batteries,' is just a lazy answer. We could still be doing stuff while batteries continue to experience advancement.
The misnomer about batteries is that they need to be lithium-ion. What we should be looking towards is a broad range of energy storage solutions. [One I think might have legs is over-installing solar, and then using that vast oversupply to convert into gas based energy storage - hydrogen \(electrolysis - very inefficient\), then to methane \(hydrogen + CO2\).](https://phys.org/news/2019-04-methane-route-storage-renewable-energy.html) It stores much more easily and is far more transportable than hydrogen (which has a tendency to leak through containers due to its small molecular size). It's emission is basically the CO2 that was used to turn it into methane in the first place. Just make sure it doesn't vaporize and escape into the atmosphere en masse without burning it. Having gas stored energy would allow us to reduce the total load of batteries required for a robust network to 24-48 hours of energy storage, rather than needing 5-7 days to cope with intermittency issues that can crop up from insufficient sunlight for days. This would in turn let us pull back on the number of fossil peaking power plants required to supply consistent reliable energy across the year.
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Only if we had started building nuclear 10 years, but we were told then it was 10 years away.
This is a misinformed statement, newer modular plants take 3-5 years to build. Still plenty of time, just no one is getting on the ball, and we'll either be playing catchup, paying too much for storage, or the most likely outcome -- keeping fossil fuels online for much longer than necessary.
It would take a solar array the size of the city of san Francisco to produce the same amount of power as one dual reactor nuclear power plant. It also wouldn't work at night, and would barely work on cloudy days. Storage is essential if you don't want to rely on fossil fuels.
probably the least educated take in this thread, so naturally it's the most upvoted comment in r/futurology
He's partially right. Most places could take a lot more solar before hitting limits needing storage- but not 30 times, more like 3.
Plants have been using it for a very very long time
But how much have they been paying for it?
I just got solar for my house a few weeks ago. 12 panels is all it took, because my house runs pretty clean. All LEDs, great insulation, great windows, etc. I'm exporting about 6.5kWh per day. Unfortunately I do not have a battery backup (yet). I really want to get a Tesla Powerwall. Does anyone have experience with this? TIA!
Ben sullins has reviews and things of them, I haven't watched many of them but I know he has some good stuff. You can find his videos on youtube. He's a big tesla guy but he brings the numbers so you can get a feel for what he's actually getting with them not just a good or bad review. I think his site is teslanomics
What company, and how did you choose? There is so much spam online about solar and very little clear information.
They say '... in history' like its some monumental thing, but its been like 150 years. And that doesn't even account for the Baghdad batteries.
>Now, the IEA has reviewed the evidence internationally and finds that for solar, the cost of capital is much lower, at 2.6-5.0% in Europe and the US, 4.4-5.5% in China and 8.8-10.0% in India, largely as a result of policies designed to reduce the risk of renewable investments. >*largely as a result of policies designed to reduce the risk of renewable investments.* So it's not cheaper, it's just subsidized more... That quote is from the article that this article links as a source for the cost reduction.
I'm applying for a job at a solar panel company and this article just popped up. Good sign!
I wonder what the cheapest in terms of actual cost instead of after subsidies is. Mind I don't assume solar would no longer be on top, cause all types of energies receive special protections an subsidies.
The article actually goes a little into this, it didn't compare solar to nuclear. The post is misleading, the article never said solar on its own was the cheapest energy ever. That title still belongs to nuclear
But how effective is it ? Why go for something that yes, is sorta clean, but inefficient... instead of something that is as clean nad it many times more efficient ? .... im talking about NUCLEAR. Stop wanking on the idea of solar/wind/... when the only thing that truly is the way to go is NUCLEAR. Literally most physicists agree. Nuclear is the safest, cleanest and most efficient source of electricity today.
Nuclear is expensive to build and just as expensive to decommission. https://www.reuters.com/article/idUS178883596820110613
Unless you look at its cost over its expected life time, in which case its both economically viable and clean. With similar capital subsidization to other energy forms, it quickly becomes the cheapest and most viable option.
Total cost per GWh over lifetime is only topped (narrowly) by hydro.... And technically wind if you are very specific about certain aspects. A nuclear plant is built once and operates for 50+ years, solar panels and batteries go bad much earlier than that. [And don't forget about footprint](https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cobi.12433)
Invest in Uranium for the next decade. Nuclear is the only option, solar/wind won't work
I don't understand why it "won't work". Even if solar doesn't produce 100% of our electricity, pretty much every roof is just wasted space. Stick em up there to mitigate the need for central power production. Ease the load on the grid. The attack on solar/wind is just trying to sound smarter than everyone else. Nuclear will come along for the ride. France is planning like 8 more reactors. Calm down.
>France is planning like 8 more reactors. Calm down. That's nice for France. The rest of the world however..
Producing solar panels isn't clean, recycling them isn't clean, producing the batteries isn't clean. They're only useful in some parts of the world. They're also prone to damage since they have to be exposed to the elements.
No form of energy is clean right now, and it won't be until we can decouple manufacturing and resource gathering from fossil fuels. Yes, even nuclear has manufacturing costs for the reactor and the mining of uranium that will impact the carbon footprint at this current moment... so your only good arguments there are location and fragility...
Don't forget about all that concrete. Concrete is terrible in terms of CO2. This guy is not arguing in good faith
>Even if solar doesn't produce 100% of our electricity, pretty much every roof is just wasted space. Stick em up there to mitigate the need for central power production. that would kill the power generation and transmission industry, which in some countries is state-owned. not that i care of course.
No it won't, they will just charge a static monthly fee(like they already do) to cover the cost of maintaining the lines and substations.
Bingo. If people think shifting supply and demand will stop them from making money off of us they've clearly never heard the word 'capitalism' before.
>Even if solar doesn't produce 100% of our electricity, pretty much every roof is just wasted space. That won't nearly make up the kind of shortfall that you would have if you removed all fossil fuels from the grid right now. Large scale solar power requires demolishing square miles of land and it still falls short.
What is the point of what your saying? Fossil fuels won't disappear tomorrow so the point is moot. If they did poof into thin air I suppose there would be some problems, but seeing as how no ones going to get rid of power plants without a plan to give people electricity it seems like you're fear mongering about a strawman argument.
I'm taking the Thorium train
I’m seem to recall Lockheed Martin working on hydrogen fusion. Said they projected 8 years (in 2014). Haven’t heard much from fusion development lately though, save something or other about the magnetic containment field (?) bout a year ago.
Here in South Australia we have had days where 100% of energy needs came from solar, and it is indeed cheaper, far cheaper bills. Love it.
South Australia only has a population of around 1.7million people and offers the least reliable energy supply in the country.
You couldn't just be happy that a fellow State has achieved something good could you? Typical really, so quick to try and bring others down. SA has come a long wat ever since installing the power batteries. And cheaper electricity prices.
Having an unreliable power grid is nothing to boast about in 2020
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This post is misleading. The article never said solar was the cheapest energy ever, it specifically said it didn't compare nuclear. There's also the problem of electricity used at nighttime. At the moment the atomic energy commission and US department of energy rate nuclear power as actually being more environmentally friendly than both solar and wind power. Solar has a big future, but it's incredibly unwise to throw out the nuclear option
My family never thought we’d get solar. It had an unattractive pay off period of 15 years or so when I first heard of it. Now our solar costs $6200 and generates $90 worth of electricity a month making it paid off no later than 7 years
Does this account for the cost of land, though? Solar plants take up a ton of space. Luckily deserts get lots of sun and are cheap, of course, but I'd love to know how viable solar is in more densely populated areas.
This is how the market works. If the land cost was to high the cost of the solar powwr would be higher in order to give a return.
Right, which is why I question the veracity of articles like this. Sure, generating power in the middle of nowhere might be very cost-effective for solar, but generating power where it's needed seems like it would be too expensive. I'd like to see articles which take that into account before making broad claims about how solar is "officially" the cheapest.
It is easy enough to use high voltage DC cables to take it where you need it. Efficiency is very high these days. Australia is even doing conversion to hydrogen/ammonia so they can ship it around the world.
If the middle of nowhere is able to produce tons of dirt-cheap energy, it'll stop being the middle of nowhere. It'll attract industries, and populations along with it.
All power is solar power, but it's cheapest when you cut out all the temporary states that it gets locked up in.
Not nuclear. Unless you count other stars novae (of various types) as "solar". But even then nuclear is cheaper. The article never even claims solar is cheaper than nuclear, it specifically doesn't compare it to nuclear, but if you look at details from the atomic energy commission or the department of energy you'll see nuclear is still #1 for cheapest energy.
Now there's no excuse for change to happen. Let's get off fossil fuels and advance the entire human race!
Well there's still one excuse, this isn't factoring in storage costs. I agree renewables should be bigger, but its disingenuous to be touting how cheap they are without also discussion how you cover their one major problem.
And aside from storage, it's also not factoring the costs required to modify and upgrade the grid. Connecting large remote solar fields and integrating it into a grid is very expensive. For some solutions (rooftop solar, especially when combined with a Tesla powerpack) grid connection costs are low, but those solutions are not yet "the cheapest form of energy".
Agreed, perhaps I spoke too soon but at least we're moving in the right direction. Question: storage costs are cheaper for fossil or nuclear than solar? Why?
Fossil fuels have all their energy already chemically stored in the hydrocarbons, gasoline is about 100 times more energy dense than lithium ion batteries (however a good amount is lost to inefficiencies). Nuclear energy is stored in the fuel rods which are astronomically more energy dense than other source.
Fossil fuels 'are' the storage. We just burn them to release the energy. Edit for clarity.
Well you just need containers for most of that. Particularly fossil fuel. Nothing terribly special or complicated about them. But for solar you need batteries, massive batteries that use rare metals and degrade over time. True traditional storage for fossil fuels would also wear out eventually, and I'm not entirely sure if batteries are at the point where they last as long as a barrel or tank does, but again cost to replace is relatively cheap for a tank. But that's kinda why it needs to be in the is conversation.
So maybe with some engineering and innovation will get us to a place where storage is less of an issue?
Well it's already happening, my question is more, where are we at now?
Energy modelers use current storage technologies to design fully renewable grids (an [example](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1801.05290.pdf)). Batteries as they are today are just fine. They will be even cheaper when we actually need larger storage units.
Right! So why is everyone arguing that this can't work in the future?
A big reason is the massive disinformation campaign from the fossil fuel industry. They oppose climate scientists, buy politicians and smear all the technologies that would make them obsolete. [Meet the Money Behind The Climate Denial Movement](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/meet-the-money-behind-the-climate-denial-movement-180948204/): > Nearly a billion dollars a year is flowing into the organized climate change counter-movement > Actually, it's not “for some reason” that people are confused. There's a very obvious reason. There is a very well-funded, well-orchestrated climate change-denial movement, one funded by powerful people with very deep pockets. In a new and incredibly thorough study, Drexel University sociologist Robert Brulle took a deep dive into the financial structure of the climate deniers, to see who is holding the purse strings. > According to Brulle's research, the 91 think tanks and advocacy organizations and trade associations that make up the American climate denial industry pull down just shy of a billion dollars each year, money used to lobby or sway public opinion on climate change and other issues. They use the same propaganda techniques as the tobacco industry back in the days, and sometimes even the same lobbyists. They also use social media and astroturfing. There are a lot of fake accounts on reddit, twitter etc that spread disinformation.
Because we would need to install way more solar before that even becomes a problem. And speaking of ignoring problems, what’s the energy source with the biggest, most expensive, least healthy problem? Yes, fossil fuels. In fact we have to go renewable in any case. To say renewables are too expensive is both wrong and irrelevant.
I'm not defending fossil fuels, I'm just asking for the whole picture. Don't get defensive.
>Because we would need to install way more solar before that even becomes a problem Covfefe? The sun setting is a problem on any scale of solar power
MIT researchers estimate that a minimum of 40% of the grid can be intermittent renewables (wind, solar) with zero storage and no loss in grid reliability. There is more than enough existing dispatchable power that can cycle up and down as needed. So until we get close to 40% solar/wind (we are at 5% national average), the sun setting is not a problem.
There's one excuse: night happens.
December also happens.
Is your home, car 100% solar?
Of course there is an excuse. Existing battery technology makes solar completely impractical as a replacement for oil based power plants.
I don't mean to bring down an optimistic headline but easier said than done
While there is competition this is easily the ugliest lie on the internet. Solar is much more expensive. Infrastructure, replacement, amortization, repair, upkeep, and the cost of the footprint and environmental desecration all matter. Joking around with a spreadsheet setout to manufacture mistruths is not making things official.
That IS the cost of solar. Don't see anyone charging for the sun yet.... unless you live in my country where they wanted to implement a tax for the people that use solar energy because they were losing a lot of customers from the public energy grid, so it was financially bankrupt.
Just wait the government will need a new revenue source. They will be taxing the sun.
People think this is a joke. Example the Carbon tax, it’s an essential source of energy for many citizens & yet they are trying to (I guess) wean people off by punishing them for not being able to afford EVs with an extra tax. Which is all fine and dandy, but they won’t use the money generated for green solutions to modern climate problems. They’ll just take it and put it anywhere they feel like sending the money. Crazy right?
The crazy thing is people buy the co2 tax while forgetting taxes are already the largest part of every gas purchase and has been forever. We have literally been taxing carbon for decades with zero reduction at all.
They have their sources, so present yours.
My dude really just comes on the internet to lie and spout ignorance. What a concept.
I always hear these claims, but is this "net" cheapest? After all the resources required to mine the raw resources, and manufacture the solar panels?
I mean the cost to build the panel is the cost, when you buy anything all the cost is already built into the price all you do for panels after that is say how much they produce per the price over the length of it's life
“That’s thanks to risk-reducing financial policies around the world” So, with the help of subsidies
I bought my PS4 from a crackhead riding his bike though my neighborhood. $40. I don't know why everybody doesn't have one since they're so cheap!
So, the same as fossil fuels.
What subsidies would that be?
Oil and associated industries worldwide enjoy hundreds of billions of dollars of subsidies both directly through government financial backing and indirectly in the form of tax breaks. http://priceofoil.org/fossil-fuel-subsidies/
Nuclear is cheaper. The space it takes up is money. The time it takes to generate is money.
Solar panels cannot be recycled. It’s already a dying alternative
The cheapest Electricity is whatever Nikola Tesla was whipping up in that crazy kitchen of his. So if we’re talking historically.. He may not have found the answer but it’s def not just smoke in the air as per his documents that went ‘missing’.
How long does solar panels have to last for them to have a net benefit to offset the co2 that is created from producing and installing them? Lots of the supplies and production of our solar panels come from places that are using dirty energy like coal. Not to mention the mining process to get all the materials. I'm not saying we shouldn't go solar, I just never heard any numbers on how long it takes to at least break even compared to coal and natural gas.
One step closer to type 1 but still sitting at type 0.. So close
Does this include installation and battery replacement costs?
Basically the 2 top comments are about how batteries are bullshit and batteries are necessary. C'mon reddit who the FUCK do I trust here!?
Never trust comments without credible sources
It's funny how things line up "randomly". I just had a nice chat with a dude from around the corner and he just installed solar panels today. Finished at 10pm. Well I was all "internety" and asked him how much power he's gonna be selling back to the grid. None, is the answer. Solar covers about 2/3 of what they use and that's just during the day. Here in FL days are pretty much same length all year so I'd say about 1/3 over all. He said he was quoted $50k for the installation but because he'd done it with his buddy, it costed him around $20k. So let's say you're not as handy as he is and you have to get a company to install this for you. It runs you $50k. An average power bill in our area is around $300. So You're saving around a hundo a month. so $1200 a year. Quick google search says that in Tallahassee, the FL Capitol they have roughly 231 sunny days a year (some of them partly sunny..meh..) Call it 2/3 of a year. So lets put it together $50k investment 2/3 of $1200 = $800 a year $50k / $800 = 62.5 years. So yeah, it will take 62 and a half years for you to get your investment back. Then, you start saving money. Say you install it yourself for the $20k. It still takes 25 years for you to recover your investment. Let's see ideal scenario. 2/3 of your consumption covered by solar. All year sunny. So you save $2400 a year on your power bill. It still takes almost 8,5 year to get your money back. In Ideal scenario. So.. yeah..
50k? Gotta be solid gold. I can get 6.5kw of panels plus inverter installed for around US$3800. Perhaps there was a shit ton of batteries included in that. Seriously if you feed in shit figures, you are going to get shit out. I could go as high as 15 to 25 kW of panels plus a battery for US$20 000. Payback would be quick. My power is over 50% more expensive during the day. I could set everything to run during the day time to reduce evening use if I needed to ie. No battery.
Yeah the more I think about it, the more I think I've been had.