World Energy Hits a Turning Point: Solar That's Cheaper Than Wind (bloomberg.com) 220
A transformation is happening in global energy markets that's worth noting as 2016 comes to an end: Solar power, for the first time, is becoming the cheapest form of new electricity. From a report on Bloomberg: This has happened in isolated projects in the past: an especially competitive auction in the Middle East, for example, resulting in record-cheap solar costs. But now unsubsidized solar is beginning to outcompete coal and natural gas on a larger scale, and notably, new solar projects in emerging markets are costing less to build than wind projects, according to fresh data from Bloomberg New Energy Finance. The chart shows the average cost of new wind and solar from 58 emerging-market economies, including China, India, and Brazil. While solar was bound to fall below wind eventually, given its steeper price declines, few predicted it would happen this soon.
A confused article (Score:3, Informative)
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Except where it mentions actual cost per MWHr. ' It started with a contract in January to produce electricity for $64 per megawatt-hour in India; then a deal in August pegging $29.10 per megawatt hour in Chile. '
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Except where it mentions actual cost per MWHr. ' It started with a contract in January to produce electricity for $64 per megawatt-hour in India; then a deal in August pegging $29.10 per megawatt hour in Chile. '
These production costs are huge. Prices in the Houston area wholesale are approximately $20-$25 per MW-h on any given day. And this is in a first world country with high labor costs and a high standard of safety.
The google term you are looking for is "LMP map", which is a map showing the wholesale price of electricity. (LMP stands for Locational Marginal Pricing) Add the term "MISO" for the midwest, "ERCOT" for Texas, "PJM" for the eastern atlantic states, "ISO New England" for the northeast, etc.
Ho
Re:A confused article (Score:5, Insightful)
> Wouldn't it make more sense to
Ah yes, the "makes sense" clause, which in this case means "I have no clue but I'm going to post anyway".
> shut the turbine down and spare the maintenance?
No. The marginal production cost for wind is close to zero. As opposed to, say,a gas plant, where even at idle you're still burning fuel. This has been *repeatedly* covered here on Ars.
> The answer is the subsidies.
Maybe it's different in Texas, but everywhere I'm familiar with the subsidies are in the form of tax credits and are on the order of 20% of the LCoE. In comparison, something like the nuclear industry receives about 10 times that amount of money, all of it up-front, and still isn't competitive,
Why is anyone surprised by this? A wind turbine is a generator, which all plants have, some blades, a steel pole, and a concrete base. Of course that is going to be able to compete once the learning curve kicks in. PV is even simpler, it's basically a storm window with some wiring. It doesn't even have moving parts. On a pure CAPEX basis there's no way anyone can compete.
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Houston seems be benefitting from excess wind production in other areas of the state, many of which are at substantially negative cost. Why would anyone sell wind turbine power at negative cost? Wouldn't it make more sense to shut the turbine down and spare the maintenance? The answer is the subsidies. Many wind farms make much more from the subsidies than their actual function of providing power.
Negative cost given the infrastructural investment, or negative cost compared to maintenance? If you've already paid for and built your turbines, some loss is still better than total loss.
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Chile has clean air for the sun's rays to get through. India is a pollution hellhole with the sun being blocked out.
All the more reason for India to go solar, amirite?
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On their cars?
Indirectly, yes. Electric cars aren't moving all the time. You can charge them from solar panels when they're parked. Solar panels on the cars themselves would be a bonus.
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No, it mentions what the contract will pay per MWh. It doesn't mention the cost of generation at all. It's possible the company screwed up and will be losing money over the life of the contract.
Exactly. I find it amazing how many here continually confuse price with cost.
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Are you picturing that solar plants have significantly non-capital costs for some reason?
It's very easy to go from the capital costs and a capacity factor figure to the cost per MWh. And yes, ~$1.60/W is very competitive with fossil fuel generation. Just a fossil plant alone (which is a small fraction of the amortized costs - by far, most of the costs are fuel) costs nearly that much. They have higher capacity factors, and the ability to ramp makes their power more valuable, but it's not that much of a d
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Emerging needs developed needs (Score:2)
Aren't emerging market needs by definition significantly less than highly-developed industrialized market needs?
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I would guess the exact opposite. They have a much larger deficit in production, and need more both to bring them more inline with our consumption patterns, and also for construction of better infrastructure.
Think about the coal miners... (Score:2)
Re:Think about the coal miners... (Score:5, Informative)
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It's more than jobs - but the approach taken by the Democratic Party and many slashdotters of "eff" them.
Now that the Democratic Party has abandoned labor (we're not talking about gov't unions here but the New Deal labor coalition) they felt that nobody was listening. All the Dems were doing were offering them welfare and some worthless "retraing"program.
The final straw was when the Dem Party went against the pipelines and opposed fracking. That's jobs. It's not sendin
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All the Dems were doing were offering them welfare and some worthless "retraing" program.
George W. signed a $3,000 tax credit for adults to retrain for a different career after 9/11. I went back to community college to learn computer programming on that tax credit while working 60 hours a week as a video game tester. After I graduated with 4.0 GPA in my major, I went in IT support and pay more in taxes than I would if I haven't changed careers. I guess a retraining program isn't worthless if a Republican signs it into law.
Trump promises jobs. Wall Street jobs.
FTFY
Not necessarily coal jobs.
Tell that to the coal miners.
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>Trump promises
Any promises from him are worthless.
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Any promises from him are worthless.
Unless you're a member of The Friends of Putin Club.
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Oh for the love of god why don't you never Trumpers and snowflakes give it a rest already. Its over, Trump won. Time to make the best of the situation and work to make it a better place.
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Its over, Trump won.
The Electoral College haven't voted yet.
Time to make the best of the situation and work to make it a better place.
But you need people to constantly remind Trump — and the Republicans riding the hems of his pants — memento mori ("remember that you have to die").
Memento mori ("remember that you have to die") is a Latin expression, originating from a practice common in Ancient Rome; as a general came back victorious from a battle, and during his parade ("Triumph") received compliments and honors from the crowd of citizens, he ran the risk of falling victim to haughtiness and delusions of grandeur; to avoid it, a slave stationed behind him would say "Respice post te. Hominem te memento" ( "Look after you [to the time after your death] and remember you're [only] a man.").
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memento_mori [wikipedia.org]
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Give it a rest. You say asinine things in threads that have nothing to do with Trump or the election. Take it over to cnn or yahoo. Some us are tired of the constant whining showing up in these technical treads. At least stick your bitch'n to the political topics.
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Some us are tired of the constant whining showing up in these technical treads.
Slashdot exists to keep me amuse while I'm waiting for a script to finish running at work. Thank you for your participation.
At least stick your bitch'n to the political topics.
The topic is coal. Nothing is more political than King Coal is in America. Especially since so many coal miners believe that Trump will bring back millions of lost jobs for a dying — and unprofitable — industry.
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you are an idiot.
Re:Think about the coal miners... (Score:4, Insightful)
The Democrats don't have a better solution and they're not good at pretending to listen and pretending to have a solution. The Republicans don't have a solution, but they're masters at pretending they care and that they have an answer. Trump is going to wave his hands and make human labor more efficient than robots. He'll stop all of the cheap imports competing with US products and still keep prices at Wal Mart low. Sure, if they can just build that wall, the manufacturing and mining jobs in places where there are no Mexicans will come back. The robots will be put out to pasture and we'll start relying on human labor in manufacturing again.
Well, he's 100% in charge now, so it will be interesting to see what happens. I wouldn't bet against the fundamental rules of economics, though. Those have a pretty solid winning record, especially when you compare it to the record of politicians promising jobs.
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Instead of coming off like an idiot why don't you bother to look at the situation logically?
This is Slashdot. You must be new around here.
Trump is a businessman.
He's an epic failure of a businessman, running fast enough to stay ahead of his disasters. What kind of moron sets up three casinos to compete with each other in the same city, loses a billion dollar in a growing economy, and brags about screwing over everyone in involved?
So instead of whining like this why not just do it right?
As a moderate conservative, I voted for Hillary.
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So this is the real crux of the matter... who you voted for didn't win so you're going to resort to hyperbole and insults to "prove" your point?
What "hyperbole and insults" are you referring to? What point do you think I'm trying to "prove"?
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Let me guess, by "moderate conservative" you mean "Pro-Choice", "Amnesty for Illegal Aliens" and "Ban 'Assault Weapons'", right?
Reagan Democrat — fiscally conservative, socially liberal.
In the end, you violated your principles and still lost anyway.
That's why I changed my registration from Republican to Democratic last year. Not only did the GOP fielded the weakest candidates for president, they nominated someone who is neither a conservative nor a Republican. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, "I didn't leave the Republican Party, the Republican Party left me."
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But would you have really voted for Reagan over Carter or Mondale? I doubt it.
Reagan was before my time. I voted for Bush Sr. in 1988 and 1992. Dole in 1996. George W. in 2000 and 2004. I voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012 because John McCain stopped being a maverick and Mitt Romney pandered to the Tea Party crowd. When the 2016 GOP clown car came to town, I went Democratic to vote for Clinton in the primary race.
Socially liberal, registered Democrat votes for Clinton over Trump just doesn't have the same dramatic effect, does it?
On the Democratic side, no is giving me crap for being a moderate conservative or calling me a DINO (Democrat In Name Only). I rather be in a party where I'm welcomed than pis
Re:Think about the coal miners... (Score:5, Insightful)
He couldn't make money running casinos.
Think about that.
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China has a global monopoly on solar panel product (Score:2)
Say thanks to communist party for subsidising 60% of your next solar panel purchase.
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I don't see how the sunk costs are relevant.
The problem is massive fossil fuel subsidies (Score:2)
Subsidies for archaic expensive outmoded fossil fuels are the problem.
No cost for pollution.
Exemptions for older less efficient fossil fuel plants.
Subsidies for fossil fuel extraction on public and private lands at rates often 1/1000th what they would be in a capitalist non-taxpayer-subsidized market.
Exemptions from costs for oil spills and the ability to go bankrupt and let the taxpayer pay for the cleanup.
In the last three months the total solar generation of power in the US has literally DOUBLED. Because
Re:Cheaper than wind? (Score:5, Informative)
Now that's great. That's like saying you're now finally running faster than the kid in the wheelchair.
Wake me when it gets cheaper than fossil fuel.
Errrr reading the statement above says.... "But now unsubsidized solar is beginning to outcompete coal and natural gas on a larger scale"
Re:Cheaper than wind? (Score:5, Insightful)
Citation please (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't believe those fake news websites. I looked at multiple energy sources for my house and calculated out these:
Cite your sources or your numbers are meaningless and most likely fictitious. The numbers I've seen aren't even remotely close to that and you didn't bother to account for externalities like the cost of dealing with fossil fuel pollution.
Re:Citation please (Score:4, Informative)
The first clue for me is that his numbers for coal is lower than natural gas. That hasn't been true for years.
The EIA (Energy Information Administration) publishes costs for the total operation, maintenance, fuel, and total cost per kWh. [eia.gov]
The site uses "mills per kWh" - or thousandths of a dollar per kWh.
The total costs are: /kWh /kWh /kWh /kWh
Nuclear: 25.71 - 2.57
Fossil (Oil & Coal) 37.26 - 3.73
Hydroelectric 13.42 - 1.34
Gas Turbine (Natural Gas) 33.24 - 3.32
It doesn't cover solar, but the actual 2015 costs are nowhere near what whoever57 claimed.
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I realize the table may be confusing -- the first number is the mills/kWh -- you divide by 10 to get the cents per kWh.
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FTFY.
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Grid kWh costs are on a sliding scale since there is a base cost for the grid connection. If you use just a few kWh a month they will cost hundreds of cents each, easily more than locally generated power plus storage. And if you can't live without those kWh add in the cost for the backup generator.
Bill the grid infrastructure separately, then generation costs can compete on a fair basis at each particular time of the day. Local storage or backup generation is an unrelated issue.
Re:Cheaper than wind? (Score:5, Insightful)
Grid kWh costs are on a sliding scale since there is a base cost for the grid connection. If you use just a few kWh a month they will cost hundreds of cents each, easily more than locally generated power plus storage. And if you can't live without those kWh add in the cost for the backup generator.
Bill the grid infrastructure separately, then generation costs can compete on a fair basis at each particular time of the day. Local storage or backup generation is an unrelated issue.
As well, try getting them to instal a power line to your house if the place isn't already on a grid. Suddenly solar isn't just cheaper, it's mid bogglingly cheaper.
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You can believe all you want, but investments in solar and wind are sky-rocketing.the race between fossil and green is over, and won convincingly by solar and wind
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I've seen this "skyrocketing" in solar and wind investments and it is impressive. That is until you compare it to investments in coal, natural gas, and nuclear. The world is seeing considerable growth in energy production but very little of that growth comes from wind and solar.
I haven't checked lately but as I recall the growth of wind in the USA has been big in the recent past, big subsidies will do that. With the economy stagnating for the last five years or so the demand for energy is also stagnant.
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Big deal, showoff. I put solar panels on my sedan chair recently.
Re:Cheaper than wind? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, right now natural gas is kicking everyone's ass -- especially coal. That's why those coal mining jobs aren't coming back. It's also why the four nuclear plants under construction in the US were contracted out almost a decade ago and in two of the four cases had to receive federal loan guarantees from the Obama administration.
But this might not last forever. China is making a push to move into natural gas electricity generation, along with the rest of the advanced economies, and the US is just starting to export. The market for gas is still expanding, and in ten years time the price situation may be quite different.
Obama has been a very pro-gas president, but he's also tried to hedge his bets by encouraging alternative technologies. This is a wise course of action because you can't conjure a new technology out of thin air just when you need it.
Re:Cheaper than wind? (Score:5, Interesting)
I know this triggers cognitive dissonance, but Obama is, in fact, pro-fracking [dailycaller.com], much to the displeasure of his base. He does favor more regulation than the industry would prefer [nytimes.com], including regulations on worker safety and environmental impact.
It boils down to this: while burning more fossil fuel is bad for climate change, the growth of natural gas is largely at the expense of coal. Natural gas emits only half the net CO2 per BTU that coal does.
Clinton's plan was actually pretty good in this respect: continue the shift from coal to natural gas, but to hedge her bets with renewable technologies, locating renewable-related jobs in areas losing coal jobs. That's not as favorable to the coal miners as bringing back the glory days of coal, but the those days just aren't coming back. By 2020 the cost to generate a given amount of electricity with coal will be almost 1/3 higher than generating the same amount with natural gas. Even if you threw out all the safety and pollution regulations they aren't coming back, because you'd have to make coal 1/3 cheaper per BTU than gas before it could compete economically with gas plants, which are more efficient and cheaper to operate. You'd have to cut the price of coal by more than 1/2.
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The short answer is no. Gas is an alkane and water is an intrinsic byproduct of combusting alkanes. Coal is a rock, and therefore different everywhere you mine it, but mostly it consists of interlocking aromatic rings of carbon Burning the main component of coal emits no water.
If you're thinking this means gas might have a higher greenhouse impact than coal because water is a potent greenhouse gas, the short answer again is unfortunately, no.
The water from gas combustion would be a concern if water vapor
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That is an extraordinary piece of wishful thinking. The process you are talking about is physically possible of course, but I suspect the reason that cloud seeding has never been statistically shown to work is that the effect is marginal. You have to take into account that you're just adding what's happening already.
This is also why the water from hydrocarbon combustion is less significant than the CO2; there's already a lot of water in the atmosphere; there's not much CO2 (400 ppm). You have to consider
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This is my view as well. Despite its climate effects moving to natural gas at the present time is a net positive both economically, industrially, and environmentally, especially as it displaces other fossil fuels. However there are major problems awaiting us if we dive in too blindly. There's a lot of money to be made in fracking and this can corrupt a lot of the public decision making process.
Re:Cheaper than wind? (Score:5, Informative)
> Frequently they underestimate owner's costs and T&D in these comparisons and only look at simplistic
> models of construction labor/material and fuel costs
Fuel costs... for solar?
> I can tell you that natural gas combined cycle plants are still far cheaper to build and run than solar or wind.
They simply are not. They are certainly competitive, but in the last two years or so the CAPEX side for PV and wind has been plummeting. Here's a reasonably up-to-date listing:
https://www.lazard.com/media/2390/lazards-levelized-cost-of-energy-analysis-90.pdf
Look on page 11.
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I've seen my CFLs last for years. I installed 4 in my bedroom when I moved into my current house 7 years ago and so far I've replaced one. Typically I always had to replace incandescent bulbs a couple of times a year. I have CFLs and LED bulbs throughout my house except for some fancy incandescent bulbs in a chandelier and in the bathrooms. The only bulbs I've replaced this year are incandescent. I'd buy LED/CFL bulbs just for not having to get ladders out constantly. That alone makes them worthwhile.
Solars pretty cheap right now, actually (Score:3)
The reason solar is relatively inexpensive right now is because of Chinese panel manufacturing costs [washingtonpost.com], or lack of them.
With the planned 45% (or short-term 15%, if he can't convince congress) tariff [forbes.com], solar may not be cheaper for very long. And/or if China continues to be aggravated about Taiwan. [newyorker.com]
Well, not here in the US, anyway. They'll still be cheaper everywhere else. Unless China actually stops subsidizing its manufacturers.
Re:Solars pretty cheap right now, actually (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, trade wars are lovely. Especially when the other side counters with retaliatory penalties.
Even if the price reduction curve slows, there's no reason to expect it to stop or reverse. A large portion of the cost of solar farms is the logistics and installation; it's not simply directly proportional to the cost of panels. All aspects of the cost of solar have been falling.
Likewise, technology is not going to just freeze. Just a dozen kilometers from my land, for example, Silicor is planning to build the world's first full-scale plant using an aluminum-based technology to produce solar silicon. Rather than using volatiles like silicon tetrachloride, it's done entirely in the liquid phase. They make a molten aluminum/silicon alloy (using aluminum from the smelter across the fjord), then cool it, causing the silicon to precipitate out as a layer on the top, with most of the impurities left in the aluminum (where they're harmless). The "waste" aluminum, now containing some silicon, is actually a more valuable alloy than the raw aluminum that they purchase, and is sold. A bit of aluminum is left on the silicon, which is dissolved (along with an additional amount of residual impurities) with hydrochloric acid, leaving polyaluminum chloride - a chemical in demand in water purification. In short, there's no waste products; everything that would be "waste" is actually value-added. And the lack of the use of volatiles makes it a comparatively green process.
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I tried a few google searches, but clearly am not using the right keywords.
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Didn't try "silicor process [silicormaterials.com]", eh? ;)
Re: Solars pretty cheap right now, actually (Score:2)
Especially when the other side counters with retaliatory penalties.
Apparently you're unaware of a certain multi-decade trade imblance that completely moots your point but regardless, they're more than welcome to tax the shit out of our exports which would be.... what, shale oil and shitty movies??
US Exports (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently you're unaware of a certain multi-decade trade imblance that completely moots your point but regardless, they're more than welcome to tax the shit out of our exports which would be.... what, shale oil and shitty movies??
The US exports lots of stuff. Here [worldstopexports.com] are the top 10 categories of exports. Machines, electronics, aircraft, vehicles, oil, medical technology, plastics, gems/metals, pharmaceuticals, chemicals. The US is the second largest export economy in the world behind China. In 2014 the US exported roughly $1.45 Trillion in goods.
So Trump being the asshole he is promising to be and starting a trade war will hurt Boeing, Caterpillar, GM, Ford, Intel, etc. Not to mention all of us when the prices of everything goes up in the ensuing trade war. Tariffs do not make things better. They save a few jobs at the expense of most everyone else.
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The US exports lots of stuff. Here [worldstopexports.com] are the top 10 categories of exports. Machines, electronics, aircraft, vehicles, oil, medical technology, plastics, gems/metals, pharmaceuticals, chemicals. The US is the second largest export economy in the world behind China. In 2014 the US exported roughly $1.45 Trillion in goods
That may all be true, but neither the USA or China are anywhere near the top of the list [wikipedia.org] when it comes to exports per capita. That actually make a lot of sense though, as smaller economies are more likely to have certain industries that simply aren't present in them, and to have both larger imports and exports per capita than larger nations. At the end of the day, the exact number for exports doesn't really matter. What matters is, as was pointed out by Type44Q, whether you have a surplus or deficit. I don'
Re: Solars pretty cheap right now, actually (Score:2)
Most Chinese silicon is scrap from microchip production anyways. Even if subsidies are removed, China will still have world's Cheapest polysilicon.
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Being found to be subsidising, and actually subsidising is not always the same thing.
Dumping investigations are often more careful works of fiction with little basis in reality.
They are not careful forensic investigations of cost. Often they use rough guesses at what they think it would cost to make in an 'equivalent' open-market country.
http://www.chinalawblog.com/20... [chinalawblog.com]
US should quit whining and buy local (Score:2)
Re: Cheaper than wind? (Score:5, Interesting)
Wind has been cheaper than coal for 2 years with Solar only about a penny per/kw more. With solar approaching winds price both a far cheaper than even the cheapsest fossil fuel produced power in 100 year old (fully paid for coal plant). 4GWs of solarpower was installed last quarter and install rate is growing at 80%+ per year while prices are falling 20% per year for the last 6 years.
Whats funny to me is the jackasses that think solar and wind power are a partisan political issue, because they aren't.
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"Whats funny to me is the jackasses that think solar and wind power are a partisan political issue, because they aren't"
Please tell that to the jackasses in Congress.
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Whats funny to me is the jackasses that think solar and wind power are a partisan political issue, because they aren't.
To politicians, EVERYTHING is partisan!
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My local power coop is filling farm land in the country with solar panels. For miles and miles you can see solar panels where there used to be soybeans and cotton. It's staggering to see so many panels. When electrical coops are putting in so much solar you know it's inevitable. The best thing about it is that during the summer when it hits 100 degrees with 80% humidity and air conditioners are running wide open the solar panels are peaking as well so when they need power the most they generate the most
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Well done, completely misreading (or failing to read) TFA. TFA discusses recent bids to provide power being cost effective (cheap, in fact) now when comparing the cost of electricity produced (priced per MWh). All your guff about capacity factors is irrelevant when the article discusses actual wholesale prices for electricity.
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Well done, completely misreading (or failing to read) TFA. TFA discusses recent bids to provide power being cost effective (cheap, in fact) now when comparing the cost of electricity produced (priced per MWh). All your guff about capacity factors is irrelevant when the article discusses actual wholesale prices for electricity.
The article completely confuses cost and price. It was written by an idiot.
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Now that's great. That's like saying you're now finally running faster than the kid in the wheelchair.
Wake me when it gets cheaper than fossil fuel.
No, I think you are doing just fine asleep because I can see it works well for ya.
I'm curious - is fossil fuel going to last forever? Are you a disciple of the abiotic oil concept, where it is just created continuously so we'll never ever run out? Is this fuel something that politics creates?
That's the thing that is a little hard to understand where people strut around beating their chests and brag about how awesome fossil fuel is compared to all the other energy generating methods. It isn't going to
If we had a just carbon tax... (Score:3)
...say a carbon tax designed to recoup the many trillions of dollars that will need to be spent on adaptation to fossil-fuel-caused climate change and on compensation of whole climate-displaced populations and farmers, fishers etc and reconstruction of infrastructure destroyed in climate-change-induced wars... (such as Syria, Sudan,...)
then wind and solar would already be far cheaper than fossil-fuel energy.
We don't have such a tax or tax ramp plan, since the people who control the oil resource have most of
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...say a carbon tax designed to recoup the many trillions of dollars that will need to be spent on adaptation to fossil-fuel-caused climate change and on compensation of whole climate-displaced populations and farmers, fishers etc and reconstruction of infrastructure destroyed in climate-change-induced wars... (such as Syria, Sudan,...)
then wind and solar would already be far cheaper than fossil-fuel energy.
We don't have such a tax or tax ramp plan, since the people who control the oil resource have most of the money, and thus have most of the politicians, and have most of the voters who are subject to the messages in paid marketing and disinformation.
I'd be completely in favor of a carbon tax, except for the fact that the government would NEVER do the productive things you are talking about even if the corrupting influence of oil money wasn't a factor. They'd probably blow it all on some war somewhere (in the name of "peace" of course) and have nothing to show for it except maybe some additional excuses to erode our rights and civil liberties a little more.
Re:Great for 10% of the population (Score:5, Informative)
I can't comment much about your situation, as I don't know where you live. I can, however, say this in general.
* Intermittency is nothing new to grid operators; through the entire history of power generation, they've been having to deal with demand fluctuation and random losses of plants and lines. Hardware is, and always will be, built to the minimum needed to statistically guarantee a given level of uptime
* There have been many, many studies on the issue of high-renewables grids - here's an example [nature.com] covering cost analyses on wind + solar + HVDC + NG peaking (no power storage) using current technology only.
* A HVDC grid actually saves about three times more than it costs due to lower hardware (and thus capital) requirements for grid operators. While HVDC lines and conversion stations pose their own point of failure risks, overall they increase grid stability against localized failures, particularly cascading failures (AC sync failures don't cascade over HVDC). The stability benefits of HVDC links has led to the US to use a number of them even without long lines, just to connect different disjoint grids together (the lines are the cheap part, relatively - it's conversion stations that are expensive). HVDC provides baseload from Quebec hydro to the northeastern US. Europe and China both make heavy use of HVDC - Europe mainly for submarine links, China mainly for bringing power from the interior to the densely populated coast (plus some HVAC). Both have huge expansion plans.
* Large HVDC grids cause both timeshifting (aka, it's nighttime wind in on the east coast during the evening demand peak on the west and on the west coast during the morning rush in the east coast; likewise with solar shifting) and weather diversity (whenever a front is moving off the east, there's almost always a new one (or more) that has come in from the west).
* Solar and wind tend to run counter to each other. Wind peaks at night; solar in the day. High pressure zones create low winds and lots of sun; low pressure zones create high winds and little sun.
* Combined with NG peaking, these factors can provide a statistically guaranteed uptime with low power costs.
* All of this is based around there being no storage - which is a pessimistic assumption:
** Dirt cheap storage can be had by uprating hydro turbine houses, combined with the aforementioned HVDC grid. Hydro thus shifts from baseload to peaking. There's extensive hydro on both coasts that can be uprated.
** Pumped hydro - as standalone plants or as modifications to existing plants - can often be affordable, but depends entirely on local geography.
** Compressed air has gained some interest, although is not yet cost effective.
** Batteries used to be by far the most expensive option, but their prices too have been plummeting, to the point that li-ion is starting to make some grid penetration. There's not going to be some huge takeoff of it at current prices, but given that large scale production (gigafactory, etc) is expected to halve costs, that would seriously take off. There's other rival chemistries also seeking for the low cost per-Wh / per-W crown.
But, storage is not a necessity when you have peaking, source diversity, and geographic diversity with a modern, well-connected grid.
Re:Great for 10% of the population (Score:4, Informative)
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Wow, that's a lot to read. It also looks a lot like one of the "negawatts" talks from Amory Lovins. I've read and heard a lot of explanations like this one, where it sounds so detailed and researched at first that it just must be true. The problem is that while there is a lot of truth in what you say the plan you spell out will not work. Explaining why it will not work would require a post much longer than yours to address the many many small details that were hand waved over. I'll try to explain this
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> the frequencies blocked by the clouds are not the ones that PV cells are most efficient at collecting.
Uhhh, yes they are. PV is most efficient in red, and clouds block that just fine.
My panels have been going for six years now, they show a pretty much linear production with cloud percentage.
The temperature effects you note are minor in comparison, I can't even see them on my production charts, except for gross seasonable time frames.
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This person was making this same nonsense claim the last time the topic came up on Slashdot. I wrote a huge, long rebuttal. And here they are again, making the same ridiculous claim.
The short summary: UV is inefficiently used by solar panels and makes up only a few percent of solar radiation (and a fair chunk of it does get blocked by clouds, even if part of it makes it through); near-IR is readily blocked by clouds and is useless to solar panels; the temperature effect is small (as you note); and (again
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Cloud cover isn't necessarily a problem for solar, as the frequencies blocked by the clouds are not the ones that PV cells are most efficient at collecting. You'll see some decrease, but not as much as you might think. Add to that the fact that PV cells become a lot less efficient if they get too hot and sometimes cloudy days can generate more power than sunny ones: less light hits the cells, but they're more efficient at converting it to electricity.
I really don't understand how people keep peddling this absolutely false information. Whoever told you that is clueless. You'd be wise to question whatever they tell you, and stop repeating it because it makes you look clueless as well. I'm sure you just trusted the wrong source.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
"It was known since the 1950s, but due to political considerations, wasn't deployed. That's my version. "
Oh, you mean the Lawrence/Alvarez/Ghiorso MTA A-48? Whimsically named the Material Test Accelerator, originally designed to produce a gram of Neutrons a day, for... things..., it was later used to investigate "Burning" Nuclear Waste or "Breeding" Stockpile material, with a net positive Power Production.
The problem with the MTA was that getting all the Waste concentrated into a form capable of being irrad
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Mr. Fusion FTW!
You talk about nuclear reactors that can burn spent nuclear fuel and then mention fusion? I don't follow.
Fusion is an energy source that is 20 years away and always will be. What we do have are molten salt reactors, especially the liquid fluoride thorium reactor or LFTR. LFTR is a technology that is derived from a series of experiments with molten salts run from the 1950s to the 1970s. As you point out the politics got in the way since a few prominent Senators could not use molten salt reactors to buy t
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But it turns out that it's not easy building a viable Thorium reactor. There are a few ideas about how to build such a reactor, but there are still many engineering problems to overcome.
Just ask the Radioactive Boy Scout.
Oh. Wait. Is it too soon?
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Re:Any thoughts on Thorium? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Your an idiot.
LOL
Are they crazy?!?!? (Score:2, Funny)
If we move to solar, we will suck up all the sun's light! How will we see and keep warm?
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You should be careful about promising "free nucs [wikipedia.org]" on slashdot.
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I don't understand this. I've stood right underneath one on a windy day and it wasn't that much louder than the wind. Is the appearance the problem? I'd love some in my valley if they'd actually do something to reduce our extreme surface winds. Too bad they don't have as much of a reduction as one would like.
I've long been tempted to try to implement a low cost windbreak-turbine hybrid system, so that when you build a windbreak, you also get power from it - without it costing much more than traditional
Re:Solar now competitive with coal and gas? (Score:5, Interesting)
There are lots of places in the world that are not the US, and don;'t have the same subsidy system you have. Wind and PV are doing even better there, mostly because they don't have entrenched billionaires like the Koch brothers spending millions of dollars to convince you it's all a plot.
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Sure, right as soon as we cut all subsidies to the non-renewables. And since we have ethanol in our gas, that means all farming subsidies too. It'll be epic. Epic fail, but epic nonetheless!
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Here's some names and dates, which appear to be specific to energy companies:
link 1 [theguardian.com]
link 2 [sourcewatch.org]
link 3 [eia.gov]
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First link is, again, the generic "subsidies" without saying WHAT the subsidies are (at least for the US). The second talks about loans to "clean coal" (green) approaches, as well as letting municipal (Government) power companies to sell bonds. The third? It is about Federal power agencies (BPA, TVA, etc) buying from public (Government) utilities first, and for providing loans to clean energy companies.
When you dig into it, you'll find that the "subsidies" that go to "Big Oil" and "Big Coal" amount to ta
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Stop confusing people with facts.
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The first link (a fairly long article I admit) then links to an official gov.uk document that explains the purpose of the subsidies. Here's an excerpt from the introduction:
Petroleum revenue tax reduction
Who is likely to be affected?
Oil and gas companies that operate in the UK or on the UK Continental Shelf (UKCS).
[...]
Policy objective
This package of measures supports the government’s objective of providing the right
conditions for business investment to maximise the economic recovery of the UK’
YES oil IS subsidized. Stop being an idiot. (Score:5, Informative)
And those subsidies are? I keep hearing about them, but all I ever get is some handwaving and "tax breaks" which are available to ALL companies, not just energy companies...
You mean besides the oil wars in the middle east that have cost trillions of dollars and caused the deaths of millions?
Besides the CO2 that's increasing Earth's greenhouse effect?
Besides the environmental damage (mining, oil spills, contaminated water supplies, fracking chemicals getting everywhere, etc) that never seems to get cleaned up?
Yeah, because besides all of those externalized costs, there are subsidies totaling around $30 billion per year! https://www.eia.gov/analysis/r... [eia.gov]
Is that enough? Can we stop denying that fossil fuels are subsidized now? I'm tired of hearing this argument. Do some research instead of parroting that tired myth FFS.
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Interestingly, this article [forbes.com] is intended to debunk the existence of oil and gas subsidies, but then fails to actually debunk some of them.
It claims that Master Limited Partnerships affect people across the board. But in fact, to qualify as an MLP, a group has to have over 90% of its business in natural resource or real estate. So you could say this subsidy affects real estate as well as oil and gas, but it's hardly across the board.
It says that some would consider reduced royalties on Federal lands to be a s