11 ms·

For the future of solar, we’ve got the tech – it’s the economics

65 points by shawndumas 11y ago

afarrell 11y ago
> Basore also noted that you can meet some of the evening surge simply by pointing photovoltaic panels to the west instead of the south. But since all electricity is priced equally, everyone tries to point theirs south for maximum productivity. Does California not use Location Based Marginal Pricing like New York, New England, and Texas?
- mikeyouse 11y ago
  We do; http://www.caiso.com/pages/pricemaps.aspx http://www.caiso.com/pages/pricemaps.aspx Not sure how the pricing varies over time, but the data is available at least.
maxerickson 11y ago
I think if the economics don't work out you can make an argument that you don't actually have the tech. Which is why there are all those people working on storage technology.
- lukeschlather 11y ago
  Economic costs of switching are always higher than maintenance costs. Solar can totally be good enough to stand on its own while not being good enough to justify de-commissioning perfectly good power plants.
  - 001sky 11y ago
    but its not good enough, then thats like saying a stone wheel would be good enough if we didn't have pneumatic/michelin tires anything is good enough when its the only option
    - jerf 11y ago
      "anything is good enough when its the only option" No, it really isn't. If it costs more than it generates, it's not good enough. That's why the power plants were built as they were in the first place; a lot of them date from when a solar installation simply couldn't pay itself back, ever.
      - 001sky 11y ago
        costs and revenues don't happen in a vaccuum, thats what your missing. they are relative prices, and only make sense in the context of a menu of choice (or:none). a stone wheel is brilliant technology, just like the bronze or iron age weapon was way back in history. but today its only useful (or not) in the context of current alternatives.
roymurdock 11y ago
> The biggest challenge with going to half renewables is overgeneration. The state receives power from a number of sources that simply can't be shut down—combined heat and power systems and nuclear plants, for example. Layered on top of that are renewable sources like solar that generate power whether you want them to or not. What? The biggest problem is the cost of storage, not the fact that the underlying technology is not yet efficient enough to compete with non-renewables cost wise? Can someone please summarize and explain this article to me? I saw no data, and there was no serious discussion of the underlying technology or economics of solar power.
- mtgx 11y ago
  Indeed. The biggest "problem" right now is storage, but anyone saying it's too big of a problem that won't be overcome soon would be as foolish as saying solar can't take off 6 years ago...which is apparently what the International Energy Agency did say then, and its estimates were overshot by 9x. > At that point the International Energy Agency (IEA) was still predicting that solar power would struggle to reach 20 gigawatts by now. Few could have foretold that it would in fact explode to 180 gigawatts. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11958916/Paris-climate-deal-to-ignite-a-90-trillion-energy-revolution.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11958916/Paris-... Battery storage for solar power plants and even homes is going to explode over the next 5 years.
- jws 11y ago
  "Overgeneration" is not a problem with photovoltaic panels. You simply open circuit the panel and let it sit. In my own off grid solar installation I routinely fill my batteries, and after doing any high power tasks, like vacuum the rugs, the panels just go idle. To a grid connected system it means you can't sell your power during the solar peaks, but it also means that you have enough capacity to sell more power during the edges of the solar periods. Certainly any business which invests in long lived capital equipment would like to operate it at 100% capacity all the time, but most industries realize this doesn't happen. Solar will adjust. For off grid people "excess" capacity means getting by better on partly cloudy days. I'll probably double my capacity next spring for just this reason.
melling 11y ago
Forty years later and solar is still the future.... Now we're only 15 years away. That's about the period of time it took humans to learn how to fly then break the sound barrier. I like the observation that it's about the economics because it's always about economics. If solar could have had a consumer product like personal computers, cell phones, or big screen TVs, we would be using a lot more solar today. There was nothing to bootstrap the industry. No Intel of solar energy was ever created.
- maxerickson 11y ago
  Cell phones weren't really a mass market product until sometime around 2000. Then almost everyone had them by 2010. (In the US anyway, but I guess they weren't so widespread in Europe in 1990 either, so it has an at least similar adoption profile.) So it could be that the moment for solar is still coming. I guess there is a good chance that a consumer storage product tips the scales, if people buy storage to save money on grid power, they benefit from incrementally installing solar even in the absence of net metering.
  - melling 11y ago
    Yes, I wasn't saying that it's not going to happen, it's just that it's taking an incredible amount of time. Once cell phones took off there was an arms race to build a supercomputer in your pocket. That R&D will carry over to wearables, which will fuel more R&D. Solar seems to be on its own little island without anything to drive it into the mainstream. If some sort of affordable consumer product existed, that could drive research.
- maxxxxx 11y ago
  It took humans from 1903 to 1947 to break the sound barrier. That's a little more than 15 years.
  - melling 11y ago
    You need to add in the other number. Let me rephrase: "40 years later and solar is still the future.... Now we're only 15 years away." For some context, the President of the United States wanted to stress solar energy in the 1970's: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/carter-white-house-solar-panel-array/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/carter-white-house... We could probably dig up a few issues of Popular Sciences
diafygi 11y ago
I work in solar, and here's some quick facts: 1. 1 out of 78 jobs created in the U.S. last year were solar jobs[1]. 2. There are more solar employees in California than utility employees[2]. 3. Soft costs (non-hardware) are 64% of the installed cost of solar[3]. 4. Solar is expected to reach a load defection point (i.e. cheaper to leave the grid) in most places in the next 10-15 years[4]. Like OP's article states, this industry's hardware has gotten so good, the software in the industry hasn't kept up. So much so, in fact, that an entire startup accelerator program in the bay area, Powerhouse[5], has been created to try and attract tech entrepreneurs into the solar industry to make the next generation of solar software. My startup recently went through the program, and being a part of this industry is one of the most empowering and rewarding things I've ever done. It's one of those extremely rare instances where you can have a solid business model and a positive impact on the world. And we need all the help it can get. Solar expected to grow 100-200x over the next 25 years[6], but it won't happen if smart people don't join in. If you're a tech entrepreneur, and want to do something that matters, please please please consider doing a startup in solar. [1]: http://energy.gov/eere/articles/1-78-new-jobs-america-solar-job http://energy.gov/eere/articles/1-78-new-jobs-america-solar-... [2]: http://www.calseia.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=231 http://www.calseia.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=art... [3]: http://energy.gov/eere/sunshot/reducing-non-hardware-costs http://energy.gov/eere/sunshot/reducing-non-hardware-costs [4]: http://blog.rmi.org/blog_2015_04_07_report_release_the_economics_of_load_defection http://blog.rmi.org/blog_2015_04_07_report_release_the_econo... [5]: https://powerhouse.solar/ https://powerhouse.solar/ [6]: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-23/the-way-humans-get-electricity-is-about-to-change-forever http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-23/the-way-hu...
- AnkhMorporkian 11y ago
  I feel point 2 is a bit misleading. That solar count includes all solar manufacturing jobs. Utility companies don't engage in manufacturing, so the comparison doesn't really seem to have any utility, if you'll pardon the horrible pun. If you included all coal, natural gas, oil, and other non-renewable equipment manufacturing, I'm positive they'd beat solar by quite a margin.
  - 11y ago
aidenn0 11y ago
Come on Ars; Giga-Watts of storage? I expect that from other places reporting on energy, but I thought you knew better.
- surrealize 11y ago
  I had the same thought. The article does mention pumped hydro storage though. And for that, watts (the capacity of the turbines/generators) is a relevant figure of merit just as watt-hours (the capacity of the reservoir) is. The article does use watts kind of indiscriminately, though.
laotzu 11y ago
Solar is not cost effective on the scale of dollars. That doesn't mean it's not cost effective though. The dollar is a debt-based system which means when something is bought with a dollar that thing is assumed to be owned and loaned by someone. No one owns the sun, it's free and basically infinite. Oil is the commodity which creates the most demand for and thus the most value out of the dollar. 6 of the 7 richest companies in the world in terms of revenue are oil and gas companies. So with all things considered the cost effectiveness of solar power to the dollar is not a valid comparison because what you are basically doing is comparing the cost benefit of solar for oil production and the ability to create debt. >Even after all this time the Sun never says to the Earth, "You owe me." Look what happens with a love like that, it lights the whole sky. -Hafez
- roymurdock 11y ago
  It takes time and money (among other resources) to convert the energy emitted by the sun into a form that we can use. Are you suggesting that we should not pay the companies who do the conversion, routing, and storage of this energy because nobody owns the sun?
  - laotzu 11y ago
    No
MilnerRoute 11y ago
Electric cars look better all the time - and maybe even more electric mass transit. I mean, this article talks a lot about "overproduction" - how the grid gets taxed by massive daytime spikes in production on sunny days. But it seems like if the problem really is going to be "too much electricity", then maybe green vehicle designers can find ways to put all that "clean" energy to good use.
ta20101029 11y ago
Want to help solve this puzzle? Genability is building software to stay ahead of the utilities and save energy consumers money through clean energy on day 1. And we're hiring: http://genability.com/careers/work_with_us.html http://genability.com/careers/work_with_us.html
benplumley 11y ago
> a staggering 20GW of overproduction > the recent drought Desalination is normally shot down for being very wasteful of energy, but given the energy can't otherwise be stored and California seems in constant drought, are there any reasons why isn't it a viable use of the surplus energy in this scenario?
- ethbro 11y ago
  I think this will probably be a major energy sink going forward, as we've never really had to find a use for "surplus electricity" on this scale before. Moreover though, I think the general class of chemical storage is likely to be another winner. Reversible reactions in liquid provide so many benefits: modest infrastructure costs (compared to anything but pumped hydro) and scalability in terms of both throughput (more reactors in parallel) and capacity (additional tank volume).
  - epistasis 11y ago
    I agree! For example, vanadium redox flow batteries are looking pretty great for grid storage lately, with estimates of storage costs below $0.20/kWh stored. As I understand it, that's more than the daily price fluctuation in some markets. Far more cycles than lithium ion and a wider range of operating temperatures. And I think we're just skimming the surface with flow batteries (pun not intended). There's a massive amount of potential for new materials here.
- aidenn0 11y ago
  In California, it's not just the energy that's the issue, it's the coastal commission, which is very stingy about giving out de-sal permits.
pjc50 11y ago
For hard data, it's hard to beat http://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ http://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ - has anyone built an equivalent for their own country? You can see that although wind is broken out to its own meter, solar is not yet broken out. The effect of solar so far is a small dip in noonday demand. The daily high point is about 6pm at the moment, as the end of the working day overlaps it getting dark here. From the rest of the graphs you can see gas and coal ramping up and down over the course of the day. Gas is capable of fairly rapid response. At the peak, the pumped storage (Dinorwig) is turned on. Until rooftop solar pushes daytime net demand below the 4am current demand low, I don't think we need to panic about storage. The government policy on subsidies is incoherent; subsidies for renewables are being cut, but the Hinkley Point C nuclear deal includes an obligation to buy the power at a price far above market or renewable levels. Personally I have 3.8kW of panels on my roof. At some point I'll go and have a look at the data logger and see what conclusions to draw.
- secabeen 11y ago
  The California Grid Operator has a similar page for our state: https://www.caiso.com/outlook/outlook.html https://www.caiso.com/outlook/outlook.html
  - mikeyouse 11y ago
    Cool link.. For people on Chrome, if you have the same issue as I did seeing the charts, there's a little Shield icon in the address bar that prevents the loading of 'unsafe scripts'. I'd never seen that before so it took me a minute to figure out why nothing was showing up.

65 points by shawndumas 11y ago

> Basore also noted that you can meet some of the evening surge simply by pointing photovoltaic panels to the west instead of the south. But since all electricity is priced equally, everyone tries to point theirs south for maximum productivity. Does California not use Location Based Marginal Pricing like New York, New England, and Texas?

mikeyouse 11y ago
We do; http://www.caiso.com/pages/pricemaps.aspx http://www.caiso.com/pages/pricemaps.aspx Not sure how the pricing varies over time, but the data is available at least.

maxerickson 11y ago

I think if the economics don't work out you can make an argument that you don't actually have the tech. Which is why there are all those people working on storage technology.

lukeschlather 11y ago
Economic costs of switching are always higher than maintenance costs. Solar can totally be good enough to stand on its own while not being good enough to justify de-commissioning perfectly good power plants.
- 001sky 11y ago
  but its not good enough, then thats like saying a stone wheel would be good enough if we didn't have pneumatic/michelin tires anything is good enough when its the only option
  - jerf 11y ago
    "anything is good enough when its the only option" No, it really isn't. If it costs more than it generates, it's not good enough. That's why the power plants were built as they were in the first place; a lot of them date from when a solar installation simply couldn't pay itself back, ever.
    - 001sky 11y ago
      costs and revenues don't happen in a vaccuum, thats what your missing. they are relative prices, and only make sense in the context of a menu of choice (or:none). a stone wheel is brilliant technology, just like the bronze or iron age weapon was way back in history. but today its only useful (or not) in the context of current alternatives.

roymurdock 11y ago

> The biggest challenge with going to half renewables is overgeneration. The state receives power from a number of sources that simply can't be shut down—combined heat and power systems and nuclear plants, for example. Layered on top of that are renewable sources like solar that generate power whether you want them to or not. What? The biggest problem is the cost of storage, not the fact that the underlying technology is not yet efficient enough to compete with non-renewables cost wise? Can someone please summarize and explain this article to me? I saw no data, and there was no serious discussion of the underlying technology or economics of solar power.

mtgx 11y ago
Indeed. The biggest "problem" right now is storage, but anyone saying it's too big of a problem that won't be overcome soon would be as foolish as saying solar can't take off 6 years ago...which is apparently what the International Energy Agency did say then, and its estimates were overshot by 9x. > At that point the International Energy Agency (IEA) was still predicting that solar power would struggle to reach 20 gigawatts by now. Few could have foretold that it would in fact explode to 180 gigawatts. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11958916/Paris-climate-deal-to-ignite-a-90-trillion-energy-revolution.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11958916/Paris-... Battery storage for solar power plants and even homes is going to explode over the next 5 years.
jws 11y ago
"Overgeneration" is not a problem with photovoltaic panels. You simply open circuit the panel and let it sit. In my own off grid solar installation I routinely fill my batteries, and after doing any high power tasks, like vacuum the rugs, the panels just go idle. To a grid connected system it means you can't sell your power during the solar peaks, but it also means that you have enough capacity to sell more power during the edges of the solar periods. Certainly any business which invests in long lived capital equipment would like to operate it at 100% capacity all the time, but most industries realize this doesn't happen. Solar will adjust. For off grid people "excess" capacity means getting by better on partly cloudy days. I'll probably double my capacity next spring for just this reason.

melling 11y ago

Forty years later and solar is still the future.... Now we're only 15 years away. That's about the period of time it took humans to learn how to fly then break the sound barrier. I like the observation that it's about the economics because it's always about economics. If solar could have had a consumer product like personal computers, cell phones, or big screen TVs, we would be using a lot more solar today. There was nothing to bootstrap the industry. No Intel of solar energy was ever created.

maxerickson 11y ago
Cell phones weren't really a mass market product until sometime around 2000. Then almost everyone had them by 2010. (In the US anyway, but I guess they weren't so widespread in Europe in 1990 either, so it has an at least similar adoption profile.) So it could be that the moment for solar is still coming. I guess there is a good chance that a consumer storage product tips the scales, if people buy storage to save money on grid power, they benefit from incrementally installing solar even in the absence of net metering.
- melling 11y ago
  Yes, I wasn't saying that it's not going to happen, it's just that it's taking an incredible amount of time. Once cell phones took off there was an arms race to build a supercomputer in your pocket. That R&D will carry over to wearables, which will fuel more R&D. Solar seems to be on its own little island without anything to drive it into the mainstream. If some sort of affordable consumer product existed, that could drive research.
maxxxxx 11y ago
It took humans from 1903 to 1947 to break the sound barrier. That's a little more than 15 years.
- melling 11y ago
  You need to add in the other number. Let me rephrase: "40 years later and solar is still the future.... Now we're only 15 years away." For some context, the President of the United States wanted to stress solar energy in the 1970's: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/carter-white-house-solar-panel-array/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/carter-white-house... We could probably dig up a few issues of Popular Sciences

diafygi 11y ago

I work in solar, and here's some quick facts: 1. 1 out of 78 jobs created in the U.S. last year were solar jobs[1]. 2. There are more solar employees in California than utility employees[2]. 3. Soft costs (non-hardware) are 64% of the installed cost of solar[3]. 4. Solar is expected to reach a load defection point (i.e. cheaper to leave the grid) in most places in the next 10-15 years[4]. Like OP's article states, this industry's hardware has gotten so good, the software in the industry hasn't kept up. So much so, in fact, that an entire startup accelerator program in the bay area, Powerhouse[5], has been created to try and attract tech entrepreneurs into the solar industry to make the next generation of solar software. My startup recently went through the program, and being a part of this industry is one of the most empowering and rewarding things I've ever done. It's one of those extremely rare instances where you can have a solid business model and a positive impact on the world. And we need all the help it can get. Solar expected to grow 100-200x over the next 25 years[6], but it won't happen if smart people don't join in. If you're a tech entrepreneur, and want to do something that matters, please please please consider doing a startup in solar. [1]: http://energy.gov/eere/articles/1-78-new-jobs-america-solar-job http://energy.gov/eere/articles/1-78-new-jobs-america-solar-... [2]: http://www.calseia.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=231 http://www.calseia.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=art... [3]: http://energy.gov/eere/sunshot/reducing-non-hardware-costs http://energy.gov/eere/sunshot/reducing-non-hardware-costs [4]: http://blog.rmi.org/blog_2015_04_07_report_release_the_economics_of_load_defection http://blog.rmi.org/blog_2015_04_07_report_release_the_econo... [5]: https://powerhouse.solar/ https://powerhouse.solar/ [6]: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-23/the-way-humans-get-electricity-is-about-to-change-forever http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-23/the-way-hu...

AnkhMorporkian 11y ago
I feel point 2 is a bit misleading. That solar count includes all solar manufacturing jobs. Utility companies don't engage in manufacturing, so the comparison doesn't really seem to have any utility, if you'll pardon the horrible pun. If you included all coal, natural gas, oil, and other non-renewable equipment manufacturing, I'm positive they'd beat solar by quite a margin.
- 11y ago

aidenn0 11y ago

Come on Ars; Giga-Watts of storage? I expect that from other places reporting on energy, but I thought you knew better.

surrealize 11y ago
I had the same thought. The article does mention pumped hydro storage though. And for that, watts (the capacity of the turbines/generators) is a relevant figure of merit just as watt-hours (the capacity of the reservoir) is. The article does use watts kind of indiscriminately, though.

laotzu 11y ago

Solar is not cost effective on the scale of dollars. That doesn't mean it's not cost effective though. The dollar is a debt-based system which means when something is bought with a dollar that thing is assumed to be owned and loaned by someone. No one owns the sun, it's free and basically infinite. Oil is the commodity which creates the most demand for and thus the most value out of the dollar. 6 of the 7 richest companies in the world in terms of revenue are oil and gas companies. So with all things considered the cost effectiveness of solar power to the dollar is not a valid comparison because what you are basically doing is comparing the cost benefit of solar for oil production and the ability to create debt. >Even after all this time the Sun never says to the Earth, "You owe me." Look what happens with a love like that, it lights the whole sky. -Hafez

roymurdock 11y ago
It takes time and money (among other resources) to convert the energy emitted by the sun into a form that we can use. Are you suggesting that we should not pay the companies who do the conversion, routing, and storage of this energy because nobody owns the sun?
- laotzu 11y ago
  No

MilnerRoute 11y ago

Electric cars look better all the time - and maybe even more electric mass transit. I mean, this article talks a lot about "overproduction" - how the grid gets taxed by massive daytime spikes in production on sunny days. But it seems like if the problem really is going to be "too much electricity", then maybe green vehicle designers can find ways to put all that "clean" energy to good use.

ta20101029 11y ago

Want to help solve this puzzle? Genability is building software to stay ahead of the utilities and save energy consumers money through clean energy on day 1. And we're hiring: http://genability.com/careers/work_with_us.html http://genability.com/careers/work_with_us.html

benplumley 11y ago

> a staggering 20GW of overproduction > the recent drought Desalination is normally shot down for being very wasteful of energy, but given the energy can't otherwise be stored and California seems in constant drought, are there any reasons why isn't it a viable use of the surplus energy in this scenario?

ethbro 11y ago
I think this will probably be a major energy sink going forward, as we've never really had to find a use for "surplus electricity" on this scale before. Moreover though, I think the general class of chemical storage is likely to be another winner. Reversible reactions in liquid provide so many benefits: modest infrastructure costs (compared to anything but pumped hydro) and scalability in terms of both throughput (more reactors in parallel) and capacity (additional tank volume).
- epistasis 11y ago
  I agree! For example, vanadium redox flow batteries are looking pretty great for grid storage lately, with estimates of storage costs below $0.20/kWh stored. As I understand it, that's more than the daily price fluctuation in some markets. Far more cycles than lithium ion and a wider range of operating temperatures. And I think we're just skimming the surface with flow batteries (pun not intended). There's a massive amount of potential for new materials here.
aidenn0 11y ago
In California, it's not just the energy that's the issue, it's the coastal commission, which is very stingy about giving out de-sal permits.

pjc50 11y ago

For hard data, it's hard to beat http://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ http://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ - has anyone built an equivalent for their own country? You can see that although wind is broken out to its own meter, solar is not yet broken out. The effect of solar so far is a small dip in noonday demand. The daily high point is about 6pm at the moment, as the end of the working day overlaps it getting dark here. From the rest of the graphs you can see gas and coal ramping up and down over the course of the day. Gas is capable of fairly rapid response. At the peak, the pumped storage (Dinorwig) is turned on. Until rooftop solar pushes daytime net demand below the 4am current demand low, I don't think we need to panic about storage. The government policy on subsidies is incoherent; subsidies for renewables are being cut, but the Hinkley Point C nuclear deal includes an obligation to buy the power at a price far above market or renewable levels. Personally I have 3.8kW of panels on my roof. At some point I'll go and have a look at the data logger and see what conclusions to draw.

secabeen 11y ago
The California Grid Operator has a similar page for our state: https://www.caiso.com/outlook/outlook.html https://www.caiso.com/outlook/outlook.html
- mikeyouse 11y ago
  Cool link.. For people on Chrome, if you have the same issue as I did seeing the charts, there's a little Shield icon in the address bar that prevents the loading of 'unsafe scripts'. I'd never seen that before so it took me a minute to figure out why nothing was showing up.