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> It is very likely that many industries will move to places where solar power is especially abundant and inexpensive. I suspect over time the cost of producin

> It is very likely that many industries will move to places where solar power is especially abundant and inexpensive. I suspect over time the cost of producing solar electricity will become negligible against the cost of storage. The key thing will be not so much the lower levels of sun which you get in temperate latitudes, but the variation you get between Summer and Winter levels of insolation, which means you have to maintain backup generation. Variation within a day you can deal with, variation from season to season will be much more difficult. But as you say that is going to drive some interesting changes in geopolitics.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
beat 11y ago
Sufficient storage to handle local load + variation should be pretty well predictable in the future. The interesting difference to me is, since storage will probably cost substantially more than generation, what the ratio will mean for cost of energy in various locations. I have no doubt that at some point, the solar generation + storage formula will be broadly cheaper than fossil fuel.
- Retric 11y ago
  Very large scale storage is fairly cheap as long as it's used every day. The issue is when your pumped storage power plant is only needed 1 month out of the year. However, with solar the daily demand for storage is fairly fixed as excess capacity is all generated at the same time of day.
  - beat 11y ago
    That's just an overcapacity problem (in this case, overcapacity on generation, not storage). In another post here, I proposed that we build a smart grid that supports pricing arbitrage on generation/storage in order to maximize generation utilization, and then let the market sort out storage requirements with a more distributed, fine-grained storage model - car batteries, for example.
epistasis 11y ago
> the variation you get between Summer and Winter levels of insolation The obvious thing to do is just size the solar array for the winter insolation levels, since the solar part is likely to be so much cheaper than the storage part. Also, don't forget wind, which is also super cheap at the good sites. It will balance out some of the seasonal shift, and also a good amount of the night time needs. This all depends on cross-continent interconnects, and energy markets. The entrenched interests are going to resist mightily to anything that might cost them even a cent, and they control the laws to lock out competition. I view interconnects as important an issue as the interstate system. It will enable so much innovation and drive down costs quite a bit.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

beat 11y ago

Sufficient storage to handle local load + variation should be pretty well predictable in the future. The interesting difference to me is, since storage will probably cost substantially more than generation, what the ratio will mean for cost of energy in various locations. I have no doubt that at some point, the solar generation + storage formula will be broadly cheaper than fossil fuel.

Retric 11y ago
Very large scale storage is fairly cheap as long as it's used every day. The issue is when your pumped storage power plant is only needed 1 month out of the year. However, with solar the daily demand for storage is fairly fixed as excess capacity is all generated at the same time of day.
- beat 11y ago
  That's just an overcapacity problem (in this case, overcapacity on generation, not storage). In another post here, I proposed that we build a smart grid that supports pricing arbitrage on generation/storage in order to maximize generation utilization, and then let the market sort out storage requirements with a more distributed, fine-grained storage model - car batteries, for example.

epistasis 11y ago

> the variation you get between Summer and Winter levels of insolation The obvious thing to do is just size the solar array for the winter insolation levels, since the solar part is likely to be so much cheaper than the storage part. Also, don't forget wind, which is also super cheap at the good sites. It will balance out some of the seasonal shift, and also a good amount of the night time needs. This all depends on cross-continent interconnects, and energy markets. The entrenched interests are going to resist mightily to anything that might cost them even a cent, and they control the laws to lock out competition. I view interconnects as important an issue as the interstate system. It will enable so much innovation and drive down costs quite a bit.