29 ms·

World Energy Hits a Turning Point: Solar That's Cheaper Than Wind

785 points by Osiris30 10y ago

transfire 10y ago
If perovskite pans out -- and it is starting to look like it will -- then solar is about to get a lot cheaper still. See https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161020142037.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161020142037.h...
spiderfarmer 10y ago
>In early May, speaking before a cheering West Virginia crowd filled with miners wearing hard hats or holding “Trump Digs Coal” signs, the then-Republican nominee pledged: “Get ready because you’re going to be working your asses off.” Guess not.
- omegaworks 10y ago
  He'll just give coal a huge tax incentive like he gave Carrier. He has no problems spending other people's money to prop up market failures, especially when it makes him look good. Just ask the creditors that funded his Atlantic City boondoggle.
  - adventured 10y ago
    What huge tax incentives? $7 million over 10 years for 1,100 jobs. Those jobs are worth half a billion dollars in income over ten years. That income generates local, state and federal taxes and supports the local economy. If the pittance of $700k per year was a clincher, it's beyond a good deal in every possible regard.
    - tasty_freeze 10y ago
      Why didn't Pence do that years ago then? It also wasn't 1,100 jobs. And there is no promise that those jobs will remain for 10 years.
      - 234dd57d2c8db 10y ago
        Maybe Trump is just actually good at negotiating like you'd expect a NY real-estate mogul to be. He might say dumb stuff but you have to admit, it isn't easy succeeding the Manhattan 5th ave. type real-estate.
        woodandsteel 10y ago
        The problem is he is a real-estate mogul. Manufacturing is a whole different thing.
- aaron695 10y ago
  An implication you do not like Trump is uninsightful and OT. An implication Trump doesn't like clean energy is uninsightful and OT. The, us against them (in this case miners, not exactly the 1%) is not healthy and OT.
  - Analemma_ 10y ago
    > The, us against them (in this case miners, not exactly the 1%) is not healthy and OT. Yeah, it sure is frustrating when people don't help promote social stability by refusing to love your preferred leader isn't it? Welcome to our lives for the last eight years, when we've had to hear about how "divisive" Obama is, as evidenced by the fact that people don't like him because he's so divisive.
  - kibwen 10y ago
    Trump is the president-elect, and it's our civic duty to call out elected officials making misleading or outlandish claims, just like we've been calling out Obama for his stance on surveillance and whistleblowing for years now. This is especially true for the long-debunked claim that coal jobs can be brought back, despite the perpetual coal pandering of every politician under the sun. And I say that as someone who spent the first two decades of his life in Appalachia, though mine was a crumbling former oil town rather than a crumbling former coal town.
    - aaron695 10y ago
      > Trump is the president-elect Last I checked he is not. Elections were years ago and we don't have presidents. And now we are wildly off topic on what might have been an interesting topic, can solar beat wind.
orf 10y ago
Thank god, this can't come soon enough.
koheripbal 10y ago
This does not include storage costs to offset the cyclic nature of solar.
- greglindahl 10y ago
  For smallish amounts of solar, you need stabilization but not storage -- when it's sunny, there's more air conditioning usage. For large amounts of solar, sure, there's a lot of work to be done on storage.
  - dexwiz 10y ago
    Sun doesn't shine for ~50% time everyday.
    - Naritai 10y ago
      That would only be relevant if demand curves had a duty cycle of 50%. As OP mentions, in the warm parts of the world demand peaks during sunny times (thanks to AC), so there is good alignment.
    - manicdee 10y ago
      Demand for electricity is not at peak for 90% of the day.
    - floatrock 10y ago
      Solar and wind make up 2-3% of energy produced in the US. We can still make huge improvements just doubling a few times to bring it to 33% before talking about a 100% renewable grid. (Though some people have said that a 100% renewable grid is still achievable within reasonable economic conditions.)
    - CalChris 10y ago
      Yes but peak demand is 9PM in the evening. Wind is down at that time as well. http://energyclub.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/kavousian-2.png http://energyclub.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/ka... Solar+wind don't have to provide 100% of the mix. They has to reduce the daytime fossil fuel generation.
chris_va 10y ago
Renewable energy accounting is shady (no pun intended). This is more accurate (original source EIA): http://www.safremaenergy.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/LCOE-2018.png http://www.safremaenergy.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/LCOE... ... and also why natural gas will always win, and why coal is getting shut down.
- DesiLurker 10y ago
  seriously! thats from EIA their entire focus is on traditional not renewable sources. plus its misleading to quote prices from 2013 knowing fully well renewables have made a lot of cost reduction owing to economies of scale in last few years. its only going to accelerate further.
- greglindahl 10y ago
  This prices carbon at $0/ton, right? Lots of big energy companies are not making that assumption.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  Can you explain more about what is shady in the auctions mentioned in the article? To me they seem to be market derived prices rather than accounting shenanigans.
  - ucaetano 10y ago
    Converting from MW to MWh is complicated for intermittent renewables. For a gas-fired plant you usually get 95+% of the installed capacity as firm production. For hydro, 50%-60% on average, depending on the profile of the reservoir and rainfall. For solar it can be 10% to 20%, for wind 20% to 40%. The accounting gets complicated when you include the fact that you can't dispatch or even precisely predict those sources, so you're only able to offer it because there are other sources (hydro, gas, etc.) which you can turn down on demand to accommodate and compensate for the intermittent renewable. Also, $/MW isn't comparable across sources due to the facts above, the price that really matters is the long-term $/MWh average, which the parent post provided. [Edit] Some of the terms I used might not match the appropriate technical terms in English, when I worked in energy it wasn't in an English-speaking country, so my apologies.
sdornan 10y ago
This is such good news. Can't wait until we abandon fossil fuels altogether.
gns24 10y ago
Solar and wind are so different that comparing them doesn't really make any sense. Generally a combination is optimal. The news in this article though is that solar prices have tumbled in the last few years - whereas wind prices have declined at a more expected rate. Comparing the photo-voltaic capacity installed in 2016 with wind capacity is a bit misleading, as wind typically has a much higher capacity factor than solar - so the 59GW of wind will almost certainly produce more electricity than the 70GW of solar.
- philipkglass 10y ago
  Utility scale solar projects, the majority of which in the US now use single axis tracking, attain significantly higher capacity factors than rooftop installations. There's still a wind advantage but I wouldn't say its CF is "much" higher. The EIA measured the capacity factors for US utility scale wind and PV respectively at 32.2% and 25.8% in 2015: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_6_07_b https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cf... Wind still has a capacity factor advantage, but at 59 GW and 70 GW, multiplying by those above capacity factors, wind and large scale PV would be nearly matched for real output (18.998 real GW and 18.06 real GW respectively). Somewhere like Germany the real-output gap between wind and solar would be greater while in India I'd expect it to be lesser, due to relatively poor wind resources. (In fact single-axis PV might actually beat wind on capacity factor in India.)
  - davedx 10y ago
    Keep in mind wind CF's are still increasing as the world moves more to offshore wind farms with taller turbine heights. See for example the new Burbo Bank extension off Liverpool. Dong Energy tweeted me this when asked about their Vestas CF's there: https://twitter.com/DONGEnergy/status/775692082497351680 https://twitter.com/DONGEnergy/status/775692082497351680 "In general it is fair to assume a capacity factor of app. 50% for new wind farms at good sites."
    - mikeyouse 10y ago
      One of my favorite charts: http://i.imgur.com/UUy8Xvz.png http://i.imgur.com/UUy8Xvz.png For the 4.5GW of wind installations that came online in 2014, the average capacity factor is above 40%. For 1/6 of the projects, they're above 45%. When we go to 140+ meter hub heights, NREL expects the best projects to have capacity factors of 60-65%: http://i.imgur.com/ebfPQYD.jpg http://i.imgur.com/ebfPQYD.jpg Nuclear obviously kills that with 92+% factors, but coal and natural gas plants are right there near 60%.. we're really on the precipice in the best possible way.
barney54 10y ago
Saying that solar is less expensive than nat gas is misleading. It's and apples to oranges comparison. To make a valid comparison you need to compare solar + batteries to natural gas. There is value to electricity production that has an on/off switch because it helps keep the grid stable.
- DesiLurker 10y ago
  with grid tie-in your grid is the battery.
- philipkglass 10y ago
  At modest levels of penetration it doesn't matter much that solar is non-dispatchable. There's already enough spare capacity in the system that you don't need to build backup specifically for solar. Consider, for example, the tens-of-gigawatts CAISO demand gap between 3:00 AM in April and 6:00 PM on the hottest day of August. The system already had to be ready for the peak-demand situation. Adding solar to the grid doesn't require new dispatchable backup capacity until penetration rises significantly. The backup capacity that was there before solar is a sunk cost. You might as well say that calling nat gas cheaper than solar is misleading because a valid comparison would require carbon capture and storage on the fossil plants.
  - barney54 10y ago
    Solar did not help meet peak demand today in California: http://www.caiso.com/Pages/TodaysOutlook.aspx http://www.caiso.com/Pages/TodaysOutlook.aspx Nor does solar help meet peak demand for 2/3rds of the year because peak demand comes after the sun goes down. Solar can help during some summer days, but for much of the year it makes the system less efficient by requiring more ramping up and down of other generation resources.
    - teach 10y ago
      Once we get our Tesla Powerwall batteries, that should help with peak demand, no?
josephg 10y ago
This is a really great mini-documentary about solar from May this year. They talk about the tumbling price and interview investors and manufacturers in China. The eye opening moment for me was the fact that they already have 2M people in China manufacturing panels, and production is still ramping up. It looks like solar is starting to become an inevitability. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmyrbKBZ6SU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmyrbKBZ6SU
- api 10y ago
  ... until import tariffs with China end the solar revolution here.
  - jacobush 10y ago
    But then it will be cost efficient to mine coal, and America will be great again!
  - mtgx 10y ago
    Good thing Tesla is going to manufacture its panels in the US.
  - infinite8s 10y ago
    There is still the rest of the world...
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    Lots of places around the world not the US. Those buyers will continue to drag the price of solar down. The US election doesn't mean a thing for the energy market. We'll be dragged along with the rest of the world by market forces.
    - jacobolus 10y ago
      Furthermore, there is a world market for other energy sources, which are all somewhat fungible. So if solar takes off around the world, fossil fuel demand will slack and prices will continue to drop making their extraction less viable. Hopefully we also start to see some significant replacement of fossil fuels used for transportation.
xt00 10y ago
The good thing about solar is that it leverages off the semiconductor industry, whereas other renewables do not. For example, in the case of smartphones, before they existed accelerometers and GPS IC's were crazy expensive, but now they are cheap. Solar probably has years and years to go before it is as cheap as possible. I would not be surprised if solar hits $0.10/watt in 10 years. Basically because as the demand picks up and money is being made, more companies will be saying, "if we can just increase our efficiency by 20% or so, we can lower the price and win huge contracts.." so they will be trying things like multilayers, changing the structure to improve efficiency as the panel heats up, coatings, lenses, etc that can all be done in low cost ways. Definitely would be interesting to compare how much it costs to run/maintain a solar farm vs. a natural gas power plant. Basically you have to deliver the fuel to the plant, maintain all the stuff, pay for the workers to make sure stuff doesn't blow up, etc. Seems like with a solar farm you basically need a guy with a truck and a leaf blower.
- philipkglass 10y ago
  The big difference between solar PV and microelectronics is that there's very little miniaturization achievable in PV. More power requires more area; light conversion efficiency increases only slowly over time. The sunlight-to-electricity conversion efficiency of common solar cells has not even doubled since 1980. There's less than a factor of 4 left between the efficiency of panels you can buy for your rooftop today and the maximum efficiency permitted by the laws of nature. That's quite a difference from the past trajectory of microelectronics, where Moore's Law doubled efficiency over and over. That's also the short explanation for why companies with deep experience in microelectronics manufacturing, like Intel, TSMC, or Texas Instruments, did not come to dominate solar PV manufacturing. PV is a very different game. It's about producing huge quantities of doped silicon wafers with little patterning across their surfaces. However, it is true that PV has made enormous strides in reducing manufacturing costs, though aggressive miniaturization was not how it was done. In sunny regions PV now has the lowest O&M costs of any new-build electricity source.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
jfoutz 10y ago
I have high hopes for ARES [1]. just a heavy train on a hill with a regenerative break. Add lots of tracks, multiple trains per track, solar above the rails. Avoids needing all the water for pumped hydro storage. none of toxic stuff to deal with when batteries have reached their end of life. Zero carbon emission (aside from whatever is required for manufacturing) is just hugely appealing. If solar prices continue as they have for another 3-5 years, the question is going to be pretty clear, how do we store all of this insanely cheap power. I'm a little mystified we're not taxing carbon emissions and subsidizing storage. But hey, there are clearly powerful forces at play, that don't agree with me. [1] http://www.aresnorthamerica.com/ http://www.aresnorthamerica.com/
- james0001 10y ago
  I disagree with you but I don't think I'm one of those powerful forces
- leereeves 10y ago
  Sounds like a good idea, but i do worry about how much overcapacity in energy storage would be required to handle the worst case scenario (a significant, extended drop in wind and solar output).
  - aaronblohowiak 10y ago
    You can use natural gas for backup on demand energy generation. It isn't all or nothing.
    - leereeves 10y ago
      And who pays for the backup on demand energy generation when it isn't in use?
      - bainsfather 10y ago
        The same people who pay for it now, the consumers. Electricity grids have massive 'problems' with balancing themselves as demand varies throughout the day. Currently there are e.g. open cycle gas turbines on standby - they are paid a retainer in return for always being available, plus are price per MWh when they are generating. For the UK you can see them http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk, also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Grid_Reserve_Service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Grid_Reserve_Service
mentos 10y ago
"The average monthly cost of living in the United States for a single adult with two children is $4,820. This adds up to an average annual cost of living of $57,851." What would the cost of living fall to if energy costs were $0?
- gedy 10y ago
  Gov't and business will never let costs go to zero
- kctess5 10y ago
  I'm not sure, but that will never happen unfortunately. The support infrastructure always comes with cost.
  - giarc 10y ago
    Perhaps the commentor is thinking rooftop solar.
- philipkglass 10y ago
  A decent rule of thumb is that the cost of residential electricity is half for transmission and distribution, half for generation. So save 50% on your home power bill if electricity became free to generate but still had to be delivered from centralized plants. If household solar and small-scale storage get ridiculously cheap, grid defection may be cheaper than buying large-scale renewable output from the grid, but utility scale solar plants can generate more real output per nominal watt and cost less to build per nominal watt. Unless your local electricity system's history is weird (unneeded grid capacity built in Australia being paid for by households, Energiewende that shifted costs away from big industrial customers and toward individuals in Germany) then grid defection probably won't be the lowest-cost option in the next 5 years.
  - ZeroGravitas 10y ago
    On the topic of grid defection, in some areas where gas heating for homes is common, there is a move to stop hooking new houses up to the gas grid, instead having all heating and cooking done via electricity. That adds another interesting angle on these calculations, since not hooking up in the first place is obviously cheaper than hooking it up and then not using it.
wernercd 10y ago
Whoa with the common sense and basic math... Common core has neither of them and you might confuse the liberals.
- dang 10y ago
  Please don't post unsubstantive comments, and please keep partisan politics and name-calling off HN. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13190490 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13190490 and marked it off-topic.
nannePOPI 10y ago
Do solar panels produce more energy that the amount required to create and operate them? (including mining the materials)
- armenarmen 10y ago
  No one ever really likes to provide these numbers. Hopefully they are a net gain, but I'm a bit skeptical
- proee 10y ago
  In doing a quick google search on this question, it seems to be "YES". Payback is in the 4 year range where the service life of the panel is in the 20-plus year range.
- philipkglass 10y ago
  Yes: http://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/9/8/622/htm http://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/9/8/622/htm Energy pay-back time (EPBT) results for fixed-tilt ground mounted installations range from 0.5 years for CdTe PV at high-irradiation (2300 kWh/(m^2·yr)) to 2.8 years for sc-Si PV at low-irradiation (1000 kWh/(m^2·yr)), with corresponding quality-adjusted energy return on investment (EROIPE-eq) values ranging from over 60 to ~10. If you want to see other publications on the same topic, try hitting Google Scholar with search terms "photovoltaic" "life cycle" "energy payback". For the most accurate results, restrict your search to recent years. Manufacturing processes are revised rapidly and studies from the turn of the millennium are now badly obsolete. (Though even in 1990 PV systems were net energy positive on average; the worry that PV system manufacturing consumes more energy than the lifetime output appears to be a holdover from the very early (1970s) days of terrestrial PV systems.)
  - ars 10y ago
    I'm skeptical of your numbers. With such a quick payback time you'd expect to see solar power going up like crazy. (Like how wind was being installed quite fast for a while - although only in the best spots.) Except you don't, you just see limited installations here and there. If solar power has such a quick payback period why aren't more investment groups funding it? Are the panels not available in sufficient quantity?
downandout 10y ago
Comparing the costs of two renewables is like comparing the cost of a new Mercedes to a new BMW: both are great to have, but neither one is affordable for most of the world. "World energy" has not "hit a turning point," though this kind of misleading headline seems to be the norm at Bloomberg. One expensive thing became a little less expensive than the other expensive thing. It doesn't change the fact that in most of the world, neither solar nor wind is even remotely competitive with conventional sources. Hopefully they are one day, but today is not that day.
- piotrkaminski 10y ago
  The article claims that today is that day, at least for new installations: > That’s record-cheap electricity—roughly half the price of competing coal power.
  - virmundi 10y ago
    Storage not included. To run an AC in Florida at night you'd burn through a Tesla wall unit in a few hours. You want that AC at night. So you'll need probably 3-5. At $8k per unit, $24k-$40k total. I like solar. I like wind. I like the grid because the best way to handle the power storage from over production during the day is in a centralized fashion.
    - kuschku 10y ago
      Or you just insulate your house and use heat exchangers with controlled airflow to avoid the need for any AC at all. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_house https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_house
      - bzbarsky 10y ago
        That Wikipedia article explicitly says that making this concept work in a tropical climate (we're talking Florida, right?) is so far an unsolved problem, and that the one example in Louisiana does in fact have an AC. Not needing AC by having decent insulation in Germany or Scandinavia (which is where most passive houses are located) is a _much_ easier problem than not needing AC in Florida. Of course not needing _heating_ is a big problem there, and is what the passive house designs are mostly aiming to deal with.
giis 10y ago
Just couple of days I saw this documentary by national geographic about world's largest solar power plant in India completed in ~8 months. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM-0lrIxCnE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM-0lrIxCnE
LeanderK 10y ago
i am really happy that the "green" energy production is in such a price war. It's Solar vs. Wind not Solar vs. Coal. I don't care what's cheaper as long as it's not Coal!
- noselasd 10y ago
  There is sadly a fix for that, which is to lift carbon tax and relax requirements for having carbon sequestration systems - and coal would be quite cheap again.
  - stevenleeg 10y ago
    Why would we ever do that? Remember that the untaxed price of coal isn't a real price for it. Without a tax the market does not take the externality of its environmental effect into an account. Economically speaking, a high tax on coal/other fossil fuels is simply forcing the market to consider its full and actual price.
    - noselasd 10y ago
      > Why would we ever do that? I don't know, but there is soon to be a new president who says he wants to support the coal industry.
    - harmegido 10y ago
      I'm very confused by this conversation. What taxes are you guys talking about? They don't exist as far as I'm aware. I am aware of some subsidies, but not taxes on specifically carbon/coal/etc.
      - drited 10y ago
        I'd guess he's talking about this: http://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/ets_en http://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/ets_en P.S. I agree about the comment regarding negative externalities not being accounted for unless something like this is in place.
  - 10y ago
sunrisetofu 10y ago
I think flow battery technology will be a viable grid storage option, it makes sense in terms of scale, simplicity and durability
XorNot 10y ago
The really interesting thing here is what this means for all the coal-warriors making their resurgence (or thinking they will): they're not going to find investors for new plants. If solar is cheaper, and scales well (i.e. you can just keep deploying it, pretty much anywhere, and have it get cheaper the more you do) then all the smart money is going to go to building as much PV as quickly as possible. There'll be no one willing to invest in coal-plants because they'll be looking at the on-going costs, looking at the up-front costs, placement issues, build-times, risk of actual action on carbon pricing and saying "you know what, let's build out solar instead".
- jartelt 10y ago
  This scenario is already playing out and it's largely due to market forces. More people are employed in the solar industry now than are employed by the coal industry. Simply put, coal in the US is dead because it can't compete with gas, solar, and wind. That is why it is silly when people say we need to prop up the coal industry. We would much better off by just training those workers to install solar panels or become wind turbine technicians because there is actually a growing market there.
  - huherto 10y ago
    ... and solar panel installation (and maintenance) cannot be outsourced.
  - bagacrap 10y ago
    Coal working jobs are more dangerous but pay much more than solar panel installation. The issue the coal workers and uneducated middle class have faced recently is a loss in earning potential (with existing skill set) moreso than absolute unemployment. The internet suggests the average hourly pay is $23 for coal to $16 for solar installers. That's a big hair cut, plus solar installers likely have to live in or closer to cities, generally increasing cost of living and providing one more obstacle that makes it hard to switch careers.
davidf18 10y ago
Interestingly, everything organic is already powered by solar energy so by far, solar is probably the greatest energy source on the planet. The Photosynthesis enzyme in plant leaves captures photons that are converted to electrons with energy stored chemically in carbohydrates. Animals eat the chemical energy created by plants as well as other animals. Animals use oxygen to oxidize the carbohydrates to create energy.
dmccunney 10y ago
Back in the early 70's, I worked for a government (HUD/ERDA) sponsored project to promote alternative energy use. It was the first flowering of OPEC, gas prices at the pump were rising over (gasp!) $1/gallon, and there was a sudden massive interest in reducing dependence on foreign oil. What my shop was pushing was using solar collectors to heat hot water. That was about 20% of the average residential energy bill, had a relatively low up front cost, and a relatively short payback period. We were aware of and tracked a variety of alternative energy sources including photovoltaics, but expected them to get niche pickup at best because they were simply too expensive. To a large extent, that's still the case. Another point to note is that energy usage isn't just electricity. Back then, a national energy budget divided roughly into quarters, with industrial heating and cooling, residential/light commercial heating and cooling, transportation, and electricity making up the demand. The total amount of energy consumed is rather larger, but that breakdown is still pretty much the same. I don't see solar electric power addressing things like heavy duty heating and cooling, nor most transportation. One thing I got convinced of back then is that the form of energy used will be the cheapest that will do the job. Energy from fossil fuel still predominates because it is still cheapest. Solar is still essentially a niche market, though growing, and lower costs are the driver. I was grimly amused a while back over the woes of Solyndra, an effort to create large scale photovoltiac production in the US, that got about half a billion in government funding. The underlying notion was creation of US jobs. Photovoltaics is semi-conductor electronics, the Chinese jumped in with both feet, and started turning out solar cells at prices domestic producers couldn't match. In fact, some Chinese producers came to grief. They dove in based on demand estimates that were unfounded, produced a glut on the market, far lower prices for buyers, and failures among firms that were late to the manufacturing party. Solyndra couldn't compete. People went on about US jobs, and I thought "Drive on the NJ Turnpike, and every other pole has a solar cell array generating power to help run the Turnpike. Somebody has the contract to design, produce, install and maintain those arrays, and those jobs by nature will be local. Decreasing costs for the raw materials used to produce the arrays made it possible to sell the end products cheaper, and increased the demand. The Chinese can do it cheapest and can have solar cell production. The money is in moving up the value chain and making things people will buy that use those solar cells." I'm delighted to see solar electricity costs dropping to the reported levels, but anyone who sees it as a solution for overall energy woes isn't looking at a big enough picture. ______ Dennis
dmccunney 10y ago
Back in the early 70's, I worked for a government (HUD/ERDA) sponsored project to promote alternative energy use. It was the first flowering of OPEC, gas prices at the pump were rising over (gasp!) $1/gallon, and there was a sudden massive interest in reducing dependence on foreign oil. What my shop was pushing was using solar collectors to heat hot water. That was about 20% of the average residential energy bill, had a relatively low up front cost, and a relatively short payback period. We were aware of and tracked a variety of alternative energy sources including photovoltaics, but expected them to get niche pickup at best because they were simply too expensive. To a large extent, that's still the case. Another point to note is that energy usage isn't just electricity. Back then, a national energy budget divided roughly into quarters, with industrial heating and cooling, residential/light commercial heating and cooling, transportation, and electricity making up the demand. The total amount of energy consumed is rather larger, but that breakdown is still pretty much the same. I don't see solar electric power addressing things like heavy duty heating and cooling, nor most transportation. One thing I got convinced of back then is that the form of energy used will be the cheapest that will do the job. Energy from fossil fuel still predominates because it is still cheapest. Solar is still essentially a niche market, though growing, and lower costs are the driver. I was grimly amused a while back over the woes of Solyndra, an effort to create large scale photovoltiac production in the US, that got about half a billion in government funding. The underlying notion was creation of US jobs. Photovoltaics is semi-conductor electronics, the Chinese jumped in with both feet, and started turning out solar cells at prices domestic producers couldn't match. In fact, some Chinese producers came to grief. They dove in based on demand estimates that were unfounded, produced a glut on the market, far lower pricers for buyers, and failures among firms that were late to the manufacturing party. People went on about US jobs, and I thought "Drive on the NJ Turnpike, and every other pole has a solar cell array generating power to help run the Turnpike. Somebody has the contract to design, produce, install and maintain those arrays, and those jobs by nature will be local. Decreasing costs for the raw materials used to produce the arrays made it possible to sell the end products cheaper, and increased the demand. The Chinese can do it cheapest and can have solar cell production. The money is in moving up the value chain and making things people will buy that use those solar cells." I'm delighted to see solar electricity costs dropping to the reported levels, but anyone who sees it as a solution for overall energy woes isn't looking at a big enough picture. ______ Dennis
_Codemonkeyism 10y ago
Coal town Trump voters come to mind.
mirimir 10y ago
OK, I can't resist: http://www.northeast.railfan.net/ashley_planes.html http://www.northeast.railfan.net/ashley_planes.html http://www.mtn-top-hs.org/ashley_planes.htm http://www.mtn-top-hs.org/ashley_planes.htm

785 points by Osiris30 10y ago

If perovskite pans out -- and it is starting to look like it will -- then solar is about to get a lot cheaper still. See https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161020142037.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161020142037.h...

spiderfarmer 10y ago

>In early May, speaking before a cheering West Virginia crowd filled with miners wearing hard hats or holding “Trump Digs Coal” signs, the then-Republican nominee pledged: “Get ready because you’re going to be working your asses off.” Guess not.

omegaworks 10y ago
He'll just give coal a huge tax incentive like he gave Carrier. He has no problems spending other people's money to prop up market failures, especially when it makes him look good. Just ask the creditors that funded his Atlantic City boondoggle.
- adventured 10y ago
  What huge tax incentives? $7 million over 10 years for 1,100 jobs. Those jobs are worth half a billion dollars in income over ten years. That income generates local, state and federal taxes and supports the local economy. If the pittance of $700k per year was a clincher, it's beyond a good deal in every possible regard.
  - tasty_freeze 10y ago
    Why didn't Pence do that years ago then? It also wasn't 1,100 jobs. And there is no promise that those jobs will remain for 10 years.
    - 234dd57d2c8db 10y ago
      Maybe Trump is just actually good at negotiating like you'd expect a NY real-estate mogul to be. He might say dumb stuff but you have to admit, it isn't easy succeeding the Manhattan 5th ave. type real-estate.
      - woodandsteel 10y ago
        The problem is he is a real-estate mogul. Manufacturing is a whole different thing.
aaron695 10y ago
An implication you do not like Trump is uninsightful and OT. An implication Trump doesn't like clean energy is uninsightful and OT. The, us against them (in this case miners, not exactly the 1%) is not healthy and OT.
- Analemma_ 10y ago
  > The, us against them (in this case miners, not exactly the 1%) is not healthy and OT. Yeah, it sure is frustrating when people don't help promote social stability by refusing to love your preferred leader isn't it? Welcome to our lives for the last eight years, when we've had to hear about how "divisive" Obama is, as evidenced by the fact that people don't like him because he's so divisive.
- kibwen 10y ago
  Trump is the president-elect, and it's our civic duty to call out elected officials making misleading or outlandish claims, just like we've been calling out Obama for his stance on surveillance and whistleblowing for years now. This is especially true for the long-debunked claim that coal jobs can be brought back, despite the perpetual coal pandering of every politician under the sun. And I say that as someone who spent the first two decades of his life in Appalachia, though mine was a crumbling former oil town rather than a crumbling former coal town.
  - aaron695 10y ago
    > Trump is the president-elect Last I checked he is not. Elections were years ago and we don't have presidents. And now we are wildly off topic on what might have been an interesting topic, can solar beat wind.

orf 10y ago

Thank god, this can't come soon enough.

koheripbal 10y ago

This does not include storage costs to offset the cyclic nature of solar.

greglindahl 10y ago
For smallish amounts of solar, you need stabilization but not storage -- when it's sunny, there's more air conditioning usage. For large amounts of solar, sure, there's a lot of work to be done on storage.
- dexwiz 10y ago
  Sun doesn't shine for ~50% time everyday.
  - Naritai 10y ago
    That would only be relevant if demand curves had a duty cycle of 50%. As OP mentions, in the warm parts of the world demand peaks during sunny times (thanks to AC), so there is good alignment.
  - manicdee 10y ago
    Demand for electricity is not at peak for 90% of the day.
  - floatrock 10y ago
    Solar and wind make up 2-3% of energy produced in the US. We can still make huge improvements just doubling a few times to bring it to 33% before talking about a 100% renewable grid. (Though some people have said that a 100% renewable grid is still achievable within reasonable economic conditions.)
  - CalChris 10y ago
    Yes but peak demand is 9PM in the evening. Wind is down at that time as well. http://energyclub.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/kavousian-2.png http://energyclub.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/ka... Solar+wind don't have to provide 100% of the mix. They has to reduce the daytime fossil fuel generation.

chris_va 10y ago

Renewable energy accounting is shady (no pun intended). This is more accurate (original source EIA): http://www.safremaenergy.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/LCOE-2018.png http://www.safremaenergy.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/LCOE... ... and also why natural gas will always win, and why coal is getting shut down.

DesiLurker 10y ago
seriously! thats from EIA their entire focus is on traditional not renewable sources. plus its misleading to quote prices from 2013 knowing fully well renewables have made a lot of cost reduction owing to economies of scale in last few years. its only going to accelerate further.
greglindahl 10y ago
This prices carbon at $0/ton, right? Lots of big energy companies are not making that assumption.
maxerickson 10y ago
Can you explain more about what is shady in the auctions mentioned in the article? To me they seem to be market derived prices rather than accounting shenanigans.
- ucaetano 10y ago
  Converting from MW to MWh is complicated for intermittent renewables. For a gas-fired plant you usually get 95+% of the installed capacity as firm production. For hydro, 50%-60% on average, depending on the profile of the reservoir and rainfall. For solar it can be 10% to 20%, for wind 20% to 40%. The accounting gets complicated when you include the fact that you can't dispatch or even precisely predict those sources, so you're only able to offer it because there are other sources (hydro, gas, etc.) which you can turn down on demand to accommodate and compensate for the intermittent renewable. Also, $/MW isn't comparable across sources due to the facts above, the price that really matters is the long-term $/MWh average, which the parent post provided. [Edit] Some of the terms I used might not match the appropriate technical terms in English, when I worked in energy it wasn't in an English-speaking country, so my apologies.

sdornan 10y ago

This is such good news. Can't wait until we abandon fossil fuels altogether.

gns24 10y ago

Solar and wind are so different that comparing them doesn't really make any sense. Generally a combination is optimal. The news in this article though is that solar prices have tumbled in the last few years - whereas wind prices have declined at a more expected rate. Comparing the photo-voltaic capacity installed in 2016 with wind capacity is a bit misleading, as wind typically has a much higher capacity factor than solar - so the 59GW of wind will almost certainly produce more electricity than the 70GW of solar.

philipkglass 10y ago
Utility scale solar projects, the majority of which in the US now use single axis tracking, attain significantly higher capacity factors than rooftop installations. There's still a wind advantage but I wouldn't say its CF is "much" higher. The EIA measured the capacity factors for US utility scale wind and PV respectively at 32.2% and 25.8% in 2015: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_6_07_b https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cf... Wind still has a capacity factor advantage, but at 59 GW and 70 GW, multiplying by those above capacity factors, wind and large scale PV would be nearly matched for real output (18.998 real GW and 18.06 real GW respectively). Somewhere like Germany the real-output gap between wind and solar would be greater while in India I'd expect it to be lesser, due to relatively poor wind resources. (In fact single-axis PV might actually beat wind on capacity factor in India.)
- davedx 10y ago
  Keep in mind wind CF's are still increasing as the world moves more to offshore wind farms with taller turbine heights. See for example the new Burbo Bank extension off Liverpool. Dong Energy tweeted me this when asked about their Vestas CF's there: https://twitter.com/DONGEnergy/status/775692082497351680 https://twitter.com/DONGEnergy/status/775692082497351680 "In general it is fair to assume a capacity factor of app. 50% for new wind farms at good sites."
  - mikeyouse 10y ago
    One of my favorite charts: http://i.imgur.com/UUy8Xvz.png http://i.imgur.com/UUy8Xvz.png For the 4.5GW of wind installations that came online in 2014, the average capacity factor is above 40%. For 1/6 of the projects, they're above 45%. When we go to 140+ meter hub heights, NREL expects the best projects to have capacity factors of 60-65%: http://i.imgur.com/ebfPQYD.jpg http://i.imgur.com/ebfPQYD.jpg Nuclear obviously kills that with 92+% factors, but coal and natural gas plants are right there near 60%.. we're really on the precipice in the best possible way.

barney54 10y ago

Saying that solar is less expensive than nat gas is misleading. It's and apples to oranges comparison. To make a valid comparison you need to compare solar + batteries to natural gas. There is value to electricity production that has an on/off switch because it helps keep the grid stable.

DesiLurker 10y ago
with grid tie-in your grid is the battery.
philipkglass 10y ago
At modest levels of penetration it doesn't matter much that solar is non-dispatchable. There's already enough spare capacity in the system that you don't need to build backup specifically for solar. Consider, for example, the tens-of-gigawatts CAISO demand gap between 3:00 AM in April and 6:00 PM on the hottest day of August. The system already had to be ready for the peak-demand situation. Adding solar to the grid doesn't require new dispatchable backup capacity until penetration rises significantly. The backup capacity that was there before solar is a sunk cost. You might as well say that calling nat gas cheaper than solar is misleading because a valid comparison would require carbon capture and storage on the fossil plants.
- barney54 10y ago
  Solar did not help meet peak demand today in California: http://www.caiso.com/Pages/TodaysOutlook.aspx http://www.caiso.com/Pages/TodaysOutlook.aspx Nor does solar help meet peak demand for 2/3rds of the year because peak demand comes after the sun goes down. Solar can help during some summer days, but for much of the year it makes the system less efficient by requiring more ramping up and down of other generation resources.
  - teach 10y ago
    Once we get our Tesla Powerwall batteries, that should help with peak demand, no?

josephg 10y ago

This is a really great mini-documentary about solar from May this year. They talk about the tumbling price and interview investors and manufacturers in China. The eye opening moment for me was the fact that they already have 2M people in China manufacturing panels, and production is still ramping up. It looks like solar is starting to become an inevitability. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmyrbKBZ6SU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmyrbKBZ6SU

api 10y ago
... until import tariffs with China end the solar revolution here.
- jacobush 10y ago
  But then it will be cost efficient to mine coal, and America will be great again!
- mtgx 10y ago
  Good thing Tesla is going to manufacture its panels in the US.
- infinite8s 10y ago
  There is still the rest of the world...
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  Lots of places around the world not the US. Those buyers will continue to drag the price of solar down. The US election doesn't mean a thing for the energy market. We'll be dragged along with the rest of the world by market forces.
  - jacobolus 10y ago
    Furthermore, there is a world market for other energy sources, which are all somewhat fungible. So if solar takes off around the world, fossil fuel demand will slack and prices will continue to drop making their extraction less viable. Hopefully we also start to see some significant replacement of fossil fuels used for transportation.

xt00 10y ago

The good thing about solar is that it leverages off the semiconductor industry, whereas other renewables do not. For example, in the case of smartphones, before they existed accelerometers and GPS IC's were crazy expensive, but now they are cheap. Solar probably has years and years to go before it is as cheap as possible. I would not be surprised if solar hits $0.10/watt in 10 years. Basically because as the demand picks up and money is being made, more companies will be saying, "if we can just increase our efficiency by 20% or so, we can lower the price and win huge contracts.." so they will be trying things like multilayers, changing the structure to improve efficiency as the panel heats up, coatings, lenses, etc that can all be done in low cost ways. Definitely would be interesting to compare how much it costs to run/maintain a solar farm vs. a natural gas power plant. Basically you have to deliver the fuel to the plant, maintain all the stuff, pay for the workers to make sure stuff doesn't blow up, etc. Seems like with a solar farm you basically need a guy with a truck and a leaf blower.

philipkglass 10y ago
The big difference between solar PV and microelectronics is that there's very little miniaturization achievable in PV. More power requires more area; light conversion efficiency increases only slowly over time. The sunlight-to-electricity conversion efficiency of common solar cells has not even doubled since 1980. There's less than a factor of 4 left between the efficiency of panels you can buy for your rooftop today and the maximum efficiency permitted by the laws of nature. That's quite a difference from the past trajectory of microelectronics, where Moore's Law doubled efficiency over and over. That's also the short explanation for why companies with deep experience in microelectronics manufacturing, like Intel, TSMC, or Texas Instruments, did not come to dominate solar PV manufacturing. PV is a very different game. It's about producing huge quantities of doped silicon wafers with little patterning across their surfaces. However, it is true that PV has made enormous strides in reducing manufacturing costs, though aggressive miniaturization was not how it was done. In sunny regions PV now has the lowest O&M costs of any new-build electricity source.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

jfoutz 10y ago

I have high hopes for ARES [1]. just a heavy train on a hill with a regenerative break. Add lots of tracks, multiple trains per track, solar above the rails. Avoids needing all the water for pumped hydro storage. none of toxic stuff to deal with when batteries have reached their end of life. Zero carbon emission (aside from whatever is required for manufacturing) is just hugely appealing. If solar prices continue as they have for another 3-5 years, the question is going to be pretty clear, how do we store all of this insanely cheap power. I'm a little mystified we're not taxing carbon emissions and subsidizing storage. But hey, there are clearly powerful forces at play, that don't agree with me. [1] http://www.aresnorthamerica.com/ http://www.aresnorthamerica.com/

james0001 10y ago
I disagree with you but I don't think I'm one of those powerful forces
leereeves 10y ago
Sounds like a good idea, but i do worry about how much overcapacity in energy storage would be required to handle the worst case scenario (a significant, extended drop in wind and solar output).
- aaronblohowiak 10y ago
  You can use natural gas for backup on demand energy generation. It isn't all or nothing.
  - leereeves 10y ago
    And who pays for the backup on demand energy generation when it isn't in use?
    - bainsfather 10y ago
      The same people who pay for it now, the consumers. Electricity grids have massive 'problems' with balancing themselves as demand varies throughout the day. Currently there are e.g. open cycle gas turbines on standby - they are paid a retainer in return for always being available, plus are price per MWh when they are generating. For the UK you can see them http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk, also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Grid_Reserve_Service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Grid_Reserve_Service

mentos 10y ago

"The average monthly cost of living in the United States for a single adult with two children is $4,820. This adds up to an average annual cost of living of $57,851." What would the cost of living fall to if energy costs were $0?

gedy 10y ago
Gov't and business will never let costs go to zero
kctess5 10y ago
I'm not sure, but that will never happen unfortunately. The support infrastructure always comes with cost.
- giarc 10y ago
  Perhaps the commentor is thinking rooftop solar.
philipkglass 10y ago
A decent rule of thumb is that the cost of residential electricity is half for transmission and distribution, half for generation. So save 50% on your home power bill if electricity became free to generate but still had to be delivered from centralized plants. If household solar and small-scale storage get ridiculously cheap, grid defection may be cheaper than buying large-scale renewable output from the grid, but utility scale solar plants can generate more real output per nominal watt and cost less to build per nominal watt. Unless your local electricity system's history is weird (unneeded grid capacity built in Australia being paid for by households, Energiewende that shifted costs away from big industrial customers and toward individuals in Germany) then grid defection probably won't be the lowest-cost option in the next 5 years.
- ZeroGravitas 10y ago
  On the topic of grid defection, in some areas where gas heating for homes is common, there is a move to stop hooking new houses up to the gas grid, instead having all heating and cooking done via electricity. That adds another interesting angle on these calculations, since not hooking up in the first place is obviously cheaper than hooking it up and then not using it.

wernercd 10y ago

Whoa with the common sense and basic math... Common core has neither of them and you might confuse the liberals.

dang 10y ago
Please don't post unsubstantive comments, and please keep partisan politics and name-calling off HN. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13190490 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13190490 and marked it off-topic.

nannePOPI 10y ago

Do solar panels produce more energy that the amount required to create and operate them? (including mining the materials)

armenarmen 10y ago
No one ever really likes to provide these numbers. Hopefully they are a net gain, but I'm a bit skeptical
proee 10y ago
In doing a quick google search on this question, it seems to be "YES". Payback is in the 4 year range where the service life of the panel is in the 20-plus year range.
philipkglass 10y ago
Yes: http://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/9/8/622/htm http://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/9/8/622/htm Energy pay-back time (EPBT) results for fixed-tilt ground mounted installations range from 0.5 years for CdTe PV at high-irradiation (2300 kWh/(m^2·yr)) to 2.8 years for sc-Si PV at low-irradiation (1000 kWh/(m^2·yr)), with corresponding quality-adjusted energy return on investment (EROIPE-eq) values ranging from over 60 to ~10. If you want to see other publications on the same topic, try hitting Google Scholar with search terms "photovoltaic" "life cycle" "energy payback". For the most accurate results, restrict your search to recent years. Manufacturing processes are revised rapidly and studies from the turn of the millennium are now badly obsolete. (Though even in 1990 PV systems were net energy positive on average; the worry that PV system manufacturing consumes more energy than the lifetime output appears to be a holdover from the very early (1970s) days of terrestrial PV systems.)
- ars 10y ago
  I'm skeptical of your numbers. With such a quick payback time you'd expect to see solar power going up like crazy. (Like how wind was being installed quite fast for a while - although only in the best spots.) Except you don't, you just see limited installations here and there. If solar power has such a quick payback period why aren't more investment groups funding it? Are the panels not available in sufficient quantity?

downandout 10y ago

Comparing the costs of two renewables is like comparing the cost of a new Mercedes to a new BMW: both are great to have, but neither one is affordable for most of the world. "World energy" has not "hit a turning point," though this kind of misleading headline seems to be the norm at Bloomberg. One expensive thing became a little less expensive than the other expensive thing. It doesn't change the fact that in most of the world, neither solar nor wind is even remotely competitive with conventional sources. Hopefully they are one day, but today is not that day.

piotrkaminski 10y ago
The article claims that today is that day, at least for new installations: > That’s record-cheap electricity—roughly half the price of competing coal power.
- virmundi 10y ago
  Storage not included. To run an AC in Florida at night you'd burn through a Tesla wall unit in a few hours. You want that AC at night. So you'll need probably 3-5. At $8k per unit, $24k-$40k total. I like solar. I like wind. I like the grid because the best way to handle the power storage from over production during the day is in a centralized fashion.
  - kuschku 10y ago
    Or you just insulate your house and use heat exchangers with controlled airflow to avoid the need for any AC at all. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_house https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_house
    - bzbarsky 10y ago
      That Wikipedia article explicitly says that making this concept work in a tropical climate (we're talking Florida, right?) is so far an unsolved problem, and that the one example in Louisiana does in fact have an AC. Not needing AC by having decent insulation in Germany or Scandinavia (which is where most passive houses are located) is a _much_ easier problem than not needing AC in Florida. Of course not needing _heating_ is a big problem there, and is what the passive house designs are mostly aiming to deal with.

giis 10y ago

Just couple of days I saw this documentary by national geographic about world's largest solar power plant in India completed in ~8 months. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM-0lrIxCnE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM-0lrIxCnE

LeanderK 10y ago

i am really happy that the "green" energy production is in such a price war. It's Solar vs. Wind not Solar vs. Coal. I don't care what's cheaper as long as it's not Coal!

noselasd 10y ago
There is sadly a fix for that, which is to lift carbon tax and relax requirements for having carbon sequestration systems - and coal would be quite cheap again.
- stevenleeg 10y ago
  Why would we ever do that? Remember that the untaxed price of coal isn't a real price for it. Without a tax the market does not take the externality of its environmental effect into an account. Economically speaking, a high tax on coal/other fossil fuels is simply forcing the market to consider its full and actual price.
  - noselasd 10y ago
    > Why would we ever do that? I don't know, but there is soon to be a new president who says he wants to support the coal industry.
  - harmegido 10y ago
    I'm very confused by this conversation. What taxes are you guys talking about? They don't exist as far as I'm aware. I am aware of some subsidies, but not taxes on specifically carbon/coal/etc.
    - drited 10y ago
      I'd guess he's talking about this: http://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/ets_en http://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/ets_en P.S. I agree about the comment regarding negative externalities not being accounted for unless something like this is in place.
- 10y ago

sunrisetofu 10y ago

I think flow battery technology will be a viable grid storage option, it makes sense in terms of scale, simplicity and durability

XorNot 10y ago

The really interesting thing here is what this means for all the coal-warriors making their resurgence (or thinking they will): they're not going to find investors for new plants. If solar is cheaper, and scales well (i.e. you can just keep deploying it, pretty much anywhere, and have it get cheaper the more you do) then all the smart money is going to go to building as much PV as quickly as possible. There'll be no one willing to invest in coal-plants because they'll be looking at the on-going costs, looking at the up-front costs, placement issues, build-times, risk of actual action on carbon pricing and saying "you know what, let's build out solar instead".

jartelt 10y ago
This scenario is already playing out and it's largely due to market forces. More people are employed in the solar industry now than are employed by the coal industry. Simply put, coal in the US is dead because it can't compete with gas, solar, and wind. That is why it is silly when people say we need to prop up the coal industry. We would much better off by just training those workers to install solar panels or become wind turbine technicians because there is actually a growing market there.
- huherto 10y ago
  ... and solar panel installation (and maintenance) cannot be outsourced.
- bagacrap 10y ago
  Coal working jobs are more dangerous but pay much more than solar panel installation. The issue the coal workers and uneducated middle class have faced recently is a loss in earning potential (with existing skill set) moreso than absolute unemployment. The internet suggests the average hourly pay is $23 for coal to $16 for solar installers. That's a big hair cut, plus solar installers likely have to live in or closer to cities, generally increasing cost of living and providing one more obstacle that makes it hard to switch careers.

davidf18 10y ago

Interestingly, everything organic is already powered by solar energy so by far, solar is probably the greatest energy source on the planet. The Photosynthesis enzyme in plant leaves captures photons that are converted to electrons with energy stored chemically in carbohydrates. Animals eat the chemical energy created by plants as well as other animals. Animals use oxygen to oxidize the carbohydrates to create energy.

dmccunney 10y ago

Back in the early 70's, I worked for a government (HUD/ERDA) sponsored project to promote alternative energy use. It was the first flowering of OPEC, gas prices at the pump were rising over (gasp!) $1/gallon, and there was a sudden massive interest in reducing dependence on foreign oil. What my shop was pushing was using solar collectors to heat hot water. That was about 20% of the average residential energy bill, had a relatively low up front cost, and a relatively short payback period. We were aware of and tracked a variety of alternative energy sources including photovoltaics, but expected them to get niche pickup at best because they were simply too expensive. To a large extent, that's still the case. Another point to note is that energy usage isn't just electricity. Back then, a national energy budget divided roughly into quarters, with industrial heating and cooling, residential/light commercial heating and cooling, transportation, and electricity making up the demand. The total amount of energy consumed is rather larger, but that breakdown is still pretty much the same. I don't see solar electric power addressing things like heavy duty heating and cooling, nor most transportation. One thing I got convinced of back then is that the form of energy used will be the cheapest that will do the job. Energy from fossil fuel still predominates because it is still cheapest. Solar is still essentially a niche market, though growing, and lower costs are the driver. I was grimly amused a while back over the woes of Solyndra, an effort to create large scale photovoltiac production in the US, that got about half a billion in government funding. The underlying notion was creation of US jobs. Photovoltaics is semi-conductor electronics, the Chinese jumped in with both feet, and started turning out solar cells at prices domestic producers couldn't match. In fact, some Chinese producers came to grief. They dove in based on demand estimates that were unfounded, produced a glut on the market, far lower prices for buyers, and failures among firms that were late to the manufacturing party. Solyndra couldn't compete. People went on about US jobs, and I thought "Drive on the NJ Turnpike, and every other pole has a solar cell array generating power to help run the Turnpike. Somebody has the contract to design, produce, install and maintain those arrays, and those jobs by nature will be local. Decreasing costs for the raw materials used to produce the arrays made it possible to sell the end products cheaper, and increased the demand. The Chinese can do it cheapest and can have solar cell production. The money is in moving up the value chain and making things people will buy that use those solar cells." I'm delighted to see solar electricity costs dropping to the reported levels, but anyone who sees it as a solution for overall energy woes isn't looking at a big enough picture. ______ Dennis

dmccunney 10y ago

Back in the early 70's, I worked for a government (HUD/ERDA) sponsored project to promote alternative energy use. It was the first flowering of OPEC, gas prices at the pump were rising over (gasp!) $1/gallon, and there was a sudden massive interest in reducing dependence on foreign oil. What my shop was pushing was using solar collectors to heat hot water. That was about 20% of the average residential energy bill, had a relatively low up front cost, and a relatively short payback period. We were aware of and tracked a variety of alternative energy sources including photovoltaics, but expected them to get niche pickup at best because they were simply too expensive. To a large extent, that's still the case. Another point to note is that energy usage isn't just electricity. Back then, a national energy budget divided roughly into quarters, with industrial heating and cooling, residential/light commercial heating and cooling, transportation, and electricity making up the demand. The total amount of energy consumed is rather larger, but that breakdown is still pretty much the same. I don't see solar electric power addressing things like heavy duty heating and cooling, nor most transportation. One thing I got convinced of back then is that the form of energy used will be the cheapest that will do the job. Energy from fossil fuel still predominates because it is still cheapest. Solar is still essentially a niche market, though growing, and lower costs are the driver. I was grimly amused a while back over the woes of Solyndra, an effort to create large scale photovoltiac production in the US, that got about half a billion in government funding. The underlying notion was creation of US jobs. Photovoltaics is semi-conductor electronics, the Chinese jumped in with both feet, and started turning out solar cells at prices domestic producers couldn't match. In fact, some Chinese producers came to grief. They dove in based on demand estimates that were unfounded, produced a glut on the market, far lower pricers for buyers, and failures among firms that were late to the manufacturing party. People went on about US jobs, and I thought "Drive on the NJ Turnpike, and every other pole has a solar cell array generating power to help run the Turnpike. Somebody has the contract to design, produce, install and maintain those arrays, and those jobs by nature will be local. Decreasing costs for the raw materials used to produce the arrays made it possible to sell the end products cheaper, and increased the demand. The Chinese can do it cheapest and can have solar cell production. The money is in moving up the value chain and making things people will buy that use those solar cells." I'm delighted to see solar electricity costs dropping to the reported levels, but anyone who sees it as a solution for overall energy woes isn't looking at a big enough picture. ______ Dennis

_Codemonkeyism 10y ago

Coal town Trump voters come to mind.

mirimir 10y ago

OK, I can't resist: http://www.northeast.railfan.net/ashley_planes.html http://www.northeast.railfan.net/ashley_planes.html http://www.mtn-top-hs.org/ashley_planes.htm http://www.mtn-top-hs.org/ashley_planes.htm