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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

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.
- greglindahl 10y ago
  For air conditioning, one solution is to make ice when electricity is cheap, and then use that for cooling. Here's an example unit: https://www.ice-energy.com/ https://www.ice-energy.com/ This concept dates back to the 1950s. The usual application then was to cool during the day using electricity delivered at night; now it's flipped, and you can make ice during the solar peak for cooling the rest of the day.
tedsanders 10y ago
More than half of new generation built in the US is now renewable. You are correct that a 100% renewable grid is going to be more expensive than a 100% fossil fuel grid, but on a marginal basis (the one by which we make investment decisions), renewables have gotten amazingly cheap. Most grids have plenty of room before expensive storage is needed.

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.
greglindahl 10y ago
For air conditioning, one solution is to make ice when electricity is cheap, and then use that for cooling. Here's an example unit: https://www.ice-energy.com/ https://www.ice-energy.com/ This concept dates back to the 1950s. The usual application then was to cool during the day using electricity delivered at night; now it's flipped, and you can make ice during the solar peak for cooling the rest of the day.

tedsanders 10y ago

More than half of new generation built in the US is now renewable. You are correct that a 100% renewable grid is going to be more expensive than a 100% fossil fuel grid, but on a marginal basis (the one by which we make investment decisions), renewables have gotten amazingly cheap. Most grids have plenty of room before expensive storage is needed.