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While I understand what you're getting at here, I see little evidence to suggest utility controlled generation will ever be cheaper. People are installing roof

While I understand what you're getting at here, I see little evidence to suggest utility controlled generation will ever be cheaper. People are installing roof-top solar now because they're able to seeing savings in the form of reduced electricity bills now. Practical point being, if you tell people: "don't install roof-top solar now, keep paying outrageous electricity prices (I'm in Australia, see) and hope that one day the electricity retailers pass on the savings when they can buy wholesale solar / wind for next to nothing" you can expect to be laughed at.

thinkcontext 8y ago
Utility scale solar is definitely cheaper. NREL puts residential at $2.80/watt vs $1.03 for utility scale[0]. Its only cheaper for consumers because of subsidies and net metering. [0] https://www.nrel.gov/news/press/2017/nrel-report-utility-scale-solar-pv-system-cost-fell-last-year.html https://www.nrel.gov/news/press/2017/nrel-report-utility-sca... edit: Missed the part where you are in Australia, I was giving numbers for the US. I believe its true the residential numbers are cheaper in Australia due to lower soft costs, its still true that utility scale has a cost advantage because of labor cost savings.
apendleton 8y ago
Can't speak for Australia, but at least in the US, a big part of the reason rooftop solar ends up looking like such a savings is net electric metering, where power companies buy surplus power from solar panel owners at the same rates that they sell those users power at night. The tricky thing is that the price users pay for power doesn't just include generation costs, but also transit, grid maintenance, etc., which rooftop solar owners benefit from even though they no longer pay for it -- these costs end up being borne by other rate-payers, who effectively cross-subsidize rooftop owners' freeloading. In the early days of solar, there was a good public policy argument to be made here: solar power is a net societal good (air quality, carbon footprint, creation of solar economies of scale that drive prices down for everyone, etc.), and power companies weren't going to do solar on their own. Now, though (again, at least in the US), utilities are making massive investments in grid solar, and it's dramatically cheaper than rooftop solar. Like: a quarter the cost per kilowatt hour of generation capacity. So now I think it's sensible to ask: if we're going to ask ratepayers to subsidize solar generation, does it really make sense for us to spend their subsidy on a way of doing solar that's objectively much more expensive just because it saves a few specific users money? They could be getting 4x the bang for their buck if we spent that subsidy on grid-scale instead, and then the economics of rooftop solar mostly go to shit (as well they probably should -- it's needlessly expensive).
- Brakenshire 8y ago
  In Australia solar is cheaper than the grid even taking account of battery storage.
glenstein 8y ago
I think it certainly could be cheaper over the time scales relevant for Kardashev scale. But we have plenty of time to worry about that later. But we need to figure out how to survive the next couple of centuries before we start worrying about efficiencies that will matter in tens of thousands of years, and rooftop solar certainly helps in the immediate term.

thinkcontext 8y ago

Utility scale solar is definitely cheaper. NREL puts residential at $2.80/watt vs $1.03 for utility scale[0]. Its only cheaper for consumers because of subsidies and net metering. [0] https://www.nrel.gov/news/press/2017/nrel-report-utility-scale-solar-pv-system-cost-fell-last-year.html https://www.nrel.gov/news/press/2017/nrel-report-utility-sca... edit: Missed the part where you are in Australia, I was giving numbers for the US. I believe its true the residential numbers are cheaper in Australia due to lower soft costs, its still true that utility scale has a cost advantage because of labor cost savings.

apendleton 8y ago

Can't speak for Australia, but at least in the US, a big part of the reason rooftop solar ends up looking like such a savings is net electric metering, where power companies buy surplus power from solar panel owners at the same rates that they sell those users power at night. The tricky thing is that the price users pay for power doesn't just include generation costs, but also transit, grid maintenance, etc., which rooftop solar owners benefit from even though they no longer pay for it -- these costs end up being borne by other rate-payers, who effectively cross-subsidize rooftop owners' freeloading. In the early days of solar, there was a good public policy argument to be made here: solar power is a net societal good (air quality, carbon footprint, creation of solar economies of scale that drive prices down for everyone, etc.), and power companies weren't going to do solar on their own. Now, though (again, at least in the US), utilities are making massive investments in grid solar, and it's dramatically cheaper than rooftop solar. Like: a quarter the cost per kilowatt hour of generation capacity. So now I think it's sensible to ask: if we're going to ask ratepayers to subsidize solar generation, does it really make sense for us to spend their subsidy on a way of doing solar that's objectively much more expensive just because it saves a few specific users money? They could be getting 4x the bang for their buck if we spent that subsidy on grid-scale instead, and then the economics of rooftop solar mostly go to shit (as well they probably should -- it's needlessly expensive).

Brakenshire 8y ago
In Australia solar is cheaper than the grid even taking account of battery storage.

glenstein 8y ago

I think it certainly could be cheaper over the time scales relevant for Kardashev scale. But we have plenty of time to worry about that later. But we need to figure out how to survive the next couple of centuries before we start worrying about efficiencies that will matter in tens of thousands of years, and rooftop solar certainly helps in the immediate term.