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You misunderstand the sense of "true" here. The point is not that the "true" price in the sense of what it ought to be. It is the "true" price in the sense of
by inputcoffee 8y ago
You misunderstand the sense of "true" here.
The point is not that the "true" price in the sense of what it ought to be. It is the "true" price in the sense of what the market is actually paying for the service.
When people put out the number $23, they compare it with the cost of power and wonder why, if it is so much lower, it doesn't already swamp the current solution.
So the purpose of the comment is to explain that it is not a complete solution, and not reflective of the total ("true") bill.
- matt4077 8y agoYet the market isn't "actually paying" for battery storage at anywhere near the amount of installed solar capacity... Which was the point you misunderstood: dedicated storage installation are not needed at current production levels, and can be avoided even when solar's share of the energy mix grows. Among the possibilities are "smart" appliances scheduling their demand to production peaks (dishwashers can often wait a few hours, cars might not need to charge right away). The same is true for industrial usage, where smelters, for example, have the natural capacity to store energy as heat. A growing fleet of electric cars could also serve as distributed storage: if your car is parked for the night, it could feed energy back into the grid (partially, if you are paranoid).
- thinkcontext 8y agoYou don't need 1:1 storage for solar production but it is a real problem. Germany and California are both facing the problem of the solar "duck curve", that is, high solar production during the day when demand is low and high electric usage at the end of the day when people get home from work as solar production is tailing off. More than batteries they utilize gas peaker plants, inefficient, dirty and expensive plants that can ramp up and down quickly to match demand.
- the8472 8y ago> Dirty By coal standards?
- Schumer 8y agoBy clean coal standards
- Jedd 8y ago> You don't need 1:1 storage for solar production... You seem to be referring exclusively to solar photovoltaic. Solar thermal generation has quite a different, evening-friendly, distribution curve.
- thinkcontext 8y agoTrue, though the article was talking about PV. I haven't followed closely recently but my impression was solar thermal has not delivered as promised. Things like Ivanpah was relying on natural gas more than expected. Is this an accurate impression?
- sjwright 8y ago> True, though the article was talking about PV. Yet confusingly the article chose images of solar thermal. It's a bit of a worry when the journalists aren't conscious of the most basic aspects of the industry they are covering.
- Jedd 8y ago> True, though the article was talking about PV. Perhaps, but we're better than conflating solar pvc with solar thermal - especially when we talk about large scale deployments, and even more especially when we talk about systems that incorporate Big Storage (batteries or otherwise). Parent (to your comment) wasn't specifically PVC, parent (to them) wasn't either (more about true cost), and parent to them was bemoaning the common misunderstanding around how pricing works, rather than ethics / feasibility / ambiguity around underlying technology. > I haven't followed closely recently but my impression was solar thermal has not delivered as promised. Things like Ivanpah was relying on natural gas more than expected. Is this an accurate impression? My impression is that solar thermal is going to provide a much more scalable solution, especially in terms of avoiding the duck curve (or at least mitigating the impact of same). I see PVC + batteries being one of those tech combinations that works reasonably well in front of, as well as behind, the meter ... but solar thermal's definitely grid-level.
- cgdcraig 8y agoIsh, solar thermal has its own set of problems and limitations; they don't work during cloudy weather and the storing the thermal energy is tricky because you need a lot of high quality thermal mass
- dd36 8y agoIt is swamping the current solution.
- criddell 8y agoI've thought about adding solar to my home and can't see any reason why I should even consider a battery for storage. I'm in Texas and so I get plenty of sun and my peak energy demand happens to coincide with that sunlight (due to HVAC). Why should I worry about a complete solution?
- ThomPete 8y agoBecause you are also a taxpayer.
- refulgentis 8y agoThe sun goes down at night
- criddell 8y agoAnd? I'm still connected to the grid.
- refulgentis 8y agoYou're replying to a comment about the true cost of solar being the battery + the panels, asking why anyone would think of buying a battery. That's why.
- petersellers 8y agoThat still doesn't answer their question. Why does the sun going down at night matter for people who are still tied to the grid?
- crdoconnor 8y ago>When people put out the number $23, they compare it with the cost of power and wonder why, if it is so much lower, it doesn't already swamp the current solution. It is swamping the current solution - it just takes a while for new plants to be built and old plants to go offline.
- sunstone 8y agoHowever the amount of storage (battery or otherwise) for a network of renewable electricity producers depends on the full diversity of the complete network. Which is to say, for example, that a grid supplied by solar and wind will need proportionally less storage per megawatt as the geographical size of the grid increases. A larger grid "averages out" the intermittent sources better as it gets bigger.
- hueving 8y agoNot for solar. There are no grids nearly large enough to have half in the day time and half in the night time on average.
- sunstone 8y agoThe type of renewable generator, ie solar, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal and tidal, or a combination thereof is another dimension of grid diversity.
- ehnto 8y agoYou don't see it swamping thr competition for a bunch of reasons. You need capital in order to install solar, you also need to own your home and not be renting. A landlord has little incentive to install solar. A state sized utility solar installation is non-trivial and that's why you don't yet see utilities providing solar themselves to the grid, and even if they did the price would be different. So you don't see everyone using it because it's expensive to get started and because utility providers have yet to build solar plants capable of supplying a state. I don't think anyone has. In time though, a combination of rooftop solar and utility scale battery/renewable systems to cover baseline load will probably be how we power the nation. Perhaps some gas or other generators will stick around to provide the baseline.
- honestoHeminway 8y agoWe dont pay the true price of coal, coal is a overdrawn credit-card on future generations where you cant bail by death.