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The point is that we're finally there. That the market has been manipulated through government incentives is not as important as the fact that developers will n

The point is that we're finally there. That the market has been manipulated through government incentives is not as important as the fact that developers will now see renewables as more favourable in future projects. This is about momentum more than anything else, and momentum is hugely important when your horizon crosses decades. The money ecosystem in play now favours renewables more than non-renewables, and that's reason to celebrate.

jimbob45 6y ago
Doesn’t the issue of cloudy days remain though? I’m genuinely asking - the last I checked, solar efficiency took a backseat to battery storage as the step preventing us from moving forward.
- rrmm 6y ago
  I would guess that capacity is designed wrt average insolation and not peak; spot market generation takes care of the peaks.
  - jimbob45 6y ago
    Right but the spot market generation wasn’t enough to subsidize upkeep and development of the local grid I thought. Grids needed to be nationalized (or city...alized) to allow citizens to pay taxes to upkeep the grids, which cut into the price-efficiency of solar. Again, I’m asking out of curiosity. My expertise is a few Reddit threads and some cursory Wikipedia research.
    - rrmm 6y ago
      Yeah, I don't know the area well at all. It seems like at some point you'll have to pay for the grid directly (ie, the power will be free-ish, you'll pay for the size of the wire to your house).
      - Ekaros 6y ago
        Standard in Finland. Our power and transmission pricing is separate. So you buy transmission from local monopoly and then can freely choose who you buy the power from. Which means that I and others who don't use electrical heating pay more for transmission than power itself. Priced on amperage for base cost and then some for per unit of power.
- kstenerud 6y ago
  There's plenty of R&D into cloudy-day solar collection, and there's also wind, tidal, hydro, as well as many clean battery technologies ranging from chemical to heat to gravitational. Not to mention traditional backup systems and smart grids. We're not so fragile that cloudy days will shut down our energy grid.
- pjc50 6y ago
  What is "forward"? While 100% isn't feasible today, currently deployment is low, so it's still easy to achieve real CO2 and cost reduction by increased deployment. (Away from the equator, seasons are more significant than cloud or day/night cycle..)
- Ekaros 6y ago
  Or during winter above Artic Circle... As only meaningful pricing metric is average price for whole year in location of consumption. Anything else is just cheating.
  - pfdietz 6y ago
    Wind becomes a very attractive option at high latitudes. The site I point at for simple energy modeling: https://model.energy/ https://model.energy/ uses real historical weather data, and surprisingly the cheapest energy systems it models for synthesized baseload from renewables + storage is in... Greenland?! I'm not sure I really believe that, but it made me sit up and take notice.
- pfdietz 6y ago
  The cost of various storage technologies is declining, and should be quite affordable by the time they are needed. This retro shadow being cast back from the expected future is among the reasons nuclear cannot get investment now.

jimbob45 6y ago

Doesn’t the issue of cloudy days remain though? I’m genuinely asking - the last I checked, solar efficiency took a backseat to battery storage as the step preventing us from moving forward.

rrmm 6y ago
I would guess that capacity is designed wrt average insolation and not peak; spot market generation takes care of the peaks.
- jimbob45 6y ago
  Right but the spot market generation wasn’t enough to subsidize upkeep and development of the local grid I thought. Grids needed to be nationalized (or city...alized) to allow citizens to pay taxes to upkeep the grids, which cut into the price-efficiency of solar. Again, I’m asking out of curiosity. My expertise is a few Reddit threads and some cursory Wikipedia research.
  - rrmm 6y ago
    Yeah, I don't know the area well at all. It seems like at some point you'll have to pay for the grid directly (ie, the power will be free-ish, you'll pay for the size of the wire to your house).
    - Ekaros 6y ago
      Standard in Finland. Our power and transmission pricing is separate. So you buy transmission from local monopoly and then can freely choose who you buy the power from. Which means that I and others who don't use electrical heating pay more for transmission than power itself. Priced on amperage for base cost and then some for per unit of power.
kstenerud 6y ago
There's plenty of R&D into cloudy-day solar collection, and there's also wind, tidal, hydro, as well as many clean battery technologies ranging from chemical to heat to gravitational. Not to mention traditional backup systems and smart grids. We're not so fragile that cloudy days will shut down our energy grid.
pjc50 6y ago
What is "forward"? While 100% isn't feasible today, currently deployment is low, so it's still easy to achieve real CO2 and cost reduction by increased deployment. (Away from the equator, seasons are more significant than cloud or day/night cycle..)
Ekaros 6y ago
Or during winter above Artic Circle... As only meaningful pricing metric is average price for whole year in location of consumption. Anything else is just cheating.
- pfdietz 6y ago
  Wind becomes a very attractive option at high latitudes. The site I point at for simple energy modeling: https://model.energy/ https://model.energy/ uses real historical weather data, and surprisingly the cheapest energy systems it models for synthesized baseload from renewables + storage is in... Greenland?! I'm not sure I really believe that, but it made me sit up and take notice.
pfdietz 6y ago
The cost of various storage technologies is declining, and should be quite affordable by the time they are needed. This retro shadow being cast back from the expected future is among the reasons nuclear cannot get investment now.