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If Solar provides up to 90% of CA’s peak capacity, why is electricity here so monstrously expensive? Shouldn’t it be nearly the lowest cost because there is no
by tyoma 3y ago
If Solar provides up to 90% of CA’s peak capacity, why is electricity here so monstrously expensive? Shouldn’t it be nearly the lowest cost because there is no need to pay for fuel?
- ttymck 3y ago1. How much "area under the curve" comes from _up to_ 90% of _peak capacity_. If it read "50% of annual consumption", I might be more inclined to ask your same question. 2. It doesn't necessarily follow that free fuel == cheaper power. I'm not at all familiar, but I imagine building, operating, and maintaining a solar plant could be expensive, perhaps even more expensive than a coal plant, for all I know.
- jeffbee 3y agoThe best way to measure this is from the CO2 emissions estimates. These fell by about 23% from 2018 to 2023[1], implying that renewables have displaced about one quarter of fossil fuel inputs. However, it should be noted that nobody really knows the true denominator of energy demand, because distributed small-scale solar production adds up to an unknown quantity. In the spring and summer seasons California routinely hits over 100% of demand generated from renewables at some point in a given month. CAISO, which does not cover the entire state, says that in June about 47% came from renewables. Last June it was only 37%. 1: http://www.caiso.com/Documents/GreenhouseGasEmissions-TrackingReport-July2023.pdf http://www.caiso.com/Documents/GreenhouseGasEmissions-Tracki...
- pfdietz 3y agoOperating a solar plant is very cheap.
- aiallthewaydown 3y agothe other 10% …
- gvkhna 3y agoYea if you look at your bill a lot of the cost is not in generation, it’s in transmission. We’re paying for the grid mostly, upkeep and PGE/SCE profits.
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- jhenkens 3y agoLast I checked my mother's bill in the SF-Bay, her price for each, transmission and generation, was higher than my total delivered price in Oregon.
- philipkglass 3y agoThe most cost-effective form of solar power is utility scale solar farms. In 2012 California was installing those faster than it did last year. Hover over the chart in this article to see the year-over-year changes: https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/solar/chart-whos-the-leader-in-utility-scale-solar-california-or-texas https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/solar/chart-whos-the-le... As toomuchtodo mentioned in another comment [1], the cost of solar declined 89% in the past decade. California's installed base is weighted toward older, more expensive solar power installations because it started installing solar power sooner and more rapidly than other states. That's compounded by California's slowdown in utility scale solar farms added in recent years. Texas is about to surpass California on installed solar farm capacity and Texas's solar generation will be cheaper because those farms have been built more recently with lower cost solar hardware. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37502924 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37502924
- beembeem 3y agoI would appreciate data to the contrary, but the accounting in your first claim doesn't seem right to me. Behind the meter rooftop solar should be the most cost-effective because no new distribution is required nor is any land use change required.
- philipkglass 3y agoThe National Renewable Energy Laboratory has charts and reports showing US system prices per installed watt for residential solar and utility scale solar with single axis sun tracking: https://www.nrel.gov/solar/market-research-analysis/solar-installed-system-cost.html https://www.nrel.gov/solar/market-research-analysis/solar-in... In 2010, the cost-per-watt was a little more than 2 dollars higher for residential solar than for utility scale solar ($8.70 vs $6.54). In 2022, residential was still a little more than 2 dollars higher ($3.16 vs $1.06), but since system costs have plummeted, that means the ratio now favors utility scale installations much more dramatically. You can see in the charts that "Soft Costs - Other" remains persistently high for residential solar. That includes things like permitting and inspection. A 100 megawatt solar farm requires permitting and inspection too, but it's much less cost than the 10,000 permits and inspections required for equivalent capacity distributed across residential rooftops. The other big difference evident from 2010 to 2022 is that residential solar inverter costs are still significant whereas the inverter costs have become practically invisible in 2022 for large solar farms. More aggressive price competition and increasing unit capacity have proportionally lowered the inverter costs much more for large solar farms. The cost per megawatt hour generated is actually even more imbalanced in favor of large solar farms than these cost-per-watt charts show. You can't use solar tracking on rooftops. Solar farms with single axis tracking to follow the sun's position generate more energy per year than equivalent wattage installed in fixed positions on rooftops. Average rooftop systems are also less frequently cleaned than ground level solar farms. Not only does rooftop solar cost 3 times as much per installed watt, it also generates maybe 30% less energy per installed watt per year.
- miguelazo 3y agoWhy is it so expensive? 3 words: Investor Owned Utilities. And two more for good measure: Regulatory Capture.
- reducesuffering 3y agoYou'll have to use more words to explain why other Investor Owned Utilities have power at 1/3 the cost. Not really a unique differentiator.
- miguelazo 3y agoBecause CPUC allows a much higher return on capital in California.
- foota 3y agoWholesale electricity prices are based on the marginal cost of electrical generation. As a result, wholesale costs will generally be driven by the cost of natural gas generation.
- JumpinJack_Cash 3y ago> > why is electricity here so monstrously expensive? This is in line with why are we replacing fossil fuels with solar. It was never a quality of life play, it's some sort of altruistic effort / dumbness deciding to be the suckers kind of thing. California for sure cares about them Californians who'd be alive 150 years from now more than those who are alive right now. Actually not even that, given that the atmosphere is one for everybody, they care more about Indians and Chinese who'd be alive 150 years from now than Californians who struggle and are 'alive' right now.
- tzs 3y ago> Actually not even that, given that the atmosphere is one for everybody, they care more about Indians and Chinese who'd be alive 150 years from now than Californians who struggle and are 'alive' right now Given that the atmosphere is one for everybody, comparing by country does not make sense because some countries have more people than other countries.
- JumpinJack_Cash 3y ago> > comparing by country does not make sense It makes sense to identify who are the fools and who are the wiseguys. Like the solar panel industry which was jumpstarted with immense subsidies by Germany, EU and the US and now is 99% a Chinese industry manufacturing product. Amazing. And EVs will be too, once the smoke clears we'll be lucky if we are left with just the brand and the cult of personality of Tesla, while everything else will be manufactured in China.
- bryanlarsen 3y agoChinese clean energy subisidies were over half a trillion dollars in 2022 alone.
- colechristensen 3y agoTransmission, paying for PG&E starting wildfires and the resulting settlements, paying for living wages for folks working at PG&E living in monstrously expensive places, paying for debt and the rest of the power generation infrastructure.
- sillysaurusx 3y agoThe problem is actually battery storage. There's a great tiktok that breaks down the costs here: https://www.tiktok.com/@lthlnkso/video/7258394490145099050 https://www.tiktok.com/@lthlnkso/video/7258394490145099050
- krmboya 3y agoInsightful video, thanks for sharing. I use solar at home and the battery is actually the most expensive and least durable component of the system. Also the battery disposal story is not great (at least at the moment).
- robsh 3y agoThey don’t mean 90% during peak demand. They mean at most solar makes up 90% of our generation. This would occur 11a-2p. Peak demand is 5-7 pm, and it’s twice as high as the midday load and it’s met by huge natural gas turbines that run a few hundred hours per year.
- AtlasBarfed 3y agoI don't recall the breakdown, but someone posted somewhere (so it must be true) that the overall distribution of PG&E was 49% nuclear. Now, nuclear is not fossil fuel, but Lazard measures LCOE of nuclear as 6x more expensive than solar and wind. So that might be part of it.
- coryrc 3y agoBecause you still have to pay for enough fossil fuel generators to power the grid AND the solar and wind subsidies, because the latter can't supply power all the time. If every solar setup had to provide guaranteed minimum power 24/7 for 30 days, then you'd see the true cost is much higher because they would need to directly pay for a mostly-idle power plant, instead of the very inefficient way we do now (brinkmanship of grid stability and occasional massive spikes in wholesale cost). In WA we pay more for "fish mitigation" than all other hydro-related costs. I expect CA has similar money pits.
- beams_of_light 3y agohttps://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/insight/barriers-fish-migration https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/insight/barriers-fish-migrati...