4 ms·

Who is paying more than coal for solar? Building new solar costs about two thirds what it costs to run an existing coal plant.

by wffurr 3y ago

panick21_ 3y ago
Now it does. Not 20-30 years ago. And then building more gas would have been cheaper, specially in the early 2000s. The government has used many mechanism to push those things, not sure how that's questionable. Including to force Utilities to adopt renewable energy (even those that already had carbon free nuclear). Other laws that prevent pricing on intermittence. Support and tax-breaks for rooftop solar. And lots of other policies.
- ViewTrick1002 3y ago
  Exactly like the huge subsidies nuclear power have had for the past 70 years? The difference is for renewables the cost savings panned out, while nuclear has only gotten more expensive. Renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels, that is why we see mass adoption. Stop crying over spilled milk because nuclear never materialized, embrace the technology that are forcing true change.
  - Incipient 3y ago
    Renewables are cheaper if you only compare cost of generation. The issue is they need storage. Add in that cost and the price becomes super murky, and depends heavily on geography; access to good clean water (electrolysis), viable valleys to dam (hydro) etc.
    - matthewdgreen 3y ago
      The parent poster’s got a valid point, though. Solar PV and wind used to be expensive but have seen massive cost declines that seem set to continue. Battery storage is currently expensive but is also following a similar pattern of cost declines as the industry ramps up mass production. The current state of the art in large nuclear plants can’t be mass produced, and so we haven’t seen any durable price declines at all. I suppose it’s possible that over the next 20 years we’ll hit some kind of technological wall in grid storage tech that prevents further price declines, but that seems like an incredibly low-odds bet to make.
      - panick21_ 3y ago
        > The current state of the art in large nuclear plants can’t be mass produced That just false. > any durable price declines at all. If we stopped building wind turbines for decades the price declines wouldn't be durable either. The simply reality is that when nuclear was built at scale, even with current PWR the prices are pretty damn good. India cost in their heavy water reactors are really good. South Koreas reactor prices in UEA are incredibly reasonable. I actually did a bunch of calculations on this. Starting in around 2000, what if Germany had gone nuclear instead of solar/wind/storage and so on. I took very pessimistic price assumptions for the nuclear plants based on the South Korean reactors in UAE. And I assumed a scaling rate far lower then what France did in the 70/80s. And even then the price for a complete transition of the whole grid to 95%+ nuclear was both cheaper and faster then what Germany actually achieved. And that would have come at a cost that amounts to about 4-5% of extra debt per GDP with resulting low electricity prices. Germany as society is paying, far, far more then that. Just their recent emergency measures to subsidize prices are about as much as a whole nuclear fleet. Germany had decades of high energy prices that one had to account for and then they had a huge investment in wind and solar. Plus costly deals with Russia both politically and in cost terms. Frankly, there is simply no evidence that Germany did better by Solar/Wind/Coal/Gas route then if they had done nuclear. And that is before we are even considering that without storage the system Germany building is very brittle and its not at all clear when they will actually achieve consistent 95%+ green energy.
  - panick21_ 3y ago
    Nuclear was getting massively cheaper and was scaling well and fast. Then a huge amount of extra regulation came killed all forward progress in the industry, a new regulator was essentially anti nuclear and the utilities understood that the political wind had massively turned against nuclear. All vital research projects for next generation plants were killed. At the same time cheap coal was discovered and changed the economics and utilities had little intensive to adopt nuclear. In France where a top down nuclear approach was adopted, it has been an absolutely amazing deal. Far, far cheaper green energy then German 30+ year journey adopting renewables (and they aren't close). > embrace the technology that are forcing true change. Nuclear actually made true chance 40 years ago. It just some countries that took advantage of it and some countries that burned a lot of coal that cost them much, much, much more.
Manuel_D 3y ago
Not if you build out enough storage to account for intermittency. 12 hours of storage just for diurnal fluctuations, then there's seasonable fluctuations in output due to weather that can last for weeks or more.
- m463 3y ago
  I think solar should pair with a market, not batteries. It would be more efficient at moving demand to match price. In the end, power at night might cost more rather than less and power during the day would stabilize or drop.
  - Manuel_D 3y ago
    Moving demand is far easier said than done. A lot of people erroneously assume that the rest of the grid is like a house where you can install a power all and schedule your dryer to run during the day. But the power grid is running a whole bunch of utilities and industrial systems like the pumps running your sewage, traffic lights, telecoms, etc.
    - m463 3y ago
      From what I understand, power is cheap at night because they can't turn off the power plants easily, and the daytime load is always higher than night. But although some things are used all the time, other things like charging your electric car or heating a tank water heater can be moved around, and people don't mind doing it if they save money.

Who is paying more than coal for solar? Building new solar costs about two thirds what it costs to run an existing coal plant.

by wffurr 3y ago

Who is paying more than coal for solar? Building new solar costs about two thirds what it costs to run an existing coal plant.

panick21_ 3y ago

Now it does. Not 20-30 years ago. And then building more gas would have been cheaper, specially in the early 2000s. The government has used many mechanism to push those things, not sure how that's questionable. Including to force Utilities to adopt renewable energy (even those that already had carbon free nuclear). Other laws that prevent pricing on intermittence. Support and tax-breaks for rooftop solar. And lots of other policies.

ViewTrick1002 3y ago
Exactly like the huge subsidies nuclear power have had for the past 70 years? The difference is for renewables the cost savings panned out, while nuclear has only gotten more expensive. Renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels, that is why we see mass adoption. Stop crying over spilled milk because nuclear never materialized, embrace the technology that are forcing true change.
- Incipient 3y ago
  Renewables are cheaper if you only compare cost of generation. The issue is they need storage. Add in that cost and the price becomes super murky, and depends heavily on geography; access to good clean water (electrolysis), viable valleys to dam (hydro) etc.
  - matthewdgreen 3y ago
    The parent poster’s got a valid point, though. Solar PV and wind used to be expensive but have seen massive cost declines that seem set to continue. Battery storage is currently expensive but is also following a similar pattern of cost declines as the industry ramps up mass production. The current state of the art in large nuclear plants can’t be mass produced, and so we haven’t seen any durable price declines at all. I suppose it’s possible that over the next 20 years we’ll hit some kind of technological wall in grid storage tech that prevents further price declines, but that seems like an incredibly low-odds bet to make.
    - panick21_ 3y ago
      > The current state of the art in large nuclear plants can’t be mass produced That just false. > any durable price declines at all. If we stopped building wind turbines for decades the price declines wouldn't be durable either. The simply reality is that when nuclear was built at scale, even with current PWR the prices are pretty damn good. India cost in their heavy water reactors are really good. South Koreas reactor prices in UEA are incredibly reasonable. I actually did a bunch of calculations on this. Starting in around 2000, what if Germany had gone nuclear instead of solar/wind/storage and so on. I took very pessimistic price assumptions for the nuclear plants based on the South Korean reactors in UAE. And I assumed a scaling rate far lower then what France did in the 70/80s. And even then the price for a complete transition of the whole grid to 95%+ nuclear was both cheaper and faster then what Germany actually achieved. And that would have come at a cost that amounts to about 4-5% of extra debt per GDP with resulting low electricity prices. Germany as society is paying, far, far more then that. Just their recent emergency measures to subsidize prices are about as much as a whole nuclear fleet. Germany had decades of high energy prices that one had to account for and then they had a huge investment in wind and solar. Plus costly deals with Russia both politically and in cost terms. Frankly, there is simply no evidence that Germany did better by Solar/Wind/Coal/Gas route then if they had done nuclear. And that is before we are even considering that without storage the system Germany building is very brittle and its not at all clear when they will actually achieve consistent 95%+ green energy.
- panick21_ 3y ago
  Nuclear was getting massively cheaper and was scaling well and fast. Then a huge amount of extra regulation came killed all forward progress in the industry, a new regulator was essentially anti nuclear and the utilities understood that the political wind had massively turned against nuclear. All vital research projects for next generation plants were killed. At the same time cheap coal was discovered and changed the economics and utilities had little intensive to adopt nuclear. In France where a top down nuclear approach was adopted, it has been an absolutely amazing deal. Far, far cheaper green energy then German 30+ year journey adopting renewables (and they aren't close). > embrace the technology that are forcing true change. Nuclear actually made true chance 40 years ago. It just some countries that took advantage of it and some countries that burned a lot of coal that cost them much, much, much more.

Manuel_D 3y ago

Not if you build out enough storage to account for intermittency. 12 hours of storage just for diurnal fluctuations, then there's seasonable fluctuations in output due to weather that can last for weeks or more.

m463 3y ago
I think solar should pair with a market, not batteries. It would be more efficient at moving demand to match price. In the end, power at night might cost more rather than less and power during the day would stabilize or drop.
- Manuel_D 3y ago
  Moving demand is far easier said than done. A lot of people erroneously assume that the rest of the grid is like a house where you can install a power all and schedule your dryer to run during the day. But the power grid is running a whole bunch of utilities and industrial systems like the pumps running your sewage, traffic lights, telecoms, etc.
  - m463 3y ago
    From what I understand, power is cheap at night because they can't turn off the power plants easily, and the daytime load is always higher than night. But although some things are used all the time, other things like charging your electric car or heating a tank water heater can be moved around, and people don't mind doing it if they save money.