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Can someone explain to me why this is a "good" thing? If solar is too cheap, it won't be overbuilt... or people will lose their return on investment => less so
by omgJustTest 2y ago
Can someone explain to me why this is a "good" thing?
If solar is too cheap, it won't be overbuilt... or people will lose their return on investment => less solar.
Unless I am missing something major, another way to say this is "solar power during peak solar flux will become so valueless that people will stop building solar".
To the downvoters: Off-grid solar will be unlikely to be dominant energy consumption, and there are other options to build cheap, efficient and clean energy. Solar is an option and I don't "hate" solar.
This is a simple argument of negative prices or low-cheap prices will correct themselves on the market without external forces like subsidies from tax payers... which means it isn't nearly as cheap as everyone is saying.
- doe_eyes 2y agoWhy is it supposed to be an investment? If it's sufficiently cheap, it becomes something that you buy because it's useful to you, not because the government is promising you subsidies for life. Also, the other driving force here is the cost of grid-delivered energy. California is sure working hard on incentivizing solar + storage that way...
- omgJustTest 2y agoI think the person who is selling "cheap" solar will decide it isn't worth it to give you something convenient without additional cost, especially if they are losing money. They will exit the market all together cause there are other ways to spend money than give away cheap solar.
- djbusby 2y agoI think it's saying the problem space is shifting towards a local storage problem.
- omgJustTest 2y agoIf one has grid-scale storage, there are many more efficient ways to do electricity generation. Hydroelectric, in existing geological reservoirs, are the only grid-scale "battery" that currently exists. The primary reason they are not more popular is because not many reservoirs exist right next to major power consuming locales.
- two_handfuls 2y agoAnother way of saying this is: All our electricity needs will be served by solar. Seems like a good thing to me.
- omgJustTest 2y agoSolar is 3.9% of total grid capacity. Misunderstanding efficiencies, capacities and costs lead to lobbying for subsidies on technologies. This article point says at some point during the day, either: 1. you need high capacity & efficiency grid storage (ie hydroelectric storage) or 2. someone engineers a grid scale batteries that have never been deployed before that are 2x more capacity than current installs and with the same efficiencies - and they deploy them in tandem with the current solar installs. While it is _possible_, there are a lot of other people competing for energy markets... it is not at all indicated by the article that market forces will be focusing 100% on solar.
- jondwillis 2y agoElectrical energy is useful by definition. As indicated in the article, you have to essentially do arbitrage by using “excess” generation to do something that produces value ($), like storing the energy in a battery for later when the grid is more expensive, or to do useful work like make fertilizer, capture carbon, condense water, run your AC extra hard , etc.
- omgJustTest 2y agoIf you were selling electricity and knew solar would be valueless at a certain point in the day, would you keep building solar?
- jondwillis 2y agoYes, because arbitrage opportunities exist by way of battery, or local uses of the negative-price-if-sold-to-grid generation.
- omgJustTest 2y agoBatteries have a 50% efficiency cut on storage and recall... it is unlikely that cutting the spot price in half will make this profitable. "Although battery storage has slightly higher round-trip efficiency than pumped storage, pumped-storage facilities typically operate at utilization factors that are currently twice as high as batteries." [1] [1]https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=46756 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=46756 Total efficiency of batteries is 80%/2 = 40% Also very limited run times on the grid: "For example, in 2015, the weighted average battery duration was a little more than 46 minutes, but by 2019, weighted average battery durations had doubled to 1.5 hours." [2] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=46756 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=46756
- CyberDildonics 2y agoTotal efficiency of batteries is 80%/2 = 40% Your own link literally says this isn't true. According to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), in 2019, the U.S. utility-scale battery fleet operated with an average monthly round-trip efficiency of 82%,
- maxerickson 2y agoThe argument isn't that solar will be too cheap, the argument is that it will be cheap enough that lots of it will be built in situations where the grid doesn't have any spare capacity and won't be connected to the grid. You are starting from the conclusion or whatever.
- omgJustTest 2y agoWho are you buying solar from if the cells are disconnected from the grid? Solar itself is already 3.9% of the _total_ us grid power. Subdivide that 3.9% into a small category: grid disconnected solar... what one would be discussing is something that will not influence the total price of energy.
- maxerickson 2y agoUh, the energy from those installations would be consumed directly by the entity that installed them. It's not hard.