6 ms·

The economics have shifted. It used to be that solar or wind were more experimental, and lacked any economies of scale. Their production was poor and less was k

The economics have shifted. It used to be that solar or wind were more experimental, and lacked any economies of scale. Their production was poor and less was known about how they fared in the long term. Now, their prices have gone down, their generation per unit has gone up, and much more is known about how they behave long-term. The world has a LOT of power generation. It will take time to replace. But with every time that some existing power generation source shuts down due to age, or expansion occurs somewhere, it will inevitably be done with solar/wind. It's just more cost effective now. In the end it is not environmental concerns that will cause solar and wind to become commonplace. It's just economics. Slapping down something that generates power for 20-30 years with no input fuel is just way more economically feasible than anything that requires fuel. They still have maintenance costs, but it's nothing by comparison. They can completely undercut other sources of power.

hinkley 2y ago
Solar and wind have economies of scale and always have. How Big Projects Get Done describes roads, wind and solar as three of the top five projects types for likelihood to come in on time and on budget. Why? The first pour and the last pour on making a road are substantially the same. The people working on it get better at doing so as they go. They iterate on the process and reduce waste. Solar and wind are installing the same structures 10, 20, 50 times so they go fast once they start and the scope can be adjusted up or down as long as you have contracts in place. Building a nuclear plant takes for-fucking-ever, there are a million different tasks to do, and they are built so far apart that getting the same team to build another means a long commute and a different local government to contend with every time. So budgeting is difficult.
- ElevenLathe 2y ago
  Can we get the Dept of Energy to build plants themselves on Federal land?
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    That doesn't really solve any of those problems. What you actually need is mass production, and a regulatory environment that facilitates the same, e.g. by putting most of the certification in the design phase and then making production certification limited to the matter of whether what was built follows the certified spec. The ideal would be to limit the on-site construction to common fungible commodities like pouring concrete and have any reactor-specific components mass produced in a factory. Then the same factory can be producing components for reactors whether they're going up in New York or Seattle or London and you get your economies of scale.
    - ElevenLathe 2y ago
      That would help too. I was thinking about the permitting issues with local authorities. Also having a permanent Federal team that does this (perhaps even in other countries?) would seem like a good way to retain institutional knowledge that would otherwise get lost if each project were a bespoke private investment project.
tracerbulletx 2y ago
Storage capacity on the grid will need to massively increase as well for solar to go much further.
- jillesvangurp 2y ago
  It will. And define massively. People overestimate and under-specify these numbers. Mostly this is just economics. The cost of 1kwh of battery is trending towards 50$ for manufacturers and trending down over time. So, installing a few kwh/mwh/gwh of battery is not the end of the world depending on your needs.
- wongarsu 2y ago
  It is increasing. At the moment it is slowed because for the longest time we were fine with just hydro, pumped hydro, gas peaker plants and the natural inertia of the power plants' turbines and generators. Now demand is big enough that even lithium-ion is deployed for grid storage, despite lithium-ion being optimized for the opposite use case (light portable power storage). Lots of options that are more optimized for grid storage are in various stages of development, but it takes time for them to be brought to maturity and for operators to gain experience and confidence with them.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- ZeroGravitas 2y ago
  Solar is nowhere near hitting limits that will require storage to continue growth. Like it could double several more times globally and not require storage to still make sense to roll out more. But, storage is already growing at a pace similar to solar because it's cheaper than the alternatives.
  - zozbot234 2y ago
    The bulk of storage on the grid is just pumped hydro, everything else is literally a drop in the bucket. Some people like to make the argument that battery storage can grow enough to become relevant but that's just speculation, it hasn't happened so far.
jillesvangurp 2y ago
Exactly. This is what people keep underestimating. The way we currently generate power is expensive and inefficient. A lot of what we do is energy intensive. Which means it requires a lot of money to do. Transport is a good example. A long distance truck can take up to 300 gallons of diesel. It will drive quite far on that. But that's over 1000$. A well utilized truck goes through well over 100K$ of fuel per year. That's a lot of money. Enter electric trucks. Yes they have range limitations (depending on their battery size). But they don't use up 100K $ worth of electricity per year burning over 1M $ of fuel over it's lifespan. Not to mention all the maintenance and parts associated with keeping diesel engines going. Solar/wind/battery power has essentially no marginal cost. Electric trucks powered by that still have some marginal cost but it's a lot lower than that of a diesel truck. And even at current grid prices (typically determined by the cost of fossil fuels), it's probably earning itself back. What happens when diesel trucks follow the same cost curve that EVs went through? You don't need to be a genius to figure out that there are going to be a lot of truckers and trucking companies that can't afford to stick with diesel for very long when everybody starts decimating their fuel expenses. That's just trucks. The same kind of economics are happening across pretty much every sector that can feasibly be electrified. It's not all happening at once. But probably in hind sight in a few decades it will have happened very quickly. One moment everybody was mostly burning diesel, petrol, methane, and coal and a few short decades later all of that is gone because it became way too costly to continue doing any of that.
- abfan1127 2y ago
  For OTR trucks, you have to factor in the battery degradation. A OTR truck easily gets to 1 million miles on an engine. Often times significantly more, and then its only a rebuild, not a replacement. While electricity is much cheaper than diesel, battery replacement cost amortization is a real thing to include in the accounting. I haven't done an OTR, but I did do amortization for a Ford Lightning. While a "battery fill up" is $2-3. The replacement battery is $30k iirc. That's $3000/yr in costs assuming 10 year lifetime. At that rate, its $62/wk in battery amortization. So, you're really spending $62+3/wk in "energy". That's still less than a tank ($90-100 at current prices), but the savings is significantly less than originally anticipated.
wongarsu 2y ago
Which has always been the explicit goal of many solar subsidies across the world over the last 20 years: generate substantial demand for the technology while it's still expensive and risky, phase out subsidies as the price comes down. It worked beautifully
- nasmorn 2y ago
  It was Germany’s gift to the world. They stopped it just in time to kill their industry too, giving another gift to china
giancarlostoro 2y ago
> It will take time to replace. One way I've thought about, and some might hate me or this idea (or both) since I see a LOT of homes where I live in Florida going Solar, I keep wondering to myself, what happens if a law passes that makes it so new housing must contain solar as an option, and then over time, make it fully mandatory. Then you'd see a lot of newer homes with solar out of the box.
m463 2y ago
I wonder how the tariffs will play into this.

hinkley 2y ago

Solar and wind have economies of scale and always have. How Big Projects Get Done describes roads, wind and solar as three of the top five projects types for likelihood to come in on time and on budget. Why? The first pour and the last pour on making a road are substantially the same. The people working on it get better at doing so as they go. They iterate on the process and reduce waste. Solar and wind are installing the same structures 10, 20, 50 times so they go fast once they start and the scope can be adjusted up or down as long as you have contracts in place. Building a nuclear plant takes for-fucking-ever, there are a million different tasks to do, and they are built so far apart that getting the same team to build another means a long commute and a different local government to contend with every time. So budgeting is difficult.

ElevenLathe 2y ago
Can we get the Dept of Energy to build plants themselves on Federal land?
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  That doesn't really solve any of those problems. What you actually need is mass production, and a regulatory environment that facilitates the same, e.g. by putting most of the certification in the design phase and then making production certification limited to the matter of whether what was built follows the certified spec. The ideal would be to limit the on-site construction to common fungible commodities like pouring concrete and have any reactor-specific components mass produced in a factory. Then the same factory can be producing components for reactors whether they're going up in New York or Seattle or London and you get your economies of scale.
  - ElevenLathe 2y ago
    That would help too. I was thinking about the permitting issues with local authorities. Also having a permanent Federal team that does this (perhaps even in other countries?) would seem like a good way to retain institutional knowledge that would otherwise get lost if each project were a bespoke private investment project.

tracerbulletx 2y ago

Storage capacity on the grid will need to massively increase as well for solar to go much further.

jillesvangurp 2y ago
It will. And define massively. People overestimate and under-specify these numbers. Mostly this is just economics. The cost of 1kwh of battery is trending towards 50$ for manufacturers and trending down over time. So, installing a few kwh/mwh/gwh of battery is not the end of the world depending on your needs.
wongarsu 2y ago
It is increasing. At the moment it is slowed because for the longest time we were fine with just hydro, pumped hydro, gas peaker plants and the natural inertia of the power plants' turbines and generators. Now demand is big enough that even lithium-ion is deployed for grid storage, despite lithium-ion being optimized for the opposite use case (light portable power storage). Lots of options that are more optimized for grid storage are in various stages of development, but it takes time for them to be brought to maturity and for operators to gain experience and confidence with them.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
ZeroGravitas 2y ago
Solar is nowhere near hitting limits that will require storage to continue growth. Like it could double several more times globally and not require storage to still make sense to roll out more. But, storage is already growing at a pace similar to solar because it's cheaper than the alternatives.
- zozbot234 2y ago
  The bulk of storage on the grid is just pumped hydro, everything else is literally a drop in the bucket. Some people like to make the argument that battery storage can grow enough to become relevant but that's just speculation, it hasn't happened so far.

jillesvangurp 2y ago

Exactly. This is what people keep underestimating. The way we currently generate power is expensive and inefficient. A lot of what we do is energy intensive. Which means it requires a lot of money to do. Transport is a good example. A long distance truck can take up to 300 gallons of diesel. It will drive quite far on that. But that's over 1000$. A well utilized truck goes through well over 100K$ of fuel per year. That's a lot of money. Enter electric trucks. Yes they have range limitations (depending on their battery size). But they don't use up 100K $ worth of electricity per year burning over 1M $ of fuel over it's lifespan. Not to mention all the maintenance and parts associated with keeping diesel engines going. Solar/wind/battery power has essentially no marginal cost. Electric trucks powered by that still have some marginal cost but it's a lot lower than that of a diesel truck. And even at current grid prices (typically determined by the cost of fossil fuels), it's probably earning itself back. What happens when diesel trucks follow the same cost curve that EVs went through? You don't need to be a genius to figure out that there are going to be a lot of truckers and trucking companies that can't afford to stick with diesel for very long when everybody starts decimating their fuel expenses. That's just trucks. The same kind of economics are happening across pretty much every sector that can feasibly be electrified. It's not all happening at once. But probably in hind sight in a few decades it will have happened very quickly. One moment everybody was mostly burning diesel, petrol, methane, and coal and a few short decades later all of that is gone because it became way too costly to continue doing any of that.

abfan1127 2y ago
For OTR trucks, you have to factor in the battery degradation. A OTR truck easily gets to 1 million miles on an engine. Often times significantly more, and then its only a rebuild, not a replacement. While electricity is much cheaper than diesel, battery replacement cost amortization is a real thing to include in the accounting. I haven't done an OTR, but I did do amortization for a Ford Lightning. While a "battery fill up" is $2-3. The replacement battery is $30k iirc. That's $3000/yr in costs assuming 10 year lifetime. At that rate, its $62/wk in battery amortization. So, you're really spending $62+3/wk in "energy". That's still less than a tank ($90-100 at current prices), but the savings is significantly less than originally anticipated.

wongarsu 2y ago

Which has always been the explicit goal of many solar subsidies across the world over the last 20 years: generate substantial demand for the technology while it's still expensive and risky, phase out subsidies as the price comes down. It worked beautifully

nasmorn 2y ago
It was Germany’s gift to the world. They stopped it just in time to kill their industry too, giving another gift to china

giancarlostoro 2y ago

> It will take time to replace. One way I've thought about, and some might hate me or this idea (or both) since I see a LOT of homes where I live in Florida going Solar, I keep wondering to myself, what happens if a law passes that makes it so new housing must contain solar as an option, and then over time, make it fully mandatory. Then you'd see a lot of newer homes with solar out of the box.

m463 2y ago

I wonder how the tariffs will play into this.