13 ms·

Solar energy is now the cheapest source of power, study

0cf8612b2e1e 1y ago
Without digging into the study, hasn’t this been true for many years now? Would love to know an actual pivot date where commercial scale deployments became the cheapest option.
- michaelbuckbee 1y ago
  I dug down trying to get the actual paper and it appears it's a pre-print with only the abstract available (but maybe I wasn't looking in the right spot). That being said, the quotes from the author were more to the point of it being a milestone that in the UK that Solar+Battery systems were now less expensive than gas/coal. To my understanding, this is a milestone vs "raw" production numbers, which you're correct in saying have had solar as the cheapest option for years.
  - epistasis 1y ago
    Holy crap, the UK has absolutely awful solar insolation, that solar and battery is now cheaper than coal really emphasizes how much the tech has advanced, and continues to advance! Germany also has absolutely terrible solar resources, worse than any continental US state, and is also deploying tons and tons of solar. Solar really is one of the more amazing technologies of our time, especially when combined with batteries, which advance almost as fast. We will have such greater reliability, cost, and air quality as coal is completely replaced by modern clean energy systems.
    - DamonHD 1y ago
      UK insolation is very roughly half that of (say) California, IIRC... (BTW, this is my crowd at Surrey, and Ravi is my (IfS) director!)
    - hvb2 1y ago
      Germany has deployed a lot of solar because of the Stromeinspeisungsgesetz from the 90s. It was the first feed in tariff law in the world afaik. It made it that you were guaranteed a certain rate for x amount of years. As a result people were driving to farmers to rent their roof to install solar on it.
    - hinkley 1y ago
      There’s a weird thing the contestants in the solar car challenge that Australia has been hosting since forever where they generate more power on haze or partly cloudy days than on sunny. I don’t know if they ever sorted out why. Speculation was reflected light off the clouds, but I suspect panel temperature also played a role. And road temperature affects panel temps. What the UK cannot do is concentrating solar. The efficiency absolutely crashes in diffuse light.
      - LamaOfRuin 1y ago
        Yeah. The temperature issue would have been my first guess. Regarding concentrating solar: are people still trying to make that work for commercial generation? I thought this had generally failed to pan out for electricity generation.
        rcxdude 1y ago
        Concentrated PV is pretty dead, the cost and complexity of the tracking is not at all worth it for the theoretical increase in efficiency.
        hinkley 1y ago
        The latest discoveries with double sided panels really puts the last nail in that coffin I believe. There are still plants out there, but I don’t know how many are still operating versus being decommissioned.
        hinkley 1y ago
        There are many variations of concentrating solar. There’s the tower, there’s the curved mirror with the tube of oil, and there’s the magnifying glass with a small, exotic solar cell that can handle 10 Suns’ worth of light. None of them work on overcast days because they rely on parallel rays of light.
    - CobrastanJorji 1y ago
      It's kind of funny because you just know that in 30 years or so Texas is going to be a gloriously wealthy producer of solar power, and it'll probably be owned by the same people who own the oil fields today, but the current stranglehold of oil is preventing those very same people from getting richer.
      - PunchyHamster 1y ago
        You're not getting richer from selling cheaper energy
        epistasis 1y ago
        When the alternative is other people selling the energy for cheaper while you sell no energy, that's even worse. Self-cannibalization is infinitely preferable to the regular sort of cannibalization.
        vel0city 1y ago
        You can definitely get richer selling cheaper energy. If the market demand price of energy is still high but you reduce your costs, you're making more money.
      - pixl97 1y ago
        Being owned by the people that have oil is pretty true. I know a number of Texans that still make good money on their wells which allowed them to accumulate a lot of land. They've been receptive to adding wind and solar farms on their properties, with wind being a pretty big winner around here.
  - gglon 1y ago
    The claim hinges entirely on the narrow definition of "large-scale energy generation." For the UK, with its high seasonal energy demand and low winter solar output, the cost of generation is almost irrelevant next to the cost of firming that power for 24/7/365 availability. While the paper[1] shows solar PV and daily-cycle batteries are getting cheaper, it also shows seasonal storage solutions like hydrogen are still an order of magnitude too expensive and inefficient (huge capex for electrolyzers/storage + poor round-trip efficiency). So providing reliable, 24/7/365 baseload power from PV + storage in the UK is demonstrably not cheaper than gas or nuclear today. [1] https://www.authorea.com/users/960972/articles/1329770/master/file/data/Manuscript/Manuscript.docx https://www.authorea.com/users/960972/articles/1329770/maste...
    - pfdietz 1y ago
      The per-kWh capacity cost at the link for hydrogen is very high compared to others I've seen. I wonder at the assumptions going into it. Are they assuming above-surface compressed hydrogen tanks, or liquid hydrogen? Ultra cheap thermal storage promises cost at least an order of magnitude below that.
  - epistasis 1y ago
    It's now passed peer-review, but hasn't yet been formatted into the journal's format as a PDF. Abstract here: https://www.authorea.com/users/960972/articles/1329770-solar-energy-in-2025-global-deployment-cost-trends-and-the-role-of-energy-storage-in-enabling-a-resilient-smart-energy-infrastructure https://www.authorea.com/users/960972/articles/1329770-solar... Which links to this .docx: https://www.authorea.com/users/960972/articles/1329770/master/file/data/Manuscript/Manuscript.docx https://www.authorea.com/users/960972/articles/1329770/maste...
- fred_is_fred 1y ago
  Wouldn't it depend a lot on where you live in terms of weather and/or required pollution controls?
dingnuts 1y ago
skimming the article it looks like this excludes transmission, construction, and disposal costs
- epistasis 1y ago
  Do you think those are significantly different for solar versus other technologies? Seems they would be right in line with anything else...
  - DamonHD 1y ago
    Capacity factor for renewables is generally lower than thermal plant, so some transmission costs may be higher. Though batteries firming output mitigates that for example.
    - epistasis 1y ago
      Right, and the majority of solar is getting installed with batteries these days because the really profitable hours are in the evening. Something like 60% of new solar in 2024 in the US had batteries on site.
      - DamonHD 1y ago
        Wind + solar + batteries at one site can be a good combo.
        epistasis 1y ago
        Depending on when the wind blows! (Which in most of the US is more at night, IIRC?)
        DamonHD 1y ago
        For the UK there is more wind in the winter, solar in the summer. Intraday anti-correlation is there, but it's more complicated: https://bmrs.elexon.co.uk/generation-forecast-for-wind-and-solar https://bmrs.elexon.co.uk/generation-forecast-for-wind-and-s... The US picture varies a lot over the contiguous states, I think, but often, again, there is anti-correlation in general.
deleted 1y ago
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nashashmi 1y ago
Does that include the delivery of power too? Or just for on site consumption?
- PunchyHamster 1y ago
  As usual, nothing, and not covering storage either. So it's cheapest in sun peak, when it's sunny
IG_Semmelweiss 1y ago
I don't understand. Why is it that in every single discussion about power- and in particular, solar power- is the cost of land omitted ? This is literally the most important factor to consider as it is a very scare resource in some markets - nevermind that this would be a significant driver of cost for solar, as it requires massive amounts of land (and taxes). This is true for solar, wind, etc be built.
- hector_vasquez 1y ago
  PV is fairly unique in that land is not required. It can be installed over existing land uses such as rooftops, canals, parking.
- Forgeties79 1y ago
  Land is also spoiled and occupied for fossil fuel extraction, refinement, and distribution. And at least you can be within the near vicinity of solar panels without experiencing significant health issues, so we need to tabulate the very real public health costs too when comparing. I highly doubt there is a solar equivalent of “Cancer Alley” in the US. Another consideration is that we can slap solar panels on top of existing structures, which you cannot do with fossil fuel at any stage. I don’t doubt that the costs are considerable but if we’re going to go down that path we need to make sure it’s applied across the board here and I imagine the gap is not as bad as you’re implying. I’m going off my gut though so I could be entirely wrong.
  - prepend 1y ago
    Land and exploration costs are definitely included in fossil fuel costs. I think most major solar projects include land and infrastructure so only comparing the costs of the panels is like comparing hydro only based on operating the dam, not building it.
    - hvb2 1y ago
      > Land and exploration costs are definitely included in fossil fuel costs. I think most major solar projects include land and infrastructure so only comparing the costs of the panels is like comparing hydro only based on operating the dam, not building it. Fossil the way we're running it now is only priced out based on burning it not dealing with its externalities either.
tehjoker 1y ago
Looking forward to the day when solar dominates and we can transmit from the sunny side of the world to the dark side... I think there are already some plans for a pan-European grid, maybe even a European/Asian grid. The bigger the grid, the more resilient solar is. It would also make the world more interdependent and thus hopefully more peaceful. I remember reading about this in IEEE. If you google "hypergrid IEEE" you can find papers in IEEE explore, but there was also a perspective that was more readable that I read a few years ago...
- echelon 1y ago
  I'm not sure how practical that would be. Transmitting power over distances incurs losses. I did see a proposal to build out solar in Africa and pipe it undersea to Europe. That seemed wild, and, predictably, it got canned for its impracticality. Edit - it looks like there are several such proposals, and that they're not all cancelled: Several travel across the Mediterranean: https://gregy-interconnector.gr/index_en.html https://gregy-interconnector.gr/index_en.html https://www.ecofinagency.com/news-industry/0210-49221-egypt-greece-advance-plan-for-3-000-mw-undersea-link-to-europe https://www.ecofinagency.com/news-industry/0210-49221-egypt-... Here's the one I thought was cancelled, which travels along the western coast of Africa to the UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xlinks_Morocco%E2%80%93UK_Power_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xlinks_Morocco%E2%80%93UK_Powe... https://xlinks.co/morocco-uk-power-project/ https://xlinks.co/morocco-uk-power-project/ https://thenational-the-national-prod.cdn.arcpublishing.com/business/uk/2023/09/29/britain-backs-undersea-cable-project-to-tap-moroccan-solar-power/ https://thenational-the-national-prod.cdn.arcpublishing.com/...
  - tehjoker 1y ago
    I suspect a mix of batteries and baseload delivery from the sunny side will be helpful. Even a few more hours of daylight from across the country can help batteries "last longer" by shortening the demand period.
  - hvb2 1y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec For those interested
swader999 1y ago
It'll be interesting if the sodium ion battery hype can combine with solar and give real base power alternatives. I think claims of cheapest don't really count unless it's qualified as non base power.
- ajross 1y ago
  Define "real base power"? You think the grid can only operate if every generator is always-on? How do you square that with the fact that the grid is operating just fine with this stuff already? This is a fallacy, basically. Not least because electricity is by far the most mobile traded commodity in human history. Not enough sun today where you live? Buy your power from across the continent, where they have plenty. Or from your wind generators which are working fine. Or the wind generators across the continent if you have to. Or crank up the hydro dams (most of which rarely run at 100%) a bit to handle the shortfall. Or even fire up an idle gas plant if you absolutely can't get anything else. The idea that solar and wind aren't (sigh) "real" is a lie that someone sold you. The real world relies on a lot of this stuff already and the promised apocalypse never arrived. Go figure.
  - mgh95 1y ago
    > Or the wind generators across the continent if you have to. Transmission losses are typically very substantial in most grids that are AC based. For example, a cross-country power transmission with the USAs grid would result in ~36% losses (napkin math at about 20% loss per 1000km). Reality isn't as simple as "ship the electricity" unfortunately; it makes a lot of sense to keep generation near consumption. Edit: Since people like this comment, take a look at this: https://patternenergy.com/projects/southern-spirit-transmission/ https://patternenergy.com/projects/southern-spirit-transmiss...
    - mikestorrent 1y ago
      Clearly something we'll need to get over. HVDC has something like 3% per 1000 KM loss - and when we start generating massive quantities of solar, 3% is going to be pretty acceptable.
buckle8017 1y ago
The actual paper seems to be available only as a docx file. I've converted it to pdf. https://files.catbox.moe/tfoim0.pdf https://files.catbox.moe/tfoim0.pdf
buckle8017 1y ago
This paper makes an error that is all too common in discussions of power grids. It talks about the California grid. Except there is no such thing, California is on the Western grid which is operated by WECC. The actual mix of energy on the western grid is here.[1] [1] https://feature.wecc.org/soti2025/soti2025/resources/index.html https://feature.wecc.org/soti2025/soti2025/resources/index.h...
- hvb2 1y ago
  But California has this: https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook
  - buckle8017 1y ago
    CalISO is a weird entity. WECC has essential subordinated contracting within a subset of the Western grid to CalISO. However it's not actually a separate grid. So when analyzing stability issues from inverter based sources of power (solar/wind/batteries) we can't use CalISO numbers since they can (and do) actually draw power from outside the CalISO grid area.
bethekidyouwant 1y ago
The research team also found that the price of lithium-ion batteries has fallen by 89% since 2010, making solar-plus-storage systems as cost-effective as gas power plants Well, which one is it? Is it cheaper or the same price as a gas plant?
- bitshiftfaced 1y ago
  New energy generation from solar is cheaper. New energy generation from solar plus storage is cost competitive with natural gas peaker plants. By how much depends on the region.
jmyeet 1y ago
This isn't surprising. Or new. I've been saying for years solar is the future. Solar has so many advantages over every other form of power generation. It's flexible, scalable (meaning you can have an installation any size from a solar farm to a calculator) and robust because it has no moving parts. It has no pollution (noise or chemical) and can be dual-use on many structures, everything from rooftops to adding solar to highways. The big problem with solar? Regulation around installing it that is entirely designed to protect the profits of utility companies. We have predatory financing around solar where companies are allowed to put a lien on your house and then essentially extort the homeowner if they ever choose to sell such that solar can reduce the value of your house significantly. We limit the amount of solar basically so the utility can keep selling you electricity. One might say it's to cover the bullding and maintenance of the transmission infrastructure. There's some truth to that. But at the same time utilities are generating massive profits, doing share buybacks and giving massive concessions to data centers that everyone else is paying for. Basically we would all be better off if every electricity provider wasn't a private company but instead what a municipal operation like municipal broadband.
- macintux 1y ago
  There's also the problem of rural opposition to solar farms. Not unusual to see a "no solar farms" sign every few hundred feet in some parts of Indiana where I wander (often in the same areas where the cars have bumper stickers celebrating coal). I assume astroturfing is at play.
  - epistasis 1y ago
    As a steady income stream, solar is a huge help to smaller farmers that might otherwise go bankrupt from a few bad years' of harvests. Larger growers hate that they no longer get to gobble up the land of the smaller growers, so there's a strong political incentive to block solar from their side.
Tepix 1y ago
With $40/kWh batteries available soon, i think even having 100 kWh of storage for a house will be rather common. With 14.4kWp solar, 5 MWh of electricity use per year and 100 kWh at 50€/kWh of battery you have 90% autarky and a time-to-value of 8-9 years. Pretty sweet.
- bboygravity 1y ago
  Not if you consider that you need to either renew or add battery capacity (and panels and power electronics) after x years? Or did you take that into account?
  - onlyrealcuzzo 1y ago
    That doesn't impact payback cost, if the batteries & panels last longer than 8-9 years (and they do). It's just one metric.
  - triceratops 1y ago
    x = ~25 years for the panels. They're paid off long before that.
- ReptileMan 1y ago
  There is small problem though - all of the people will need the last 10% at the same time. And because you need infrastructure that will work only 10 percent of the time, expect the price of kwh to be 10 times the current to compensate. The less you need the grid - the more expensive is what you will pull from it because the infrastructure costs will be spread on fewer kwh.
  - epistasis 1y ago
    I'm not sure if everybody will need the last 10% at the same time. Perhaps on a grid that's only a few counties large? 100 kWh of energy will last the average US house three days. And when you throw in people's EV batteries too...
    - 1y ago
deleted 1y ago
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m55au 1y ago
It has become so incredibly cheap that in some parts of the world it has started eating itself, called solar cannibalization. https://www.aalto.fi/en/news/rapid-growth-of-solar-power-in-finland-could-crash-summer-electricity-prices-new-study-warns-of https://www.aalto.fi/en/news/rapid-growth-of-solar-power-in-... https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/plunging-solar-capture-rates-test-nerve-europes-policymakers-maguire-2024-04-19/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/plunging-solar-captu...
- oompydoompy74 1y ago
  It’s almost like market forces aren’t what you want for a utility.
  - epistasis 1y ago
    Very few people realize that for most of the US, cheaper electricity costs for the utilities means lower profits, because most are regulated utilities that take a fixed profit on costs. Models for this vary greatly, sometimes they only take fixed profit on necessary grid investments (where necessary is determined by the utility, then stamped for approval by a Public Utility Commission, which has a board that might be elected and susceptible to bribing/election malefeasance, such as in Arizona...) So-called "natural" monopolies are quite difficult to regulate correctly. And the solution we chose as a society a century ago might not be the right one for today.
    - floatrock 1y ago
      Utilities tend to make most profit as a fixed rate of return on infrastructure built, not really based on electricity costs. Build a new substation, some poles & wires to distribute it to the new subdivisions, and bammo, regulator grants you a fixed rate of return on that from your ratebase (paying customers) over the lifetime of that infrastructure.
      - zdragnar 1y ago
        You get a fixed return on that infrastructure, but you need to keep pace with inflation in all other areas of the business. Storms, errant vehicles, animals, fires, all sorts of things cause that same infrastructure to require maintenance personnel and equipment, and that equipment needs its own maintenance, as do the offices for the personnel, and so on. It becomes a balancing act because you only get to adjust the rates every so often, and with regulator approval.
joe8756438 1y ago
i have a house in a lot of sun in mid atlantic usa. i have spent a modest amount of time casually exploring solar. the cost/benefit never seems that great. what am i missing?
- cinntaile 1y ago
  Where are your calculations? It's hard for anyone to comment without seeing your cost/benefit analysis.
- floatrock 1y ago
  Lets do some simple napkin math: Lets say a solar system will cost $25k (that should get you an 8-10kW rooftop system). Pay for it with, say, a 5% APR loan. - 10 years: $265/mo - 15 years: $197/mo - 20 years: $164/mo What are your current monthly electricity costs, and what time horizon gets you a good break-even? Also consider what electricity costs are gonna do. The loan locks in a monthly cost, but electricity rates have lately been increasing around 3% per year. Say you currently have a $150 monthly electricity bill... in 10, 15, and 20 years that will be $202, $233, and $270/mo. There's other ways to finance it (PPA's, leases, maybe incentives if we get serious about our energy again someday, etc.) that have their own advantages/disadvantages, but even this simple approach shows there's some wins depending on your exact consumption, time horizon, time-value of money, and what you expect your electric load to do (will you get an EV? will you adopt heat pumps? will you need to start using way more AC in the summers? etc)
  - FuriouslyAdrift 1y ago
    I'm in a leaky, 80 year old 3 bed 2 bath in the Midwest (that doesn't have insulation in the walls... brick and plaster). Worst in the Summer is around $100/mth, worst in the Winter $40/mth (of course gas for heat is around $80 Winter, $15 Summer for water heater, stove, etc.).
    - floatrock 1y ago
      Ok, sounds like it doesn't pencil out for you in your region. I have a similar size in a different part of the country with my bills consistently in the mid-$100's. YMMV. As with most things in life, there is no one-size-fits-all. Do what's right for you.
opo 1y ago
It should be noted that those low costs for solar installations are not including consumer rooftop solar. The consumer rooftop solar cost is usually one of the most expensive ways you can generate electricity - often several times the cost of utility solar installations: https://www.lazard.com/media/xemfey0k/lazards-lcoeplus-june-2024-_vf.pdf https://www.lazard.com/media/xemfey0k/lazards-lcoeplus-june-... The high rooftop solar price is usually hidden because no power source has been as subsidized as rooftop solar. Besides direct subsidies, wealthier home owners have often been paid the retail rate for the electricity they sell to the grid which causes higher electricity bills for those who can't afford to put panels on their roof. Also, in almost all cases, the home installation doesn’t have enough battery power to actually last through inclement weather and so is free riding on the reliability provided by the grid, putting more costs on the less well off. The whole thing is sort of a reverse Robin Hood scheme. Any subsidies for solar power should go to utility grade solar. Money is limited and is fungible - a dollar spent subsidizing utility solar will go much, much, further than a dollar spent subsidizing wealthy homeowners who install panels on their roof.
- iknowstuff 1y ago
  Totally. Grid solar and grid battery installations are gonna rock the world but rooftop solar is too bespoke and labor intensive. It goes directly against the benefit of solar’s mass manufacturing
- devjab 1y ago
  This is true. A lot of the older panels are also rather inefficient and come with a rather poor lifespan. It's part of the reason I don't personally have any form of solar despite working in the industry. Technology is catching up on the solar panel front though. French Heliup are producing panels which are only 5kg per square meter. Which makes them significantly easier to install on roof-tops. I imagine I'll eventually have solar panels on my roof, but I'll likely wait another decade for battery tech to also be more viable.
  - SoftTalker 1y ago
    I would have to cut down so many trees around my house to get effective sunlight on the roof more than a few hours a day. Plus my roof is pitched east/west so at best I have half the roof in sunlight for half the day. I do have quite a bit of clear space behind the house, so I could consider a system that sits on the ground. I just like paying the utility every month and not having to worry about owning, maintaining, and repairing my own infrastructure though. As it is now, if anything goes wrong upstream of the meter, that's not my responsibility.
jackcnreturns 1y ago
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asdefghyk 1y ago
RE ".. Solar energy is now the cheapest source of power, study ...." Does this cost include needed storage( up to several days ) and often new transmission lines? Is any country running only on solar? if it is the cheapest? The actual all up costs to actually allow 100% solar actually make it very expensive
- Kon5ole 1y ago
  Storage is not needed. You can consume solar power as it's generated, and it is as useful then as if it came from oil, gas or coal. When the sun goes down, you have saved tons of oil, gas and goal that didn't have to burn during the day. Which is very very good. You don't have to "solve nighttime" before solar makes sense, it makes sense immediately. Edit: And of course, nighttime is also being solved, in many ways, already.
  - asdefghyk 1y ago
    Unless blackouts or brownouts are going to be allowed to increase in frequency from very rare at present, sources of immediate dispatchable electricity are needed. Large scale hydro plants, battery storage, are expensive to have sitting around. Coal can take several hours to ramp up generation , Gas can be much faster, a few hours from a cold start. Nighttime is predictable. I'm specifically include bad weather in solar / wind generation which can mean zero output. Can be for days. Storage needs to be reserved for these events.
legitster 1y ago
> These hybrid setups, which combine solar panels with batteries, are now standard in many regions and allow solar energy to be stored and released when needed, turning it into a more reliable, dispatchable source of power that helps balance grid demand. On one hand, I think people underestimate how much energy our grids demand in a 24 hour cycle. The amount of lithium it would take to handle an unusually cloudy week would be astronomical. On the other hand, one of the ironies of electric cars is that they are one of the least effective uses of battery capacity. A Tesla with a 60kwh battery is probably touching less than 20kwh of capacity every day. So theoretically if you use the batteries for grid storage and actually cycle them regularly from 80% down to 20%, the battery capacity would be well over 2x - 4x more effective at offsetting carbon sources. (Even more so if you are offsetting worse sources like coal).
- matthewdgreen 1y ago
  Also, sodium batteries are now coming online. Slightly lower energy density, but potentially vastly lower cost. From looking at cost trends and increased production, it also seems pretty obvious at this point that we probably are going to get those vast quantities of battery storage everyone is so surprised about.
  - legitster 1y ago
    I'm still a little bit skeptical because chemical energy storage is inherently corrosive and unstable and so maintaining installed capacity is more expensive. Unlike power generation, where you can build a facility and it can more or less run for decades with basic maintenance, batteries effectively have a limited number of cycles they can be relied on for. So you would effectively have to remanufacture your entire storage capacity every 10-15 years. So scaling up on storage would theoretically get exponentially more expensive the more of the grid you take over. Obviously battery technology is improving and each 1% gain in improvement represents drastic savings. But I think there is still lots of reason to diversify technologically and continue to look into complementary sources of base power like nuclear.
    - 1y ago
2snakes 1y ago
Does this include the lifetime costs of need to replace the panels? Also batteries though I'd imagine that is a separate. But the panels would seem to be direct additional costs.
- pfdietz 1y ago
  Of course. That's the major cost (along with inverters and mounting and installation). If you didn't include that, if you just looked at operating costs, solar would be insanely cheap, far cheaper than any other source.
silexia 1y ago
Nuclear is far superior as you don't need batteries and can have 24/7 reliable power. Cut the artificial costs caused by insane regulation and nuclear is the safest and most cost effective solution.
- RobinL 1y ago
  I'm generally pro nuclear and think it should be a significant part of the energy mix. But an interesting point is that the floor price of nuclear is the cost of the turbines, which are surprisingly expensive, and aren't really getting cheaper. Solar can go much cheaper than that, potentially at least. More on this point in the recent Casey Handmer interview of Dwarkesh.
- DamonHD 1y ago
  Not being able (or willing) to turn turn nukes down or off to load-follow makes them sometimes as difficult to work with as intermittents. None in the GB grid load-follow, though one can AFAIK. And nukes need refuelling, so you need to fill in those generation gaps. And one of the last two big grid stumbles in the GB (UK) in the last ~20Y was caused by a big nuke (Sizewell B) tripping, so nukes can be big single points of failure too. Note: I am pro nukes in the mix, but nukes have difficult points too.
- thinkcontext 1y ago
  There are two approved sites for AP1000 reactors to be built, Turkey Point in FL and Summer in SC, all regulatory hurdles have been passed. Yet no one wants to take the risk to build them, not because of regulation but because industry can't control construction costs.
- pfdietz 1y ago
  Nuclear is far inferior in that it is too costly, despite that putative advantage. The value of being able to run 24/7 doesn't make up for the unaffordably high cost of building the plants.
themafia 1y ago
Ctrl-F: "Recycle" -- 0 results "Maintenance" -- 0 results "Insurance" -- 0 results Okay?
Havoc 1y ago
Wow the comments are bleak. Cheap clean elec and comments is all about finding issues
specialist 1y ago
Interview with paper's authors: Solar+storage is so much farther along than you think / A conversation with Kostantsa Rangelova and Dave Jones of Ember. [2025/07/16] https://www.volts.wtf/p/solarstorage-is-so-much-farther-along https://www.volts.wtf/p/solarstorage-is-so-much-farther-alon... Really, every one interested in renewables and net-zero should listen. IIRC, my own take aways from this interview: At the time of this interview, in the USA, because of subsidies and tariffs, only natural gas (IIRC ~$70 gWh) is cheaper than solar + battery for new generation. Battery storage costs continue to drop faster than any one has anticipated. -40% in 2024 alone. Wow! Even people savvy about our glorious renewable energy future don't fully appreciate just how quickly how fast both solar and batteries have and will continue to improve. I don't remember the specifics when where wind is preferable to solar. IIRC, even in Finland solar + battery still pencils out. Since solar + battery only gets us ~90% (?) to net-zero, we'll still need wind. (Ditto adv geo therm, heat batteries, pumped hydro, etc. Because we'll need A LOT more of everything for net-negative, to restore 360 ppm for CO2 and other GHGs.) Personal note: Am very eager for Jenny Chase's yearly report on solar. Especially prospects for scaling up wind generation. Chase previously expressed concern about wind lagging behind solar. Which is bad, because we'll still need a lot of wind (at northern latitudes). Having quickly scanned prior comments here, my impression is that u/epistatis is spot on. In other words, most everyone's priors need a major update.

Without digging into the study, hasn’t this been true for many years now? Would love to know an actual pivot date where commercial scale deployments became the cheapest option.

michaelbuckbee 1y ago
I dug down trying to get the actual paper and it appears it's a pre-print with only the abstract available (but maybe I wasn't looking in the right spot). That being said, the quotes from the author were more to the point of it being a milestone that in the UK that Solar+Battery systems were now less expensive than gas/coal. To my understanding, this is a milestone vs "raw" production numbers, which you're correct in saying have had solar as the cheapest option for years.
- epistasis 1y ago
  Holy crap, the UK has absolutely awful solar insolation, that solar and battery is now cheaper than coal really emphasizes how much the tech has advanced, and continues to advance! Germany also has absolutely terrible solar resources, worse than any continental US state, and is also deploying tons and tons of solar. Solar really is one of the more amazing technologies of our time, especially when combined with batteries, which advance almost as fast. We will have such greater reliability, cost, and air quality as coal is completely replaced by modern clean energy systems.
  - DamonHD 1y ago
    UK insolation is very roughly half that of (say) California, IIRC... (BTW, this is my crowd at Surrey, and Ravi is my (IfS) director!)
  - hvb2 1y ago
    Germany has deployed a lot of solar because of the Stromeinspeisungsgesetz from the 90s. It was the first feed in tariff law in the world afaik. It made it that you were guaranteed a certain rate for x amount of years. As a result people were driving to farmers to rent their roof to install solar on it.
  - hinkley 1y ago
    There’s a weird thing the contestants in the solar car challenge that Australia has been hosting since forever where they generate more power on haze or partly cloudy days than on sunny. I don’t know if they ever sorted out why. Speculation was reflected light off the clouds, but I suspect panel temperature also played a role. And road temperature affects panel temps. What the UK cannot do is concentrating solar. The efficiency absolutely crashes in diffuse light.
    - LamaOfRuin 1y ago
      Yeah. The temperature issue would have been my first guess. Regarding concentrating solar: are people still trying to make that work for commercial generation? I thought this had generally failed to pan out for electricity generation.
      - rcxdude 1y ago
        Concentrated PV is pretty dead, the cost and complexity of the tracking is not at all worth it for the theoretical increase in efficiency.
        hinkley 1y ago
        The latest discoveries with double sided panels really puts the last nail in that coffin I believe. There are still plants out there, but I don’t know how many are still operating versus being decommissioned.
      - hinkley 1y ago
        There are many variations of concentrating solar. There’s the tower, there’s the curved mirror with the tube of oil, and there’s the magnifying glass with a small, exotic solar cell that can handle 10 Suns’ worth of light. None of them work on overcast days because they rely on parallel rays of light.
  - CobrastanJorji 1y ago
    It's kind of funny because you just know that in 30 years or so Texas is going to be a gloriously wealthy producer of solar power, and it'll probably be owned by the same people who own the oil fields today, but the current stranglehold of oil is preventing those very same people from getting richer.
    - PunchyHamster 1y ago
      You're not getting richer from selling cheaper energy
      - epistasis 1y ago
        When the alternative is other people selling the energy for cheaper while you sell no energy, that's even worse. Self-cannibalization is infinitely preferable to the regular sort of cannibalization.
      - vel0city 1y ago
        You can definitely get richer selling cheaper energy. If the market demand price of energy is still high but you reduce your costs, you're making more money.
    - pixl97 1y ago
      Being owned by the people that have oil is pretty true. I know a number of Texans that still make good money on their wells which allowed them to accumulate a lot of land. They've been receptive to adding wind and solar farms on their properties, with wind being a pretty big winner around here.
- gglon 1y ago
  The claim hinges entirely on the narrow definition of "large-scale energy generation." For the UK, with its high seasonal energy demand and low winter solar output, the cost of generation is almost irrelevant next to the cost of firming that power for 24/7/365 availability. While the paper[1] shows solar PV and daily-cycle batteries are getting cheaper, it also shows seasonal storage solutions like hydrogen are still an order of magnitude too expensive and inefficient (huge capex for electrolyzers/storage + poor round-trip efficiency). So providing reliable, 24/7/365 baseload power from PV + storage in the UK is demonstrably not cheaper than gas or nuclear today. [1] https://www.authorea.com/users/960972/articles/1329770/master/file/data/Manuscript/Manuscript.docx https://www.authorea.com/users/960972/articles/1329770/maste...
  - pfdietz 1y ago
    The per-kWh capacity cost at the link for hydrogen is very high compared to others I've seen. I wonder at the assumptions going into it. Are they assuming above-surface compressed hydrogen tanks, or liquid hydrogen? Ultra cheap thermal storage promises cost at least an order of magnitude below that.
- epistasis 1y ago
  It's now passed peer-review, but hasn't yet been formatted into the journal's format as a PDF. Abstract here: https://www.authorea.com/users/960972/articles/1329770-solar-energy-in-2025-global-deployment-cost-trends-and-the-role-of-energy-storage-in-enabling-a-resilient-smart-energy-infrastructure https://www.authorea.com/users/960972/articles/1329770-solar... Which links to this .docx: https://www.authorea.com/users/960972/articles/1329770/master/file/data/Manuscript/Manuscript.docx https://www.authorea.com/users/960972/articles/1329770/maste...
fred_is_fred 1y ago
Wouldn't it depend a lot on where you live in terms of weather and/or required pollution controls?

dingnuts 1y ago

skimming the article it looks like this excludes transmission, construction, and disposal costs

epistasis 1y ago
Do you think those are significantly different for solar versus other technologies? Seems they would be right in line with anything else...
- DamonHD 1y ago
  Capacity factor for renewables is generally lower than thermal plant, so some transmission costs may be higher. Though batteries firming output mitigates that for example.
  - epistasis 1y ago
    Right, and the majority of solar is getting installed with batteries these days because the really profitable hours are in the evening. Something like 60% of new solar in 2024 in the US had batteries on site.
    - DamonHD 1y ago
      Wind + solar + batteries at one site can be a good combo.
      - epistasis 1y ago
        Depending on when the wind blows! (Which in most of the US is more at night, IIRC?)
        DamonHD 1y ago
        For the UK there is more wind in the winter, solar in the summer. Intraday anti-correlation is there, but it's more complicated: https://bmrs.elexon.co.uk/generation-forecast-for-wind-and-solar https://bmrs.elexon.co.uk/generation-forecast-for-wind-and-s... The US picture varies a lot over the contiguous states, I think, but often, again, there is anti-correlation in general.

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nashashmi 1y ago

Does that include the delivery of power too? Or just for on site consumption?

PunchyHamster 1y ago
As usual, nothing, and not covering storage either. So it's cheapest in sun peak, when it's sunny

IG_Semmelweiss 1y ago

I don't understand. Why is it that in every single discussion about power- and in particular, solar power- is the cost of land omitted ? This is literally the most important factor to consider as it is a very scare resource in some markets - nevermind that this would be a significant driver of cost for solar, as it requires massive amounts of land (and taxes). This is true for solar, wind, etc be built.

hector_vasquez 1y ago
PV is fairly unique in that land is not required. It can be installed over existing land uses such as rooftops, canals, parking.
Forgeties79 1y ago
Land is also spoiled and occupied for fossil fuel extraction, refinement, and distribution. And at least you can be within the near vicinity of solar panels without experiencing significant health issues, so we need to tabulate the very real public health costs too when comparing. I highly doubt there is a solar equivalent of “Cancer Alley” in the US. Another consideration is that we can slap solar panels on top of existing structures, which you cannot do with fossil fuel at any stage. I don’t doubt that the costs are considerable but if we’re going to go down that path we need to make sure it’s applied across the board here and I imagine the gap is not as bad as you’re implying. I’m going off my gut though so I could be entirely wrong.
- prepend 1y ago
  Land and exploration costs are definitely included in fossil fuel costs. I think most major solar projects include land and infrastructure so only comparing the costs of the panels is like comparing hydro only based on operating the dam, not building it.
  - hvb2 1y ago
    > Land and exploration costs are definitely included in fossil fuel costs. I think most major solar projects include land and infrastructure so only comparing the costs of the panels is like comparing hydro only based on operating the dam, not building it. Fossil the way we're running it now is only priced out based on burning it not dealing with its externalities either.

tehjoker 1y ago

Looking forward to the day when solar dominates and we can transmit from the sunny side of the world to the dark side... I think there are already some plans for a pan-European grid, maybe even a European/Asian grid. The bigger the grid, the more resilient solar is. It would also make the world more interdependent and thus hopefully more peaceful. I remember reading about this in IEEE. If you google "hypergrid IEEE" you can find papers in IEEE explore, but there was also a perspective that was more readable that I read a few years ago...

echelon 1y ago
I'm not sure how practical that would be. Transmitting power over distances incurs losses. I did see a proposal to build out solar in Africa and pipe it undersea to Europe. That seemed wild, and, predictably, it got canned for its impracticality. Edit - it looks like there are several such proposals, and that they're not all cancelled: Several travel across the Mediterranean: https://gregy-interconnector.gr/index_en.html https://gregy-interconnector.gr/index_en.html https://www.ecofinagency.com/news-industry/0210-49221-egypt-greece-advance-plan-for-3-000-mw-undersea-link-to-europe https://www.ecofinagency.com/news-industry/0210-49221-egypt-... Here's the one I thought was cancelled, which travels along the western coast of Africa to the UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xlinks_Morocco%E2%80%93UK_Power_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xlinks_Morocco%E2%80%93UK_Powe... https://xlinks.co/morocco-uk-power-project/ https://xlinks.co/morocco-uk-power-project/ https://thenational-the-national-prod.cdn.arcpublishing.com/business/uk/2023/09/29/britain-backs-undersea-cable-project-to-tap-moroccan-solar-power/ https://thenational-the-national-prod.cdn.arcpublishing.com/...
- tehjoker 1y ago
  I suspect a mix of batteries and baseload delivery from the sunny side will be helpful. Even a few more hours of daylight from across the country can help batteries "last longer" by shortening the demand period.
- hvb2 1y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec For those interested

swader999 1y ago

It'll be interesting if the sodium ion battery hype can combine with solar and give real base power alternatives. I think claims of cheapest don't really count unless it's qualified as non base power.

ajross 1y ago
Define "real base power"? You think the grid can only operate if every generator is always-on? How do you square that with the fact that the grid is operating just fine with this stuff already? This is a fallacy, basically. Not least because electricity is by far the most mobile traded commodity in human history. Not enough sun today where you live? Buy your power from across the continent, where they have plenty. Or from your wind generators which are working fine. Or the wind generators across the continent if you have to. Or crank up the hydro dams (most of which rarely run at 100%) a bit to handle the shortfall. Or even fire up an idle gas plant if you absolutely can't get anything else. The idea that solar and wind aren't (sigh) "real" is a lie that someone sold you. The real world relies on a lot of this stuff already and the promised apocalypse never arrived. Go figure.
- mgh95 1y ago
  > Or the wind generators across the continent if you have to. Transmission losses are typically very substantial in most grids that are AC based. For example, a cross-country power transmission with the USAs grid would result in ~36% losses (napkin math at about 20% loss per 1000km). Reality isn't as simple as "ship the electricity" unfortunately; it makes a lot of sense to keep generation near consumption. Edit: Since people like this comment, take a look at this: https://patternenergy.com/projects/southern-spirit-transmission/ https://patternenergy.com/projects/southern-spirit-transmiss...
  - mikestorrent 1y ago
    Clearly something we'll need to get over. HVDC has something like 3% per 1000 KM loss - and when we start generating massive quantities of solar, 3% is going to be pretty acceptable.

buckle8017 1y ago

The actual paper seems to be available only as a docx file. I've converted it to pdf. https://files.catbox.moe/tfoim0.pdf https://files.catbox.moe/tfoim0.pdf

buckle8017 1y ago

This paper makes an error that is all too common in discussions of power grids. It talks about the California grid. Except there is no such thing, California is on the Western grid which is operated by WECC. The actual mix of energy on the western grid is here.[1] [1] https://feature.wecc.org/soti2025/soti2025/resources/index.html https://feature.wecc.org/soti2025/soti2025/resources/index.h...

hvb2 1y ago
But California has this: https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook
- buckle8017 1y ago
  CalISO is a weird entity. WECC has essential subordinated contracting within a subset of the Western grid to CalISO. However it's not actually a separate grid. So when analyzing stability issues from inverter based sources of power (solar/wind/batteries) we can't use CalISO numbers since they can (and do) actually draw power from outside the CalISO grid area.

bethekidyouwant 1y ago

The research team also found that the price of lithium-ion batteries has fallen by 89% since 2010, making solar-plus-storage systems as cost-effective as gas power plants Well, which one is it? Is it cheaper or the same price as a gas plant?

bitshiftfaced 1y ago
New energy generation from solar is cheaper. New energy generation from solar plus storage is cost competitive with natural gas peaker plants. By how much depends on the region.

jmyeet 1y ago

This isn't surprising. Or new. I've been saying for years solar is the future. Solar has so many advantages over every other form of power generation. It's flexible, scalable (meaning you can have an installation any size from a solar farm to a calculator) and robust because it has no moving parts. It has no pollution (noise or chemical) and can be dual-use on many structures, everything from rooftops to adding solar to highways. The big problem with solar? Regulation around installing it that is entirely designed to protect the profits of utility companies. We have predatory financing around solar where companies are allowed to put a lien on your house and then essentially extort the homeowner if they ever choose to sell such that solar can reduce the value of your house significantly. We limit the amount of solar basically so the utility can keep selling you electricity. One might say it's to cover the bullding and maintenance of the transmission infrastructure. There's some truth to that. But at the same time utilities are generating massive profits, doing share buybacks and giving massive concessions to data centers that everyone else is paying for. Basically we would all be better off if every electricity provider wasn't a private company but instead what a municipal operation like municipal broadband.

macintux 1y ago
There's also the problem of rural opposition to solar farms. Not unusual to see a "no solar farms" sign every few hundred feet in some parts of Indiana where I wander (often in the same areas where the cars have bumper stickers celebrating coal). I assume astroturfing is at play.
- epistasis 1y ago
  As a steady income stream, solar is a huge help to smaller farmers that might otherwise go bankrupt from a few bad years' of harvests. Larger growers hate that they no longer get to gobble up the land of the smaller growers, so there's a strong political incentive to block solar from their side.

Tepix 1y ago

With $40/kWh batteries available soon, i think even having 100 kWh of storage for a house will be rather common. With 14.4kWp solar, 5 MWh of electricity use per year and 100 kWh at 50€/kWh of battery you have 90% autarky and a time-to-value of 8-9 years. Pretty sweet.

bboygravity 1y ago
Not if you consider that you need to either renew or add battery capacity (and panels and power electronics) after x years? Or did you take that into account?
- onlyrealcuzzo 1y ago
  That doesn't impact payback cost, if the batteries & panels last longer than 8-9 years (and they do). It's just one metric.
- triceratops 1y ago
  x = ~25 years for the panels. They're paid off long before that.
ReptileMan 1y ago
There is small problem though - all of the people will need the last 10% at the same time. And because you need infrastructure that will work only 10 percent of the time, expect the price of kwh to be 10 times the current to compensate. The less you need the grid - the more expensive is what you will pull from it because the infrastructure costs will be spread on fewer kwh.
- epistasis 1y ago
  I'm not sure if everybody will need the last 10% at the same time. Perhaps on a grid that's only a few counties large? 100 kWh of energy will last the average US house three days. And when you throw in people's EV batteries too...
  - 1y ago

deleted 1y ago

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m55au 1y ago

It has become so incredibly cheap that in some parts of the world it has started eating itself, called solar cannibalization. https://www.aalto.fi/en/news/rapid-growth-of-solar-power-in-finland-could-crash-summer-electricity-prices-new-study-warns-of https://www.aalto.fi/en/news/rapid-growth-of-solar-power-in-... https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/plunging-solar-capture-rates-test-nerve-europes-policymakers-maguire-2024-04-19/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/plunging-solar-captu...

oompydoompy74 1y ago
It’s almost like market forces aren’t what you want for a utility.
- epistasis 1y ago
  Very few people realize that for most of the US, cheaper electricity costs for the utilities means lower profits, because most are regulated utilities that take a fixed profit on costs. Models for this vary greatly, sometimes they only take fixed profit on necessary grid investments (where necessary is determined by the utility, then stamped for approval by a Public Utility Commission, which has a board that might be elected and susceptible to bribing/election malefeasance, such as in Arizona...) So-called "natural" monopolies are quite difficult to regulate correctly. And the solution we chose as a society a century ago might not be the right one for today.
  - floatrock 1y ago
    Utilities tend to make most profit as a fixed rate of return on infrastructure built, not really based on electricity costs. Build a new substation, some poles & wires to distribute it to the new subdivisions, and bammo, regulator grants you a fixed rate of return on that from your ratebase (paying customers) over the lifetime of that infrastructure.
    - zdragnar 1y ago
      You get a fixed return on that infrastructure, but you need to keep pace with inflation in all other areas of the business. Storms, errant vehicles, animals, fires, all sorts of things cause that same infrastructure to require maintenance personnel and equipment, and that equipment needs its own maintenance, as do the offices for the personnel, and so on. It becomes a balancing act because you only get to adjust the rates every so often, and with regulator approval.

joe8756438 1y ago

i have a house in a lot of sun in mid atlantic usa. i have spent a modest amount of time casually exploring solar. the cost/benefit never seems that great. what am i missing?

cinntaile 1y ago
Where are your calculations? It's hard for anyone to comment without seeing your cost/benefit analysis.
floatrock 1y ago
Lets do some simple napkin math: Lets say a solar system will cost $25k (that should get you an 8-10kW rooftop system). Pay for it with, say, a 5% APR loan. - 10 years: $265/mo - 15 years: $197/mo - 20 years: $164/mo What are your current monthly electricity costs, and what time horizon gets you a good break-even? Also consider what electricity costs are gonna do. The loan locks in a monthly cost, but electricity rates have lately been increasing around 3% per year. Say you currently have a $150 monthly electricity bill... in 10, 15, and 20 years that will be $202, $233, and $270/mo. There's other ways to finance it (PPA's, leases, maybe incentives if we get serious about our energy again someday, etc.) that have their own advantages/disadvantages, but even this simple approach shows there's some wins depending on your exact consumption, time horizon, time-value of money, and what you expect your electric load to do (will you get an EV? will you adopt heat pumps? will you need to start using way more AC in the summers? etc)
- FuriouslyAdrift 1y ago
  I'm in a leaky, 80 year old 3 bed 2 bath in the Midwest (that doesn't have insulation in the walls... brick and plaster). Worst in the Summer is around $100/mth, worst in the Winter $40/mth (of course gas for heat is around $80 Winter, $15 Summer for water heater, stove, etc.).
  - floatrock 1y ago
    Ok, sounds like it doesn't pencil out for you in your region. I have a similar size in a different part of the country with my bills consistently in the mid-$100's. YMMV. As with most things in life, there is no one-size-fits-all. Do what's right for you.

opo 1y ago

It should be noted that those low costs for solar installations are not including consumer rooftop solar. The consumer rooftop solar cost is usually one of the most expensive ways you can generate electricity - often several times the cost of utility solar installations: https://www.lazard.com/media/xemfey0k/lazards-lcoeplus-june-2024-_vf.pdf https://www.lazard.com/media/xemfey0k/lazards-lcoeplus-june-... The high rooftop solar price is usually hidden because no power source has been as subsidized as rooftop solar. Besides direct subsidies, wealthier home owners have often been paid the retail rate for the electricity they sell to the grid which causes higher electricity bills for those who can't afford to put panels on their roof. Also, in almost all cases, the home installation doesn’t have enough battery power to actually last through inclement weather and so is free riding on the reliability provided by the grid, putting more costs on the less well off. The whole thing is sort of a reverse Robin Hood scheme. Any subsidies for solar power should go to utility grade solar. Money is limited and is fungible - a dollar spent subsidizing utility solar will go much, much, further than a dollar spent subsidizing wealthy homeowners who install panels on their roof.

iknowstuff 1y ago
Totally. Grid solar and grid battery installations are gonna rock the world but rooftop solar is too bespoke and labor intensive. It goes directly against the benefit of solar’s mass manufacturing
devjab 1y ago
This is true. A lot of the older panels are also rather inefficient and come with a rather poor lifespan. It's part of the reason I don't personally have any form of solar despite working in the industry. Technology is catching up on the solar panel front though. French Heliup are producing panels which are only 5kg per square meter. Which makes them significantly easier to install on roof-tops. I imagine I'll eventually have solar panels on my roof, but I'll likely wait another decade for battery tech to also be more viable.
- SoftTalker 1y ago
  I would have to cut down so many trees around my house to get effective sunlight on the roof more than a few hours a day. Plus my roof is pitched east/west so at best I have half the roof in sunlight for half the day. I do have quite a bit of clear space behind the house, so I could consider a system that sits on the ground. I just like paying the utility every month and not having to worry about owning, maintaining, and repairing my own infrastructure though. As it is now, if anything goes wrong upstream of the meter, that's not my responsibility.

jackcnreturns 1y ago

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asdefghyk 1y ago

RE ".. Solar energy is now the cheapest source of power, study ...." Does this cost include needed storage( up to several days ) and often new transmission lines? Is any country running only on solar? if it is the cheapest? The actual all up costs to actually allow 100% solar actually make it very expensive

Kon5ole 1y ago
Storage is not needed. You can consume solar power as it's generated, and it is as useful then as if it came from oil, gas or coal. When the sun goes down, you have saved tons of oil, gas and goal that didn't have to burn during the day. Which is very very good. You don't have to "solve nighttime" before solar makes sense, it makes sense immediately. Edit: And of course, nighttime is also being solved, in many ways, already.
- asdefghyk 1y ago
  Unless blackouts or brownouts are going to be allowed to increase in frequency from very rare at present, sources of immediate dispatchable electricity are needed. Large scale hydro plants, battery storage, are expensive to have sitting around. Coal can take several hours to ramp up generation , Gas can be much faster, a few hours from a cold start. Nighttime is predictable. I'm specifically include bad weather in solar / wind generation which can mean zero output. Can be for days. Storage needs to be reserved for these events.

legitster 1y ago

> These hybrid setups, which combine solar panels with batteries, are now standard in many regions and allow solar energy to be stored and released when needed, turning it into a more reliable, dispatchable source of power that helps balance grid demand. On one hand, I think people underestimate how much energy our grids demand in a 24 hour cycle. The amount of lithium it would take to handle an unusually cloudy week would be astronomical. On the other hand, one of the ironies of electric cars is that they are one of the least effective uses of battery capacity. A Tesla with a 60kwh battery is probably touching less than 20kwh of capacity every day. So theoretically if you use the batteries for grid storage and actually cycle them regularly from 80% down to 20%, the battery capacity would be well over 2x - 4x more effective at offsetting carbon sources. (Even more so if you are offsetting worse sources like coal).

matthewdgreen 1y ago
Also, sodium batteries are now coming online. Slightly lower energy density, but potentially vastly lower cost. From looking at cost trends and increased production, it also seems pretty obvious at this point that we probably are going to get those vast quantities of battery storage everyone is so surprised about.
- legitster 1y ago
  I'm still a little bit skeptical because chemical energy storage is inherently corrosive and unstable and so maintaining installed capacity is more expensive. Unlike power generation, where you can build a facility and it can more or less run for decades with basic maintenance, batteries effectively have a limited number of cycles they can be relied on for. So you would effectively have to remanufacture your entire storage capacity every 10-15 years. So scaling up on storage would theoretically get exponentially more expensive the more of the grid you take over. Obviously battery technology is improving and each 1% gain in improvement represents drastic savings. But I think there is still lots of reason to diversify technologically and continue to look into complementary sources of base power like nuclear.
  - 1y ago

2snakes 1y ago

Does this include the lifetime costs of need to replace the panels? Also batteries though I'd imagine that is a separate. But the panels would seem to be direct additional costs.

pfdietz 1y ago
Of course. That's the major cost (along with inverters and mounting and installation). If you didn't include that, if you just looked at operating costs, solar would be insanely cheap, far cheaper than any other source.

silexia 1y ago

Nuclear is far superior as you don't need batteries and can have 24/7 reliable power. Cut the artificial costs caused by insane regulation and nuclear is the safest and most cost effective solution.

RobinL 1y ago
I'm generally pro nuclear and think it should be a significant part of the energy mix. But an interesting point is that the floor price of nuclear is the cost of the turbines, which are surprisingly expensive, and aren't really getting cheaper. Solar can go much cheaper than that, potentially at least. More on this point in the recent Casey Handmer interview of Dwarkesh.
DamonHD 1y ago
Not being able (or willing) to turn turn nukes down or off to load-follow makes them sometimes as difficult to work with as intermittents. None in the GB grid load-follow, though one can AFAIK. And nukes need refuelling, so you need to fill in those generation gaps. And one of the last two big grid stumbles in the GB (UK) in the last ~20Y was caused by a big nuke (Sizewell B) tripping, so nukes can be big single points of failure too. Note: I am pro nukes in the mix, but nukes have difficult points too.
thinkcontext 1y ago
There are two approved sites for AP1000 reactors to be built, Turkey Point in FL and Summer in SC, all regulatory hurdles have been passed. Yet no one wants to take the risk to build them, not because of regulation but because industry can't control construction costs.
pfdietz 1y ago
Nuclear is far inferior in that it is too costly, despite that putative advantage. The value of being able to run 24/7 doesn't make up for the unaffordably high cost of building the plants.

themafia 1y ago

Ctrl-F: "Recycle" -- 0 results "Maintenance" -- 0 results "Insurance" -- 0 results Okay?

Havoc 1y ago

Wow the comments are bleak. Cheap clean elec and comments is all about finding issues

specialist 1y ago

Interview with paper's authors: Solar+storage is so much farther along than you think / A conversation with Kostantsa Rangelova and Dave Jones of Ember. [2025/07/16] https://www.volts.wtf/p/solarstorage-is-so-much-farther-along https://www.volts.wtf/p/solarstorage-is-so-much-farther-alon... Really, every one interested in renewables and net-zero should listen. IIRC, my own take aways from this interview: At the time of this interview, in the USA, because of subsidies and tariffs, only natural gas (IIRC ~$70 gWh) is cheaper than solar + battery for new generation. Battery storage costs continue to drop faster than any one has anticipated. -40% in 2024 alone. Wow! Even people savvy about our glorious renewable energy future don't fully appreciate just how quickly how fast both solar and batteries have and will continue to improve. I don't remember the specifics when where wind is preferable to solar. IIRC, even in Finland solar + battery still pencils out. Since solar + battery only gets us ~90% (?) to net-zero, we'll still need wind. (Ditto adv geo therm, heat batteries, pumped hydro, etc. Because we'll need A LOT more of everything for net-negative, to restore 360 ppm for CO2 and other GHGs.) Personal note: Am very eager for Jenny Chase's yearly report on solar. Especially prospects for scaling up wind generation. Chase previously expressed concern about wind lagging behind solar. Which is bad, because we'll still need a lot of wind (at northern latitudes). Having quickly scanned prior comments here, my impression is that u/epistatis is spot on. In other words, most everyone's priors need a major update.