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The biggest impediment to clean energy, which is actually cheaper than fossil fuels, is politics. We have political interference at the highest level to impede

The biggest impediment to clean energy, which is actually cheaper than fossil fuels, is politics. We have political interference at the highest level to impede solar, storage, and wind. In the US, residential solar is 5x-6x more expensive than in Australia per W, i.e. on identical system costs, not on what's generated. And they pay their labor better than we do in the US at the same time. It's because of a lot of regulatory and utility interference, and a laundry list of other things: https://www.volts.wtf/p/whats-the-real-story-with-australian https://www.volts.wtf/p/whats-the-real-story-with-australian This is the headline from a non-partisan energy media outlet when it comes to wind: " How Trump dismantled a promising energy industry — and what America lost---The demolition of the offshore wind sector in 2025 will reverberate for decades, resulting in lost jobs, higher utility bills, and less reliable power grids." https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/offshore-wind/how-trump-dismantled-a-promising-energy-industry-and-what-america-lost https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/offshore-wind/how-trump... And when it comes to batteries, people that don't care about the effects of mining or oil extraction or toxicity of gasoline all of a sudden start to get all worked up about supposedly "toxic" lithium batteries, because they've consumed a ton of propaganda on the matter, and no facts. People also seem to think that we somehow burn lithium, instead of mine it once, and use a tiny amount (dozens of pounds) to power an entire car, which can then be recycled. And I can't tell you how many times I've been told that we can't do solar because it takes "too much land" or "physics" by people that pretend to be good with numbers but have never figured out how to calculate the actual requirementns by solar... This is a US-specific comment, but the rest of the world is not as foolish and is plowing full-steam ahead to a world of ever decreasing energy costs because they are not stopping the progress of better technology.

perilunar 9mo ago
In Australia we have so much solar that wholesale electricity prices are often negative during the day. Despite that we still have high retail prices. Domestic battery installations are getting popular and will help. See: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-08/big-swings-in-australias-electricity-market/106305696 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-08/big-swings-in-austral...
- nandomrumber 9mo ago
  I don’t understand what you’re trying to say here. How do domestic battery installations help with the retail price of electricity?
  - perilunar 9mo ago
    More domestic batteries reduces the electricity demand at night, meaning power companies need to buy less natural gas and coal powered electricity from producers. They lose some solar generation during the day that is now going into charging the batteries, but they have too much of that already. Net result a lower proportion of (more expensive) fossil fuels in the overall mix, meaning total cost of power generation comes down, and retail prices come down.
  - pfdietz 9mo ago
    It's customers fleeing high prices by making more of their consumption themselves.
    - hedora 9mo ago
      This is happening in the US too. We're creeping closer and closer to the day where just installing off-grid battery + PV is cheaper than dealing with regulations + politically inflated grid prices. In most states, the power company cannot seize your home for cancelling your account + not paying your bill. Also, in most states, the power company gets to regulate the design of grid-attached solar. They're artificially driving installation costs up (building codes do too, and are a separate problem). This means there's a big step function coming. The price of grids (which are subsidizing the AI data center boondoggle, and also legacy fossil fuel plutocrats) are currently a little higher than grid attached battery + PV. We're maybe one more price halving to the point where it makes sense to go off grid. At that point, a market for off-grid (non-subsidizing) system installations will materialize. In distorted markets, this will drop prices non-linearly (2-4x), and then everyone will act surprised.
  - epistasis 9mo ago
    Two ways that batteries reduce costs: 1. Time arbitrage of energy. Store energy from times when it is abundant, and put it back when it's more scarce. This is profitable on most grids with at least high single digits of percentage of renewable generation. And to say it's profitable for battery operators is the same thing as saying it's reducing costs, if the grid/utility is operated in a fair way. 2. Location arbitrage of electricity by making use of times with less grid congestion. The grid itself is the only location arbitrage we have had up until grid-sized batteries. But it's expensive, and the costs are not even. Some locations are far cheaper to service than others. Battery storage has long been a "non-wired alternative" that in many cases is cheaper than stringing wires to expand capacity. There's probably more that I dont understand. Battery storage on the grid is a disruptive technology, because up until now the grid was pretty much the only major system I could think of that doesn't have any storage. (Computer networking is kind of similar, but buffers have always existed. It just turns out that buffering is not tremendously useful in the network itself when the endpoints have tons of storage...) In the US, transmitting and distributing electricity is more expensive than generating it. That imbalance is going to widen far further as solar and wind get cheaper, which they will for a minimum of a decade, based on the current pace. They could get cheaper for multiple decades. We don't really know what the floor is going to be, but we do know it will be electricity far cheaper than we had imagined from any other technology up until now.

perilunar 9mo ago

In Australia we have so much solar that wholesale electricity prices are often negative during the day. Despite that we still have high retail prices. Domestic battery installations are getting popular and will help. See: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-08/big-swings-in-australias-electricity-market/106305696 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-08/big-swings-in-austral...

nandomrumber 9mo ago
I don’t understand what you’re trying to say here. How do domestic battery installations help with the retail price of electricity?
- perilunar 9mo ago
  More domestic batteries reduces the electricity demand at night, meaning power companies need to buy less natural gas and coal powered electricity from producers. They lose some solar generation during the day that is now going into charging the batteries, but they have too much of that already. Net result a lower proportion of (more expensive) fossil fuels in the overall mix, meaning total cost of power generation comes down, and retail prices come down.
- pfdietz 9mo ago
  It's customers fleeing high prices by making more of their consumption themselves.
  - hedora 9mo ago
    This is happening in the US too. We're creeping closer and closer to the day where just installing off-grid battery + PV is cheaper than dealing with regulations + politically inflated grid prices. In most states, the power company cannot seize your home for cancelling your account + not paying your bill. Also, in most states, the power company gets to regulate the design of grid-attached solar. They're artificially driving installation costs up (building codes do too, and are a separate problem). This means there's a big step function coming. The price of grids (which are subsidizing the AI data center boondoggle, and also legacy fossil fuel plutocrats) are currently a little higher than grid attached battery + PV. We're maybe one more price halving to the point where it makes sense to go off grid. At that point, a market for off-grid (non-subsidizing) system installations will materialize. In distorted markets, this will drop prices non-linearly (2-4x), and then everyone will act surprised.
- epistasis 9mo ago
  Two ways that batteries reduce costs: 1. Time arbitrage of energy. Store energy from times when it is abundant, and put it back when it's more scarce. This is profitable on most grids with at least high single digits of percentage of renewable generation. And to say it's profitable for battery operators is the same thing as saying it's reducing costs, if the grid/utility is operated in a fair way. 2. Location arbitrage of electricity by making use of times with less grid congestion. The grid itself is the only location arbitrage we have had up until grid-sized batteries. But it's expensive, and the costs are not even. Some locations are far cheaper to service than others. Battery storage has long been a "non-wired alternative" that in many cases is cheaper than stringing wires to expand capacity. There's probably more that I dont understand. Battery storage on the grid is a disruptive technology, because up until now the grid was pretty much the only major system I could think of that doesn't have any storage. (Computer networking is kind of similar, but buffers have always existed. It just turns out that buffering is not tremendously useful in the network itself when the endpoints have tons of storage...) In the US, transmitting and distributing electricity is more expensive than generating it. That imbalance is going to widen far further as solar and wind get cheaper, which they will for a minimum of a decade, based on the current pace. They could get cheaper for multiple decades. We don't really know what the floor is going to be, but we do know it will be electricity far cheaper than we had imagined from any other technology up until now.