
Cheap Solar Power - SushiMon
http://www.keith.seas.harvard.edu/blog-1/cheapsolarpower
======
tvchurch
"Admits" seems a bit harsh, like he was doing his best to hide something from
the world.

By all accounts, it looks like he had written out a reasonable explanation as
to why he predicted solar would not become cost effective. At the end of the
day, if something doesn't make financial sense, it won't last long without
subsidies from the government.

The assumptions behind his predictions changed and therefore so did the
conclusion. Seems pretty reasonable.

Like he says, solar power's intermittency is still an issue in non-sunny
places, but in areas with lots of sunlight, the landscape of power generation
is changing for the better.

~~~
Amorymeltzer
I particularly liked his point about bringing processes with a high
electricity demand to those areas and cutting down on cost across the board.
He gives aluminum, ammonia, and desalination as examples, which could do a lot
for reducing costs of production while still overall "greening" the process.
If they can take advantage of the cycling in prices, I can see regions like
the American Southwest selling this as a business incentive.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
The transportation fuels example is even more exciting, IMO. Transportation
fuels are basically simple hydrocarbons that burn with oxygen to turn into CO2
and H2O. There's only engineering, capital, and energy costs that need to be
overcome - then we can run that process in reverse and turning our current
transportation infrastructure carbon-neutral.

~~~
afarrell
> run the process in reverse

Does the fact that CO2 makes up a very small portion of the atmosphere make
this hard?

~~~
semi-extrinsic
One of the big financial problems for CCS (carbon capture and storage) is that
CO2 is essentially worthless. If a market would suddenly arise for
concentrated CO2, I do not think we would have much of a problem to fill
demand.

~~~
swsieber
So, really, if one wanted to fix CCS, you would just need to find a good
application for CO2, like with peanuts and peanut butter.

~~~
dougmany
I like the idea of making carbon fibers from CO2.

[http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/newsreleases/201...](http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/newsreleases/2015/august/co2.html)

~~~
semi-extrinsic
Sure, there are many interesting things you can make from CO2. The problem is
the sheer amount of CO2 we need to capture and store, which utterly dwarfs the
production volumes of basically anything you can think of.

We're talking hundreds of gigatonnes of CO2 that have to be stored over a
century of CCS. At high temperatures and pressures, when the CO2 is in a dense
(supercritical) state, as in geological storage formations, this corresponds
to hundreds of billions of cubic meters.

It's a thousand Hoover dams each year full of dense phase CO2. It's truly
mindboggling.

------
buovjaga
Keith is one of the authors of the Ecomodernist Manifesto (2015). In the
Manifesto they say:

The scale of land use and other environmental impacts necessary to power the
world on biofuels or many other renewables are such that we doubt they provide
a sound pathway to a zero-carbon low-footprint future.

High-efficiency solar cells produced from earth-abundant materials are an
exception and have the potential to provide many tens of terawatts on a few
percent of the Earth’s surface. Present-day solar technologies will require
substantial innovation to meet this standard and the development of cheap
energy storage technologies that are capable of dealing with highly variable
energy generation at large scales.

Nuclear fission today represents the only present-day zero-carbon technology
with the demonstrated ability to meet most, if not all, of the energy demands
of a modern economy. However, a variety of social, economic, and institutional
challenges make deployment of present-day nuclear technologies at scales
necessary to achieve significant climate mitigation unlikely. A new generation
of nuclear technologies that are safer and cheaper will likely be necessary
for nuclear energy to meet its full potential as a critical climate mitigation
technology.

~~~
evolve2k
Ref: [http://www.ecomodernism.org](http://www.ecomodernism.org)

------
djrogers
I really have to take exception with a statement in the opening here:

> rooftop solar seem systems which are (arguably) little more than green bling
> for the wealthy

My rooftop solar system (installed in late 2013) is 2.5 years in to what is
looking to be a 5.9 year break-even point. After 6 years I will be earning
$4-5k/year from it. Even if I had financed this (not a solar lease, those are
usually structured so the leasing company gets all the benefits) at a high
interest rate, it would turn out to be one of my best investments on a
$/return basis.

The fact that basically don't have a monthly power bill (which is substantial
in hot parts of PG&E land) is my #1 benefit here, as reducing my monthly
budget by that amount makes the rest of my life that much nicer. The fact that
I have reduced my 'carbon footprint' is barely on my radar compared to the
financial benefits here....

I did find it crazy that the installer/designer wanted to know if I wanted
more visible colors, or a portion of the panels facing the from top the house
so they were more noticeable. I suppose some people just have to green-
signal...

~~~
xrange
>After 6 years I will be earning $4-5k/year from it.

Can you point us in the direction of a good write-up on net-metering? I'm sure
different jurisdictions have different rules. I was under the impression that
net metering was only good up until your yearly production was equal to your
demand. Or are you saying that the $4-5k/year is at wholesale rates?

~~~
djrogers
If I'm not paying that $4-5k to PG&E, and the installation costs have been
recouped, then that $4-5k/yr is profit. Money is fungible - if you manage it
well, you get the same net effect from preventing it's loss as you do from
earning it.

~~~
xrange
Ah, got it. Thanks. Although if anyone has a good article on net metering, I'd
like to read it.

------
BatFastard
Could this be a solution in the EU's problem of bringing jobs and wealth to
North Africa? Thereby encouraging immigrants to stay in their homeland?

The Sahara has some of the Sunniest sky's in the world. Maybe its time to
spend a few hundred billion and build those solar plants in North Africa.

~~~
roel_v
Panels would be build elsewhere, installation is once in two or three decades,
maintenance is minimal and low skill. The only profit is land lease, which
will only benefit those that have plenty of money already. So I think no, this
won't bring jobs or wealth to North Africa.

------
josefresco
"It does not mean rooftop solar in New England makes sense"

Someone forgot to tell my neighbors - in New England. Rooftop solar
everywhere.

------
jernfrost
So year after year it is becoming evident that solar is the future and yet
very little seems to happen elsewhere to accommodate this. Solar cells produce
DC. Batteries which can store the solar power uses DC. Our iPhones, laptops,
flat screens, electric cars use DC. Yet the connection between this DC power
production and DC power consumption happens with an AC line wasting power.

It is also a dumb line. Solar power production varies considerably and a lot
of power consumption is flexible but we don't have any intelligence built into
the power distribution network to be able to tell devices when to use power
and when not to.

Imagine if smart cables went into our laptops so they could charge when power
was abundant/cheap and use battery when it wasn't. Electric cars could
automatically start charging when power was cheap and stop when it got
expensive. Washing machines could have timer function which would start them
as soon as power prices were low.

------
thrownaway2424
When will this "duck pricing" actually trickle down to consumers? I'm on a
PG&E rate plan that charges me an incredible $0.75/kWh during the afternoons
of selected days. According to the figures in the CAISO paper, these are the
hours of least net demand.

~~~
djrogers
>I'm on a PG&E rate plan that charges me an incredible $0.75/kWh during the
afternoons of selected days.

Yeah, PG&E is practically begging their customers to install solar. The
biggest savings come on the days/times with the best solar potential, and
dropping out of that highest tiers can be a real win.

~~~
thrownaway2424
You think so? It seems like the rate system is stacked against solar. They
just made the top tier cheaper, and raised the bottom tier so that your very
first joule costs more. If you had installed solar based on the savings of
staying out of the top tiers, now your payoff looks less certain.

~~~
djrogers
The top tier is still 3.5-4x the cost of the bottom tier, making for a big
chunk of your bill to whack off with a smallish solar setup

------
amalantony06
Given that Solar power is the fundamental source of energy leading to
petroleum based energy (starting with photosynthesis), it's surprising that we
still rely on petroleum to the degree we do today. In 100 years this would
perhaps be something people would find shocking (like how we are shocked today
at how mainstream slavery used to be 150 odd years ago).

Solar Energy is unlimited, cheap and clean. My guess would be that energy will
eventually end up being near free.

~~~
agumonkey
Because history made us build structures and lifestyles that require oil class
energy density. We surely don't need it since we were born without. We don't
need all of this. Not to that extent, we could cut worldwide transportation.
We could eat less. Rethink housing. Even internet[1].

I'd like to see the time when energy will lack.

Sometimes I wonder how we could rebootstrap technology in a frugal manner.
Have shelter, a bit of comfort, a predictable enough supply not to worry too
much.

[1] just the other day I put a gif on imgur, 1Million views, a few TB of
bandwidth.. I felt bad. So much for this. And that's not the most viewed, nor
the longest. Imagine how much is used everyday.

~~~
feld
Don't feel bad. You did not waste any measurable amount of electricity. We
constantly waste electricity by not utilizing the networks we have built to
their full capacity.

(Ignoring that servers being busier without a good caching infrastructure
tends to ramp up resource usage and pull more power)

~~~
agumonkey
Even considering end point caching I feel bad. Good point about networks being
already on anyway.

------
dang
Submitters: Please don't editorialize titles when submitting stories. The HN
guidelines ask you to use the original title unless it is misleading or
linkbait.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

(Submitted title was "Harvard Physicist, Long-Time Solar Skeptic Admits Solar
Power Now Makes Sense".)

------
fancy_pantser
I wish there was more analysis around energy storage (mainly because that's
what my startup does). I think it's often overlooked in the press when talking
about the future of solar. We're working to flatten the duck curve that solar
created.

~~~
jes5199
I would love to see some good numbers about how much it costs to do grid-scale
storage and how those costs are changing over time

------
vackosar
Is solar using rare metals that we will run out of soon? So will in the end
solar fail anyway?

~~~
wmeredith
"Limited supplies of five rare-earth minerals pose a threat to increasing use
of clean-energy technologies such as wind turbines and solar panels, a U.S.
Energy Department report found."

Source is from 2012: [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-01-05/five-
rare-...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-01-05/five-rare-earths-
crucial-for-clean-energy-seen-in-short-supply)

~~~
epistasis
>The substances -- dysprosium, terbium, europium, neodymium and yttrium --
face potential shortages until 2015, according to the report, which reiterates
concerns identified a year ago.

So, it's past 2015, apparently these shortages didn't materialize.

------
brooklyndavs
A bit off topic....

Currently Hydro power makes up a small (6%) but significant portion of the
energy mix in the US.

[https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=427&t=3](https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=427&t=3)

When you look at just the clean energy sources in the US this percentage is
greater obviously. Also, other countries rely more on Hydro than the US
(Canada and China come to mind).

Has there been modeling done on what global warming will do to those Hydro
power sources? For example, I can imagine drought is not good for reliable
Hydro power. Has declining Hydro power been accounted for in possible future
clean energy mixes?

------
beat
That's fascinating. I especially like where he's going on the cost of
synthetic gasoline. I'm a little iffy on it (what's the source for CO2 by the
ton? Atmosphere?), but if sufficiently cheap solar electricity can generate
gasoline straight from the air at a price that rivals fossil fuel, it both
solves the storage problem (gasoline is wonderful high density storage), and
makes banning fossil fuel via regulation an achievable goal.

~~~
danielweber
I always ask about synthetic fuels as an alternative to electric vehicles and
have never gotten a good answer on it. We already have a huge liquid fuel
distribution network built up. Why re-invent the wheel?

~~~
beat
Cost. Synthetic fuels are very expensive. The ethanol industry sucks - it's
just a fancy crop subsidy.

~~~
epistasis
That's a biofuel, not a synthetic fuel. The difference being biological
process versus a chemical synthesis process.

BTW, I accidentally downvoted you, did not mean to! Sorry for the loss of an
internet point. It wasn't mean to discourage your comment.

~~~
beat
Synthetic fuels have it even worse, I think, in terms of cost. Unless we can
get a really cheap form of electricity that is clean (solar) and connect it to
a process that it more efficient than simply growing corn (or other biomass),
then synthetic fuels will have the same problem. They can't be cost-
competitive with fossil fuels without massive subsidy.

~~~
epistasis
Yeah, I agree. Making hydrogen, the first step for pretty much any synthetic
fuel, is exceedingly inefficient. That means that transmitting electricity
long distances is usually going to be much more cost-effective than making
liquid fuels.

But I think that as electricity gets cheaper and cheaper, and as fossil fuels
have a pigovian tax levied on them, that eventually synthetic or biofuels will
be more cost effective than fossil fuels. Electricity is going to get super
cheap, and there's going to be times when supply outpaces demand. If the
electricity would go to waste otherwise, something that's 40% efficient may be
a good use of it.

------
ck2
Imagine an earth 1000 years from now where countries on one side of the planet
help out the other side via solar power through superconducting power cables
that have little power loss over 10,000 miles.

Since each side gets sunlight somewhere, no batteries needed. Of course 1000
years from now they could solve the battery problem too where each residence
has its own low cost, safe storage.

Or 1000 years from now terrorists dirty-bomb everyone. Sigh.

~~~
xrange
>Or 1000 years from now terrorists dirty-bomb everyone.

...Well, on a more optimistic note, a dirty-bombs, while they may destroy
property values and cause cleanup issues, don't really kill any more than a
conventional/kinetic bomb. I think they may be one of the best-case scenarios
when it comes to a terrorist strike, since the causalities will be low, but
there will be a lot of "frenzy" about the invisible radiation. (I'm sure
someone will correct me if I'm wrong, or if there are silent aerosolized
short-half-life "bombs" in existence that are "detonated" secretly inside of
buildings so that people are accumulating long term exposures unknowingly).

Also, I wouldn't be surprised if room-ish temperature superconductors appear
much sooner than 1,000 years from now. And it will definitively be interesting
to see how high of energy densities SMES (Superconducting Magnetic Energy
Storage) will get to in the next 20 years with existing cryogenic
superconductors.

[http://snf.ieeecsc.org/abstracts/stp443-high-field-hts-
smes-...](http://snf.ieeecsc.org/abstracts/stp443-high-field-hts-smes-coil)

~~~
ck2
Look at all the cancer from 9/11 and that was just fine particles in the air.

Now imagine radioactive fine particles with half-life of decades.

Sure, the death isn't instantaneous. But the suffering and early death will be
massive. After the US nuked Japan (twice) the real damage was to those left
living for the short time afterwards and all the radioactivity an slow death.

------
_FKS_
In the meanwhile, a few other sources argue that the overall ERORI (energy
invested vs. energy produced) is well below a somehow 'sustainable' level. The
impression I'm getting is that the day oil/gas production starts to fall due
to geological limits, so will the production of photovoltaic & windmills.

Please see:
[https://collapseofindustrialcivilization.files.wordpress.com...](https://collapseofindustrialcivilization.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/ferroni-
y-hopkirk-2016-energy-return-on-energy-invested-eroei-for-photo.pdf)

And: [http://science-and-energy.org/wp-
content/uploads/2016/03/201...](http://science-and-energy.org/wp-
content/uploads/2016/03/20160307-Des-Houches-Case-Study-for-Solar-PV.pdf)

And:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqhC6uI8TUY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqhC6uI8TUY)
(for french speakers out there)

Please do convince me that we can run the current industrial civilization, at
current rates of energy usage, with only solar & wind, on a long enough run,
without oil.

~~~
marcosdumay
If solar power is cheaper than coal without subsides, it has greater than 1
EROEI by a big margin, and the question is settled.

Bottom-up studies suffer from a big diversity of flaws, and there are plenty
of them with obvious bias both ways.

~~~
_FKS_
Fossil fuels _are_ the base subsidy. It's hard to see how a manufactured
product will be cheaper than fosil fuels consumed on the spot (as coal is
primarly a local consumption resource). Also the economy of scale principle
works here too: how can a (coal) thermal plant which feeds a region, cities,
can be replaced by a collection of small scale devices that produce
electricity, and pretend to be cheaper? Nothing will ever be cheaper than coal
to produce electricity. There's a good reason why the industrial revolution
started with coal and not with renewables (which for the record were already
available in Europe for a few centuries before that - it was already widely
used since the 12th century)

~~~
marcosdumay
If you use fossil fuels to create an energy supply, and the energy from this
supply is cheaper than the original fossil fuel, that means your supply has
bigger than 1 EROEI. (Unless your new supply has a subside.)

------
kamran20
Wind and geothermal is good options as well. The biggest problem is storage.

~~~
yoodenvranx
A big problem with wind energy in Germany is a very vocal minority of old
people who think that wind park visually destructs nature and it looks
horrible.

Personally I think wind parks look awesome but there is a lot of opposition.

~~~
tvchurch
That's what I mean. Wind might be generated "for free," but one cost is what
it looks like.

Another is how many birds it kills a year.
([http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-many-birds-
do-w...](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-many-birds-do-wind-
turbines-really-kill-180948154/?no-ist))

That's not to say we shouldn't build it. Just that we need to consider what it
costs before we do.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
If you check what bird conservation organisations say, they are generally pro
wind power, because most of the alternatives are worse for birds.

They do want to avoid building them on busy migration routes though.

Amazingly popular talking point amongst hypocritical fossil fuel industry
supporters and semi-professional contrarians though.

~~~
tvchurch
Sure. Anyone pro- or anti-wind will say whatever argument they can to try to
convince people.

All I'm saying is before we decide to build more wind turbines, we should have
an honest accounting of all of the benefits and costs laid out. There are
locations where they make sense and places where they don't. And there are
levels where some government support might make sense, and some levels where
they don't.

Even if people support one form of power generation over another, there should
always be a limit.

~~~
epistasis
I don't think that there's an equal distribution of people willing to say
whatever in favor of their end goals. Certainly not "anybody." Most pro-wind
people are that way because of an honest accounting of the pros and cons, as
there's no other reason to be in favor of it. There's not a super-strong
political or economic constituency behind it. Those who are anti-wind
however...

------
dmvaldman
So if this has the potential to change the future energy economy, what are
some good investments to make now? Should I be looking at SolarCity, who sell
the panels, or the energy companies like Sempra, PG&E, Edison? Something else?

~~~
pyoung
Probably the safest 'investment' you can make is to put panels on your roof
(assuming your utility is supportive, barring that wait for batteries to get
cheap/good). Solar stocks are a minefield at the moment (largely thanks to
SunEd[1]). There are also things called yield co's which are holding companies
for energy projects that largely focus on dividends. They are kinda like
REITs. But it is worth mentioning that these are relatively new investment
vehicles, and they still share some risk with the parent company[2]

[1] [http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-sunedison-
collapse-201...](http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-sunedison-
collapse-20160504-story.html) [2] [http://www.reuters.com/article/us-
sunedison-inc-yieldco-idUS...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-sunedison-
inc-yieldco-idUSKCN0XM0A2)

------
homido
If solar is such a good investment, why aren't power companies creating solar
fields with a sense of urgency? Sure, there are a token few, but this is
mainly for PR reasons or funded by grants ETC.

When businesses (wholesalers and consumers) start going to solar on a grand
scale, Solar will have finally arrived as a cost effective alternative. Wake
me when this happens.

~~~
sunstone
Wake up! It's happening already in places with lots of sun (or high
electricity costs). Examples are, much of Australia, Hawaii, California and
others. As solar gets cheaper the viable territory expands.

------
forrestthewoods
I'll start paying attention when a solar company is formed and becomes
profitable without any reliance on subsidies.

I'm not holding my breath.

