
Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid - rchaudhary
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/07/giant-batteries-and-cheap-solar-power-are-shoving-fossil-fuels-grid
======
rmuesi
I’ve always wondered about something, yet have never found anyone discussing
it online. So maybe some smart people can help me out:

a lot of people install solar on their rooftops. Much of the time this is done
with the assumption that it will pay off financially because energy prices are
currently at a certain rate and will continue to rise.

But here’s my question: If its financially advantageous to install solar on
your roof, wouldn’t it be greatly more financially advantageous (given the
main cost for solar installation is the labor) for energy companies to install
solar at scale? And if that’s the case, wouldn’t the energy companies
eventually do this, which, given macro market laws of supply and demand, would
eventually cause the price of electricity to go dramatically down for their
end consumer, thus eliminating the financial benefit of privately installed
roof top solar for homeowners?

I live in the southwest, and based on online calculators it “makes sense” from
a 10 year outlook to pay the money now and install solar on my home, but
that’s only if the energy prices don’t fall. But nobody seems to even think
that’s a possibility.

~~~
thinkcontext
Can't believe all the comments so far and no one feels the need to justify
their opinion with numbers. Drives me nuts.

You are correct, according to National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL), rooftop
solar is over twice as expensive as utility scale solar[0]. The NREL estimate
is helpful in that it details the components of the cost. And, as you would
expect, the hardware and labor costs are lower for utility scale because of,
well, scale, but the dominating difference is soft costs (land, marketing,
profit, overhead, etc). Its worth noting, soft costs for residential solar are
significantly lower elsewhere in the developed world (DE, AU) mainly because
permitting and marketing are much easier.

[0] [https://www.nrel.gov/news/program/2018/costs-continue-to-
dec...](https://www.nrel.gov/news/program/2018/costs-continue-to-decline-for-
residential-and-commercial-photovoltaics-in-2018.html)

~~~
brownbat
I'm a big fan of that study.

It suggests there may be an opportunity for a company to push rooftop solar
for big strip malls and other large footprint single owner buildings - they
aren't utility scale, but the install efficiencies make them pretty
competitive.

The incentives would be tricky, since the owners are less likely to be paying
for utilities than the leaseholders...

~~~
floatrock
[https://www.wundercapital.com](https://www.wundercapital.com)

The problem with commercial solar is the cost of the financing. Home solar is
on par with a car loan, banks know how to do that with personal credit scores.
Utility scale solar is the realm of private equity.

Something like a strip mall is a weird in-between that requires enough manual
review that the cost to do all of the risk analysis that financing requires
kinda outweighs the potential returns. Will that KMart or Costco keep that
store open for the duration of the project? What happens when the tenancy
changes?

I don't have any relation with Wunder, but from my understanding of them, they
built some stuff to streamline all the financing and permitting required of
commercial-scale to make those projects pencil out.

~~~
kragen
On the contrary, personal loans from banks routinely charge much higher
interest rates than commercial paper. Think about the interest rate on a money
market account, which consists of bonds. That's the rate PG&E is going to pay
if they float a bond issue to build a solar power station. Large companies,
particularly including electric generation utilities, can also get loans from
banks at similarly low interest rates.

This is precisely the genius of SolarCity: they were able to use the low
interest rates banks would charge them to install solar power on people's
houses at a much lower cost of capital than the same banks would have charged
the same homeowners without SolarCity's intermediation.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> This is precisely the genius of SolarCity: they were able to use the low
> interest rates banks would charge them to install solar power on people's
> houses at a much lower cost of capital than the same banks would have
> charged the same homeowners without SolarCity's intermediation.

That sounds like a pretty interesting pitch as a business model.

But if I recall correctly, SolarCity failed and had to be bailed out by, um,
Tesla. Why? Was the free money just not enough?

------
Animats
$0.02/Kwh for the solar part is pretty good.

A reasonable short-term goal: get 100% of US peak air conditioning load south
of 37° N on solar. That's the line from the Virginia/North Carolina border
west to central California.

Peak solar power output and peak air conditioning load line up pretty well, so
that doesn't need storage. Storage is more of an issue for wind, which varies
about 4:1 over a day over large areas and doesn't match load at all.

~~~
ivanhoe
There should be also more focus on proper thermal insulation of houses in warm
climate, which is something that is not often mentioned. Lots of energy gets
lost on AC simply because heat easily enters the houses.

~~~
krferriter
Yeah I'm renting a house in central NC and May-September our power bill
skyrockets from AC. The windows are not insulated at all and we have a lot of
them. Even the floors, walls, and ceilings leak heat like crazy, you can feel
it just putting your hand close to the wall or ceiling. We run AC to get it
down to 76F and it's still crazy expensive and using a lot of unnecessary
power. We need to encourage insulation, especially of windows. My parents had
a lot of big windows too and recently have started upgrading them to insulated
windows and it makes a huge difference. The US needs to heavily encourage
these sorts of improvements to buildings, it's good for everyone.

~~~
asdkhadsj
> The US needs to heavily encourage these sorts of improvements to buildings,
> it's good for everyone.

Is it though? I imagine your landlord doesn't think it's good for them. It's
not _bad_ for them, but why would they spend hundreds or thousands of dollars
improving your apartments insulation when it costs them nothing to keep the
poor thermal in place.

I too lived in rentals that had terrible thermal protection. It was awful to
heat and cool. Yet, my landlords wouldn't have spent a dime to improve that.

Not sure what can be done here, but with seemingly more and more homes
becoming rentals this perhaps needs a solution.

~~~
duderific
They can potentially raise the rent (for the next renter if there's rent
control) by advertising "modern double pane windows" which offer sound
insulation from outside noise, in addition to the thermal benefits.

~~~
krferriter
They definitely could raise rents if offering thermal and noise insulated
living environment. The quality of living goes up drastically with that, so it
would make sense.

------
DubiousPusher
> the cost to decarbonize the U.S. grid alone would be $4.5 trillion

They make this sound like a lot but that strikes me as actually pretty cheap.
I don't think that number can be right.

Edit: I mean seriously think. The F-35 has cost us 1.45 trillion dollars so
far.

That's roughly 1/3 of the price they're asserting here. Localizing our entire
energy dependence has got to have some serious national security benefits. I
mean way beyond the simple evolutionary next step of one piece of military
equipment.

It seems like every dollar we spend on energy sovereignity is doing like 10 or
even 100 times the work 1 dollar of weapons development is doing to secure our
country.

~~~
nexuist
>Localizing our entire energy dependence has got to have some serious national
security benefits

It would also cause extreme instability by shooting up unemployment,
destroying large corporations that offered valuable careers with good
benefits, and exacerbate polarization between those who believe in man made
climate change and those who don't.

Don't get me wrong - I think energy independence is the way to go - but paying
$4.5 trillion to effectively ruin the lives of millions of people is not a
popular position, especially given that we have terrible safety nets to allow
these people to find other jobs.

I think the much more likely, less rough path is to continue renewable
research until it becomes cheaper than fossil fuels in almost all cases. At
which point the market will do the rest. The vast majority of fossil fuel
users _do not actually care that they use fossil fuel_ \- they just care about
energy generation. If you can give them a cheaper means to achieve that, they
will go for it.

~~~
notJim
I've got some bad news for you about what's going to happen to the economy
when we have 3° C of warming because we didn't do this fast enough.

~~~
8bitsrule
Not to mention how many people will no longer need jobs.

------
ourmandave
Meanwhile in Iowa, Mid American Energy is well on their way to 100% renewal by
2021 with an endless array of wind farms.

Their final phase of the project started in 2018 with a $922M investment.

Iowa Public Radio toured one of the windmills back in January.

[https://www.iowapublicradio.org/post/skyscrapers-fields-
wind...](https://www.iowapublicradio.org/post/skyscrapers-fields-wind-energy-
continues-expand-iowa#stream/0)

~~~
colechristensen
I wonder how people would feel about ethanol plants fired by wind farms.

The one built near my family home is coal fired and the idea of growing crops
to be turned into car fuel is ... less appealing.

But if you had electric or ethanol powered tractors growing biomass to ferment
and distill into more ethanol with a plant fired with wind, maybe there are
some different environmental considerations there.

For one it would be carbon negative or neutral if you considered that the fuel
is all going to be returned to the atmosphere.

~~~
basicplus2
Ethanol is highly corrosive, damages engines and fuel lines, is hydroscopic
which exacerbates above and more problems, has even short term storage
problems let alone long term, thats why its only ever used blended and is very
toxic, in fact it is a nightmare fuel really.. bio diesel on the other hand
has none of these problems.

[https://www.government-fleet.com/157454/storing-
dispensing-u...](https://www.government-fleet.com/157454/storing-dispensing-
using-ethanol-gasoline-blends)

[https://www.cfact.org/2014/07/21/killing-marine-life-with-
et...](https://www.cfact.org/2014/07/21/killing-marine-life-with-ethanol/)

~~~
kragen
Almost everything you said is precisely opposite from the truth.

Ethanol is less corrosive to metals than even pure water, although (like
gasoline) there are some plastics that it can dissolve; some of these plastics
were used decades ago in some cars, including in their fuel systems, when
blending ethanol with gasoline was uncommon. Its hygroscopic (not
"hydroscopic") nature is a reason that people have been adding it to their gas
tanks for many decades, to safely get the water out ("HEET" is a common brand
name in the US), although it's true that each teaspoon of ethanol can only
dissolve a small amount of water before becoming immiscible with gasoline.
It's very chemically stable, unlike gasoline, which can polymerize into
"varnish," and it's easier and safer to store than gasoline, although it does
need to be stored without access to too much air so it doesn't absorb water.
It's so nontoxic that people drink it recreationally, which is a major
industry in most countries, although this doesn't seem appealing to me. And,
unlike gasoline, diesel fuel, or biodiesel, you can put out ethanol files with
water. These are some of the reasons it's been used as a fuel alone, as well
as blended, for centuries, and many cars in countries like Brazil are able to
run on pure ethanol, despite its lower energy density.

------
darksaints
I know someone who has gone fully off the grid via sailboat and is currently
on his way around the world. He converted his sailboat to a hybrid setup
(electric engines powered by the same batteries that power his stovetop,
refrigerator, etc.). His power sources keeping those batteries charged are
solar (1200W) and sail regeneration [0]. He has an 18kw diesel generator as a
safety measure.

His story is particularly interesting to me because he doesn't give a shit
about climate change. His views are best described by George Carlin [1]. And
yet, he has the lowest carbon lifestyle of anybody I know. In the 15,000
nautical miles he's sailed, he has burned a grand total of 5 gallons of
diesel. And that was only because he stayed for a few weeks in Palau without
sailing around, and there was a stint of a few days where there was little
solar energy due to storms. He now thinks his decision to buy a diesel backup
generator was just a waste of money. If you ask him why he did it, these are
his answers: It's cheaper, it's quieter, it's less smelly, and it's more
reliable. Not a single mention of carbon emissions or resource depletion or
pollution.

At this point, I feel like the only reason fossil fuels are used anymore in
new projects is inertia. The costs and performance of renewables+batteries has
come so far in the last 5-10 years, and I think we're finally at the point
where the intrinsic costs will guarantee adoption.

[0] [https://oceanvolt.com/solutions/hydro-
generator/](https://oceanvolt.com/solutions/hydro-generator/)

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjmtSkl53h4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjmtSkl53h4)

~~~
nexuist
>At this point, I feel like the only reason fossil fuels are used anymore in
new projects is inertia

Solar might work for boats and trains, but can it work for a plane? What about
drones?

No renewable energy source can beat gasoline, sans nuclear power (which I
think we should be transitioning to, along with the rest of the renewables).
MIT built a gas powered drone that lasts 5 days (not minutes!) in the air[1] -
that's simply impossible with today's battery tech. I know there are electric
planes in development, maybe in production - but none of them match the
passenger capacity or cargo volume of a Boeing 747. Until they do, there will
always be a place for gas guzzling airliners.

Solar _can_ work for households, skyscrapers, and apartments, and like you
said, I think the advantages do outweigh the advantages of traditional coal
plants so I'm excited to see that become more mainstream.

[https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/27/mits-gas-powered-drone-
is-...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/27/mits-gas-powered-drone-is-able-to-
stay-in-the-air-for-five-days-at-a-time/)

~~~
state_less
You might be interested in the sun seeker duo. It's in the ballpark for
personal air travel:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBA4XeMddMY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBA4XeMddMY)

In flight charging (refueling) could be a possibility too.

The drone based solar planes can stay up longer than 5 days. I think the
defense companies can keep them up for months.

~~~
Tempest1981
Also cool, the adventure of circumnavigation on solar:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Impulse](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Impulse)

Captured on this Nova special: [https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/the-
impossible-flight/](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/the-impossible-
flight/)

------
driverdan
> In March, an analysis of more than 7000 global storage projects by Bloomberg
> New Energy Finance reported that the cost of utility-scale lithium-ion
> batteries had fallen by 76% since 2012, and by 35% in just the past 18
> months, to $187 per MWh.

I hate it when they list battery prices this way, it's very misleading. That's
the amortized cost of $187 per MWh cycle, not the battery's upfront cost.
Assuming 2000 cycles that's $374,000 per MWh of storage.

~~~
xbmcuser
They are comparing it with building a new power plant costs for which are
calculated similarly for 20-30 year life cycle. Same is for Solar and wind
power plants. Many people assume that prices of grid scale solar and wind
power are coming down because of technology improvements that is partly true
but another reason for the price decreases is that the investors are finding
out the calculated life of these is actually 50-100% more than their previous
assumptions.

~~~
dv_dt
The other thing that is happening is that solar wind and battery are naturally
working forward through cost-reduction manufacturing S-curve, while fossil
fuel plant tech has already hit the mature-flat portion of that curve.
Renewables are basically at the point where there are easy & dramatic
improvements in cost reduction by "just" volume scale up and financing, while
fossil fuel plants have long explored those options and have more or less hit
costs that are much more difficult to improve.

------
rossdavidh
Good news: non-carbon energy sources will, faster than most of the world
currently thinks, force carbon energy sources off the market. This has already
started to happen with coal.

Bad news: Well the Left may lament the fact that it will not be due to any
change of heart or international cooperation, it will just be due to mercenary
calculations of cost, and technology. But all of us have to consider what will
(not may, will) happen to places with very oil-dependent economies, when oil
goes the way of coal. Imagine Saudi Arabia in the state that Venezuela is in
right now.

~~~
ajross
Cynically: to first approximation no one lives in Saudi Arabia. Even if it
devolves to a Venezuela style anarchy, we'd still be more worried about
Venezuela.

Practically: Saudia Arabia is an oil source. Petroleum fuels are going to be
with us forever. It's coal (first) and gas (eventually) which are being
displaced by better electrical generation options. But if you want to fly an
airplane, you really can't replace the savings you get from not having to
carry 2/3 of the reaction mass on the vehicle. Oil wealth will be the very
last to go, likely well after they're tapped out anyway.

And politically: "the Left" you postulate doesn't really exist anyway. You can
be a raving socialist and still be pleased that technology solves your
problem. You can be a market centrist and still believe that carbon regulation
is a good idea.

~~~
rossdavidh
You _can_, certainly. But I still have the suspicion that a good chunk of the
political Left will be dissatisfied that the carbon emissions will plummet
without any changes in political beliefs or policies being involved.

As for Saudi Arabia: there's a lot more people living there, than did before
there was oil. Yes, we will still use _some_ oil for many years, but if the
oil revenue drops to, say, 50% of current levels, I think that there will be
problems sooner rather than later.

~~~
ajross
> But I still have the suspicion that a good chunk of the political Left will
> be dissatisfied

Only in the somewhat specious sense that a good chunk of the political X is
continually dissatisfied, for all values of X.

I'm on that mythical "Left" you're talking about. No one would be happier to
see carbon emissions plumet than I, and for any reason. That doesn't mean that
I don't think some kind of regulation is inappropriate or unnecessary, in
particular because I don't see the revolution in the linked article as
inevitable as we might hope.

~~~
rossdavidh
Well you make a good point, it may just be the noisiest part of the left that
will be dissatisfied, not necessarily the biggest part.

------
pg_bot
I've done a bit of research on batteries and I haven't seen too many people
mention vanadium redox flow batteries (VRFB) for grid storage. While lithium
ion batteries have great energy density (necessary when you need to carry your
energy) they deteriorate over time leading to continual capital expenditures.
From what I've read, it seems like the VRFBs can basically run forever with
minimal maintenance. If I were betting on large scale grid battery storage
technologies I think this is where I would be interested in putting my money.
While they are less energy dense, it doesn't really matter since most houses
are stationary.

~~~
tim333
Apparently the vanadium stuff is expensive. Guy here arguing for Zinc.
[https://youtu.be/UCwJqMOiLs0?t=275](https://youtu.be/UCwJqMOiLs0?t=275)

------
stupidcar
I wonder what the wider economic effect will be if the price of solar
continues to improve and the fossil fuel industry can't find a way to remain
competitive. Since some places are far more suitable for solar power
generation than others, will those areas end up with a significant advantage
in the cost of living? Could that in turn lead to a major migration of people
and economic activity to those areas?

~~~
marcosdumay
If you are talking about countries, cost of energy stopped being an important
differential ages ago (except for some very specific niches, like aluminum
refining).

If you are talking about cities, people will just build transmission lines.

------
laser
How is the battery storage only $0.013 per kWh? Is that a misprint and they
meant $0.13 per kWh? Or is there some fancy accounting where they're storing
only a small percentage of the total energy output and giving a diluted price
with the partial storage cost spread over the total output? Or is it truly
possible with massive scale to achieve battery costs this low? I can't see how
this adds up without some sleight of hand, as the gigafactory production cost
isn't even nearly this low yet?

~~~
F_r_k
It's the marginal price of storing a kWh of energy. Not the price of the
battery capacity itself

~~~
laser
Right, I get that—but still don't get the math. Let's say they're buying this
capacity at $300 per kWh of capacity, that the batteries last six years on
average with a daily cycle, for a total of 2190 cycles. Amortizing that $300
kWh cost over 2190 cycles is $0.137 per kWh. In other words, holding the other
constants the same, this company is suggesting $30 kWh batteries, which is
just not yet possible as far as I'm aware. That makes me suspect they're
actually only storing like 10% capacity then amortizing the cost of storage
across total output, as I can't understand how else the numbers add up. Any
ideas?

~~~
Obi_Juan_Kenobi
The mythical $100/kWh figure for car batteries is for the pack cost, not the
cells. Much of that cost is focused on a compact, lightweight solution for
cell cooling, voltage balancing for ~100 batteries in series, etc.

Utility installations have much cheaper solutions for cooling, the balancing
is much easier with lots of parallel cells, and even the chemistry benefits
from smaller charge/discharge currents.

We're not down to $30/kWh yet, but we're not that far off. Certainly well
below $300.

------
alvern
(Los Angeles deal) would provide 7% of the city's electricity beginning in
2023 at a cost of 1.997 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) for the solar power and
1.3 cents per kWh for the battery.

So 3.297 cents per kwh. That's on par with large hydro like Tacoma Power Park.
I'm getting 11 cents per kwh for my solar currently in the midwest.

------
TazeTSchnitzel
Why lithium ion batteries — are they much cheaper to make than new
gravitational potential (i.e. hydroelectric) storage systems?

~~~
bobthepanda
Hydro can be extremely disruptive to ecosystems, and you also need a suitable
site for it. It's very situational, from what I understand.

~~~
Animats
_very situational_

Yes. You need a mountain lake and a low level lake close to each other, and
the lakes aren't useful for much else because the water level goes way up and
down every day. The US has 10 pumped storage plants bigger than a gigawatt,
and few attractive sites for more.

~~~
cmoscoe
I've hear the Hoover Dam proposed, and theoretically any existing dam could be
converted? Just need to pump some water back upstream when there's excess load
in the system.

Here in Canada a lot of our energy is hydroelectric and I know there's a lot
of talk about this sort of solution in Quebec.

~~~
Obi_Juan_Kenobi
> Just need to pump some water back upstream

In this situation, you'd simply never let the water flow through in the first
place. This amounts to releasing water while generating energy, only to pump
it back. The net result is just a lot of wasted energy.

Pumped hydro _requires_ two reservoirs. There's no way around it.

------
bit_logic
Maybe we don't need the batteries if the synthetic fuel tech becomes good
enough (there are companies working on this such as Prometheus and Carbon
Engineering). Could it be possible for California to become a major oil
producer state with extremely cheap solar? Cover the Mojave desert with solar
and convert the excess power into oil? It seems definitely possible if there
was a carbon tax (which should exclude such synthetic fuel from the tax since
it's carbon neutral when it's burned). Without such a tax, maybe it's possible
but much more difficult to compete with fossil oil.

~~~
rcMgD2BwE72F
>should exclude such synthetic fuel from the tax since it's carbon neutral
when it's burned

I hope not. Let the plants remove the CO2 from the air instead. That would be
much better than burning it again. How can your process be called neutral if
nature has a "more neutral" solution than yours? Let the biomass do its job
and just stop burning oil.

------
emanuensis
Much better than batteries or gravity storage mechanisms is liquid air
storage. It is not for small scale sites, but the bigger, the more economical,
it becomes. As an OTS (off the shelf) solution i do not know why it is not
used more...

Liquid air storage offers cheapest route to 24 hour wind and solar

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20424313](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20424313)

~~~
tim333
It's often not very efficient in terms of getting back the energy you put in
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryogenic_energy_storage#Effic...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryogenic_energy_storage#Efficiency)

~~~
emanuensis
Great review! Yes both the review and the recent article i cited mention the
use of hot and/or/both cold sources to boost efficiency. with high grades of
both one can approach 100% Even low grade (AKA heat pump type) sources boost
well.

------
ailideex
Is this like a future dated article or something? Seems it is discussing
events that may happen in 2023.

------
zelon88
Seriously! I'm an old time R/C enthusiast who romps frequently and still buys
a toy here and there. I got out of R/C for a little bit so the last pack I
bought was a 4,200mah 7.4 volt LiPo from a tiny mom+pop manufacturer. The pack
is well taken care of and probably 7 or 8 years old. It's time for a new one.

I just looked up a replacement battery by the same manufacturer and their 7.4v
LiPo's are up to 22,000 mah! That's almost 525% bigger than my last pack! That
kind of capacity was only a dream back then, and 20 years ago when NiMH was
the only game in town we were racing 30mph with 3,300!

I thought it was a typo. But other manufacturers are offering similar
products.

~~~
mfgs
Is there a theoretical limit to (current generation) battery capacity, like
there is with solar panel power output?

~~~
zelon88
Also, it's important to note that batteries don't _generate_ power. They
_store_ power.

Literally. You pump electrons into them and they hold onto them internally
until they can be released again. Think of it as a water balloon for
electrons.

You create a vessel which is capable of efficiently containing electrons. Then
you pump electrons into it and hope enough of them stick to be worthwhile.
This is battery technology.

Different battery technologies have different characteristics. Nickel
batteries usually have some form of "cell memory" where the cell will store
"stale" electrons indefinately, and lose the ability to release them. These
electrons can become "trapped" inside the battery and reduce it's capacity.

Likewise the chemical composition of lithium batteries makes them extremely
volatile. This means that if you were to completely remove _all_ electrons
from the cell it would _forget_ that it is a battery and refuse to store
future electrons you try to pump into it. You also have to balance each cell
in a lithium pack, else they will become uneven and one could possibly become
completely empty (killing the cell).

Likewise, when a nickel cell loses all it's electrons it is still possible to
"zap" the cell back to life with a large jolt of electrons. Some of which
stick, some do not. Sometimes this results in the battery "waking up" to
accept more electrons. Sometimes it doesn't, and a 6 cell (7.2v) nickel
battery will have to be dissected to replace the bad cells.

------
mattferderer
I'm curious about the Mark Jacobson quote.

Is getting rid of coal & natural gas possible without nuclear?

I don't see how solar & wind can do it by themselves, even if you take the
battery part out of the equation.

~~~
caoilte
Why not? We have enough sunshine and wind to power the Earth many times over.
If you take the battery part out of the equation there is no advantage left
for nuclear and many many disadvantages,

\- is hugely expensive to design, build and run (requiring eye watering
government guarantees that encourage builders/operators to cut corners).

\- takes longer than the climate can tolerate to build

\- needs water for cooling that access to will be problematic once
construction is finally complete (France is struggling to run it's reactors
already, Britains will be under water in 50 years)

\- byproducts we cannot deal with and haven't even figured out how to safely
bury.

\- insane de-commissioning costs that everyone pretends don't exist

\- small risk that there will be an accident and Hollywood will make a
shockingly inaccurate hit tv series about it

\- huge geo-political risk that constrains use to countries that are not going
to be de-stablised by global warming in 60 year life time of plant (name
one...)

\- build more than a few and we will struggle to supply the uranium (it's
surprisingly hard to find in high enough concentrations for economic strip-
mining)

And now that batteries are becoming affordable the last argument left for
Nuclear is evaporating.

------
foxyv
> It would provide 7% of the city's electricity beginning in 2023.

This seems a bit slow to me. 5 years in California time usually ends up being
at least 10 years if you are lucky. By then the 7% will probably be closer to
3-5%. I think California is going to have to be a lot more aggressive with
Solar and battery if they are going to reach their climate goals...

------
Causality1
I wonder why we're not seeing such precipitous drops in the cost of personal
solar installations? It still takes a couple of decades for a home panel
installation to pay for itself, and that's if you're in a good area for
sunlight.

Regardless, it's excellent news. Coal is godawful stuff and we'll be much
better off leaving it in the ground where it belongs.

------
Jedd
> .. addressing its chief flaw: It works only when the sun shines.

This never fails to frustrate me. Solar cells / PVC won't work absent
sunshine, but solar thermal / CSP produces power for many hours after the sun
goes down.

------
IshKebab
> Last month, the energy research firm Wood Mackenzie estimated the cost to
> decarbonize the U.S. grid alone would be $4.5 trillion

So 20% of the US military budget for 40 years. Doesn't sound impossible.

~~~
jillesvangurp
How independent are they? This number sounds ridiculously high. The right
question to ask would be how expensive it would be to keep coal/gas going when
it is clearly more expensive than just about anything else, even right now.
It's a reason coal plants have been closing for several years now; and even
some gas plants are shutting down way ahead of their projected end of life.
They're just not viable anymore. It's not about the cost of decarbonizing but
the cost of not doing that. There's a point where putting enough solar and
batteries in your house gets cheaper than consuming coal produced electricity.

------
barneygumble742
> Wood Mackenzie estimated the cost to decarbonize the U.S. grid alone would
> be $4.5 trillion

The 2017 tax cut cost $1.5 trillion. I'm starting to suspect that priorities
are being misplaced.

~~~
kragen
The tax cut cost _the government_ $1.5 trillion, but provided that same $1.5
trillion directly to the taxpayers. It was a pure transfer, not a cost in the
sense that we're talking about here, which involves the consumption of natural
resources and human labor, for which the dollars are merely a numerical
representation. A better comparison would be the cost of some boondoggle
defense program, or the prison system, or unemployment.

------
option
Maybe this isn’t a problem, but I am curious about how and where all those
solar cells and batteries will be disposed at the end of their usefulness?

~~~
jillesvangurp
It's pretty much a non issue. Battery recycling is going to be a great
business once currently produced batteries start reaching their rather long
end of life. We're in a weird situation right now where we are producing
vastly more than just a few years ago so the recycling market is lagging the
production market by about 10-15 years or so. However, lithium is easily
recovered and the incentives for recovering it are very high given how scarce
and expensive this stuff is.

Solar recycling is much less of an issue since we're mostly talking about
silicon. There's probably enough precious metals involved that recycling them
after a few decades is going to be a thing. But compared to the extremely
dirty business that is coal mining this is a complete non issue.

------
kalium-xyz
Are these being produced using renewable materials and how will they be
disposed of after their lifetime (up to 10 years iirc)?

------
hristov
Good. Could not have happened soon enough.

------
cyrksoft
In case anybody knows, what will happen to those batteries? Can they be
recycled in any way?

~~~
rcMgD2BwE72F
We already recycle 50% of them: [https://www.pv-
magazine.com/2019/07/12/lithium-ion-recycling...](https://www.pv-
magazine.com/2019/07/12/lithium-ion-recycling-rates-far-higher-than-some-
statistics-suggest/). And we can recycle them 100%
[https://www.scribd.com/document/406401162/Tesla-Impact-
Repor...](https://www.scribd.com/document/406401162/Tesla-Impact-Report-2019)
(p. 26)

------
earthstabber
Contrarian buy signal on natural gas from this article. Currently hovering
just under 2.5

------
dclowd9901
I love the move to clean energy, but the pragmatist within me can't help but
wonder: what's the downside to solar from an environmental perspective (if
any)? Has anyone conducted any studies on the environmental impact of a large
solar farm in a given area (to wildlife, weather, etc)?

------
macawfish
Looks like the so-called "carbon bubble" is starting to pop!

------
jwillie
An alternative perspecrive from a physicist/enginner/venture capitalist who
was named Energy Writer of the Year" in 2016 by the American Energy Society.

This paper highlights the physics of energy to illustrate why there is no
possibility that the world is undergoing—or can undergo—a near-term transition
to a “new energy economy.”

Among the reasons:

    
    
        Scientists have yet to discover, and entrepreneurs have yet to invent, anything as remarkable as hydrocarbons in terms of the combination of low-cost, high-energy density, stability, safety, and portability. In practical terms, this means that spending $1 million on utility-scale wind turbines, or solar panels will each, over 30 years of operation, produce about 50 million kilowatt-hours (kWh)—while an equivalent $1 million spent on a shale rig produces enough natural gas over 30 years to generate over 300 million kWh.
        Solar technologies have improved greatly and will continue to become cheaper and more efficient. But the era of 10-fold gains is over. The physics boundary for silicon photovoltaic (PV) cells, the Shockley-Queisser Limit, is a maximum conversion of 34% of photons into electrons; the best commercial PV technology today exceeds 26%.
        Wind power technology has also improved greatly, but here, too, no 10-fold gains are left. The physics boundary for a wind turbine, the Betz Limit, is a maximum capture of 60% of kinetic energy in moving air; commercial turbines today exceed 40%.
        The annual output of Tesla’s Gigafactory, the world’s largest battery factory, could store three minutes’ worth of annual U.S. electricity demand. It would require 1,000 years of production to make enough batteries for two days’ worth of U.S. electricity demand. Meanwhile, 50–100 pounds of materials are mined, moved, and processed for every pound of battery produced.
    

Heres's a link to his full paper: [https://www.manhattan-institute.org/green-
energy-revolution-...](https://www.manhattan-institute.org/green-energy-
revolution-near-impossible)

Whose argument holds up to serious critical analysis, Mills or Science Mag's?

------
dfilppi
Thanks to the most essential ingredient: taxpayer 'subsidies'

------
gersh
Lithium ion batteries have limited lifecycles so they aren't sustainable. We
need to be building massive pumped hydro.

~~~
rcMgD2BwE72F
Newly produced Lithium-Ion batteries last longer than the average car life
expectancy. They are also fully recyclable.

------
viach
Imagine our energy is solar 90%, don't we lose some risks diversification here
just in the case if the state of affairs with the global sunlight conditions
will change drastically?

~~~
mrsharpoblunto
If global sunlight conditions change drastically, we're probably screwed
regardless of how we're generating our power. Think crop failures, ecosystem
collapse etc.

------
ed_at_work
So, that's cool and all. I love green tech. And I hate fossil fuels.
Buuuuuuut, aren't we going to have the same issue with supplies of lithium
that we are having with fossil fuels? Unless we have a dramatic shift in
renewable battery tech, we're still painting ourselves into a corner with the
giant battery trent.

~~~
CydeWeys
The big difference is that fossil fuels are burnt, lithium is not. Lithium can
also be recycled once batteries hit end of life.

But lithium is just one of many possible battery chemistries. And you're not
even limited to chemical batteries; potential energy ones work at grid scale
too; all you need to do is pump water uphill.

