
New Record Low Solar Price in Abu Dhabi – Costs Plunging Faster Than Expected - slyall
http://rameznaam.com/2016/09/21/new-record-low-solar-price-in-abu-dhabi-costs-plunging-faster-than-expected/
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merraksh
Previous discussions:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12537649](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12537649)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11627965](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11627965)

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ahazred8ta
[https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=rameznaam.com](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=rameznaam.com)

    
    
      > How Cheap Can Electric Vehicles Get? (rameznaam.com)
    
      > How Cheap Can Energy Storage Get? (rameznaam.com)
    
      > How Cheap Can Solar Get? (rameznaam.com)
    
      > Why Energy Storage Is About to Get Big – And Cheap (rameznaam.com)
    

Is anybody seeing a pattern? :-(

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rogerdpack
Before getting too excited, realize this is for solar in Abu Dhabi, where
umm...they get tons of sunlight as it were :) Though his other graph
"predicts" that solar in more temperate climes will equal natural gas in
"2020?" [http://rameznaam.com/2015/08/10/how-cheap-can-solar-get-
very...](http://rameznaam.com/2015/08/10/how-cheap-can-solar-get-very-cheap-
indeed/)

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narrator
Another great thing about Abu Dhabi and solar is that they can use the extra
solar power during the day to ramp up water desalination and store energy as
clean water.

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Xylakant
There's a lot of demand that can be shifted to high-power periods, basically
anything that requires heat/cold. Modern insulation is fairly good and we do
have a lot of liquids with a high thermal capacity. Generating warm water for
buildings and cold coolant for aircons during peak power production would be
technologically feasible, it just doesn't pay off currently since the power
production curve is essentially flat (lot of base power with some peak added
on top).

In the future it might also be interesting to move industries with high power
demand to places with more solar power - electric arc furnaces, aluminum
production, ... Some of those require a base load, but a lot of them can
survive a few hours with limited power.

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patall
While I primarily agree, the problem from a more long term prospective is not
intra-day balancing but between summer and winter. Every place that is not
near to the equator gets less sun in the time of the year when there is more
need for electricity. While there are some concepts with liquid salt etc., it
becomes much harder to store such large amounts of energy for long periods.

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Xylakant
Summer/winter is really not much of a concern in Dubai.

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pavanred
May be a noob question, but if we can lay down cables for internet across the
ocean floor connecting the entire world, why not lay down cables to connect
all electricity grids. Half the earth always faces the sun. We shouldn't need
batteries at all then, right? And we always have the traditional power
stations (renewable and non-renewable) to augment the load. (At least in
theory?)

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qoobaa
It's a very good question. I always thought that it's because of technical
difficulties when transmitting electricity over long distances, but it turns
out we already do it well (HVDC). When you think about it on a continent
scale: why not move all PV panels from Germany to sunnier regions of Europe
like Spain or Portugal where you can generate twice more power with them (in
average 200 W/m² instead of 100 W/m²). The answer is simple: we'd need to have
a common grid across EU member countries, but such a thing doesn't exist and
it's unlikely to happen anytime soon. It turns out the biggest issue on this
planet is always politics.

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nickff
The amount of copper you would need to constantly convey electricity from the
sunny side of the earth to the dark side would be absolutely massive. It is
not an issue of common grids, as long distance high power transmission is done
at many different voltages depending on the specific route, and has nothing to
do with your mains voltage and frequency.

Current long distance power transmission is most often used as a way of
'balancing' production and demand between different types of plants; it is not
intended or capable of transmitting the full power needs of the recieving
area.

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qoobaa
You can use aluminium instead of copper (see HVDC Gotland).

I didn't say it's just about "connecting countries with a common grid".
Switching from fossil fuels to renewable sources is much more challenging than
that. However, transmitting lots of power over long distances is doable and
cheaper than many people think.

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rodionos
For reference, 2.42 cents per KWh is 10x lower than commercial/residential
prices in sunny Hawaii
[https://apps.axibase.com/chartlab/9e548f6b](https://apps.axibase.com/chartlab/9e548f6b)
per data.gov [https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/hi-electricity-
prices-815fa](https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/hi-electricity-prices-815fa)

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Annatar
This whole machination thing will collapse as soon as the solar panel prices,
along with the inverter and battery costs drop low enough to be part of every
house.

Once everyone generates and stores their own electricity, the residential
market will go away. This might be another 20 to 30 years off, but it is
inevitable. And once factories start building Stirling engines and solar
facilities into their designs, the industrial power market will collapse as
well. It's a good thing.

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DrStalker
Only for people that own their house; renters won't be able to take advantage
of this because it's a lot of capital outlay that the home owner gets no
benefit from. Same for anyone in an apartment.

So the residential market for purchased electricity will never go away, but a
significant reduction would still be a huge win.

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_ph_
If rooftop solar is profitable it doesn't matter too much who owns the house.
The owner still could sell the electricity to the renters.

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mseebach
Indeed, the landlord can probably get away with mandating that his tenants buy
a certain minimum amount of power at a certain cost giving him a fixed income
to finance the capital outlay against.

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magoon
If the price is dropping so rapidly, this makes a bad deal out of the 30-year
loans solar installers are pitching in the US. Furthermore, if fossil-fuel-
sourced kilowatt-hours compete by pricing downward, and thus pay solar owners
less per kWh, it could make solar seem like a bad deal.

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known
I heard that with latest solar panels we can convert 30% light to electricity;

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nomercy400
They can get a bit higher I believe (40%) in small sizes, so a trick that is
also applied is focussing all the sunlight in that small area, to improve
conversion rate. There is still a thing called heat, making it a bit more
complicated.

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blazespin
This will create massive pressure on the price of oil. Why would anyone in
their right mind not try to sell it off as fast as possible as it won't be
worth much in a few years.

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CptJamesCook
Solar doesn't really compete with oil. It competes with coal, natural gas, and
nuclear power to power homes.

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visarga
Why can't solar be used to capture CO2 and produce fuel?

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mseebach
It not so much that it isn't possible, just that it's significantly more
efficient, by a large margin, to use solar to displace more dirty energy
sources (and of those, coal is by far the highest priority).

