
Solar’s Future is Insanely Cheap - epistasis
https://rameznaam.com/2020/05/14/solars-future-is-insanely-cheap-2020/
======
sephamorr
Power markets are more complicated than most people realize. One thing to note
is that solar power can be cheaper than gas, but still not be economic. The
fact of the matter is that an intermittent kWh is not as valuable as an on-
demand reliable kWh to a utility who's number 1 priority is reliability. Even
as solar is acquired at lower and lower prices, if evening power is generated
by expensive and inefficient gas turbines, the customer might not see costs go
down (and emissions might not go down either!). Solar is clearly economic in
many markets, but we'll never get grid emissions in a place like California
down much more without storage.

~~~
remmargorp64
All they need to do is build mechanical/hydraulic systems for storing solar
power during the day and unleashing it at night.

For example, use solar power during the day to pump fluid from a lower
reservoir into a higher reservoir, and then harness the energy of the water
flowing from the higher reservoir into the lower reservoir through turbines.

As long as your output energy is always coming from the turbines, and as long
as your solar powered pumps running during the day can keep up with double the
rate of drainage flow, then you should have a constant loop with a steady
supply of power.

This type of system could be retrofitted onto virtually any dam, giving you a
way to create a closed loop with constant power and without the water loss
typical from a dam (other than evaporation).

For areas where water is scarce and a dam isn't feasible, there are also other
ideas, such as gravitational potential energy systems that use solar powered
energy to lift weights on pulleys, which then power a generator as the weights
are lowered by gravity.

Other ideas: Thermal storage including molten salts which can efficiently
store and release very large quantities of heat energy, compressed air energy
storage, flywheels, cryogenic systems, etc...

~~~
opo
>...For example, use solar power during the day to pump fluid from a lower
reservoir into a higher reservoir, and then harness the energy of the water
flowing from the higher reservoir into the lower reservoir through turbines.

Trying to rely only on intermittent power sources has huge storage
requirements due to weather along with daily/seasonal variation. If grid
energy storage was a simple problem it would have been done decades ago.

For example, one estimate is that for Germany to rely on solar and wind would
require about 6,000 pumped storage plants which is literally 183 times their
current capacity:

>...Based on German hourly feed-in and consumption data for electric power,
this paper studies the storage and buffering needs resulting from the
volatility of wind and solar energy. It shows that joint buffers for wind and
solar energy require less storage capacity than would be necessary to buffer
wind or solar energy alone. The storage requirement of over 6,000 pumped
storage plants, which is 183 times Germany’s current capacity, would
nevertheless be huge.

[https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/144985/1/cesifo1_wp5...](https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/144985/1/cesifo1_wp5950.pdf)

~~~
pfdietz
> If grid energy storage was a simple problem it would have been done decades
> ago.

Except storage is much less useful in the old paradigm, so the motivation
wasn't there. Going forward, prices will swing wildly, so storage will be more
valuable.

~~~
opo
>Except storage is much less useful in the old paradigm,

Plentiful storage would obviously have been very useful over the last several
decades. There is a large variation in daily electrical usage (particularly in
summer months):

[https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915](https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915)

There is also the need for extra capacity in the system because of planned and
unplanned maintenance.

>...Going forward, prices will swing wildly, so storage will be more valuable.

Well yes, our economy is based on having reliable power and it would be
impossible to have anywhere near the reliable power relying on intermittent
power sources without a huge amount of storage. The problem is that contrary
to what advocates claim, people have been looking at grid energy storage for
decades and it isn't as simple as they claim.

As Bill Gates said in an interview: "…They have this statement that the cost
of solar photovoltaic is the same as hydrocarbon’s. And that’s one of those
misleadingly meaningless statements. What they mean is that at noon in
Arizona, the cost of that kilowatt-hour is the same as a hydrocarbon kilowatt-
hour. But it doesn’t come at night, it doesn’t come after the sun hasn’t
shone, so the fact that in that one moment you reach parity, so what? The
reading public, when they see things like that, they underestimate how hard
this thing is. So false solutions like divestment or “Oh, it’s easy to do”
hurt our ability to fix the problems. Distinguishing a real solution from a
false solution is actually very complicated."

[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/11/we-
need...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/11/we-need-an-
energy-miracle/407881/)

Gates is investing in 4th gen nuclear and energy storage companies so he is
putting his money where his mouth is.

------
Retric
Another aspect of this is the cost of the physical solar cells have dropped
low enough that other costs have become significant. This is pushing companies
to increase efficiency which opens the door for other applications.

A hypothetical cheap ~30% efficient solar panel could add something like 40
miles of range per day to a car in ideal conditions. That starts to look
actually useful vs a simple gimmick.

~~~
TheGrim-888
Correct me if I'm wrong, and I quite possible could be, but from a quick
Google search, I'm seeing numbers of anywhere 200Wh/mile to 350Wh/mile for a
Tesla. If we're generous and assume only 200Wh/mile, then 40 miles of range
translates to an energy consumption of 8,000Wh.

A 100 watt solar panel, producing the full 100 watts, would take 80 hours of
perfect sunlight to produce enough power for an extra 40 miles of range.

Assuming best case (unrealistic) conditions, if you get 8 hours of perfect
sunlight in day, and your solar panels produce 100% of their rating for all 8
hours, it would take 1000 Watts worth of solar panels to produce that extra 40
miles of distance over 8 hours. It seems kind of unrealistic to fit 1000 Watts
of solar on top of a car. And that's an absolute minimum, under best case
conditions.

If you had, say, maybe a more realistic 300 watts worth of panels on top, and
they got 4 hours of full sunglight, you'd be producing an extra ((300W * 4h) /
200Wh/mile) = 6 miles. And that's still assuming best case condition for power
consumption per mile.

[Edit] - And like the other commenter stated, those few extra miles get cut
down when you consider the weight of hundreds of watts of solar panels added
onto the vehicle.

~~~
rootusrootus
Here's a recent analysis: [https://teslatap.com/articles/solar-vehicle-roof-
analysis/](https://teslatap.com/articles/solar-vehicle-roof-analysis/)

To me it looks like it will never be a meaningful solution, due simply to
physics.

~~~
Retric
That has several really bad assumptions by assuming all solar roofs need to
fit on an existing Tesla‘a roof.

> The usable clear area of a Model S glass roof is 42” x 45”

A Model S is actually 195.9” by 77.3 (ex. mirrors). Assuming a reasonable
shaped solar car using 75% of that surface is covered in panels that’s 12x the
area. But you also gain from panels covering the sides of the vehicle.

Further “Because the vehicle roof is flat, it collects less light than if it
was positioned at the optimum angle to the sun.“ as I said your not limited by
the roof. “Lastly, we lose at least 10% more due to the safety glass,” we
don’t need glass and that’s already part of panel efficiency numbers. “and the
inverter/charging is only 81% efficient.” Solar panels and batteries are both
DC so you don’t need an inverter, the charge discharge efficiency of lithium
ion can be over 90%.

San Francisco 5.34kWh/m * .3 efficiency * 7.33 square meters = 11.7kW/day
/.3kW per mile = 35 to 39.14 miles in San Francisco depending on how much your
charging the battery with plenty of areas getting more sunlight. Using the
highest efficiency panels currently produced that goes up significantly, but
cheap 30% efficient panels seems like a more reasonable mid term prediction.

PS: Example of a flexible 1m panel zero glass required at under 300$/m:
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B082FCZ4MD/ref=emc_b_5_t?th=1](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B082FCZ4MD/ref=emc_b_5_t?th=1)

~~~
SAI_Peregrinus
> Solar panels and batteries are both DC so you don’t need an inverter, the
> charge discharge efficiency of lithium ion can be over 90%.

You'll still need a DC-DC converter, which is just an inverter with a
rectification step. The 81% number is low, but there is a loss here.

------
clairity
nice application of the learning curve, a model taught in strategy and
operations courses in business school.

basically every model from around 2010 badly miscalculated the learning
coefficient of the solar industry. apparently some forecasts are still badly
calculating it.

~~~
greglindahl
The part that boggles the mind is that the forecasts are still terribly wrong,
in the same direction, 10 years later.

~~~
frede
The forecasts from the IEA are my favourites, predicting a decline in PV
expansion every year. [https://www.pv-magazine.com/2018/11/20/iea-versus-
solar-pv-r...](https://www.pv-magazine.com/2018/11/20/iea-versus-solar-pv-
reality/)

~~~
jmelloy
The IEA forecast has been so wrong it suggests malice.

------
ph0rque
This tells me that until fossil plants are mostly shut down (and perhaps
afterward), we will continue to have negative electricity prices at times. It
might be a profitable idea to buy extra energy storage capacity to get paid
for storing energy at certain times, then sell it when it is high demand.

~~~
Scoundreller
I just wish the negative electricity prices reached the non-industrial
consumer.

If it reached me, I'll have an Arduino controlled hot water heater, furnace
and fridge/freezer dynamically turning on/off to take the most advantage of
prices pronto.

~~~
tialaramex
In some areas you can _buy_ electricity this way, but the other end of the
deal bites you, so beware of that.

When it seems like you might die from the heat but the price charged is $8.50
per kWh how much longer do you want to wait before switching on the AC? (If
you live somewhere it never gets hot, figure on the same but for a midwinter
freeze and deciding when to pay for your resistive circuit heat pump boost)

~~~
Scoundreller
I figure it all averages out. But when I pay an average price, I have no
incentive to lower demand when prices are high or raise demand when prices are
low, contributing to even higher average prices.

------
frede
Energy is cheap, power is expensive - you can already get energy for free
sometimes on the intraday market, but you still pay if you need delivery at a
certain time and the grid fees for peak power consumption stay expensive. I am
looking forward to Tesla's million-mile battery!

------
deepnotderp
With launch costs set to drop aggressively I wonder if space based solar
becomes viable sooner than expected. Iirc the NASA estimate was something like
$200-500/kg launch costs. I wonder if concentrated solar in the form of thin
mirrors can change that.

~~~
lachlan-sneff
Musk's most recent estimate of the eventual cost per kg on starship was 10
usd/kg. He may be considered an unreliable source at this point, however.

------
Animats
It's now reached the point that "energy producer" lobbyists are lobbying Trump
to keep banks from refusing to finance fossil fuel projects.[1][2] They're now
a bad long-term investment.

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/05/08/us/08reuters-
heal...](https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/05/08/us/08reuters-health-
coronavirus-energy.html)

[2] [http://archive.is/QSPle](http://archive.is/QSPle)

------
3fe9a03ccd14ca5
I'm actually quite shocked at how much energy is produced by solar, especially
when compared to residential wind turbines. Panels are efficient, and when
it's sunny, you're juicing.

The real challenge is of course bringing down cost of storage, which is the
key to make solar systems efficient (not just cheap).

~~~
Scoundreller
> residential wind turbines

Wind has a scalability problem. Residentially, it's only a good sell as a
backup supply for when solar isn't cutting it to hopefully prevent generator
use. And even that's a tough economic argument.

Towers have huge economies of scale, both in total size and height. So the
turbines just keep getting bigger and bigger because it's more and more cost
effective.

~~~
somewhereoutth
If my understanding is correct there is curious difference in perceived scale
with kinetic vs thermal energy. Based on a a rowing machine's advertised
metrics, I calculated you could row across the English channel on half a
packet of chocolate biscuits.

~~~
burlesona
This sounds interesting but I don't really understand, could you elaborate?

~~~
somewhereoutth
1 biscuit = 85 cal

1000m rowing = 60 cal [1]

English Channel = 35km (narrowest point)

35 * 60 / 85 = 24.7 biscuits!

[1] [https://darkhorserowing.com/how-to-translate-calories-to-
met...](https://darkhorserowing.com/how-to-translate-calories-to-meters)

~~~
burlesona
Ah, got it. That's cool, thanks for sharing!

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dave333
I thought the old lie with statistics trick of starting the Y axis above zero
was debunked in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s etc. The blog name above the X axis
and gray shading make it look like the costs are approaching zero.

------
maheart
I recently watched the documentary "Planet of the Humans". For context, the
writer of the documentary is an environmentalist.

One of the stated points was that solar and wind cannot be relied upon 24/7 --
to account for the lack of reliability, you need to have a backup power
generator (e.g. coal power plant) running. The thing about coal plants (does
it apply to natural gas plants too?) is that if you "idle" them, then have to
ramp them up to feed demand, then later ramp them down -- it's a very
inefficient way of running them. Now based on my understanding, it might be
more efficient to just run the coal plant (or natural gas planet?) 24x7, in
which case you've just added waste with the use of solar/wind. How much truth
is there to this?

~~~
qaq
0? You can have utility scale storage and Nuclear as backup

~~~
ktal
Damn shame we haven't been investing in nuclear over the past few decades. Now
when we need it most, it's too late.

~~~
epistasis
Nuclear is one of the few technologies that has a negative learning curve. As
we improve designs, it seems to get more expensive rather than less.

There was a brief window in the 1970s where US nuclear construction projects
were finishing on time. But the utility industry had planned for waaaaay too
much new capacity. So when all the construction projects with poor execution,
that struggled to complete and therefore came in way over budget, finally came
online in the early 80s, they were financial disasters in a scale that nearly
bankrupted several utilities.

Since then, utilities lost their appetite. And there's basically _no_ way for
us to replace the 400 or so reactors in the world that eMate nearing end of
life.

However, I'm not sure we will need nuclear. With how cheap wind and solar are
getting, far faster than anybody anticipated, we have finally found the
technologies that may some day provide energy "too cheap to meter." However,
like nuclear they are not dispatchable (except for some designs in France), so
if we want to power a grid we either need to overbuild capacity by quite a
bit, or use energy storage. There's a cost trade off for the two that depends
on how cheap storage gets, and how cheap extra capacity is, and how cheap
transmission is from an area with different weather that day. (For example,
one can imagine building 2x of panel capacity over the amount of inverter
capacity on a solar install, so that even on cloudy days you can chug along at
near full energy output... it all depends on the cost trade offs.)

And as fast an solar is getting cheap, far beyond expectations, so is lithium
ion storage. And there are many chemistries with high specific energies (and
thus unsuitable for vehicles), that we are just now dipping our toes into.

Nuclear would be a nice tool to have, if it was competitive with other
technologies, but it's going to be decades before it can prove itself and
establish a positive track record for deployment. Utilities have been burned
too many times by financial dumpster fires.

------
lettergram
Do we really need a “2020” by the title?

~~~
ascorbic
It's in the title of the original post, to distinguish from similar posts in
2011 and 2015

------
swayvil
Solar's future may be cheap but capitalism's future is always going to be
pricey.

------
gyogyo
Making solar panels require massive amount of energy. If built in China, these
panels are made with electricity from coal. They don't have a great C02
budget.

~~~
timbit42
Today's solar panels are efficient enough that even if they are produced using
electricity from coal, by the end of their life, they've reduced CO2 emissions
by more than what the coal produced to manufacture them.

------
undershirt
Is solar just a stopgap tech? Like, do they still require fossil fuel energy
to create, not to mention maintain and rebuild? And I know we’re now strip
mining the ocean for battery metals. I don’t yet sense the sustainability in
this amid all this economic hand-waving of “it’s getting cheaper”. (forgive my
tone, i have a hard time of making sense of the big picture of renewables,
hoping to eventually see how it actually fits into a utopic idea of a “closed-
loop economy”)

I’m reminded here a bit of Ted Chiang’s short story, Exhalation, where the
people devise clever ways to try to put air back in the ground without using
more than they’re sequestering. I hope our situation is better than that.

~~~
Barrin92
I'm not sure about the resource costs of solar in particular but the question
is a very salient one. Vaclav Smil has a great piece on this. "What I see when
I see a wind turbine"

 _" the quest for renewable electricity generation. And yet, although they
exploit the wind, which is as free and as green as energy can be, the machines
themselves are pure embodiments of fossil fuels. • Large trucks bring steel
and other raw materials to the site, earth-moving equipment beats a path to
otherwise inaccessible high ground, large cranes erect the structures, and all
these machines burn diesel fuel. So do the freight trains and cargo ships that
convey the materials needed for the production of cement, steel, and plastics.
For a 5-megawatt turbine, the steel alone averages 150 metric tons for the
reinforced concrete foundations, 250 metric tons for the rotor hubs and
nacelles (which house the gearbox and generator), and 500 metric tons for the
towers.[...] For a long time to come—until all energies used to produce wind
turbines and photovoltaic cells come from renewable energy sources—modern
civilization will remain fundamentally dependent on fossil fuels."_

[http://vaclavsmil.com/wp-
content/uploads/15.WINDTURBINE.pdf](http://vaclavsmil.com/wp-
content/uploads/15.WINDTURBINE.pdf)

~~~
lallysingh
Sounds like a bullshit purity test.

~~~
Barrin92
It's not a bullshit purity test at all. It highlights the extremely neglected
costs in raw material and non-electrifiable infrastructure that is required to
produce materials that are nominally 'green'. In some cases it's questionable
if some green technologies actually are a net positive at all.

There is a strong 'abundance' bias implicit in articles by people like Ramez
Naam, who push so strongly for green energy production because they don't want
to consider the very obvious alternative, dematerialisation and reduction of
energy consumption. People like Naam still categorically hang onto a growth
narrative so they tend to neglect the downsides of the solutions they provide.

~~~
alextingle
> It highlights the extremely neglected costs in raw material and non-
> electrifiable infrastructure that is required to produce materials that are
> nominally 'green'.

Ignored by whom? You?

In fact, embedded energy is a huge consideration in the evaluation of green
technologies.

~~~
ashtonkem
It’s a depressingly common reality that “nobody has considered” is effectively
equivalent to “I haven’t considered” on the internet.

The idea that solar panels might not be more efficient than _burning coal_ is
not an opinion held by someone who has done any level of research on the
subject at all.

------
maallooc
Cheap for the economy, not so cheap for the environment.

These kind of articles rarely calculate the price to dispose old solar panels.

Our country recently found that current methods for disposing solar panels
pose a grave danger to the environment and imposed strict regulations for it.
As a result the price for disposal quadrupled. Because consumers of the solar
panel, which are mostly individuals, can't afford those prices, the government
is preparing for a law that charges manufactures up front for the price of
disposal.

It is assumed that solar will be more expensive than natural gas after the
changes.

~~~
skybrian
I'm wondering why landfills are insufficient? Are the linings not good enough?

~~~
maallooc
Not processing old solar panel was deemed dangerous by the government and we
are building a government facility to recycle and properly decontaminate them.
The price to run the facility will be collected from the manufacturers.

Same for Wind too. 81 tons of waste needs to be processed after 20 years of
service of a 5MW wind turbine but operators and manufacturers does not take
the price of disposal into account.

~~~
skybrian
Sure but I'm asking about the technology. It seems odd that old solar panels
couldn't somehow be safely buried without leaching.

