
World Energy Hits a Turning Point: Solar That's Cheaper Than Wind - Osiris30
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-15/world-energy-hits-a-turning-point-solar-that-s-cheaper-than-wind
======
jfoutz
I have high hopes for ARES [1]. just a heavy train on a hill with a
regenerative break. Add lots of tracks, multiple trains per track, solar above
the rails. Avoids needing all the water for pumped hydro storage. none of
toxic stuff to deal with when batteries have reached their end of life. Zero
carbon emission (aside from whatever is required for manufacturing) is just
hugely appealing.

If solar prices continue as they have for another 3-5 years, the question is
going to be pretty clear, how do we store all of this insanely cheap power.
I'm a little mystified we're not taxing carbon emissions and subsidizing
storage. But hey, there are clearly powerful forces at play, that don't agree
with me.

[1] [http://www.aresnorthamerica.com/](http://www.aresnorthamerica.com/)

~~~
krapht
I'm extremely skeptical that ARES will ever be cost efficient. Potential
energy is proportional to mass * g * d_height - any reasonable grid storage
option will need to be moving truly enormous amounts of mass.

Back of the napkin here:

California consumes 9.54 * 10^17 Joules of electricity / year, or 1.09 * 10^14
Joules / hour.

Suppose we wish to hold in storage enough energy to supply to grid for twelve
hours, since the sun does not shine at night. Assume we have a 100% efficient
method of recovering potential energy stored on a train. Suppose we find a
suitable mountain with a 1000 meter height differential. Then according to e =
mgh, we would need to shift a load of 1.33*10^11 kilograms to supply twelve
hours of electrical demand.

Let's assume we use the cheapest rock we can to fill this mass. I assume you
can get wholesale pea gravel for $8 a metric ton.

Then the cost of gravel alone is $1.07 billion.

That doesn't sound so bad, but remember, this project will need ~1333500
100-metric-ton freight cars. Suppose they cost $120,000 / ea. Then suddenly,
the cost of the train cars is 160 billion.

This is on the order of magnitude of the entire California yearly state
budget. And also ignoring a bunch of other cost factors that will increase the
total price by another 1-2 orders of magnitude.

Pumped storage hydroelectric is viable precisely because the reservoir holds
your water for essentially free. Train cars are far, far more expensive.

~~~
jfoutz
There is a very good chance i've screwed up my math, but my silly back of the
envelope calculation says,

9.54 * 10^17 Joules/ (3.6 *10^9 Joules/mwh) = 265000000 mwh. Levelized cost,
[1] (operating + construction + financing) works out to around $72 per mwh,
over 30 years. (going with the cheapest average option) So if we were to throw
away everything today, and be required start fresh, I get about $570 billion.

That's clearly a stupid thing to do.

However, my big point is, if solar falls another order of magnitude (which is
a pretty big if), we can afford to spend a lot on storage. I think solar is
now competitive with coal, but it's not dispatchable.

I'd argue solar would probably need 4x the amount of production of a similar
coal plant, it's only going to work really well part of the day, and there are
losses in storage (ares claims 20% loss, which is comparable to batteries)

there's not much weight difference between gravel and packed dirt. I figured
they'd just use whatever mass is handy when they're building the track.

I don't know if $120k is a fair price. the cars have to have regenerative
breaks, which are likely expensive. Just building something strong enough to
support 100 metric tons can't be cheap. I don't know if there are any special
features of regular freight cars that can be abandoned to cut down costs. On
the other hand, if you're building a million of them, the costs would likely
come down a bit.

Perhaps solar has reached the end, and any improvements will be slow. I don't
believe that, and i do believe some sort of efficient storage will be the big
focus in energy going forward.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#United_States)

~~~
patall
IF solar falls another order of magnitude, it will be far cheaper (which only
has the conversion efficiency problem) to go for power-to-gas technology that
has the additional advantage of being able to use gas (not gasoline) powered
cars with normal range.

~~~
reitanqild
IIRC one of the big ideas behind ARES is to make money by supplying peak power
for consumption and possibly even by taking peak power production off the
grid.

Basically a grid scale AC capacitor equivalent.

I only have education in electronics and no other experience with High Voltage
or big grids so I might be very wrong.

------
josephg
This is a really great mini-documentary about solar from May this year. They
talk about the tumbling price and interview investors and manufacturers in
China. The eye opening moment for me was the fact that they already have 2M
people in China manufacturing panels, and production is still ramping up.

It looks like solar is starting to become an inevitability.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmyrbKBZ6SU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmyrbKBZ6SU)

~~~
api
... until import tariffs with China end the solar revolution here.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Lots of places around the world not the US. Those buyers will continue to drag
the price of solar down.

The US election doesn't mean a thing for the energy market. We'll be dragged
along with the rest of the world by market forces.

~~~
jacobolus
Furthermore, there is a world market for other energy sources, which are all
somewhat fungible. So if solar takes off around the world, fossil fuel demand
will slack and prices will continue to drop making their extraction less
viable.

Hopefully we also start to see some significant replacement of fossil fuels
used for transportation.

~~~
sitkack
We need to use solar to pay for the extraction and transportation of fossil
fuels.

~~~
throwayawnotime
LOL, very good point. Maybe for the back of the classroom you could clarify?

It is clear that the calculation or real EROEI is very hard when you start
counting all externalities and dependencies.

Do you have any good sources of anylsis on this that you could recommend?

~~~
john_reel
What do those terms mean?

------
xt00
The good thing about solar is that it leverages off the semiconductor
industry, whereas other renewables do not. For example, in the case of
smartphones, before they existed accelerometers and GPS IC's were crazy
expensive, but now they are cheap. Solar probably has years and years to go
before it is as cheap as possible. I would not be surprised if solar hits
$0.10/watt in 10 years. Basically because as the demand picks up and money is
being made, more companies will be saying, "if we can just increase our
efficiency by 20% or so, we can lower the price and win huge contracts.." so
they will be trying things like multilayers, changing the structure to improve
efficiency as the panel heats up, coatings, lenses, etc that can all be done
in low cost ways. Definitely would be interesting to compare how much it costs
to run/maintain a solar farm vs. a natural gas power plant. Basically you have
to deliver the fuel to the plant, maintain all the stuff, pay for the workers
to make sure stuff doesn't blow up, etc. Seems like with a solar farm you
basically need a guy with a truck and a leaf blower.

~~~
philipkglass
The big difference between solar PV and microelectronics is that there's very
little miniaturization achievable in PV. More power requires more area; light
conversion efficiency increases only slowly over time. The sunlight-to-
electricity conversion efficiency of common solar cells has not even doubled
since 1980. There's less than a factor of 4 left between the efficiency of
panels you can buy for your rooftop today and the _maximum efficiency
permitted by the laws of nature_. That's quite a difference from the past
trajectory of microelectronics, where Moore's Law doubled efficiency over and
over.

That's also the short explanation for why companies with deep experience in
microelectronics manufacturing, like Intel, TSMC, or Texas Instruments, did
not come to dominate solar PV manufacturing. PV is a very different game. It's
about producing huge quantities of doped silicon wafers with little patterning
across their surfaces.

However, it is true that PV has made enormous strides in reducing
manufacturing costs, though aggressive miniaturization was not how it was
done. In sunny regions PV now has the lowest O&M costs of any new-build
electricity source.

~~~
xt00
interesting.. would be interesting to listen to your explanation while
listening to some of your music mr. glass. :-)

~~~
philipkglass
:-) Philip K Dick meets Philip Glass: I combined two of my favorite Philips
for my nom de plume.

~~~
D_Alex
Are you in the renewable energy industry in the US? If yes, send me a message
on the e-mail in my profile please.

------
XorNot
The really interesting thing here is what this means for all the coal-warriors
making their resurgence (or thinking they will): they're not going to find
investors for new plants.

If solar is cheaper, and scales well (i.e. you can just keep deploying it,
pretty much anywhere, and have it get cheaper the more you do) then all the
smart money is going to go to building as much PV as quickly as possible.
There'll be no one willing to invest in coal-plants because they'll be looking
at the on-going costs, looking at the up-front costs, placement issues, build-
times, risk of actual action on carbon pricing and saying "you know what,
let's build out solar instead".

~~~
jartelt
This scenario is already playing out and it's largely due to market forces.
More people are employed in the solar industry now than are employed by the
coal industry. Simply put, coal in the US is dead because it can't compete
with gas, solar, and wind. That is why it is silly when people say we need to
prop up the coal industry. We would much better off by just training those
workers to install solar panels or become wind turbine technicians because
there is actually a growing market there.

~~~
bagacrap
Coal working jobs are more dangerous but pay much more than solar panel
installation. The issue the coal workers and uneducated middle class have
faced recently is a loss in earning potential (with existing skill set) moreso
than absolute unemployment.

The internet suggests the average hourly pay is $23 for coal to $16 for solar
installers. That's a big hair cut, plus solar installers likely have to live
in or closer to cities, generally increasing cost of living and providing one
more obstacle that makes it hard to switch careers.

------
gns24
Solar and wind are so different that comparing them doesn't really make any
sense. Generally a combination is optimal. The news in this article though is
that solar prices have tumbled in the last few years - whereas wind prices
have declined at a more expected rate.

Comparing the photo-voltaic capacity installed in 2016 with wind capacity is a
bit misleading, as wind typically has a much higher capacity factor than solar
- so the 59GW of wind will almost certainly produce more electricity than the
70GW of solar.

~~~
imaginenore
> _59GW of wind will almost certainly produce more electricity than the 70GW
> of solar._

What do you mean? These are not some peak figures, they are expected energy
production figures.

~~~
pilom
Capacity factor means "take the amount of MWh actually produced by the plant,
divide by the number of MWh that theoretically could be produced if it
generated its maximum output 24/7/365." 70GW of solar refers to the maximum
instantaneous production (note that it is measured in GW not GWh). So while in
full sun, all of that solar is generating 70GW of power per unit time but at
night, it generates 0W. Average that over a year and it generated about 28% of
it's maximum power over time.

Hydro plants have huge ranges of capacity factors depending on other
restrictions on the dam like if it is used for flood mitigation, if it is
operated as a peaker plant, and if it snowed a lot the past winter. Nuclear
Plants generally have capacity factors in the 90% range to account for
swapping out fuel periodically. Fossil fuel plants have capacity factors of
>90% unless they are used as peaker plants.

------
transfire
If perovskite pans out -- and it is starting to look like it will -- then
solar is about to get a lot cheaper still.

See
[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161020142037.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161020142037.htm)

------
giis
Just couple of days I saw this documentary by national geographic about
world's largest solar power plant in India completed in ~8 months.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM-0lrIxCnE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM-0lrIxCnE)

------
LeanderK
i am really happy that the "green" energy production is in such a price war.
It's Solar vs. Wind not Solar vs. Coal. I don't care what's cheaper as long as
it's not Coal!

~~~
noselasd
There is sadly a fix for that, which is to lift carbon tax and relax
requirements for having carbon sequestration systems - and coal would be quite
cheap again.

~~~
stevenleeg
Why would we ever do that?

Remember that the untaxed price of coal isn't a real price for it. Without a
tax the market does not take the externality of its environmental effect into
an account.

Economically speaking, a high tax on coal/other fossil fuels is simply forcing
the market to consider its full and actual price.

~~~
harmegido
I'm very confused by this conversation. What taxes are you guys talking about?
They don't exist as far as I'm aware. I am aware of some subsidies, but not
taxes on specifically carbon/coal/etc.

~~~
drited
I'd guess he's talking about this:
[http://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/ets_en](http://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/ets_en)

P.S. I agree about the comment regarding negative externalities not being
accounted for unless something like this is in place.

------
nannePOPI
Do solar panels produce more energy that the amount required to create and
operate them? (including mining the materials)

~~~
epistasis
The term is EROI (energy returned on energy invested), for renewables its
currently roughly equivalent to fossil fuels and getting higher as the
technology improves. As oil and natural gas get more expensive and energy
intensive to extract, their EROI is going down.

~~~
planteen
Yep. Many forms of petroleum are also very convenient for energy storage. So
even an EROI less than 1 they would still have utility.

1 L of diesel has about 39 MJ of energy. That's about 10 kWH (a Tesla
Powerwall) in the size of a Nalgene bottle.

~~~
epistasis
Most definitely, chemical energy storage is fantastically dense.

I think that as intermittent renewable energy sources get cheaper and cheaper,
in addition to time-shifting of arbitrage from batteries, energy storage in
chemical bonds may make sense. Methods to create synthetic fuels from
electricity are in their very early days, and all of them are terribly
inefficient; most go through hydrogen and that step alone results in a huge
loss of energy.

So for applications where energy density is needed, e.g. jets, the fuel costs
will just be that X% higher than being able to use straight electricity +
battery.

I can definitely imagine a world where creating synthetic fuels from excess
grid energy is cheaper than fossil fuel extraction, but it involves tons of
research and development in those synthetic fuel methods, and many decades of
improving renewable technologies at their current rate.

~~~
woodandsteel
From what I understand, for electric generation storage, at present the
technology with the best promise seems to be flow batteries.

------
koheripbal
This does not include storage costs to offset the cyclic nature of solar.

~~~
greglindahl
For smallish amounts of solar, you need stabilization but not storage -- when
it's sunny, there's more air conditioning usage.

For large amounts of solar, sure, there's a lot of work to be done on storage.

~~~
dexwiz
Sun doesn't shine for ~50% time everyday.

~~~
CalChris
Yes but peak demand is 9PM in the evening. Wind is down at that time as well.

[http://energyclub.stanford.edu/wp-
content/uploads/2013/06/ka...](http://energyclub.stanford.edu/wp-
content/uploads/2013/06/kavousian-2.png)

Solar+wind don't have to provide 100% of the mix. They has to reduce the
daytime fossil fuel generation.

~~~
patrickk
Any idea why wind is up or down on a particular time? I would've thought it's
extremely random.

~~~
CalChris
No, it's definitely not random.

Off shore you get 24 hour constant wind, the synoptic wind. When we race to
Hawaii, first you HAVE to get past the Farallones the first day and into the
synoptic wind. If the inshore wind shuts down, you're bobbing all night with 0
wind. Get to the synoptic wind, set the spinnaker and it's a downhill sled
race to Oahu.

At the coast, you get marine layer driven winds in the afternoon, dying off in
the evening. Stockton heats up midday, creates a low pressure and sucks in the
marine layer. It cools off in the evening, shutting it down.

Now, as to the wind chart, that's CA as a whole. Dunno. But wind is definitely
not random by geography and season. Basically, it's solar driven.

------
orf
Thank god, this can't come soon enough.

------
barney54
Saying that solar is less expensive than nat gas is misleading. It's and
apples to oranges comparison. To make a valid comparison you need to compare
solar + batteries to natural gas. There is value to electricity production
that has an on/off switch because it helps keep the grid stable.

~~~
TillE
There won't be many "batteries" when renewables are supplying most power. We
have fairly cheap solutions for large-scale energy storage like hydroelectric
with pumps.

~~~
ztratar
You're far from correct. Large-scale energy storage is one of the biggest
unsolved problems today, and there are numerous startups in the space.
LightSail is an interesting one, and is using compressed air combined with
micro-droplets of water to ensure stable, efficient energy transfer.

Renewables success is heavily tied to battery technology. The wind isn't
always moving and the sun isn't always shining, so you need to store that
energy. Right now with existing battery tech, most of the energy is lost in a
storage process due to heat or battery wear/tear.

If energy storage was solved today, the oil/gas industry would be on their
knees.

~~~
maxerickson
China is installing an 800MW-h vanadium flow battery:

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2016/12/13/vanadium-f...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2016/12/13/vanadium-
flow-batteries-the-energy-storage-breakthrough-weve-needed/)

The cost claimed for a small installation coming online in Washington is $0.05
per kilowatt hour. That might not be cheap enough to beat out fossil fuel
generation, but it is cheap enough to run the world on.

------
mirimir
OK, I can't resist:

[http://www.northeast.railfan.net/ashley_planes.html](http://www.northeast.railfan.net/ashley_planes.html)

[http://www.mtn-top-hs.org/ashley_planes.htm](http://www.mtn-top-
hs.org/ashley_planes.htm)

------
mentos
"The average monthly cost of living in the United States for a single adult
with two children is $4,820. This adds up to an average annual cost of living
of $57,851."

What would the cost of living fall to if energy costs were $0?

~~~
philipkglass
A decent rule of thumb is that the cost of residential electricity is half for
transmission and distribution, half for generation. So save 50% on your home
power bill if electricity became free to generate but still had to be
delivered from centralized plants.

If household solar and small-scale storage get ridiculously cheap, grid
defection may be cheaper than buying large-scale renewable output from the
grid, but utility scale solar plants can generate more real output per nominal
watt and cost less to build per nominal watt. Unless your local electricity
system's history is weird (unneeded grid capacity built in Australia being
paid for by households, Energiewende that shifted costs away from big
industrial customers and toward individuals in Germany) then grid defection
probably won't be the lowest-cost option in the next 5 years.

~~~
Inthenameofmine
What you call grid defection might very well happen in currently developing
countries though, just as they never adopted telephone lines or stable postal
services.

In most developing countries the grid is the problem, not the production. They
often lose more than 50% of the electricity before it gets O the point of use.
They also need to make large scale coordinated upfront investments, which i
difficult with weak governments.

In a way, solar + cheap storage could become an economic and social
democratisation force.

------
sdornan
This is such good news. Can't wait until we abandon fossil fuels altogether.

------
sunrisetofu
I think flow battery technology will be a viable grid storage option, it makes
sense in terms of scale, simplicity and durability

------
_Codemonkeyism
Coal town Trump voters come to mind.

------
dmccunney
Back in the early 70's, I worked for a government (HUD/ERDA) sponsored project
to promote alternative energy use. It was the first flowering of OPEC, gas
prices at the pump were rising over ( _gasp!_ ) $1/gallon, and there was a
sudden massive interest in reducing dependence on foreign oil.

What my shop was pushing was using solar collectors to heat hot water. That
was about 20% of the average residential energy bill, had a relatively low up
front cost, and a relatively short payback period. We were aware of and
tracked a variety of alternative energy sources including photovoltaics, but
expected them to get niche pickup at best because they were simply too
expensive. To a large extent, that's still the case.

Another point to note is that energy usage isn't _just_ electricity. Back
then, a national energy budget divided roughly into quarters, with industrial
heating and cooling, residential/light commercial heating and cooling,
transportation, and electricity making up the demand. The total amount of
energy consumed is rather larger, but that breakdown is still pretty much the
same. I don't see solar electric power addressing things like heavy duty
heating and cooling, nor most transportation.

One thing I got convinced of back then is that the form of energy used will be
the _cheapest_ that will do the job. Energy from fossil fuel still
predominates because it _is_ still cheapest.

Solar is still essentially a niche market, though growing, and lower costs are
the driver. I was grimly amused a while back over the woes of Solyndra, an
effort to create large scale photovoltiac production in the US, that got about
half a billion in government funding. The underlying notion was creation of US
jobs.

Photovoltaics is semi-conductor electronics, the Chinese jumped in with both
feet, and started turning out solar cells at prices domestic producers _couldn
't_ match. In fact, some Chinese producers came to grief. They dove in based
on demand estimates that were unfounded, produced a glut on the market, far
lower prices for buyers, and failures among firms that were late to the
manufacturing party. Solyndra couldn't compete.

People went on about US jobs, and I thought "Drive on the NJ Turnpike, and
every other pole has a solar cell array generating power to help run the
Turnpike. _Somebody_ has the contract to design, produce, install and maintain
those arrays, and those jobs by nature will be local. Decreasing costs for the
raw materials used to produce the arrays made it possible to sell the end
products cheaper, and increased the demand. The Chinese can do it cheapest and
can _have_ solar cell production. The money is in moving up the value chain
and making things people will buy that use those solar cells."

I'm delighted to see solar electricity costs dropping to the reported levels,
but anyone who sees it as a solution for overall energy woes isn't looking at
a big enough picture. ______ Dennis

~~~
jartelt
You are really downplaying the growth of solar over the last 10 years. In many
places in the US, utility scale solar is the cheapest power you can buy.
Prices have gone down from ~$100/W in the 1970s to ~$0.30/W today. The amount
of solar installed in the US is growing exponentially. The growth rate will
likely slow a bit, but the US already gets 0.5% of its electricity from solar.
When factoring in exponential growth, there will be a very significant amount
of solar installed in the next 10 years.

------
dmccunney
Back in the early 70's, I worked for a government (HUD/ERDA) sponsored project
to promote alternative energy use. It was the first flowering of OPEC, gas
prices at the pump were rising over ( _gasp!_ ) $1/gallon, and there was a
sudden massive interest in reducing dependence on foreign oil.

What my shop was pushing was using solar collectors to heat hot water. That
was about 20% of the average residential energy bill, had a relatively low up
front cost, and a relatively short payback period. We were aware of and
tracked a variety of alternative energy sources including photovoltaics, but
expected them to get niche pickup at best because they were simply too
expensive. To a large extent, that's still the case.

Another point to note is that energy usage isn't _just_ electricity. Back
then, a national energy budget divided roughly into quarters, with industrial
heating and cooling, residential/light commercial heating and cooling,
transportation, and electricity making up the demand. The total amount of
energy consumed is rather larger, but that breakdown is still pretty much the
same. I don't see solar electric power addressing things like heavy duty
heating and cooling, nor most transportation.

One thing I got convinced of back then is that the form of energy used will be
the _cheapest_ that will do the job. Energy from fossil fuel still
predominates because it _is_ still cheapest.

Solar is still essentially a niche market, though growing, and lower costs are
the driver. I was grimly amused a while back over the woes of Solyndra, an
effort to create large scale photovoltiac production in the US, that got about
half a billion in government funding. The underlying notion was creation of US
jobs.

Photovoltaics is semi-conductor electronics, the Chinese jumped in with both
feet, and started turning out solar cells at prices domestic producers _couldn
't_ match. In fact, some Chinese producers came to grief. They dove in based
on demand estimates that were unfounded, produced a glut on the market, far
lower pricers for buyers, and failures among firms that were late to the
manufacturing party.

People went on about US jobs, and I thought "Drive on the NJ Turnpike, and
every other pole has a solar cell array generating power to help run the
Turnpike. _Somebody_ has the contract to design, produce, install and maintain
those arrays, and those jobs by nature will be local. Decreasing costs for the
raw materials used to produce the arrays made it possible to sell the end
products cheaper, and increased the demand. The Chinese can do it cheapest and
can _have_ solar cell production. The money is in moving up the value chain
and making things people will buy that use those solar cells."

I'm delighted to see solar electricity costs dropping to the reported levels,
but anyone who sees it as a solution for overall energy woes isn't looking at
a big enough picture. ______ Dennis

------
davidf18
Interestingly, everything organic is already powered by solar energy so by
far, solar is probably the greatest energy source on the planet.

The Photosynthesis enzyme in plant leaves captures photons that are converted
to electrons with energy stored chemically in carbohydrates. Animals eat the
chemical energy created by plants as well as other animals. Animals use oxygen
to oxidize the carbohydrates to create energy.

------
spiderfarmer
>In early May, speaking before a cheering West Virginia crowd filled with
miners wearing hard hats or holding “Trump Digs Coal” signs, the then-
Republican nominee pledged: “Get ready because you’re going to be working your
asses off.”

Guess not.

~~~
aaron695
An implication you do not like Trump is uninsightful and OT.

An implication Trump doesn't like clean energy is uninsightful and OT.

The, us against them (in this case miners, not exactly the 1%) is not healthy
and OT.

~~~
kibwen
Trump is the president-elect, and it's our civic duty to call out elected
officials making misleading or outlandish claims, just like we've been calling
out Obama for his stance on surveillance and whistleblowing for years now.
This is especially true for the long-debunked claim that coal jobs can be
brought back, despite the perpetual coal pandering of every politician under
the sun. And I say that as someone who spent the first two decades of his life
in Appalachia, though mine was a crumbling former oil town rather than a
crumbling former coal town.

------
chris_va
Renewable energy accounting is shady (no pun intended). This is more accurate
(original source EIA):

[http://www.safremaenergy.com/wp-
content/uploads/2013/11/LCOE...](http://www.safremaenergy.com/wp-
content/uploads/2013/11/LCOE-2018.png)

... and also why natural gas will always win, and why coal is getting shut
down.

~~~
ricardobeat
That graph puts solar at $150/MWh, while current contracts are reaching < $30

~~~
D_Alex
That graph is not from a credible source, it is from a company trying to push
tidal power generation. Sure enough - according to the graph, tidal power is
the cheapest. In reality, tidal power is WAY more expensive than wind
turbines.

------
downandout
Comparing the costs of two renewables is like comparing the cost of a new
Mercedes to a new BMW: both are great to have, but neither one is affordable
for most of the world. "World energy" has not "hit a turning point," though
this kind of misleading headline seems to be the norm at Bloomberg. One
expensive thing became a little less expensive than the other expensive thing.
It doesn't change the fact that in most of the world, neither solar nor wind
is even remotely competitive with conventional sources. Hopefully they are one
day, but today is not that day.

~~~
piotrkaminski
The article claims that today is that day, at least for new installations:

> That’s record-cheap electricity—roughly half the price of competing coal
> power.

~~~
virmundi
Storage not included. To run an AC in Florida at night you'd burn through a
Tesla wall unit in a few hours. You want that AC at night. So you'll need
probably 3-5. At $8k per unit, $24k-$40k total.

I like solar. I like wind. I like the grid because the best way to handle the
power storage from over production during the day is in a centralized fashion.

~~~
kuschku
Or you just insulate your house and use heat exchangers with controlled
airflow to avoid the need for any AC at all.

See:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_house](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_house)

~~~
bzbarsky
That Wikipedia article explicitly says that making this concept work in a
tropical climate (we're talking Florida, right?) is so far an unsolved
problem, and that the one example in Louisiana does in fact have an AC.

Not needing AC by having decent insulation in Germany or Scandinavia (which is
where most passive houses are located) is a _much_ easier problem than not
needing AC in Florida. Of course not needing _heating_ is a big problem there,
and is what the passive house designs are mostly aiming to deal with.

