
Wind and solar are cheaper than thought, admits UK government - open-source-ux
https://www.carbonbrief.org/wind-and-solar-are-30-50-cheaper-than-thought-admits-uk-government
======
cbmuser
That doesn’t change the fact that neither wind nor solar can produce
electricity on demand.

Unlike many other products, customers buy electricity when they need it, not
when it’s cheap. It doesn’t really matter whether a wind farm in the German
North Sea can produce a lot of electricity cheaply during a windy day when
that electricity is needed three days later in Munich.

This complete lack of matching supply and demand is what drives electricity
prices with a large share of renewables in the market so high.

In Germany, lots of electricity is produced from renewables at times when it’s
not needed. This causes market prices to be negative at times and Germany is
paying neighboring countries money to buy that excess electricity.

At the same time, producers of renewables have guaranteed sales by German law,
i.e. their electricity is always bought by the market whether it’s needed or
not.

It’s this gap between supply and demand that customers are paying for which
drives German electricity prices.

Currently, we’re paying 31 Euro cents in Germany per kWh while French
customers whose grid has a large share of nuclear pay just 17 Euro cents per
kWh on average.

At the same time, the average CO2 emissions in Germany per kWh are at 400
grams in Germany while they’re only at 50 grams in France. That’s because
whenever solar and wind aren’t delivering any electricity we’re starting up
coal and gas plants.

I wish proponents renewables were honest enough to not withhold these
problems.

I mean, absolutely no one argues that it’s not that expensive to build a wind
or solar farm. What makes wind ans solar expensive is keeping the necessary
backup plants in standby for when they’re not delivering and paying for
getting rid of excess electricity from renewables when they’re not needed.

The intermittency and low energy density are inherent physical properties of
solar and wind farms which is why 100% renewables is newer feasible (unless
for countries like Norway who have the possibility to build lots of hydro
plants).

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I don't disagree with the thrust of your comment, but:

>customers buy electricity when they need it, not when it’s cheap. //

It doesn't have to be like this. You can let customers buy according to price,
distributors don't seem to want to; presumably because that democratises the
cost savings.

Octopus, a UK energy company, I think offers a customer direct grid pricing
policy to some customers.

I'm happy to run dishwasher, washing machine at night. Do hoovering (vacuum
cleaning) on sunny days, etc.. Wait half an hour to bake a cake if a storm is
passing. But these things mean paying less to the electricity company.

I can see fridges that use a cold-storage scheme. And would definitely get a
hot water tank if I could be paid to heat it.

~~~
adwww
Fridges are a huge opportunity - they could easily monitor the frequency of
the mains supply and turn the pump off whenever load drops under 50hz.

Users would never even know, if they were factory wired with this kit the
lights and any gadgets could continue to work.

Perhaps this should be something manufacturers have to include in order to get
their A+++ energy rating.

~~~
gdudeman
There are lots of interesting things like this right now. For instance, there
is work on hot water heaters that can store excess energy by heating water
hotter when electricity is cheap and then mixing with cold water to maintain a
constant temp throughout the day / night.

~~~
natmaka
See also "smart grid" (
[https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_grid](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_grid)
) and "vehicle to grid" ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-
grid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-grid) )

------
darrenoc
This is a bit like when they cancelled the Rotherhithe walking & cycling
bridge because it was allegedly going to cost 400 million. Powerful
establishment lobbying groups ensure that government estimates for green
projects make them seem unaffordable.

~~~
inamberclad
Who the hell is lobbying against a pedestrian bridge?

~~~
mperham
I see you've never been to a City Council meeting. NIMBYs will screech about
the most minor change.

~~~
inamberclad
Without idiots it wouldn't be a representational body...

------
ericvanular
The true energy solution to climate change will need to be a mix of wind,
solar, nuclear, storage, and more. No one generation method will solve all of
our issues. We need to start being more technology agnostic

(small plug for the [https://collective.energy](https://collective.energy)
community)

~~~
joshlemer
I have been wondering why hydro-electric generation is often left out of
discussions about renewable energy? Is it because we're currently maxing out
the hydro-electric potential of the earth so there's no more gains to be had?
If not, it seems like the perfect energy generation method -- it avoids the
battery problem, has 0 pollution outside of initial dam construction, is
perfectly safe. Three provinces in Canada are ~100% on hydro electric power.

~~~
mullingitover
Hydroelectric dams aren't all sunshine and roses.

> “The river was transformed from being a thriving producer of millions of ﬁsh
> such as shad, herring, striped bass, Atlantic salmon, sturgeon and alewives
> and supporting a wide cornucopia of other species ranging from otters to
> eagles — into a wastewater drainage system,” Jeff Crane, a dean of the
> College of Arts and Sciences at Saint Martin’s University, wrote in a paper
> published in 2009.

[https://therevelator.org/edwards-dam-
removal/](https://therevelator.org/edwards-dam-removal/)

~~~
markdown
Sounds like something else is going on. There shouldn't be much difference
between the amount of water flowing into and out of a hydro dam.

~~~
mullingitover
It's not about the water flow, it's that there's a physical barrier that
blocks migrating fish from going between the river and the
bays/estuaries/ocean.

~~~
markdown
Most fish species don't migrate.

~~~
mullingitover
I mean, that's true, but also every fish species listed in the above quote
_does_ , and were severely negatively impacted by the dam. They in turn feed a
large amount of other wildlife.

~~~
markdown
I see. My mistake, I thought only salmon (from your list) migrated.

------
8bitsrule
Electricity generated from the free 'fuel' of renewables costs nothing to
mine, nothing to nothing to refine, very little to transport.

In line with the laws of physics, 'cheaper' is the only possible conclusion.
The 'on-demand' 24/7 part arrives once the reality-distortion field is dropped
and we commit to solving the storage problem.

Like turbines and panels, storage won't be up-front cheap, but done right
it'll be amortized over centuries. The built-in fuel-cost savings will quickly
pay for that ... and over that time the costs to humanity and to the planet
will plummet. A no-brainer long-term investment.

------
zaroth
The amount that cost continues to decrease is almost mind boggling. The
manufacturing learning curve is truly providing exponential returns for
decades now.

Seems like the comparison is unfair (or at least, overly simplistic) unless
you include the cost of enough storage to provide supply more in the general
shape as the demand curve.

Solar is great by providing the most generation during peak hours, and wind is
a great compliment in that generation slacks during the day when solar is at
its strongest. Combined in theory they can do a decent job covering the demand
curve, until you hit a stretch of calm or cloudy days...

If you included 24 hours of storage in the LCOE then solar and wind probably
stop looking quite so cheap. But if you ignore the biggest innate trade-off
then they become the cheapest energy around.

~~~
libertine
>The amount that cost continues to decrease is almost mind boggling. The
manufacturing learning curve is truly providing exponential returns for
decades now.

The problem is that in some countries - I'll mention mine, Portugal - it does
not reflect on the price sold to the consumer.

So something isn't adding up, most of public entities (from government to
regulators) brag and preach that we're reaching milestones, and claim prices
keep decreasing, yet electricity prices keeps increasing/stays the same.

Therefore I assume someone is taking the value out of it, because the consumer
is definitely not, or make it clear that the costs will only ever reflect on
production, because storage/distribution is what sets the prices to consumers,
and those are increasing.

~~~
7952
Renewables are weird in that most of the cost is up front. So a developer goes
into debt and then uses an agreed price to pay off that debt over the lifetime
of the site. But the marginal cost of the power generated is very low. So
effectively the public are paying the developers mortgage, but never get to
own the asset they are funding.

------
DrBazza
Are the UK govt 'admitting' something, or merely just stating results?
'admits' seems weird here.

~~~
rjknight
_The first half of this section covers technology-specific changes to our
assumptions. For offshore wind, onshore wind, solar PV, and Carbon Capture
Usage and Storage technologies (CCUS), there have been significant updates,
which we discuss below. We have also made minor changes to CCGT, tidal stream
and AD assumptions._

I think "admits" is a reasonable term to use here, in the sense of acceptance
or allowing the possibility. "Admit" is sometimes used to refer to an
admission of guilt, or the admission of some secret that was previously
denied, and that meaning would seem to be incorrect.

~~~
sambe
But that is by far the most common modern usage of the term. I would almost
say the neutral usage is deprecated.

~~~
rjknight
The fun thing about language is that we can un-deprecate things just by
deciding to do so!

------
m12k
I wonder if they were using numbers from the IEA? That agency seems to have
been massively hit by regulatory capture by the fossil fuel industry, and
consistently underestimates the price reductions of renewables year after
year.

~~~
adamcharnock
Absolutely. Here is a chart illustrating this [1] (and its source [2]). I've
seen a better version of this somewhere, but it's all I could find quickly.

My interpretation of the chart is that the IEA's predictions for solar power
growth have been very consistently delusional.

[1] [http://guensberg.at/wp-
content/uploads/2018/03/weo2017_pv_EN...](http://guensberg.at/wp-
content/uploads/2018/03/weo2017_pv_EN-1.jpg)

[2] [http://guensberg.at/how-the-transformative-trend-in-
energy-s...](http://guensberg.at/how-the-transformative-trend-in-energy-
systems-is-systematically-underestimated-an-analysis-of-the-iea-world-energy-
outlook-2017/#prettyPhoto)

------
haltingproblem
I briefly researched this and it sounds like accounting shenanigans but I am
open being corrected.

This analysis "Levelised cost of energy – A theoretical justification and
critical assessment "[1] says that:

 _" The weaknesses of the LCOE are found to centre on discount rate, inflation
effects and the sensitivity of results to uncertainty in future commodity
costs. These weaknesses are explored in the context of comparing combined
cycle gas fired generation and offshore wind in the UK, based on publicly
available cost measures. It is found that with variability of future fuel gas
prices, and a Monte Carlo approach to modelling LCOE, the range of LCOE for
CCGT is much broader in comparison to the LCOE of offshore wind. It is urged
that explicit account be taken of the areas of weakness in future use of
LCOE."_

Solar and Wind have high initial costs and lower operating (variable) costs.
Since the variable costs around maintenance suddenly be slashed by 50% when
they dont have inputs like fuel (coal, gas,...)

I saw another article recently of how Wind was more expensive as the wind
companies which were LLCs would go out of business and saddle the local
government or state with the disposal costs for the useless windmills.

[1]
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142151...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421518306645)

------
simlevesque
the thing with wind and solar is that you can build it fast. If you have a
boom and you misplanned your energy requirements, or your governments wants to
do green projects before the end of his term, solar and wind is the way to go.

------
Zenst
Supply and demand - demand for wind and solar generation increased so
production costs got cheaper. Now you just can't factor that kind of market
shift into the numbers as easily as you can factor in costs increasing. So
whilst we often see government projects overrun and cost more than initially
calculated, it's good to see the opposite.

I have read (sorry don't have link at hand) that some energy producers will
end up paying the government due to reduced costs in production - so that'll
balance things out and win win all around perhaps.

OK dug out link - [https://inews.co.uk/news/environment/offshore-wind-power-
che...](https://inews.co.uk/news/environment/offshore-wind-power-cheap-
explained-pay-back-government-subsidies-563941)

------
g8oz
So 5.7 cents per kWh for offshore wind by 2025. Compare that to the Hinkley
Point C nuclear project which will be 11.3 cents per kilowatt-hour (indexed
against inflation). I'd prefer the former and use the savings to build out
international HVDC connections to deal with intermittancy.

------
LatteLazy
We've decided to do nothing. Discussing the price of doing something is
pointless.

------
crispyporkbites
As our energy needs rise up, in the long run (100 years or more) solar will
definitely be cheaper than any other form. It’s a giant nuclear reactor in the
sky that’s beaming energy at us 24/7, all we have to is capture a fraction of
a fraction of a fraction of a % to fulfil all our needs in perpetuity.

The sooner we stop setting fire to parts of our planet instead the better. I
think this is something we will look back on and struggle to understand why
we’re doing this now.

The technology is there, and we’re over the tipping point now. It won’t be
long till we create our first Dyson Sphere now, relative to human history.

------
therealrootuser
Many have rightly brought up the issue of energy storage for solar. Could
hydrogen fuel cells provide an answer here? I believe there is some fairly
recent research describing efforts to use solar energy directly to produce
hydrogen (as opposed to electrolysis).

One could imagine a system in which solar cells produce hydrogen and the
hydrogen is stored until needed or sold to industrial or retail customers.

Interesting field to watch, I hope we'll see some neat progress in the coming
years that combine developments from multiple areas of research.

~~~
macspoofing
>One could imagine a system in which solar cells produce hydrogen and the
hydrogen is stored until needed or sold to industrial or retail customers.

You would need to massively over-provision your solar deployment because you
not only need to produce enough energy for current needs, but also to produce
enough spare hydrogen to bridge the intermittency gap ... and it is incredibly
inefficient to produce hydrogen via solar-generated electricity. Worse than
that, you need to over-provision not just for daily load (i.e. night and
peak), but for seasonal (summer vs winter) and inter-seasonal variance. All
this means you have huge amount of infrastructure that most of the time is
doing nothing.

I'm also not sure about the feasibility of using hydrogen as battery backup.
Hydrogen is notoriously hard to handle, move and store - and the fact nobody
is building out this infrastructure right now is probably indicative of this.

~~~
twic
If you wanted to get by with only solar and hydrogen storage, then you would
need to store a lot of hydrogen.

But fortunately, we also have wind, and a moderate amount of on-demand
renewable power (hydro, biomass). To smooth that out, you need to store much
less hydrogen.

~~~
macspoofing
Hydro is a great option ... as long as you have the geography for it. Biomass
is an environmental disaster. You're destroying huge swaths of natural
habitats so you can grow corn or whatever just to burn ... does that sound
like technology of the future? Wind has the exact same problems as solar and
buys you almost nothing.

~~~
twic
Wind and solar tend to produce power at different times. The intermittency of
wind + solar is much less than either alone.

~~~
macspoofing
They really don't. That's one problem.

------
olivermarks
We just had rolling power cuts at sundown during the height of summer in
California, largely due to over reliance on solar power. We urgently need
better energy storage technologies.

~~~
hinkley
I'm a little worried that home power conditioning is going to set up a much
bigger class divide than in-home water purification does.

If all the upper-middle-class people have Power Walls, local officials are
going to care a lot less about brownouts.

------
siavosh
Does northern Europe have enough reliable sunlight to make a dent in their
energy needs?

~~~
baq
if it could store the gathered energy, yes... otherwise, winter is quite
difficult; you'd have to overpanel probably something like 10x or more. the
arctic circle still presents a problem.

------
amai
It is also shown that wind and solar energy are much cheaper than nuclear
energy.

Nuclear energy: 102£/MWh

Gas energy: 85£/MWh

Offshore wind energy: 57£/MWh

Onshore wind energy: 46£/MWh

Solar energy: 44£/MWh

------
jordache
still too expensive in many cases.

Putting solar on our house over 20yrs can reach an economic return of $10K.
That is really weak value proposition, factoring in the work involved getting
it installed and then uninstalled for roof work.

------
robertofmoria
I want to know what "assumptions" are being made to denote pricing. If it
assumes wind and solar can produce constantly and consistently that is wrong.
The solar power suffers greatly from the fact that the panels need to be at a
specific angle to the sun and that the highest production can only occur for
maybe 6 hours of the day. I can already tell yhe lifetime use of both wind and
solar are not calculated correctly. And as one person said wind and solar
cannot produce on demand.

