
The Way Humans Get Electricity Is About to Change - chollida1
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-23/the-way-humans-get-electricity-is-about-to-change-forever
======
cfsc
This article doesn't mention some serious problems that affect power grids
reliant on renewable energies:

1 - The grids becomes vulnerable to the weather. There's no solar energy at
night and it's greatly reduced in cloudy days. Wind power is unpredictable and
closely matches the output of hydraulic power, so that the two sources can't
complement each other. You can check Brazil in recent history to check the
effects of droughts in the power grid. In the end there is a need of
conventional power plants always ready to backup the grid when the renewable
energy is not available.

2 - The majority of losses of the power distribution network are on the last
mile, when the voltage is lower and the current is higher. If every house and
electric car become consumers and providers to the grid, most power movements
occur in the low voltage networks. There's also the issue of batteries storing
energy for later consumption. Lithium batteries have a 80%-90% efficiency
storing energy.

3 - Since we are talking of the environment, rare earth metals have a very
pollutant and energy intensive extraction process which in most cases is not
accounted in the environmental cost of solar panels.

Replacing the majority of energy production by renewable energies will result
in an net efficiency loss. I would rather support a balanced production with
nuclear (fusion?) power plants providing the fixed needs of the grid and
renewable energies making up the rest.

~~~
SovietDissident
3 - The rare earth mining operations in China which provide the raw materials
for solar panels, batteries, and many other electronics products are
reportedly quite filthy and require massive energy (diesel trucks, processing
plants, etc.) [http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/rare-
earth-m...](http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/rare-earth-mining-
china-social-environmental-costs)

The push for renewable energy would not be possible at its current scale if it
weren't so attractive to the political elite (and subsidized as well), for the
shortcomings you mentioned. Fossil fuels and nuclear simply better fulfill the
role of consistent, cheap, plentiful energy. Unfortunately, even though
nuclear is quite safe, has very few emissions, and emits a ton of energy, it
takes a Herculean effort to get federal approval to build a plant.

~~~
mikeash
Fossil fuels are massively subsidized by being allowed to pollute without
paying for the consequences. They are not cheap when you account for the
externalities they're allowed to impose.

The decision to allow fossil fuel users to poison us all is a political one
and it's pretty much the only reason renewables are even still a question
instead of being the obvious answer.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
I think the decision to allow fossil fuel users to poison us all is motivated,
at least in the case of electricity, historically, by the improvement in air
quality as people moved away from burning wood for heating and cooking.

The small city I live in, ~100k population, is powered almost entirely by
hydro electricity. Some small percentage still burn wood for heating and even
that makes the air around town hazy, I'd hate to think what it would be like
if everyone was still doing it.

It's interesting to think about this. Those burning wood for heating are
polluting the air locally -and globablly- and aren't paying a premium for the
privilege, and at the same time all new hydro electricity in Australia was
permanently shelved after the Franklin River Dam project was successfully
blocked by The Wilderness Society 1983.[1]

So Australian's can thank the 'environmental movement' for pushing us toward
being one of the world leaders in CO2 polluters per capita - I think we're the
OECD leader, if I remember correctly.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Dam_controversy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Dam_controversy)

(Edit: a letter)

~~~
mikeash
I thought the historical motivation was just that there was not much of a
concept of pollution harming people far away, so this sort of activity has
traditionally been allowed by default. For thousands of years, you could burn
your wood on your land and everybody was fine with that. At most you might
have some trouble with your neighbors if they don't like your smoke. But the
idea you'd cause diffuse harm to millions is pretty new, and has a lot of
inertia to overcome.

~~~
elevenfist
This is actually incorrect. When I was digging through old new york times
articles from the 1900s and 1930s (using the online search) I stumbled across
numerous articles expressing concern about the pollutants being released by
factories and combustion-engine automobiles, and how they not only affect the
immediate area but surrounding towns. Don't have links to the sources at the
moment, or the time right now to pull it up, will check back later, but if you
search on nytimes.com you should be able to pull them up.

~~~
mikeash
I'm thinking an order of magnitude or two farther back. Humanity spent
thousands of years making fires, but widespread awareness of how the pollution
it emits can hurt people is only a century or two old.

------
cmsmith
This article does a pretty good job of synthesizing why I'm fairly optimistic
about climate change despite believing the scientific models. I think that
there is an austerity/flagellant meme within environmental circles that states
that we have sinned against the environment, and unless the solution involves
a heroic self-sacrifice (a la Kyoto protocol) then we cannot be saved.

In reality, all power is solar power, and innovation and market forces will
eventually make it more efficient to skip the fossil-fuel middleman. The
process could be accelerated by a carbon tax, but it will happen either way.

Responding to the 'Climate is still screwed' point, once we're on track to
stabilizing emissions, geo-engineering methods that were dismissed as stopgaps
can always be used to hold the climate over for the next century.

~~~
JoshTriplett
> In reality, all power is solar power

If you're going to use that metaphor, then really, all power is nuclear power,
since that's how all that solar energy is generated.

~~~
spenczar5
Not quite - tidal power is purely gravitational, and doesn't rely on nuclear
forces at all.

~~~
JoshTriplett
That same argument applies to the (metaphorical) claim that all power is
solar, which is what I was poking fun at.

~~~
spenczar5
Oh, of course - I'm just playing the game too. Technically correct: the best
kind of correct.

------
ThePhysicist
As others have already pointed out, the article contains a lot of handwaving
arguments and seemingly inaccurate claims.

So, for anyone interested in a more thorough and quantitative discussion of
the problem I highly recommend David MacKay's book "Sustainable Energy -
Without The Hot Air", which is available __for free __online:

[http://www.withouthotair.com/](http://www.withouthotair.com/)

It contains detailed discussions of many of the problems that we would face
when shifting our energy production to renewable sources and decentralizing
it, and he provides a lot of data and calculations to give you a feeling of
how to overcome them.

~~~
cossatot
This is an excellent book, very well reason, quantitative, and clearheaded. I
do wish it was a little less UK focused (I have the same problem with many
books that are US focused; it's a world problem and leaving out the BRICs is
missing a lot of the story).

------
titzer
How to lie with graphs: use a log/log plot. In this article the GDP/capita vs
the energy consumed/GDP. I know they did this to cram a lot of data onto one
compact space, but it's very misleading. Overall the trend is to the lower
right, which sounds great, and it's mostly straight lines. But on a log/log
plot, all polynomials are straight lines.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Log%E2%80%93log_plot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Log%E2%80%93log_plot)

Second, the energy consumed per capita is not _going down_, it's actually
still going up--it's just going up slower than GDP. The fact that GDP keeps
going up would also seem to be a good thing, but it isn't always, e.g. if the
economy is producing superfluous goods that don't actually improve the quality
of life, and if life demands ever more services for basic necessities, this is
also not a win.

The simple fact remains that the total resource consumption per person is
still rising. And the population is still rising, too.

------
tdees40
My problem with all of this is that, as renewables get cheaper, people use
less fossil fuels. But this drives the price of fossil fuels down. Eventually
all you're extracting is the low-hanging fruit that can be pulled out of the
ground very cheaply and running tight margins on it. So you have kind of a
vicious cycle. Meanwhile most people just assume that fossil fuel prices will
increase inexorably. I doubt it.

In other words, absent regulation keeping fossil fuel costs high (carbon
tax!), I think the shift to renewables will take longer than the optimists
think.

~~~
throwaway342526
Only for some types of fossil fuels. Saudi light crude costs very little to
extract -- a few dollars a barrel -- whereas shale oil has an extraction cost
of around $70-$90.

You're right in that the Saudis will likely never stop extracting. But there
are much larger deposits in the Americas that we quite likely will never
develop if solar brings down the price of energy.

------
inetsee
The article was so optimistic, right up until the sixth section: "The Climate
Is Still Screwed".

~~~
PhasmaFelis
The next few decades are gonna be a _great_ time to say "I told you so." :-/

~~~
merpnderp
19 years and 6 months with a statistically insignificant temperature trend.
UAH 6.0 brings the UAH data inline with the RSS data. As the years go on,
catastrophic warming seems less and less likely - or at least so the hard
satellite data says.

[http://images.remss.com/msu/msu_time_series.html](http://images.remss.com/msu/msu_time_series.html)

~~~
sitkack
I have a coral reef to sell you.

~~~
merpnderp
You mistake my argument. I don't doubt ocean acidification, rise in ocean
levels, or global warming. My point is that the best data we have conflicts
with the IPCC consensus of 4 degrees Celsius of warming by 2100. And there
wasn't a single model that showed 2 decades of flat temperatures until the
latest IPCC assessment, when it became obvious there were definitely 2 decades
of flat temperatures.

------
lspears
I work at ShaleApps [http://shaleapps.com/](http://shaleapps.com/) a Oil and
Gas focused start up in West Virginia. Investment in the industry is
plummeting because of low oil prices. The price of oil is around $60 a barrel
right now, but the oil sands in North Dakota and Canada are only profitable at
>$100. Coal is getting killed in the US for regulator reasons, but I don't see
why other countries would make the massive investment to switch to natural
gas. I think coal will like be seen as the "bridge fuel" by later generations.

~~~
jacquesm
> I don't see why other countries would make the massive investment to switch
> to natural gas.

Quite a few countries have substantial natural gas reserves.

~~~
lspears
True but with a lack of certainty in demand few companies will invest to
extract those reserves.

~~~
baakss
Right now the efficiency over oil is enormous. At current market price youre
getting over 3x the energy per dollar for natural gas, IIRC. Methane is also
by definition the cleanest burning hydrocarbon, with the fewest CO2 molecules
per energy provided. In the US alone, it's estimated that nat gas has the
average household pocketing $800 yearly since the fracking boom. In addition,
a geoscientist recently told me it's estimated that we're only extracting
about 10% of the natural gas available per well, meaning there's tons more
down there. It has serious potential, and at least the US's electric
infrastructure is rapidly changing to accommodate it. Anyway, what I'm getting
at is maybe we shouldn't count out natural gas.

------
arca_vorago
My main issue is that electricity prices are not going to reflect the
reduction in costs to the consumer, and instead, between stagnant companies
fighting decentralization via corruption of local politics and big monopolies
taking over, electricity will be high as ever.

A good example is my local town, where the city council are all bought out,
don't even rely on the single electricity provider because they live in a
different part of the city, but still keep voting on jacking up prices more
and more all while the electrical company that was originally a publicly owned
company, (pushed private by our congresscritter), is probably the most hated
entity in town for it's shady business practices and constant rate hikes.

(For example, last summer they said they underbilled in May, but didn't catch
it till June, and then added the new "back-owed" charges at the new rates in
July, one of the hottest times of the year, handily raking in tons more money
than they would have. No one did a thing because all our politicians are
corrupt. Of course this is in one of the most conservative towns in America,
where everyone pays jingoistic lip-service to "family values" like "honesty",
but when it really comes down to it we're just as bad as the beltway.)

~~~
pakled_engineer
Public isn't much better, here in Canada the corrupt kleptocrats running my
province clean out the profits of the public hydro corp which disappear into
general revenue, so the corp has to increase rates every year as they have no
way to save any income, and are increasing filled with more crony management
positions with sky high salaries.

------
josefresco
Related: [http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2015/05/inside-war-
on-c...](http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2015/05/inside-war-on-
coal-000002)

------
netcan
A question for one of you build-it types.

For large scale energy storage, what's wrong with pumping water up high and
then making electricity on the way down. IE, make a dam. Make electricity at
night. Refill the top part during the day.

~~~
rgbrenner
already exists. It's called pumped storage hydroelectricity:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-
storage_hydroelectricit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-
storage_hydroelectricity)

Here's one (built in 1977.. uses power from the grid), and can produce 3000MW
(stores 24000MWH): [http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/08/27/2524501/hydro-
pu...](http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/08/27/2524501/hydro-pumped-
storage-climate-change/)

Many of them were built to make nuclear plants more efficient.. nuclear plants
turbines are most efficient at full power.. so they would store the water
during the night (when demand is low) and then use it the next day to handle
peak demand.

So they were also made to start generating electricity quickly.. the one above
takes 5-10minutes.. but there are others that respond within a minute. Much
faster than starting a oil-fired generator.

These account for the vast majority (90%+) of stored capacity worldwide.

There's no reason they couldn't be used to store solar/wind energy.

~~~
david-given
There's a couple in Scotland, where I grew up. My school did a tour once. (The
tour was uninspired and rather dull. The nuclear reactor tour was way more
interesting.)

They're strictly limited as to how much they can store. Ben Cruachan (the one
I visited) can generate 440MW for up to 22 hours before the reservoir empties.
It's used for emergencies and buffer usage spikes; Ben Cruachan can spin up in
two minutes from standby, or thirty seconds if they have some warning, and is
used to provide power while the much slower reacting gas or coal plants rev
up. I don't know how quickly it can pump water uphill, but it's probably a lot
slower than it consumes it. Round-trip efficiency looks to be ~70%.

According to Wikipedia the UK uses about 40GW of electricity at peak, so you'd
need a hundred Ben Cruachans to store enough to run the country for under a
day.

Here's a picture of the upper reservoir:
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/Cruachan...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/Cruachan_Reservoir_-
_geograph.org.uk_-_171791.jpg)

See the grey border around the water? Hydro power reservoirs are ecologically
pretty bad --- freshwater life isn't equipped to deal with what are basically
irregular tides, and so the shorelines are always completely barren.

------
sravfeyn
This might be one of the most trivial questions, but I always tried to find
the answer, failing always.

How is it that Solar energy is 'clean' and 'renewable', (or for that matter,
any natural source of energy that plays a significant role on earth ecology),
for if we make use of solar energy, will it not break the environmental
equilibrium (temperatures, weather patterns etc) thereby making it 'unclean'?
I see that using solar energy doesn't create any direct poisonous residue, but
what about the unintended indirect effects? Did researchers already prove that
there won'e be any effects or that the effects are far less significant than
existing energy sources? (I would like to read actual research, apart from
opinions/thoughts)

~~~
bwanab
Why would you think there's a possible break in environmental equilibrium due
to solar energy. They amount of solar energy entering the atmosphere won't
change. The only thing that changes is instead of the energy being wasted, it
will be used to generate electricity. Conservation of energy guarantees this.

You asked for research, so here's a link from UCS. While they don't address
that particular point, they do point out various potential problems.
[http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/our-energy-
choices/renewa...](http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/our-energy-
choices/renewable-energy/environmental-impacts-solar-power.html#.VYmIO_lVhHw)

~~~
sravfeyn
> They amount of solar energy entering the atmosphere won't change

True

> The only thing that changes is instead of the energy being wasted

The solar energy that is falling on earth and that is not yet captured by the
solar panels is doing a good number of direct things, such as Photosynthesis
(not that Photosynthesis is stopped by putting solar panels, but one example
of direct things Sun is doing), and an unknown number of indirect things such
as Heating the atmosphere by scattering back from earthly-surface (causing
many ecological reactions). Would you consider all these effects waste?

If we do know all these effects and also know that redirecting this solar
energy into our energy needs won't significantly annihilate the effects, then
it's good. I am curious to know about studies in this regard. If there are no
studies and my question itself is pointless, I want to be enlightened, because
I haven't had a satisfactory explanation yet.

One argument might be that, all the solar energy that's captured and used by
us will also generate heat back into atmosphere and thereby not changing the
ecological reactions in earth atmosphere - but I just made it up

------
netcan
Oil is constantly underestimated. Underestimated hopefully in most cases but
underestimated nonetheless.

A - Demand for oil is notoriously inelastic. If demand drops a little, a big
shift in price will "compensate." If solar starts genuinely digging into oil's
market share the oil prices will drop by a lot, fast until almost the same
amount of oil gets bought as before. Whatever you are assuming is the "cheaper
than oil" flip point, is very likely to be too optimistic. It is likely to
just be cheaper than the most expensive marginal 5%.

This is inherently speculative because economics and because real marginal
costs of oil production are closely guarded secrets, but over the last 50+
years this has usually been correct. This isn't disruptive tech land where the
cheaper-worser becomes the cheaper-better and wins total victory. This is
substitutable commodity land where prices drop like rocks but total volume
produced barely moves.

^Much cheaper power for slightly less carbon is still a good thing, but more
on the prosperity front than the climate change front.

B - There is a lot of oil down there. Even "dry" wells are usually only
slightly drier than they were when we started drilling them. We just got the
easy oil out and then stopped. FInding oil really means finding "accessible"
oil. Our methods of finding and our methods of accessing are technology too.
It's advancing, like solar tech is.

This is what "fraking" is. It's a new way of accessing.

C - Speaking of fraking… It's only just begun, probably. It's happening in the
states because that's where it happens to have been invented. There is no
reason to think that it is not equally applicable in Russia, S. America, the
Persian Gulf or anywhere else with oil.

I like the elegance of solar though, and I hope it succeeds. Decentralization
seems like it can take a big part of the residential market. In rich
countries, a lot of people can afford it and with between incentives, people's
general interest and the real estate value (people like investing in their
home), it seems like it will have a good run.

In poor and/or dysfunctional places, going off grid is always a favored
option. Solar power can do what mobile phone did. Anything that relies on less
infrastructure is more suitable for these places. This is an especially
attractive idea. Mobile phones/modems mean that phone infrastructure is much
easier to come by. Solar + battery could mean the same for electricity. Add in
rainwater + home purification systems (progress here too) and all we'll need
is hover cars to deal with potholes.

~~~
lukasb
You make an excellent argument for a carbon tax.

~~~
netcan
No. No. I don't.

I need a Terry Pratchett philosopher to help here, but they're all in the
bath.

First, the inelasticity means that a tax is a great way to raise taxes, but a
terrible way to reduce use. Oil has gotten more expensive lots of times, when
has it ever made people take the bus? We've seen oil price fluctuations. A tax
will work just like a natural price hike. A nasty painful tax (with street
protests just short of revolution) might get you a 10% reduction in emissions,
maybe 30% over a really long time if your tolerance for civil unrest is above
average. Probably less. Also, flat taxes hit poor people hard.

Second, a carbon tax is an almost hopeless mission. We're having enough
trouble with money taxes. I mean we might be able to make carbon tax or cap-
and-trade or something in that family of thing work in a country. We might
even be able to get it partially functional in the EU, NAFTA or some group
level. We are absolutely not ready to pull off this level of cooperation at
international scale yet.

We will have cheating and defecting. Carbon tax evasion and carbon tax
loopholes and carbon tax havens, or whatever the gasey equivalents of monetary
tax mess are.

A great book (though slightly dated now) on climate change is "Climate Wars"
by Gwynne Dyer. He's a shining beacon journalist and an ex soldier-scholar
tip. He made the argument (I'm paraphrasing) that we're lucky we hit this
problem now, when we have a chance of cooperating at this scale. Imagine if
you had to get China, Kazakhstan, Brazil, Canada and everyone else to
cooperate in the 1700s. I like the thinking, but I think he's overestimating
our chances. It's straddling the border region between optimisms and lunacy.

We have spent the last 20 years trying to come up with a light weight
agreement for minimal reductions in rates of expansion. The idea was, put in a
framework, make it easy and painless at first. Then turn the crank. We failed!
We failed at ground level, well before the point where it even starts to
sting. Even though the targets were way under what we need to be targeting in
order to avert disaster based on the median models (or the most lenient ones),
we failed to agree on them. And, when we did agree them, we failed to meet
them.

Technology is the only way out of this.

------
hyperion2010
Decentralized solar might work in some places, but we have a long, long way to
go before our existing grid can start to make use of it. We still need old
school generating capacity (read: nuclear) to serve peak demand.

The other reason solar has become so attractive is because the spinup time is
so much lower than for other traditional sources.

~~~
mikro2nd
Except that nuclear plants do not serve peak demand in any way, unless by
"peak" you mean something other than the electrical supply industry means by
that term; nukes are by nature very much baseload generation, taking days and
weeks to spin up and synchronise. Pumped storage, gas turbine, large-scale
hydro,... those are peak supply generation that can be brought onstream in
minutes to hours to meet peak demand.

~~~
hyperion2010
And don't forget the good old diesel generators that are the last line of
defence when all other capacity is maxed out.

~~~
mikro2nd
As we currently experience to great cost here in South Africa currently,
where, due to a decade of neglected maintenance and capacity building brought
about by a short-sighted government, rolling blackouts (euphemistically called
"load shedding") are the norm, and diesel generation is brought to bear as a
poor substitute for baseload capacity, at - as you may imagine - ruinous
financial cost. Something in the region of USD400million a month for diesel
fuel. Boy, are we in for some price hikes coming up!

------
brobdingnagian
How can you make projections like "between now and 2040" with a straight face?
It makes me instantly lose respect for an article attempting to be serious.

------
traviswingo
With a combination of solar and energy storage overall consumption and demand
can drop dramatically. Intelligent storage systems can curb demand and
drastically reduce carbon footprint. I'm surprised that wasn't mentioned in
the rift about cheap rooftop solar.

------
matdrewin
It'll be a while before it is cheaper than the hydro-electricity we generate
here in Quebec.

But yeah, anywhere else it makes sense. Also wonder how cost effective it is
in harsh climates where there is less sun.

~~~
fweespeech
But it _never_ has to be cheaper than hydro-electric. ;)

It just has to be cheaper than pure coal/natural gas/etc. plants.

~~~
yxhuvud
Well, it is never going to be cheaper than _existing_ hydro-electric.

It could well be cheaper than installing new capacity.

------
TheSpiceIsLife
From the article:

> So even as people rise from poverty to middle class faster than ever, BNEF
> predicts that global electricity consumption will remain relatively flat. In
> the next 25 years, global demand will grow about 1.8 percent a year,
> compared with 3 percent a year from 1990 to 2012. In wealthy OECD countries,
> power demand will actually decline.

The doubling time at 1.8% per year is 39 years.

This must be some alternate definition of the term 'flat' I was previously
unaware of.

------
txu
"The lifetime cost of a photovoltaic solar-power plant will drop by almost
half over the next 25 years".

Can someone explain how big of an impact this is?

~~~
pjc50
I'm confused as to whether that means "if you build a plant today, your de-
amortized annual running costs will fall" or "in 25 years time, the projected
lifetime cost of a solar plant will be half of what it is today". The latter
is .. not useful today.

------
gameshot911
Re: the essentially unavoidable coming climate change - Perhaps it will be the
impetus to learn how to control the climate, knowledge which in turn could be
applied to making Mars more habitable? Just fanciful pondering, but cool to
think about nonetheless (while also recognizing that for that impetus to
exist, we're going to go through some rough times climate-wise for a while).

------
badloginagain
How do we get power at night? Batteries?

~~~
sp332
Yes. Also we probably use less power at night.

------
autokad
does anyone else have HUGE issues with their chart? it makes it seem like
solar provides something like 20% of the world electricity and hydro electric
is not even a mention. meanwhile, as far as I know (wikipedia) solar is only
1% of the worlds total electricity and hydro around 16%

~~~
upofadown
The first chart is energy capacity _additions_ ... which confused me too...

~~~
autokad
ah, thanks for the clarification. hmm, that seems like a stat cherry picked to
suit its narrative

~~~
OrwellianChild
Additions are what's called a leading indicator. They are predictive about the
direction of change in a system. If there is much more solar added than coal,
then the overall make-up of the system will shift towards more solar, less
coal overall... It is future-looking.

------
StronglyTyped
The governments of the world will allow decentralization only to the point
where it starts to cut into the tax proceeds of centralized energy. In the
U.S., solar isn't going to move to rooftops, it's going to move to panel
arrays on large swaths of government-owned land out west where it can still be
metered and taxed.

~~~
oldmanjay
This is reminiscent of the argument that marijuana could never be legalized
because no one could figure out how to tax it. Different angle of attack, I
suppose, but just as inapplicable to reality.

------
hngiszmo
Who else thought the article might be about Skunk Works Fusion Reactor?

------
fapjacks
Hasn't it been on the verge of changing forever forever?

------
graycat
Okay, let's consider some of that:

First, sure, for the usual _renewables_ , need either storage or transmission
lines across continents and/or oceans. So, assume renewables need storage.

=== Home Batteries?

For residential electric power, why have home batteries instead of grid
batteries? Likely grid batteries will be cheaper due to economy of scale and
also, due to parallelism and better engineering and maintenance, better
reliability.

=== Wholesale Electric Prices

We need to keep in mind, for someone in the US paying their local electric
utility 12 cents per KWh, that the wholesale price on the grid is surprisingly
low. E.g., at

[http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/update/wholesale_mark...](http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/update/wholesale_markets.cfm)

can see that the wholesale price is often, depending on geographic location
and time, ballpark 1-2 cents per KWh.

That's a current reference, but as I recall not so many years ago the
wholesale price was commonly 0.5 cents per KWh.

Lesson: In the US, electric power, the actual power itself, as generated, at
the plant, and ready to put on the grid, is surprisingly cheap. So, talking
about something cheaper has some challenges.

So where does the rest of the 12 cents go? Sure, to running the grid.

=== Charging for a Grid Connection

So, basically, assuming the wholesale price of 2 cents per KWh, for an
electric bill of $100 at 12 cents per KWh,

    
    
         (10/12) * 100 = 83.33
    

dollars are for basically just the grid connection alone.

So, if you tell your electric company that you want to use their power only
when there is two feet of snow on your roof, then they will have their public
utility commission let them tell you that, fine, and now, the good news, your
cost of electricity is reduced from 12 cents per KWh to 2 cents per KWh but,
the bad news, there is now a flat fee of $83.33 per month for just the grid
connection itself.

Else, ballpark, the electric company loses money, and the public utility
commission doesn't much like that.

=== Rugged Rooftop Solar

Roof-top solar will need to be more reliable than asphalt shingles or will
need to be replaced, say, each 10 years due just to wind and weather.

Just the labor cost for the replacement will be significant even if the panels
are just dirt cheap. If they are cheaper than asphalt shingles -- terrific!
Somehow I doubt that rooftop solar panels will be cheaper per square foot than
shingles; ask the shingle guys -- I doubt that they are worried!

Gotta keep those solar panels in good shape. So, ballpark need a new roof
each, maybe, 10 years.

=== Off the Grid!

Suppose want to have no grid connection at all. Four issues:

(1) If want electric cars, then need one heck of a slug of electric power and
the grid again. Else get to drive for groceries maybe once a month. Look up
the arithmetic -- e.g., for charging stations, we're talking megawatts.

(2) I'm skeptical that rooftop solar can drive whole house A/C in warm
climates. Then, what about the standard summer afternoon thunder storms -- the
A/C will be pulling one heck of a load out of the batteries.

Uh, a lot of the load on A/C is not to cool the air but just to condense the
humidity as the air cools and keep the humidity nicely below 100%. So, even if
the thunder storms cool the air, the A/C still has to remove humidity.

Sure, a totally sealed up house, no air leaks at all, an air to air heat
exchanger, special windows, fantastic insulation, etc. can work wonders (if
you are not over a radon source), but only a tiny fraction of houses were
built that way.

(3) How to heat the house in the winter, say, the snow last winter in Boston?
No sunlight to the solar panels for days. So, no electric power even to drive
the pump for burning fuel oil.

(4) If want electric heat in the winter (and I believe we should hope for
that), then will need the grid again, at least when have two feet of snow on
the solar panels. Then for the grid, will be back to that $83.33 a month fixed
charge for the grid connection.

=== Cover the US SW

So. sure, cover the US SW with solar panels. Also put wind turbines on the
Rockies, all over Kansas, etc.

Assume all this is for free, both capex and opex.

Now, what will the batteries cost?

And the conversions between DC and AC?

Net, we need to hear about not just cheap solar panels but about a lot of
really cheap batteries.

Also we're talking paying for those batteries -- capex plus opex -- with
ballpark 1 cent per KWh, maybe less, in wholesale electric prices.

=== Tests

To me, the OP fails both the sniff test and the giggle test.

=== The Hidden Agenda

So, what's really going on?

I smell carbon taxes and, net, higher electric bills. No thanks.

=== High Speed Trains

Japan has high speed trains. So do the Chinese. So does France. Just get on
board and zip to your destination -- clean, modern, quiet, smooth,
comfortable, fast, safe. Right?

Wouldn't you really like to see lots of high speed trains, a nice grid,
connecting all the important US cities? Pride of the US! Great for the US
infrastructure! Benefits beyond ability to count! Changes everything! Why have
we waited so long?

If China can build high speed trains, then surely US engineering can also. Is
there something wrong with US engineering; does it need to catch up with
China? Do we need to wake up US engineering? Why does the US want to fall
behind China?

What to do with the carbon taxes? Sure, high speed trains, general revenues,
etc.

=== Cost/Benefit Analysis

Of course, there are problems with the US Federal Government building high
speed trains: About 100 years ago a lot of people saw that could build big
water resource projects and make the desert bloom.

So, smart real estate entrepreneurs, buy up some cheap desert land, have the
Feds build a big water resource project, make the desert bloom and that land
valuable, sell the land, and retire rich, all from the generosity of the US
taxpayers.

Well, that situation, I didn't actually call it a _scam_ , was the case a few
times too often, and then a law was passed about "cost/benefit analysis".
Before such a project, had to add up all the costs and all the benefits "to
whomsoever they may accrue" and have the benefits bigger than the costs.

Presto. Bingo. Right away that little ratio killed off nearly all the Fed
funded water resource projects.

For high speed trains? In the US, nearly all projects for public
transportation of people lose buckets of money and would get a grade of flat F
on any reasonable cost/benefit analysis. Indeed, in a course I took, the
_optimal_ decision for the Baltimore subway, already built and ready to roll,
was just to brick up the entrances and f'get about it because, even counting
the capex as $0.00, the project failed cost/benefit just from the opex.

States and cities can fund high speed trains, but the Feds can't.

=== Summary

The OP is not about solar panels. Instead it's about something it never
mentions -- carbon taxes.

Watch your wallet.

------
breakyerself
Not fast enough!

