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World Energy Hits a Turning Point: Solar That's Cheaper Than Wind (bloomberg.com)
A transformation is happening in global energy markets that's worth noting as 2016 comes to an end: Solar power, for the first time, is becoming the cheapest form of new electricity. From a report on Bloomberg: This has happened in isolated projects in the past: an especially competitive auction in the Middle East, for example, resulting in record-cheap solar costs. But now unsubsidized solar is beginning to outcompete coal and natural gas on a larger scale, and notably, new solar projects in emerging markets are costing less to build than wind projects, according to fresh data from Bloomberg New Energy Finance. The chart shows the average cost of new wind and solar from 58 emerging-market economies, including China, India, and Brazil. While solar was bound to fall below wind eventually, given its steeper price declines, few predicted it would happen this soon.
Exactly. Installed capacity doesn't mean anything. The article fails to mention actual cost per MWHr
Your numbers are wrong because you are either looking at rooftop solar, which is different to this, or you are looking at costs related to existing solar installations (ie, historical solar costs).
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Don't believe those fake news websites. I looked at multiple energy sources for my house and calculated out these:
Cite your sources or your numbers are meaningless and most likely fictitious. The numbers I've seen aren't even remotely close to that and you didn't bother to account for externalities like the cost of dealing with fossil fuel pollution.
Apparently you're unaware of a certain multi-decade trade imblance that completely moots your point but regardless, they're more than welcome to tax the shit out of our exports which would be.... what, shale oil and shitty movies??
The US exports lots of stuff. Here are the top 10 categories of exports. Machines, electronics, aircraft, vehicles, oil, medical technology, plastics, gems/metals, pharmaceuticals, chemicals. The US is the second largest export economy in the world behind China. In 2014 the US exported roughly $1.45 Trillion in goods.
So Trump being the asshole he is promising to be and starting a trade war will hurt Boeing, Caterpillar, GM, Ford, Intel, etc. Not to mention all of us when the prices of everything goes up in the ensuing trade war. Tariffs do not make things better. They save a few jobs at the expense of most everyone else.
Then we can cut subsidies and zero-interest loans to those companies, right? If they are at "parity" then let the market decide...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
> Wouldn't it make more sense to
Ah yes, the "makes sense" clause, which in this case means "I have no clue but I'm going to post anyway".
> shut the turbine down and spare the maintenance?
No. The marginal production cost for wind is close to zero. As opposed to, say,a gas plant, where even at idle you're still burning fuel. This has been *repeatedly* covered here on Ars.
> The answer is the subsidies.
Maybe it's different in Texas, but everywhere I'm familiar with the subsidies are in the form of tax credits and are on the order of 20% of the LCoE. In comparison, something like the nuclear industry receives about 10 times that amount of money, all of it up-front, and still isn't competitive,
Why is anyone surprised by this? A wind turbine is a generator, which all plants have, some blades, a steel pole, and a concrete base. Of course that is going to be able to compete once the learning curve kicks in. PV is even simpler, it's basically a storm window with some wiring. It doesn't even have moving parts. On a pure CAPEX basis there's no way anyone can compete.
He couldn't make money running casinos.
Think about that.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Grid kWh costs are on a sliding scale since there is a base cost for the grid connection. If you use just a few kWh a month they will cost hundreds of cents each, easily more than locally generated power plus storage. And if you can't live without those kWh add in the cost for the backup generator.
Bill the grid infrastructure separately, then generation costs can compete on a fair basis at each particular time of the day. Local storage or backup generation is an unrelated issue.
As well, try getting them to instal a power line to your house if the place isn't already on a grid. Suddenly solar isn't just cheaper, it's mid bogglingly cheaper.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Aha, the mandatory /. Thorium comment! It seems like a late time to be suggesting alternatives, because we already have renewable energies that don't require radioactive materials, actually exist, and are nearly at parity with fossil fuels. I hate to be the one to tell you, but the people have spoken and solar/wind is the future, not nuclear.
A large chunk of the "no jobs" complaints are about the world economy moving on and leaving some people behind. Stuff gets automated. Trade happens. It's rough, and unless somebody has a brilliant solution the the displacements caused by those changes, it seems like retraining and a social safety net are about the best we can do.
The Democrats don't have a better solution and they're not good at pretending to listen and pretending to have a solution. The Republicans don't have a solution, but they're masters at pretending they care and that they have an answer. Trump is going to wave his hands and make human labor more efficient than robots. He'll stop all of the cheap imports competing with US products and still keep prices at Wal Mart low. Sure, if they can just build that wall, the manufacturing and mining jobs in places where there are no Mexicans will come back. The robots will be put out to pasture and we'll start relying on human labor in manufacturing again.
Well, he's 100% in charge now, so it will be interesting to see what happens. I wouldn't bet against the fundamental rules of economics, though. Those have a pretty solid winning record, especially when you compare it to the record of politicians promising jobs.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"