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Solar Could Beat Coal to Become the Cheapest Power on Earth In Less Than a Decade (bloomberg.com)
Solar power is now cheaper than coal in some parts of the world. In less than a decade, it's likely to be the lowest-cost option almost everywhere, reports Bloomberg. From the article: In 2016, countries from Chile to the United Arab Emirates broke records with deals to generate electricity from sunshine for less than 3 cents a kilowatt-hour, half the average global cost of coal power. Now, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Mexico are planning auctions and tenders for this year, aiming to drop prices even further. Taking advantage: Companies such as Italy's Enel SpA and Dublin's Mainstream Renewable Power, who gained experienced in Europe and now seek new markets abroad as subsidies dry up at home. Since 2009, solar prices are down 62 percent, with every part of the supply chain trimming costs. That's help cut risk premiums on bank loans, and pushed manufacturing capacity to record levels. By 2025, solar may be cheaper than using coal on average globally, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. The solar supply chain is experiencing "a Wal-Mart effect" from higher volumes and lower margins, according to Sami Khoreibi, founder and chief executive officer of Enviromena Power Systems. The speed at which the price of solar will drop below coal varies in each country. Places that import coal or tax polluters with a carbon price, such as Europe and Brazil, will see a crossover in the 2020s, if not before. Countries with large domestic coal reserves such as India and China will probably take longer.
You need some method of storing energy gathered during the day.
> Nat Gas is the cheapest.
Natural gas is highly subsidized, and even still no company has pulled a profit on natural gas since 2008.
Plus the costs, which can be huge, are externalized onto taxpayers and landowners.
Take Pennsylvania, which made $204 million on taxing shale, but road damage from nat. gas was over $3.5 bn. That's just one state.
Plus, many natural gas companies have stopped paying landowners en masse. What happens when their class action lawsuits start to come through?
Natural gas being cheap is a short term aberration.
For reference:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/...
In general, we use much less power during night-time., but some solar systems (in particular, solar-thermal systems) provide power a few hours into the night. We're also getting better with storage and transmission also which helps, because one can then not only store solar power for use when the sun is not out, but also move power from areas where it is still out to where it is. High-voltage DC is really great for this, and we're also starting to have superconducting transmission lines like the Holbrook line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holbrook_Superconductor_Project and the planned Tres Amigas Superstation which will link the three major US grids (East, West and Texas) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tres_Amigas_SuperStation. Honestly, the fact that we have superconducting power lines falls into the how-is-this-not-a-bigger-deal-we-live-in-the-freaking-future. Any long-term energy plan will of course not use just solar, but likely solar, with some storage and some amount of wind, nuclear, geothermal, hydroelectric, with possibly some natural gas for quick spin-up during high load periods or when there's an unexpected drop-off in the power level. But it does look plausible at this point that a grid where the largest power source is solar is doable and may happen for primarily direct economic reasons even without the environmental considerations.
China knows about real costs, and they are building new coal plants at about 1 a week.
China is overbuilding unnecessary coal plants for the same reason they are overbuilding everywhere else. Cheap money and perverse incentives. Their coal plants are already operating at below 50% capacity. Their coal consumption has dropped for the past two years and the drop is accelerating.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
No. But it's not prohibitively expensive, generally adding a couple cents per kWh to your total costs**. The amount of peaking/storage required depends on a lot of factors, including climate, diversity of generation (e.g. wind + solar has much higher statistical reliability than just wind or solar, as they tend to run counter to each other), and the amount of long distance transmission (HVDC/HVAC), for 1) geographic diversity of weather, 2) sharing common peaking resources, and 3) timeshifting of loads/generation. A recent study in nature estimates that a nationwide US HVDC network would cost 0,3 cents per kWh but save 1,1 cents per kWh in generation/peaking hardware costs. The cost of peaking (and type) depends on location. Hydroelectric turbine house uprating makes for very cheap peaking where available (transforming baseload hydro into peaking hydro). Pumped hydro can be affordable, but only in limited areas. Batteries are marginal at present, but are likely to become highly competitive over the next decade. In the US, where natural gas is cheap and plentiful, the vast majority of new peaking capacity is NG. In countries where natural gas is expensive, other fossil fuels are used.
Also note that up to a certain level of penetration, solar actually does more to help remove variable generation (load following plants) than it imposes (peaking), as daytime loads are higher than night, and are higher on sunny days than cloudy days.
** - A peaker that's used only several hours a year may charge $2/kWh or so... but you're not buying a lot of kWh from it. A load following plant that's used a bunch every day may only charge $0,1/kWh... but you're buying a lot of kWh from it. It all depends on what sort of power you're needing to buy.
For the love of Crom, am I the only one here who wants to keep the U.S. technologically competitive?
Oddly enough cock-womble appears to have the march on you. The UK at least uses a lot more power at night during the winter. See http://www.gridwatch.templar.c... As ever a mixture of power sources is likely to provide the best results globally.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
What about at night?
Fortunately the wind blows at night. Here is a wind resources map for the United States. Lots and lots of consistently windy areas. Wind is cheaper than solar currently and in nine out the ten nations that top the renewable energy charts, there is more wind capacity than solar, and this is likely to remain the case.
With the use of high voltage DC transmission lines (a technology that has been in use since 1930) electricity can be shipped coast to coast with minor losses. 800 KV lines can transport electricity from one coast to the other with about the same losses as existing grids, about 6%. Constructing a national long distance electrical "highway" makes most of the "problems" perceived with renewable energy disappear. Just like now, there is not going to be just one source of power in the future, so solar does not have to do it all.
Even is solar "only" supplies the daytime peak load, this is half of the total electricity demand. In North America it is convenient that 40% of the entire U.S. population lives on the Eastern Seaboard, so that when it has its evening demand peak, the sunny west is three hours earlier and would still be producing a lot of solar electricity. Then there are proven power storage technologies like pumped water storage. Just considering existing pumped storage capacity, and capacity expansion that has applied for permits, we are looking at 76.7 GW of PS capacity in the U.S. which is 7.5% of U.S. peak electricity demand.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Well, you do realize, that capacity (natgas or whatever) sitting idle (not making money) is seriously expensive, right?
Peaking power plants, or power plants that generally only run when there is high demand, are generally gas turbines that burn natural gas. It is common for peaker plants to run only a few hours a day with well under 10% capacity. This is not a new problem. Electricity storage continues to become cheaper and as time goes on there will be less need for these types of power plants, but we have them now and could build more if they help us transition to more renewable energy sources.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Impractical fantasy you say? There is also a 1 km liquid nitrogen cooled superconducting installation in Essen that has been working just fine as a part of Essen power grid for several years already. This installation has replaced a 100kV AC powerline. No helium was needed and not that much liquid nitrogen either thanks to a good insulation. It just works.The reason for that installation was a different one, though - there was no room left in the underground channels for additional power lines and that superconducting cable transfers 5 times as much power as a normal copper cable with the same diameter.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
> natural gas burning plants could handle 10x their normal load to cover for idle solar panels.
Yep, natural gas and nuclear can provide power when solar isn't providing enough at the moment, for whatever reason. That's a great mix. The cheapest, cleanest energy when it's available, reliable energy that's still clean and reasonably cheap when the more preferred energy isn't sufficient at the moment.
> All of the "problems" with solar energy are very easily solvable [by using natural gas instead] and most are hardly even worth mentioning
Whether or not it's worth an honest analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of different sources of energy depends on whether you want to actually solve some problem, such as environmental problems, or you just want to be a cheerleader for your "team", without actually accomplishing anything.
Suppose you just want to be a cheerleader, so you just sing the praises of solar electric, and pretend that it can replace, rather than supplement, other sources. Then you end up encouraging people to think solar is "the answer" and they therefore oppose natural gas and nuclear infrastructure, leaving you stuck burning coal for 50 years longer than necessary. That's what has happened. We could have gotten rid of coal in the US by 1975. We're still burning a shit-ton of coal, which spews radiative substances directly into the air, because rather than talking honestly about an energy mix that actually works, half the population decided to romanticize solar and wind, and avoid mentioning in what ways they don't work so well. If, 50 years ago, the leaders of Greenpeace said what you said above (use solar when you can, natural gas and nuclear when you can't), we wouldn't be burning coal today.
You miss the point. Obama through ACA (obamacare) helped the miners by increasing their healthcare benefits and providing the families of deceased miners with benefits. They hated him with passion in return, now they stand to lose those benefits. They are decent hard working people, but this doesn't change the fact they have been brainwashed to absurd levels and because of that every choice they make ends up hurting them. There is no future for coal and not because Obama hates miners, but because it is no longer economical, even with the subsidies and underhand tricks that are being played out. It cannot sustain the Appalachian region economy. Yet most people in the region consistently vote for representatives that promise them to bring back the old coal jobs. They even elected Jim Justice for governor of West Virginia. This is the guy whose mines repeatedly placed miners lives at risk by skirting safety regulations. Then he screwed them again by not paying millions in fines, local taxes and severance fees.
Based on the facts of the system. Fossil fuels are subsidized at rates that no other industry achieves. Oil alone nets close to 5 billion dollars in incentives and tax benefits and this doesn't even count underpaying the tax payers for the oil by as much as 50%. Coal is even worse, massive subsidies, free use of federal land and resources and often paying the taxpayers less than a penny per ton for the coal. Nuclear wouldn't even exist without the Federal loan guarantees and the federal government backstoping the disaster insurance. That doesn't count the tax cuts and subsidies the industry receives.
Solar and Wind receive two tax breaks, an accelerated depreciation schedule and a tax credit that goes away in 2020 for wind and 2024 for solar with both credits scaling down yearly until their final year.
Compared fairly the tax credits to fossil fuels over the past 50 years could have paid to replace the entire electricity gird a dozen times over. Fossil fuels receive more government subsidies than any other industry.