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World's Cheapest Energy Source Will Be Renewables Within Three Years (qz.com)
Morgan Stanley researchers predict renewable energy will become the world's cheapest form of power within three years. An anonymous reader quotes Qz:
Renewable energy is simply becoming the cheapest option, fast... "We project that by 2020, renewables will be the cheapest form of new-power generation across the globe," with the exception of a few countries in Southeast Asia, the Morgan Stanley analysts said in a report published Thursday... Globally, the price of solar panels has fallen 50% between 2016 and 2017, they write. And in countries with favorable wind conditions, the costs associated with wind power "can be as low as one-half to one-third that of coal- or natural gas-fired power plants." Innovations in wind-turbine design are allowing for ever-longer wind blades; that boost in efficiency will also increase power output from the wind sector, according to Morgan Stanley.
The researchers also predict America will reach its Paris Climate Accord targets in 2020 -- five years early -- simply because renewables are already becoming the cheapest option for power.
The researchers also predict America will reach its Paris Climate Accord targets in 2020 -- five years early -- simply because renewables are already becoming the cheapest option for power.
And renewable. Once us humans kill oirselves off, we'll have a whole new batch of coal in another 300 million years.
If this pans out, the Middle East problems will become largely irrelevant, outside the Middle East. And Saudi Arabia will revert to what it always was.
No, technology, science, and engineering FTW. "free market" parasites show up after the fact and guilt us into giving THEM credit.
Sure, we can hook up all those politicians and trolls to the new wind turbines, but do we really want to have to keep them around?
Rick Perry says if we put the coal out there, the demand for it will follow.
(What do you want from a guy who got his degree in Animal Science?)
Never mind that Natural Gas is cheaper. I have a choice when I buy my electricity. Up to now I've been buying from a utility that produces more from renewables – just because it's more expensive, not because it comes from renewables. Now that coal is the more expensive option I'll switch to that. It costs more, it's got to be better, right?
What about the cost of energy storage? Producing it is not enough if you can't use it at-will.
Um, you do know what finances technology, science, and engineering, right?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
A bold move! But it makes sense. The most expensive electrons are usually the best electrons! That's just logic, my friend.
Animal Science
You saying there's another kind?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Chinese communist bureaucrats?
If this pans out, the Middle East problems will become largely irrelevant, outside the Middle East. And Saudi Arabia will revert to what it always was.
I’m not so sure about that. There is more at stake in the region than just oil revenue, like competing regional influence (with military benefits), mass migrations, exportable terrorism and, of course, the Israel-Arab conflict in which the U.S. has always been knee deep. Turning the region into a resourceless dump of poverty is unlikely to improve things for anyone. If coal country here in the U.S. can effortlessly swing to radical extremes because their outdated jobs have gone away, think of what’s likely to happen in the Middle-East when it’s their turn. It would probably be smart to help them to a soft landing and rebound to better opportunities.
...maybe not. The cross over is probably pretty soon either way though.
And that's good news on reaching those pesky Paris numbers without having to waste all that money. Smart man.
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
Meh. I think they're secretly trying to create another bubble so they can short the market.
Maybe we can build things up again someday
SAILING MISHAP
True.
Hawking radiation is renewable, but a tad outside our reach right now, in any quantities that's useful, at least.
Vacuum energy is so renewable that it can only be borrowed, so it's not a good source.
Net metering at the residential scale. Forcing energy companies to pay retail instead of wholesale is a direct subsidy to residential solar. Requiring some fraction of renewable generation forces the power companies to pay wind even when Nuclear is cheaper. That's a direct subsidy. California, in particular, requires power companies to,buy all available renewable power, whether or not they need it. That subsidizes renewables by ensuring that they never have idle capacity. The EPA Andrew other federal and state agencies giving coal construction, particularly major repairs and upgrades, a pocket veto by just not responding to permit actions is an indirect subsidy, as they are deliberately driving up the construction cost to competition. Ignore direct congressional pressure on major landholders in the desert southwest to force them into leasing their land to politically connected renewable companies at well below market rates. And let's not get started with the average of a decade and a half of regulatory and judicial delays to nuclear construction which increase the cost ten-fold. No subsidies here.
degree in Animal Science
Might be quite useful in the Republican Party.
The improvement to the environment in terms of less particulate and chemical contamination made it cost effective a while ago.
the fact that this fact was always ignored as a cost means we're still debating whether renewables are "cost effective".
meanwhile, if only China would manufacture solar cells properly and stop dumping the by-products into the environment.
pollution is, and has been for quite some time, a global problem.
Absolute statements are never true
Proton emitters like Cobalt-53 are rather rare, and we'd need a lot to generate enough hydrogen to restart the Sun.
You couldn't find anything with whale oil subsidies? It would be about a relevant to the current economics.
Panels price per watt, yes they have come down more then I expected. Inverters not so much. Inverters are the expensive part now.
I can buy a 20 watt solar panel at walmart for a hundred bucks. Standard solar output is way less than the max though, because of clouds, night, sunlight that isn't at the right angle, etc. Usually you figure 20% of max production. So that's 4 watts 24 hours per day. Say it lasts 20 years, which is conservative IMO. 4 watts * 365 * 20 = 29.2 megawatt-hours over the course of its lifetime.
If your ideas are correct, that's a subsidy of $230 per megawatt hour, or $6,716 total subsidy for that solar panel.
Let's think about that for a second. Do you really think the government is shelling out $6,716 every time someone buys $100 worth of solar panel from Walmart? And that there's a giant conspiracy to hide that fact from consumers? Does that seem like a sane explanation to you? Or maybe that website should not be trusted without double checking elsewhere on the web.
Here's my link.
All those money you claim unfair taxation has boost the renewable industry with by paying more than what is was worth?
Not free market. Rather discriminating.
The oil industry becomes less profitable as the tax breaks they have had in the past began to close. All things being equal, expect renewables to get cheaper and fossil fuels to get more expensive just on the tax benefits.
(tax deductions are not a subsidy in the strictest sense of the word)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
when you factor in the environmental damage coal causes that must be remediated and is paid for by the government because the company responsible declared bankruptcy and reorganized into a new company free to do it again, i hazard a guess that the subsidy for coal is much greater.
If you're talking about cutting edge stuff. It's mostly the Government. There's a good reason lots of STEM professors carry/carried some level of clearance.
Also see transistors (gov contract to Bell Labs to develop components for radar improvement, general purpose computers for ballistics calculations, ARPAnet, GPS, EPIPEN, etc....). Free market can't be bothered to see things veyond a fiscal quarter.
Sorry to do this to you, but you've miscalculated a bit.
The output over 20 years is 4 * 24 * 365 * 20 ~= 700 kilowatt-hours...
which is about $161 worth of electricity at a rate of $0.23/kwh
(... just to stop anybody dashing out to buy 20 watt solar panels in the hope of making a fortune.)
Coal has a shit ton of externalities that are not subsidies of the kind that would be captured in that article. Also FWIW, the Daily Caller (blech) says the subsidies are only 326 times Coal's subsidies. That number should continue to drop as technology advances. But, if renewable turns out to be unsustainable, then the coal will still be there, and 5000 guys with the right equipment will be able to mine enough to satisfy the energy needs of the country, including the underwater gardens of Maralago.
It was government funding, not free market investment, that fueled (pun intended) solar power cost reduction. To be perfectly fair, the economies of scale resulted from capitalism, but without government's long term economic commitment capitalists would have no reason to bet money on unproven technology. The solar power market is the result of government policy including technology investment and tax incentives.
Why is Snark Required?
In the long term, renewables have to be cheaper, for the simple reason that the supply of expendables, though enormous, will eventually be so depleted that they'll be very expensive to unearth. Whether it's 3 years or 1000 years, the principle stands.
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Well it was on a website and it mentioned Washington Times. I don't think GP's critical thinking went much further than that.
Yes, if you agree you're also a racist.
Some guy is selling them discounted of a pickup truck, slightly used. Cash only please.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
They don't realize it because it's not true. Slavery exists; it's not the free market.
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USD 100 for 20W? That's ridiculously expensive. You can buy the same in China - where they're made - for about USD 10-15. Even with battery and charge controller you're at no more than half that price.
Larger panels are cheaper per watt - a 20W panel is really small.
He has this sort of flaccid response to any green technology. He also predicts that less than 50K of the Tesla Model 3 reservations will turn into real orders.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
I think 20 watt panel is a waste of time. Here's a 100 watt one at Amazon for about 100 dollars shipped free with prime. https://www.amazon.com/HQST-Wa...
That should actually work out a little better. I don't know how much it's subsidized or anything like that though.
In case of going for solar exclusively (same accounts for wind, another intermittent renewable that has to rely on battery storage) it makes more sense of converting most of your household electronics to DC power. Laptops, phone chargers, TVs, even LED lights: they all take AC and convert it to DC to power the device itself. So why use an inverter in the first place? Power everything on 24V instead, directly off the batteries. You'll still need a converter to go from the 24V to the actual voltage they need (5-12V commonly) but those converters are cheap and efficient (>90%).
Washing machines, air cons and so are trickier. They can of course run on 24V DC instead of 240V AC, that's a matter of installing different motors, it's just that the current jumps tenfold as well, but it's still quite feasible.
Even worse would be my electric water heater, which takes about 20 Amp, 3-phase power. That's not going to work any more I'm afraid.
The inverter would be needed for connecting to the grid back and forth (your backup power), but when converting all your home appliances to DC you should be able to get away with a much smaller, cheaper inverter.
This is a much better deal.
https://www.amazon.com/HQST-Wa...
Lets verify that for a moment.
You linked to a blog, that quoted a chart from the Washington Times, so lets Google that article:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/9/hillary-clintons-solar-energy-baloney/
Which cites a chart made from EIA numbers, specifically naming this article.
https://www.eia.gov/analysis/requests/subsidy/
Which cites LOAN guarantees, and R&D costs among the biggest costs, i.e. the CAPITAL costs.
"That idea that renewables will be cheaper than coal is simply politically motivated bullshit."
No, you're the victim of someone deliberately trying to mislead you by mixing in capital costs subsidies in and comparing them to ongoing costs.
You expect a huge capital investment when switching to renewables and thus a large capital cost.
For example Musk has rolled out the latest car from his factory, car 1, if I calculated the capital cost per electric car it would be about $2 billion for that one car!
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2017/05/30/why-do-federal-subsidies-make-renewable-energy-so-costly/#52ba304e128c
Utility scale solar is already at 6-7 cents per KwH before subsides in the South West USA, so the federal subsidy would amount to 2 cents a KwH. The indirect of pollution is at least 10 cents a KwH, so when you consider total costs, fossil fuels sources are much more expensive.
You have 3 phase power in your house? Many 3 phase elements can be rewired to single phase.
Yes, but no one cares if it is 1,000 years...
The Republic of Texas (now defunct) had presidents that served for 2 or 3 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Texas
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You are still thinking of the 1980s there AC.
Many of the current solar panel designs do not use arsenic in the panel doping process. Much of the research has been in the development and use of inexpensive organic molecules, and even plastics instead.
This is one of the reasons why the price has declined so precipitously; It is not just China flooding the market with cheap (artificially price lowered) panels-- It is also ACTUALLY LESS EXPENSIVE manufacturing processes that do not incorporate toxic metaloids, like arsenic, which have costly refinement processes with expensive waste materials-- instead favoring organic molecules deposited with a simple chemical reaction onto pure crystalline silicon, or onto a suitable plastic substrate. In some cases, the photon collecting capabilities come from nanostructures generated inside the silicon using laser assisted vapor deposition, and other novel techniques.
If you had actually been following the research and science in emerging panel designs and technologies, you would know that-- but you were clearly too busy poopooing it instead.
Nope. It will create increased demand for high capacity, high worklife battery technologies, which will then finally force automakers to go full-electric.
Currently, there are several novel battery designs out there that could conceivably satisfy this need in the power generation infrastructure, which are lacking the necessary R&D funding. The unreliability issue can be solved by calculating average load baselines, comparing to typical peak use curves, and factoring in the losses incurred by using the battery arrays. That would let the utilities know how much generation they need and how much battery they need to assure continuous, green power generation and delivery.
Sorry to do this to you, but you've miscalculated a bit.
The output over 20 years is 4 * 24 * 365 * 20 ~= 700 kilowatt-hours...
which is about $161 worth of electricity at a rate of $0.23/kwh
(... just to stop anybody dashing out to buy 20 watt solar panels in the hope of making a fortune.)
The current wholesale price per KW of solar panels is 33 cents. Also, the life expectancy of solar panels is 30 years plus. so redoing the calculation
5*365*30 = 54.75 KwH
so price per KwH = .33/54.75 = $.006/KwH
Yes. Real three phase power.
Three 32A fuses just for that one device (and three 64A fuses downstairs where some really thick wires connect the block to the grid). It probably can be rewired to a single phase but it's rated power is 21 kW so that'd be about 88A at a single phase, 240V, instead of 3x 19A at 380V.
Just in case you're wondering: it's an instant on type, without reservoir.
Let's think about that for a second. Do you really think the government is shelling out $6,716 every time someone buys $100 worth of solar panel from Walmart? And that there's a giant conspiracy to hide that fact from consumers? Does that seem like a sane explanation to you? Or maybe that website should not be trusted without double checking elsewhere on the web.
Not quite that much but according to Fit and Microfit prices here in Ontario, but it's pretty damn close, or roughly 2/3's the price. And people wonder why Ontario has gone from people loving "green energy" to "fuck this, we're grabbing pitch forks."
Om, nomnomnom...
If you think that the US or international economy is a free market based on real costs then you are a fool. The game is rigged, and it has always been rigged. Pointing to a study funded by entrenched special interests is, to use your phrase, "bullshit."
If you are so in love with coal power then move to Beijing. You will be coughing most of the time and you life expectancy will decrease by a few years, but it will get you away from that evil subsidized renewable energy.
Choke on that, Mr. Free Marketeer.
Why is Snark Required?
Coal is half that price... my wholesale cost of coal power is about 3.5 cents per KWh
I live outside of the US and I can get a 100W panel for less than $100 so I guess the US is subsidizing solar in other countries too.
As others have pointed out your "megawatt" should be a kilowatt, but also you have not factored in full costs such as any battery storage or electrical starter unit, etc. over the 20 year period
Solar power is nice to see improved, but ain't going to make all the cool things from science fiction a reality (like wireless power and the like). It has long been a matter of personal opinion of where we should go as humans with consumption of resources such as power, either towards a more "sustainable" society which uses less and is "able to live within its means" or using more power and hoping that new technologies make life better for future generations. I would personally like to see much greater power generation and take some solace in that both approaches will likely be tried at the same time if history is anything to go on.
It was government funding, not free market investment, ...
You could say all that about the early Internet too.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
That website uses out of date data to make a point about the future. It also refers to more biased sites.
Biased website is biased. Film at 11.
Seriously, the Koch brothers are spending a lot of money right now to convince people that coal has a viable future.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
That's why Germany and Denmark, which have the highest wind+solar energy investments, have such affordable electricity. Oh, wait...
http://www.euanmearns.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/europeelectricprice.png
In Germany, where they now get 20% of their electricity from wind & solar, the extraordinarily high cost has driven the price of electricity there up to three times what I pay here in North Carolina. (Well, it also doesn't help that Merkel is shutting down their perfectly good nuclear plants.)
The truth is that the intermittency problem with wind and solar is so severe that when you get more than a few percent tied into the grid it actually has negative value. It is only "crony capitalism" (government mandates, tax incentives, etc.) which make wind & solar competitive with coal and gas except in very special circumstances.
Diverting resources to wind and solar boondoggles impoverishes people, not just in West Virginia, where huge numbers of them are now out of work, but also everywhere that it inflates the cost of energy. It causes people living "on the edge" to sometimes have to choose between eating and staying warm.
Either choice can be deadly. In Europe, where there have been enormous price hikes for energy because of "renewables" scams, "energy poverty" is killing tens of thousands of mostly-elderly people:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/fuel-poverty-killed-15000-people-last-winter-10217215.html
What's more, most of the energy used to PRODUCE solar panels, and much of the energy used to produce wind turbines, comes from soot-belching, coal-fired power plants in China, and most of the energy REPLACED BY these devices would have been produced in clean power plants with state-of-the-art "scrubbers" in North America, Europe & Australia.
So, Chinese workers get emphysema, American workers get to collect unemployment (until it runs out), and American & European environmentalists get to feel self-righteous.
Such a deal.
Heating elements don't care if they are AC or DC. It is pretty common to use them as dump loads. But getting the voltage to run yours off battery banks for homes is not realistic. 48 volts would be lucky to warm the water a few degrees. Utility type banks could run it no problem. You reminded me why I ended up with natural gas for our instant water heater. I about choked when I figured I needed 55kW just for the water heater.
Innovations in wind-turbine design are allowing for ever-longer wind blades
Eventually we'll have wind blades long enough to reach to the top of the atmosphere. They'll also double as space elevators! /hope
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Yeah. Here in NC, the legislature has been mandating wind+solar, so our electricity prices have been going up. We're around $.11 / kw-hr, retail, now. So in 20 years that 20W panel would produce about $77 worth of electricity, valued at current retail price.
But, of course, the true value of intermittently supplied electricity is actually much LESS than the WHOLESALE value of reliable electricity.
Also, the panels diminish in output over their lifetime, AND they probably won't last 20 years, AND they don't include installation costs, AND they don't include the expensive inverter (which also won't last 20 years), NOR the extra expense when it comes time to replace your roof (if you mount the darn things on your roof), etc., etc.
The bottom line is that solar is nowhere near as cost effective as wind, which is nowhere near as cost effective as gas and coal fuels.
unfortunately the poorly maintained pipelines in my home state are leaking and have contaminated surface water and ground water in some areas.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I'm sure it's possible to heat lots of water with such a heater on just 24V, as long as you can get the current big enough you will get the power needed. Not easy to do, not practical to do, but it should definitely be possible.
Not something I'm planning to try, though :-) In such a situation gas is probably the way to go.
They're not adding storage for because it's cheaper than peaker plants. They're adding storage because peaker plants cant correct the stupid fast supply transients (100 msec-5 sec) caused by large PV farms. Those are all about grrid stability inside 10 seconds, and have nothing to do with the pipe dream of overnight storage for renewables. All of the current large scale storage projects are straight up graft.
Why would you buy a 20 watt solar panel from Walmart for a hundred bucks when you can get a 150 watt solar panel from Amazon for $175?
competent and forward thinking governments
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
It can also be the other way around. Solar production tends to correspond with peak demand, and peaking power costs an arm and a leg. A solar user importing power at night and exporting power during the day is doing operators a favour.
That said, I think it would be fair to do what we do in Iceland with power bills, that is separate the infrastructure cost on your bill (aka, what it costs them to provide you with a power connection, amortized) from the generation cost. So if you want a grid connection, you always pay the infrastructure bill - but your generation bill could be net metered, even negative, ideally wholesale** both ways with time-of-use taken into account.
** Wholesale because you're already paying the overhead cost separately.
Citation needed for specifics showing that this is some sort of widespread practice, or even that it occurs at all. The feds generally have no say in "coal construction" excepting where it touches upon the EPA, which is obligated by law to respond to all permit actions. Coal-producing states are generally extremely coal friendly.
Again, "Citation needed showing that this is some sort of widespread practice, or even that it occurs at all." What you're describing is eminent domain - quite common with roads, oil pipelines, power lines, etc, but can you name a single example of it being used for building "renewable" power plants in "the desert southwest"?
Pure nonsense. Name a single nuclear power plant that has had its cost "increased ten-fold" due to "regulatory and judicial delays". One can easily take a look at power plants that have gone way over budget - for example, here's one of the most extreme cases in modern times. Planned for 2010, but now probably not operational until as late as 2020, and coming in at three times its initial budget. Why? NIMBYs? Red tape? Hardly:
"The delays have been due to various problems with planning, supervision, and workmanship"
"The first problems that surfaced were irregularities in the foundation concrete, "
"Later, it was found that subcontractors had provided heavy forgings that were not up to project standards and which had to be re-cast"
"An apparent problem constructing the reactor's unique double-containment structure also caused delays, as the welders had not been given proper instructions"
"... told the BBC that it was difficult to deliver nuclear power plant projects on schedule because builders were not used to working to the exacting standards required on nuclear construction"
"...are in bitter dispute over who will bear the cost overruns and there is a real risk now that the utility will default."
Tell me, when was the last time that you welded a large-diameter zirconium-alloy pipe and X-rayed it for defects, with any possible sign of imperfection meaning having to cut it off and start from scratch? How many people in the world do you think have that skillset? Because that's what's involved in nuclear power plant construction - it is extremely exacting. And if you think it'd be just jolly to cut corners, by all means hold that view, but understand that I most definitely will not be joining you in that.
Dear Diary...today I was pompous and my sister was crazy.
For 100 bucks I can get a 50 watt panel. But that's still ridiculously expensive. The first hit on Google Shopping goes for $0.60 per watt. Your example is... not a good exapmle.
0x or or snor perron?!
All these renewables have always been just one decade away from the market. Now a days they are just three years out. Great improvement. In just 50 years they will be 1 year away.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Intel has a fab in Israel, and an assembly factory, plus various R&D facilities.
I'll believe it once all subsidies and penalties are accounted for.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
The researchers also predict America will reach its Paris Climate Accord targets in 2020 -- five years early -- simply because renewables are already becoming the cheapest option for power.
And the coal miners will be blaming EPA, regulation and government conspiracy for their loss of jobs. Their "drill baby drill" chants crashed the natural gas prices and made coal unviable economically. People who tell this stark truth unvarnished are pilloried by them.
In fact EPA is what has kept most coal jobs alive till now. All the old coal powered power stations were grand-fathered from most EPA regulations. So even when natural gas becomes cheaper than coal, the new plants have to comply with the latest standards. So the cost of gas plants were high and gas has to become significantly cheaper to make retiring old coal plants viable economically. This was the reason why the old coal plants continued to survive, at least maintaining some level of demand for coal.
Cost of new generation of renewables is within striking distance now, but gas prices can keep falling and stretch the transition period.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
So much bollocks. When you use oil to produce electricity you have no more oil to produce electricity. It's not renewable. When you use the sun to produce electricity, YOU DO NOT USE UP THE SUN. Unless you're considering going there and scooping up Deuterium and Tritium from the sun, the sun is not used up.
Fossilised microbes is to oil as sun is to photon. And there are no new sources of fossilised microbes.What's there now is what's there for our forseeable future as a species. There is no more. But the sun is still there and not used up.
Asinine cries of "But nothing is renewable!!!" is just the clarion call of the Frequently Spotted Loudmouth Moron. A call of sound and fury signifying nothing. It merely cries to be heard and to inflate its own ego.
Remove subsidies and solar or wind will get cheaper slower.
FTFY
Ezekiel 23:20
Because it doesn't have to pay for externalities. People die from the generation of that coal power you buy so cheap, that is why it's so cheap.
The oil industry has been getting subsidies from the government for over 100 years now... so what's your point?
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
Rick Perry says if we put the coal out there, the demand for it will follow.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
People always complain about the subsidies that renewables get. They forget that oil companies don't pay for the oil they are pumping out of the ground. The oil isn't theirs. And not only that they get a tax break for the amount of oil they pump out called a "oil depletion allowance".
Chinese solar panels face anti-dumping tarriffs upon import to the US to combat this, in some cases as high as 239%, due to the low-interest loans the Chinese government gives solar manufacturers. And they've faced these tarriffs since 2012. China, for its part, denies that its dumping, and says that the loans are simply an investment in clean power and an attempt to improve the environment. Of the top 10 manufacturers, 4 are from China, 2 from the USA, 2 from Taiwan, one from Canada and one from South Korea.
China not only produces extensively to export, but also has a huge domestic solar consumption as well. For example, China just completed the world's largest floating solar farm. China is the world's largest market for photovoltaics and is the world's largest producer of solar power. They're on track to have over 100 GW installed solar power by 2018 (up from 77GW in 2016). They also use 70% of the world's total installed solar water heating.
Dear Diary...today I was pompous and my sister was crazy.
Your calculations are off by a factor of one thousand.
No, but I do think it's entirely possible that the company that is building the panels is getting billions in subsidies, that equates to thousands per panel, sure. (Or other billions are being dumped into other firms that are part of the production chain upstream of your retail purchase.)
Don't think government would be that stupid? I do, particularly in pursuit of politically-motivated eco goals like:
http://money.cnn.com/2009/10/2... cash for clunkers, where the U.S.government spent $24000 per car to give people $4500 rebates
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... - a half-billion dollar dunno into renewables for fuck-all result.
And before you go after the source of the information in the original item about subsidies, understand that the data came from the Washington Times...an organization quite a bit more credible than...well, you.
In your specific example, it's made in China...one might further calculate the astonishingly low pay rates in China as a subsidy, knowing the Chinese government is more about keeping people employed than making a capitalist-style profit. Hell, Sunforce might be owned by the PLA as far as we know.
-Styopa
Hawking radiation is not renewable. That said, the lifespans of black holes are usually written in scientific notation with a large exponent, so....
Dear Diary...today I was pompous and my sister was crazy.
Why do you say that? Is it because knowledge of the behaviors of sheep and cattle would help them relate with Democrats?
Seriously though, do you even know what courses one must take to major in animal science? Sure, there's a couple silly sounding class names but then every major has a few. I went to an agricultural and engineering school like Texas A&M and knew students that studied Animal Science. About half were headed to go on to graduate school and get their DVM, the other half were planning on going into ranching and farming.
Make jokes if you like but it's the animal science majors that keep meat cheap and safe to eat. Taking a course called "Meats" is an important part of knowing how to do that.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
From your link: "Perfect for charging 12 volt batteries of boats, trucks, RVs, tractors, cars and more"
It's not even designed for connecting to an inverter, it's designed for mobile DC charging. Even so, I bought a similar one with the charge circuit and a chassis for about $30 a few years ago. Walmart are taking the piss a bit there.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I feel like people like you should be required to get a facial tattoo that says "I believe anything on the internet" just so the rest of us can easily identify you.
Yeah, I realized after I lay down and closed my eyes, content with the mis-information I had corrected.
Then I woke up my wife with the sound of "Aww SHIT.".
You realise that the US subsidises fossil fuels by more than renewables, right? There's $6.8bn of government money given to coal producers, another $1.5bn to other fossil fuels, and $7.8bn to renewables.
Yup, some people don't realise that socialist policies are just a way of applying game theory to get a better outcome in the capitalist game than "EVERYONE FOR THEMSELVES".
What makes you think an 8kW system is a strawman? That's a pretty normal size for a system these days and the price is pretty accurate.
In this place called reality, here is what really happened.
In 2007, the OPEC countries decided that the price of oil was too low (remember, gas was a dollar something at that point) and colluded to raise the cost of oil. Within the span of a year, the price doubled. This caused the recession that the we all have been enjoying for the last decade or so.
As the price per gallon reached an absurd $4/gallon, this spurred a great deal of innovation in the energy sector, since engineering solutions that were not feasible at $50/barrel suddenly become feasible at close to $100 barrel. Suddenly, one could talk about expensive option like Solar with a straight face as a real cost effective alternative.
Along with new economic viability of renewable energy sources , the oil recovery technique which is known as fracking became feasible. The oil reserves found in the Middle East are simply easy to get at, so the cost per barrel is lower. However, there are actually greater oil reserves found in Canada and the U.S. trapped in rock. Normally, this oil was considered to be untouchable, since it was so much harder to get out of the ground compared to the Mid East Oil. But at an inflated $100?B cost, these North American reserves become viable
The rate that fracking technology was implemented and improved stunned the OPEC nations. In the typical sleeping giant fashion of the U.S., once it awoke, it started solving technical problems very quickly. Not only was the U.S. suddenly able to counter the ridiculously artificially high oil costs, it was in danger of being able to be competitive in oil production cost in general. Since the North American reserves are actually greater than those of Middle East, this would mean they could no longer dictate world policy.
To combat the situation, the OPEC nations flooded the market with oil. They committed economic warfare by selling oil at below cost, just to shut down the Fracking threat. So, in response, we did what we typically do. Instead of adopting a long term strategy to ensure the growth of our industry, achieve economic independence, and break Middle East power, we decided to implement no protections on oil import and went for the quick, easy solution.
This is why you are enjoying very cheap gas today. You are enjoying the benefits of the destruction of the U.S. Energy sector. The warfare sent a very big message to the Petroleum companies. If you invest in developing this technology, we will make sure that you lose this investment. Once enough damage is done, expect to see the price at the pump go up again, for no reason. This time, fracking will not quickly come online to counter it.
This may sound like a godsend to the Burney Sanders crowd, but this does not mean a renewable resource paradise. Under the current below market oil prices, renewable won't really be able to compete either. If you read the article, they make a lot of assumptions and also carefully select their words to equivocate about certain markets. The article does not say for wide spread domination, which is what is being assumed in these forums. The economic pressure by the below market oil will further suppress the development and implementation of renewable. How long do you think these companies can sell at a loss before they have to give in?
"Liberalism is a very noble idea, currently controlled by some very bad people. Be sure you do not get the two confused.
I would have guessed the cheapest electricity now comes from hydro-electric dams that have already paid for themselves three times over, and might continue to operate for another 100 years.
(I tried to determine the expected lifespan of Robert-Bourassa not long ago, but the reality is that no-one really knows, depending of subtleties of surface water chemistry over timespans barely investigated. They pencil in "100 years" at time of construction, probably more for the bankers than the engineers. To a banker, 100 years is aleph two, the last countable infinity.)
Oh, you meant the cheapest marginal new construction, as viewed from the second margin of cherry-picked bank loan shovel-ready favourability.
And once you exhaust hot, sunny, and dry and California's low coefficient of tropical fungus, then what?
I know, I know.
Have the entire Amazon rainforest collect rainwater, aggregate it all into a single large flow, and run it through a BIG honking generator.
I'm just sure it would work. And who even knows just how long those puppies would spin? Why, fifty years from now, if the climate becomes wetter than ever, it might almost be practically free.
1) Where did you get your $40m figure from? I've been searching for quite a while now and can't find a cost statement for the plant anywhere. And it's suspicious (although not damning) that your dollar figure is exactly the same as the power production figure, making it look like a miscopy. Then again, it's in the ballpark; the average for new US plants is now around $1.50/W, while $40m for 40MW would be $1/W, in a country with cheaper labour, etc.
2) Panel power production doesn't just end after 25 years. For typical cells, the production would be down to 70-80% after 25 years. Inverters are a more likely early replacement item than panels. On the other hand, nor do you factor in cost amortization.
3) That's not how you calculate solar generation; you use capacity factors. It doesn't make a material difference (average US capacity factors for PV plants is 28%), but it's a very amateurish way to go about things.
4) 6*40*365*25 is not 32, it's 2,19 million MWh. You mean to also divide 40 million dollars by that figure, but that's not 0,32 dollars/MWh either, it's 18.26 dollars/MWh.
5) You seem to think that that's a bad thing. 18.26 dollars per megawatt hour is ~1.8 cents per kilowatt hour. Let alone 0.32 dollars per megawatt hour, which would be 0.32 cents per kilowatt hour. How much do you pay?
Dear Diary...today I was pompous and my sister was crazy.
We will also have Fusion in 20 years.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Tell me, when was the last time that you welded a large-diameter zirconium-alloy pipe and X-rayed it for defects, with any possible sign of imperfection meaning having to cut it off and start from scratch?
Not to take away from your point, but... this is not an uncommon requirement for any important infrastructure. A bridge went up near me which connected two boroughs. There were several months of delays when inspectors did x-ray checks of the welds and determined they had not been done to the rigorous standards set in the contract. "They had to grind (each weld) out, cut it out and gouge it out and fix it"
Those are words you don't often see in one sentence anymore.
-- Cheers!
Now they have. I'm -1 Troll. :)
It's like a badge of honor, here.
-Styopa
I thought a teacher degree would be enough or worst case being a preacher?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Math?
4W * 365 days/year * 20 years * 24 hours/day *0.000001MW/ W = 0.7 Megawatt-hours over the panels lifetime. A subsidy of $161.
Really? Where are you?
NPR says about 11cents for MN average.
http://www.npr.org/sections/mo...
(ok that was 2011)
According to Xcel energy themselves: https://www.xcelenergy.com/sta...
Energy charge per kWh:
On-peak time
June through September $0.20077
October through May $0.16454
October through May with electric space heating $0.10912
Off-peak time:
All months $0.03015
-Styopa
You make bridges out of zirconium where you are? Impressive budget you have ;)
Dear Diary...today I was pompous and my sister was crazy.
It's inevitable that the combustion economy will eventually be replaced with renewables. Most estimates are this will happen over the next 10-25 years as renewables become more efficient, energy storage at large scale becomes more possible and attitudes about fossil fuels change. Resistance is futile..
It sounds like this has more to do with America's interest in finding better and more efficient ways of killing everyone else. This really isn't about "enlightened efficient government" but the American military industrial complex.
Peaceful civilian applications are just a happy accident.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The researchers also predict America will reach its Paris Climate Accord targets in 2020 -- five years early --
Yay! We're saved!
Whoops, what's that? The permafrost is melting? Did I say "saved"? I'm sorry. I meant boned. We are totally boned.
Arctic permafrost contains 1.8 trillion tons of carbon, more than twice as much as is currently suspended in the Earth’s atmosphere. When it thaws and is released, that carbon may evaporate as methane, which is 34 times as powerful a greenhouse-gas warming blanket as carbon dioxide when judged on the timescale of a century; when judged on the timescale of two decades, it is 86 times as powerful. In other words, we have, trapped in Arctic permafrost, twice as much carbon as is currently wrecking the atmosphere of the planet, all of it scheduled to be released at a date that keeps getting moved up, partially in the form of a gas that multiplies its warming power 86 times over
This is like that false salvation moment near the end of the movie, right before the giant bad thing stands up behind the heroes and smiles at them. It ain't gonna be that easy.
to bet money on unproven technology.
And which technology actually is unproven?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
48 volts would be lucky to warm the water a few degrees.
Not true. It is just a question of how much water you are talking about.
A majour hazard in boats is that shower or sink water is to hot.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
You mean Chinese Government funding, seeking to completely corner the market on solar panels and wind turbines (they've accomplished the former, and are working on the latter - although they do have the market on neo magnets completely sewn up). It was done not as an egalitarian move, but a purely capitalistic/monetary move - corner a market, own the market, increase your own GDP.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
...are not synonymous.
SoCal power rates. The "first tier" is usually set well below what a normal household would use (for example, I have no AC, no pool/hot tub, all LED lighting, natural gas for heating and clothes drying, and I'm only home for 15-18 days a month - and I still use 110-120% of my typical allowance). Of course, we also get to have the highest gas prices in the lower 48 - even though we are the 3rd largest producer of oil in the US.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Arsenic basically never was used in silicon based PV cells anyway.
It is used in Galium/Arsenid cells. And that means: the toxic stuff is inside of the cell, and can not really get out anyway.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Right or wrong, I think the subsidy is often considered the exploitation of the externalities such as pollution. This is part of the rational for giving cleaner tech subsidies, to balance the playing field. While I think it would be more honest to remove the externality, it's probably easier to give the clean technology the subsidy.
Chris Mesterharm
The truth is that the intermittency problem with wind and solar is so severe that when you get more than a few percent tied into the grid it actually has negative value.
Only if you do it stupidly. California is already seeing days where renewable make up 50% of their electric usage and their problems with negative value are relatively small, manageable and are in the process of being mitigated. BTW, the term for what you call intermittancy is the duck curve.
The smart way to do it is:
What you can't do is rely on baseload power (like nukes and coal) which get tons of subsidies in the form of guaranteed returns.
What's more, most of the energy used to PRODUCE solar panels, and much of the energy used to produce wind turbines, comes from soot-belching, coal-fired power plants in China, and most of the energy REPLACED BY these devices would have been produced in clean power plants with state-of-the-art "scrubbers" in North America, Europe & Australia.
That's all bullshit of the highest degree.
The energy required to manufacture wind turbines is recouped within about 6 months of operation.
And, in case anyone is interested:
The energy required to manufacture solar panels is a tiny fraction of how much they will generate over their lifetime.
In Middle Europe, where irradiance is about equal to that of Alaska, PV panels built with 10 year old manufacturing technology reached a net energy cost of zero within 3 years. In Southern Europe it was between 0.5 and 1.5 years.
Furthermore for every doubling in solar manufacturing capacity energy used to produce solar panels decreased by 12-13 percent, and greenhouse gas emissions dropped by 17-24 percent. Over the last decade, solar manufacturing capacity has increased 10x.
As for "scrubbers" and coal, China is way ahead of the US.
China recently cancelled construction of 104 new coal plants equal to one third of the US's total installed coal capacity. Even then, China's coal regulations are so much cleaner than the US's that by 2020 not one single US coal plant would be clean enough to legally operate if it were in China.
I didn't criticize Animal Science or anyone who studies it, not even Rick Perry. That blindseeing isn't going too well - why don't you open your eyes?
Check your math.
4 watts per hour * 24 hrs a day * 365 days * 20 years .. and then get your 20% of max production = 140,160 watts. I'm not impressed, really. I could probably do better with a hamster wheel.
Some people here are vegans and some are vegetarians, dude... not all people eat meat. Even in Texas.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
certainly with religious based governments +UK +USA
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Add + NL to that. Sigh :(.
-- Cheers!
The oil companies have all the renewables CEOs shot
The only way, in the foreseeable future, for Renewable Energy to be the cheapest energy in the USA is to Outlaw the so-called "Non-renewable Energy". And that will not happen. Plus, the ecological damage from certain forms of Renewable Energy is worse than Non-renewable Energy -- per a /. story.
Actually yes. I know several dairies that are energy independent, just due to funneling the manure into a capped digesting pond with a methane powered turbine sitting on top.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
It's the same as Russia-Gate. Every day, we are breathlessly told THIS IS IT! THIS IS THE SMOKING GUN! WE HAVE HIM!
With the renewable crowd it's exactly the same. We'll all be driving electric cars in ______! We'll be on all renewable by ________! We won't need oil by ________! We're at PEAK OIL!
Same with the environmentalists. By ______ we'll be dead! The Earth will be superheated in __________ years. The oceans will be devoid of life by _______.
After years and years and years of these of claims none of them have happened. Which is proof that these groups of people here have no memory and oh so desperately WANT TO BELIEVE. Now it seems Morgan Stanley wants you to INVEST. Their motives are pure.
Kill all the subsidies for all of this crap and see what happens...
Murphy was an optimist
Crude may be cheaper, but refineries have a lot more control over the prices of their products. The supply of crude may be high, but the supply of gasoline depends entirely on what the refineries choose to produce.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Tell me, when was the last time that you welded a large-diameter zirconium-alloy pipe and X-rayed it for defects, with any possible sign of imperfection meaning having to cut it off and start from scratch? How many people in the world do you think have that skillset? Because that's what's involved in nuclear power plant construction - it is extremely exacting.
That said, the reason that we don't have the necessary skill set readily available today is because NIMBY-ism and regulatory hoops (esp. laws regarding public purchasing - cheapest bidder wins) means that nuclear is a more or less dead industry. When everything you ever build is a once-in-a-lifetime one-off, of course you're not going to reap any benefits from economy of scale, a mature subcontractor market, industry tradition and knowledge etc. etc.
So, the politics mentioned above did manage to kill nuclear, but indirectly, by making it such an uncertain (huge political risk) and unattractive field that the economy to support is isn't there. It's not inherent in the technology itself, we managed to do this (including welding) well enough in the sixties and seventies; as a species we're better at it now...
Stefan Axelsson