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Solar Could Beat Coal to Become the Cheapest Power on Earth
- Thread starter Usobuko
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Paraguay is a 100% mine is very close to that too
womfalcs3
Banned
The 2020s will be big for renewable energy. PV costs are expected to further decrease in the coming years, fossil fuels will be made more expensive in countries that have historically kept their prices very low (and further incentivized their use), and CSP will become cost-competitive toward the end of the 2020s.
Saudi Arabia will soon deregulate fuel prices to their world equivalents, which will make utility-scale (and potentially distributed) PV a competitive technology. The country will not import coal.
Saudi Arabia will soon deregulate fuel prices to their world equivalents, which will make utility-scale (and potentially distributed) PV a competitive technology. The country will not import coal.
Vicetrailia
Member
Government spending is always the prerequisite.
womfalcs3
Banned
Further, with China (reference below) wanting to add 110 GW of PV by 2020 and Saudi Arabia's $30 billion push to add renewables by 2023, we're gonna a see an accelerating drive to reduce costs of PV in 3 years.
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2016/11...tallation-target-to-110-gw-by-2020_100026817/
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2016/11...tallation-target-to-110-gw-by-2020_100026817/
Muppet of a Man
Member
Renewables, Gen 4+ nuclear fission, nuclear fusion (when it is finally ready for prime time), biofuels, smart grids, and state of the art battery and super capacitor technologies can together make this world livable for the long term.
We just need to invest heavily in this stuff to accelerate it coming to market and replacing the current crumbling energy infrastructure. We are in a race against time and now we have to deal with orange fuck face. Sad.
We just need to invest heavily in this stuff to accelerate it coming to market and replacing the current crumbling energy infrastructure. We are in a race against time and now we have to deal with orange fuck face. Sad.
France kinda proves that all you really need is nuclear.
womfalcs3
Banned
It depends on your demand load profile. If the load profile you have to meet is low at night and peaks for a few hours in the daytime (e.g., for cooling), you need a more flexible technology to meet the peak. Possibly nuclear for base load, we competitive (its 10-year lead time is often not convenient), and efficient combined-cycle plants or PV for peaking.
No matter how fast we transform the infrastructure, we still need to capture CO2 in order to not break the 2° goal. The tech for making CO2 and water back to fuel is actually there, but we need the political will (and lots of energy) to do it.
Frankfurter
Member
And the occassional renewables import from your neighbours, when rivers are too warm to properly cool your old, expensive nuclear power plants
Muppet of a Man
Member
I personally agree, but current fissile reactor technologies that rely on enriched Uranium 235 are not sustainable in the long term due to scarcity of the fuel (in the form of unenriched Uranium 238) in the earth's crust. If we utilized breeder/burner technologies found in gen 4+ fission reactors such as Molten Salt Reactors (MSRs) like Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTRs), then we'd be able to generate massive amounts of electricity cheaply, cleanly, sustainably for the foreseeable future worldwide, and with passive safety, all while preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons and producing only tiny amounts of nuclear waste with a manageable half-life (only 200 to 300 years). Thorium is both plentiful in the earth's crust and ubiquitously distributed around the world. Many scientists believe it could meet the world's base electrical power needs for hundreds of thousands of years. When you consider that the surface of the moon is supposedly covered in thorium, it might possibly be a viable power source for millions of years (see movie Moon for fictional take on such a thing).
Muppet of a Man
Member
Sure, carbon capture on a mass scale will likely only be viable when MSRs like LFTRs and/or nuclear fusion reactors become widespread. Half of that battle comes in the form of modularizing the reactors and shipping them mostly assembled to the reactor site so the whole thing becomes viable from a wide-spread economic perspective.
D
Deleted member 231381
Unconfirmed Member
Onshore wind is actually cheaper per unit of energy than solar right now and is competitive with coal, it just has less prospect of gains in the way that solar does. For countries that are less naturally blessed with sunlight, the immediate future is going to be a mix of onshore wind and then nuclear as back-up.
With investment, we could also hope to bring the costs of offshore down.
And the occassional renewables import from your neighbours, when rivers are too warm to properly cool your old, expensive nuclear power plants
That argument flows both ways, you realize. Especially when it comes to wind and solar. More so, even.
Frankfurter
Member
Absolutely. So why use the more expensive technology (nuclear fission), which is also only going to get more expensive, atleast relatively speaking?
Because uranium is cheaper per Kwh than both coal and solar power at 2 cents. And has the problem that you speak of far far less than solar and wind have problems based on the weather. And you only need a few scattered nuclear power plants to power an entire country. Hell, the U.S. still gets 20% of its power from 60 nuclear power plants as compared to 1.3k coal plants.
Thanks for taking the time to post this!
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
Holy shit is this accurate? This can't be accurate
Linkstrikesback
Member
I could believe it. Nuclear gives out stupidly more amounts of energy than burning fuels.
https://www.nei.org/Knowledge-Center/Nuclear-Statistics/US-Nuclear-Power-Plants
Last time a nuclear plant started construction was 1972.
Oh, and for the plant number:
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=207&t=3
If we never started freaking out pointlessly about Nuclear, global warming never would've been a problem in the first place...
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
Fucking hell. Imagine if the US had been 50-60% nuclear since the 70s instead
Fuck the nuclear scare
Would have done nothing for farming and vehicle emissions. Nor would it have prevented developing economies from turning to fossil fuels initially.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
Yeah we'd still be in trouble but we might have had another decade before we hit the brink
You have a point, but solar doesn't solve those issues either. Electrical cars might solve ground transportation problems in a fully renewable or nuclear grid(In the U.S. with a mostly fossil fuel grid, it'd actually be more environmentally friendly just to burn the gas directly, though), but there's no solution to aircraft.
Frankfurter
Member
Uranium isn't the only thing a nuclear power plant needs. Nuclear fission is more expensive than anything else. No nuclear power plant would ever be profitable if massive subsidies weren't a thing (see Britains new nuclear power plant for instance).
phxxBullet
Banned
Is now the time to invest in renewable energy?
A friend of mine told me 3 years ago to invest and I didn't bother.
A friend of mine told me 3 years ago to invest and I didn't bother.
elrechazado
Banned
We can thank the anti science left for that one. Sad.
Frankfurter
Member
Solar has been growing exponentially for sth. like 20 years. It already IS more than a sideshow.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_photovoltaics
Jack The Nipper
Banned
Can people with solar run self efficiently without the cost of electric bills?
It's not. It can never run the grid. It's just something useless people talk about.
plagiarize
Banned
Why does it need to run the grid?
Frankfurter
Member
Useless huh? That's why total investments in solar stood at $162 billion in 2015 I guess.
See page 14: http://fs-unep-centre.org/sites/def...dsinrenewableenergyinvestment2016lowres_0.pdf
Gotdatmoney
Member
The thought of mankind deciding to mine shit off the Moon literally frightens me. I know its just theoretical but man, please god no.
plagiarize
Banned
If it wasn't true that we average much higher usage during the day than we do during the night, he might have a point. But we don't.
And that's presuming we don't come up with cost effective storage methods.
If you look at German investments in solar, they're a large portion of that and it's failed to make any dent in total emissions nor emissions intensity, which I presume is the point of solar. And it's markedly increased electricity costs (mainly felt by the poor), while reducing grid reliability.
Covering the roof of every single house in Australia would provide a few percent of total energy needs. And that's assuming the sun is shining everywhere.
Solar is seeing investment because governments subsidise it to a massive extent. In a real market (with carbon priced), it would never get off the ground. It's a complete white elephant.
Jack The Nipper
Banned
Ban all coal and watch solar work like you never imagined.
plagiarize
Banned
Governments subsidize coal mining and fracking in various ways too.
But even if you take that all away, Solar would still be cheaper than coal right now. The government subsidies helped get it off the ground, but we're close to being beyond the need for them now.
And like I said, if you *just* took away the solar industries subsidies, you'd not be looking at an even playing field, because of all the other subsidies other energy companies get directly and indirectly.
It's sort of like saying if you took away someone's prosthetic leg, they'd lose the race, when everyone in the race has a prosthetic leg.
Oh, and 'total emmissions' is a bullshit standard.
In the United States, the total CO2 emissions last year from electricity generation, were the lowest they had been since the early 80s. And I'm not talking per capita here.
Jack The Nipper
Banned
Why can't energy yields improve as well as improved storage? It can.
Gotdatmoney
Member
Oh you think oil doesnt get massive subsidies?
Shake Appeal
Member
All energy is subsidized. You should look at the, uh, arrangements in the U.S. for coal, oil and gas.
But regardless, renewable energy is pretty much our only hope of surviving the next century with anything resembling our current lifestyle, so of course smart people are trying to encourage it.
D
Deleted member 284
Unconfirmed Member
So, how long until this administration blackens out the sky à la the matrix?
paradise_circus
Member
People in Germany can even sell their electricity.
Solar is only cheaper when you look at nameplate capacity. The LCOE ignores redundancy, distribution, power storage and grid level effects. You know, all the best and most expensive bits of running a grid with variable generation.
Also, coal and dirty energy are not subsidised to any real extent, and anyone telling you otherwise is twisting statistics to push an agenda.
It doesn't.
Fulminator
Member
Hope.
Frankfurter
Member
Quite a few points here:
1.) You claim that renewables (or solar in specific?) reduce the grid reliability in Germany. Please provide proof. The German grid is among the most reliable in the world and energy blackouts, even the ones lasting only for seconds, are pretty much unheard of in Germany.
2.) German investments in solar WERE a huge part of those total investments back in ~2008-2012 or so. But right now that's actually totally false. China is the main driver behind the growth (while German PV investments are down!), while many other markets (incuding the US) are also growing at huge rates.
3.) Germany shut down around half of its nuclear capacity in an instant after the Fukushima incident and the rest will be shut down in the next couple of years. Obviously that results in a temporary rise in coal, natural gas etc. usage. That temporary rise is pretty much over, though.
4.) Your point about covering the roof of all Australian houses is wrong. Covering every single house would provide HUGE amounts of energy. Let's say 5kwp for the average home, 10 million houses, and an average of 1500KWh per kwp per year (considering Australia is a pretty sunny place overall that's probably lowballing it):
1500KWh x 5 x 10 million = 75.000.000.000 kw/h -> 75 TWh
womfalcs3
Banned
It does in much of the Middle East. Oil is planned to be deregulated by 2020-2021, though. They use oil for power generation even... its deregulated will make PV competitive.
Shake Appeal
Member
L-O-fucking-L.
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