Solar and Wind Start to Win on Price vs Other Fuels

It's not really new news in the power industry though. Renewables don't have much variable costs when they are installed and available. But, the fact that they aren't always dispatchable is a weakness that isn't easily solved. If the sun doesn't shine, it doesn't shine; and if the wind doesn't blow, it doesn't blow. The quickly improving battery technology will improve things, because we might get to a point where we can store excess renewable energy more cheaply than we can produce it on the spot with conventional. Even so, no matter how green we get, I think we'll need to have some gas-fired plants that will give us power when we need it. They can start up and shut down quickly and mostly burn a lot more cleanly than coal. I think it's inevitable we'll get to a place where we're using mostly renewables with battery storage, backed up by gas-fired plants, while coal and maybe nuclear go by the wayside.

 

Hasn't the issue really been storing and transferring the energy that made reusable energy so unappealing? From what I've heard, our grid needs serious work. Glad to see this kind of tech is getting cheaper, but unfortunately wind and solar requires far less jobs than oil and gas, definitely an issue.

 

There had been an issue with bringing West Texas wind to market, but FPL recently finished a big transmission line to the Dallas market that has made the situation a lot better. Transmission has been an appealing busines the last couple of years and the infrastructure is improving a bit.

It's also debatable how much infrastrcuture we'll continue to need though. We'll get to a point (we're there already in some markets) where it'll be cheaper for people to put solar panels on their roofs than to be buy power from the grid. People may be a bit afraid to disconnect from the grid entirely, but if many people get rooftop solar panels as their first supply and use the grid for backup, the economics won't really support having all that infrastructure anymore. Utilities are trying to think of ways they can charge solar power owners in a way to keep the system alive -- which would increase the incentive to disconnect from the grid entirely.

 

This is true, I've heard from many people that have Co-Opt providers, e.g. CoServe in the DFW region, that won't allow consumers to subsidize their energy costs with solar panels.

 

markets are distorted and prices hidden by regulations/deductions/credits/subsidies

as in "buy a solar panel and get a $10k tax credit" or some such, so something is purchased that wouldn't be if it cost $10k more (the $10k being a transfer of taxpayer money to the corporation that makes the solar panel)

or the corporation get subsidies in exchange for charging the end user less, so again, the taxpayer eats a chunk of the bill

 

I wonder how much credit in tax breaks the oil industry is getting and who is paying for it.

 

Which is why true free-marketeers favor fossil fuels, where underprivileged plucky upstarts like ExxonMobil collect billions and billions in drilling and refining subsidies each year.

 

There are some credits and some beneficial treatment of depreciation for tax purposes that have helped renewables get to where they are today. And, no doubt it'll hurt the industry when those stop. But, they aren't just propped up by government subsidies anymore. They'll continue to get penetration into the generation stack with or without government help.

 

Odd that you don't mention pollution.

The article covers that, and discusses both the costs with and without subsidies.

 

That cost is so hidden, he couldn't find it.

 

There is a strong argument that solar tax credits aren't fostering competitive pricing any longer.

http://cleantechnica.com/2012/10/04...ment-cleantechnica-exclusive-from-jigar-shah/

And another article about what we have learned from the German solar power explosion

http://cleantechnica.com/2013/02/09/germany-solar-power-lessons/



I feel the age of fossil fuels for power is coming to an end and it will end quicker than people think. It's clear where technology is going and it is moving away from fossil fuels.

 

Fossil fuels are clearly the future. The Germans are begging the Swedes to keep the coal mines open. Germany clearly doesn't have the same technological capacity of the U.S. it has to degrade from nuclear to coal and all the meanwhile can't figure out what fracking is or how to burn natural gas for power.

 

German solar power is a utter failure given the resources put into it. 38.1GW capacity but only has a capacity factor of 11.3% so that it gets beaten by nuclear, brown coal, black coal, wind and burning wood. It only accounts for 7.4% of total electricity production for the first 10 months of 2014, and electricity is only a fraction of total German energy usage anyways.

If Germany wanted meaningful CO2 reductions, it should greatly increased nuclear.

 

i used to hate wind power because i thought it was all hippie bs. but then my uncle's house in west texas got a huge wind farm and there whole house in run by the fans. that wind farm was because of ppl like t boone pickens and the texas govt which are conservative. i thought only liberals would support wind.

my aunt had to move away from the cities because of her lungs getting all choked up from pollution. she's doing better living out there. i dont believe in global warming, but i do believe in pollution. if solar and wind means less pollution im for it

 

Energy delivery is impossible in certain parts of the fourth largest and third most populous country in the world without massive continuous government investment and operation. The economic and sociopolitical risks of system interruption or abandonment are most costly than whatever concentrated economic gain from keeping minority or rural communities from being lit at night or shut off from any outside communication.

 

That's the historical pattern for improvements in civilization. Freethinkers conceive something new and different, the people who stand to lose out to the new way rail and holler against it, the facts become unavoidable and the change become common place.

You can direct change, but you can't stop things from always being in a state of change. You can be on the side of change for the Greater Good, or the other side.

 

DOOMED
______________
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I think it'll be around for at least 50 more years (I think it was 7-8 years when I wrote that last time).

It's mostly a money issue where these loser companies sitting on mountains of cash can out spend and lobby anything they want.

Other than that, the developing nations should theoretically outpace energy supply or make use of the supply with higher cost of living gains. Since they're gung ho about CoL rather than what's green or brown, the cheaper more abundant infrastructure wins while industrialized nations completely overhaul and upgrade.

Wind power had always been comparable in price wrt coal. It's just that making enough of them was the biggest bottleneck.

I'm optimistic current tech will move beyond resource limitation of rare earth and other previous minerals, but outside cheap fusion, we got ways to go and not much time left on the CO2 clock...

 

LOL, whaa?