Solar power expected to dominate electricity generation by 2050—even without more ambitious climate policies::In pursuit of the ambitious goal of reaching net-zero emissions, nations worldwide must expand their use of clean energy sources. In the case of solar energy, this change may already be upon us.
Its not directly in the article but the primary reason Solar is its a lot cheaper than electricity production from fuel, something like 1/4 - 1/10 the price depending on where in the world you are. An energy company is basically foolish to invest in oil based electricity production when Solar is so competitive and cheap and easy to maintain. Wind is a little cheaper where there is good airflow but the maintenance cost is higher especially for offshore. Both however are so much cheaper than Nuclear and especially than oil/drilling fuels that its hard to see much real investment in those older technologies.
There has been a lot of recent complaints around the UK’s granting of further drilling rights in the North sea for Oil. I think the companies taking those up haven’t yet come to terms with the fact there is a good chance those ventures drive their companies to bankruptcy because they wont be competitive as EVs and Solar/Wind take over due to cost savings.
The cost of solar and wind is becoming so attractive, it’s hard to see why anyone would do otherwise.
The elephant in the room (at least for the US; I’m not as familiar with UK policies) are the subsidies. It sparks new investments because many of the incentives are specifically related to new projects. Other ones mess with the valuation of the equipment, making long term tax burden much lower. It’s not the only energy industry to receive subsidies. But it’s pretty asinine to continue to support the one that’s destroying our world.
“In one case, it’s going to profit, amplifying the incumbent status of the oil and gas industry. In another, under more aggressive decarbonization policy and low oil and gas prices, it’s actively working against the climate goal by spurring additional production.”
UK we do a reverse subsidiary system, the most expensive method of production sets the per unit price for all methods. So we effectively apply tariffs to the consumer for renewables as they are usually our cheapest method of producing energy. Yes its as fucking stupid as it sounds, and yes it is on purpose that we have yet to address this.
It kind of makes sense at the start as it incentivized companies to invest in renewables and it was much more expensive to produce back then, but now it has become a lot cheaper for renewables it should be urgently fixed as we still have excessively high energy pricing. However we have a Prime Minster who thinks being anti green means votes so we get the opposite.
Thanks for sharing that info. Definitely sounds like it might have been a good idea in the past but now overdo for a change. Sad that the current PM wants to continue destruction to get votes.
Seems like a good example of how policies need to be implemented with a forward-thinking mentality. Can’t rely on future changes.
Both however are so much cheaper than Nuclear and especially than oil/drilling fuels that its hard to see much real investment in those older technologies.
I keep telling people that the economics of nuclear - especially new plants - just doesn’t work, but here and on Reddit it seems to be a very bitter pill that many are not ready to swallow.
The time of nuclear energy has come and gone. We missed it.
I’m not some anti-nuclear energy hippie. I took nuclear reactor design courses at uni. But you just can’t make money that way anymore.
Yup. The pro-nuclear lot have gotten stuck with talking points that were valid against Greenpeace in the 90s. I argued the same way for many years. However, I also saw how the numbers have changed over the decades. There’s a reason nobody with money to invest in the energy sector wants to bother with nuclear at all; the US government has been willing to sign off on new nuclear plants, but nobody is trying. Nor is there any reason to subsidize it when those same subsidies could go towards storage for solar and wind.
The places we maybe want to subsidze it is in non-traditional places (ships) and reusing our old nuclear waste. Not the grid as a whole, though. The opportunity cost would be terrible.
Is it though? I rather would have renewables. But if you look at the LCOE then it isn’t that bad at all
The time of nuclear energy has come and gone. We missed it.
Yes really.
Molten salt reactors are not significantly cheaper to build own or operate, on the contrary. I’m making an economic argument here.
If you put economics before the environment then sure, nuclear’s not viable, never was.
And oil’s only viable because of mass subsidies and tax exemptions.
If you put economics before the environment then sure, nuclear’s not viable, never was.
Wait what? Surely nuclear gets less viable if you factor in the cost of cleaning up after yourself.
And oil’s only viable because of mass subsidies and tax exemptions.
That, and massive externalization.
Those molten salt reactors can run on what the current reactors create as nuclear waste. They actually help with the cleanup process by breaking the radioactive waste down to a few very short lived ions that cease to be radioactive quite quickly. The other nice part about them is that you can’t make weapons with them.
I’m in favor of subsidizing nuclear reactors that can reuse waste. That’s a better idea than the current strategy of letting it sit around, or the potential future of burying it and hoping nobody digs it up again millennia from now.
There is little other reason to bother with nuclear anymore.
I’m familiar with the technology. It’s great.
It won’t get built because you can’t make money off it without running the risk of government changing its mind as soon as you’re done building the thing.
See also, theme park Kalkar.
And these numbers don’t even take into account the question of what will happen to fossil fuel companies if society / states start to make them accountable for even a tiny fraction of the environmental damage their business model has caused.
Solar as it is today exists because the Germans put a shit ton of R&D funds into it, and because the Chinese used state-funds to built an industry, and now it’s a competitive industry that will take over the energy market. People sometimes think you have to wait for the technology to develop. That’s usually not the case though, governments invest and make it happen. If you wait nothing happens.
Most of the technologies we benefit from today have been either entirely funded by some government or at least partially funded by them.
There are exceptions, but I mean… I’d argue vaccines and the internet are more important than double-sided tape and a VCR for sure.
I’m glad the article mentioned a number of potential stumbling blocks. Working in the mining sector, I do worry about the ability of metals production to keep pace with demand for all that a solar/wind/EV revolution entails. Metals are certainly the oil of this century though. Our end of the trade show floor has grown so much since I first started in the industry and the oil exploration people are just staring at their feet right now.
I think some people underestimate how much work will need to be done on grids before solar/wind can dominate? The article does mention this also, though without any specifics. Where I live, there is a lot of solar/wind development happening, but it’s more due to the fact that the grid still has some spare capacity left in it than the area being especially well-suited to renewables. In many jurisdictions, they can’t hook up any additional capacity without major work on the grid. You might think that they could still replace existing fossil fuel energy production at least, but it is not as straightforward as you may think to move from a centralized power generation model to something more distributed. This is where nuclear may still hold some advantage, since it is centralized by nature and can fit into the existing infrastructure with less drama.
One thing the article did not mention is the NIMBY backlash problem. In my area, some wind projects were outright cancelled and solar scaled back due to community activism. This drives me nuts, frankly. Where were all these people when coal plants were blackening the skies? But it is what it is. The next phase will be to add grid storage, but even there, there are signs of community blowback.
Working in the mining sector, I do worry about the ability of metals production to keep pace with demand
If mining can’t keep up, recycling will fill in the gaps. We toss a lot of metal into landfill and regularly replace electronics that could easily be repaired. I think we’ll be fine.
I think some people underestimate how much work will need to be done on grids before solar/wind can dominate?
I took a team of three electricians about four hours to install solar on my home. They were done by lunch time and did a second home in the neighbourhood the same day, and that included connecting the panels to the grid — most of the power we produce is sold to the grid. It didn’t cost much either - the four hours labour was about a third of the cost to give you some idea.
It’s a relatively small system, but even on an overcast day they produce more power than we use even under peak load situations. On a sunny day it produces more power than we use in a week.
Obviously we’re still drawing power from the grid overnight… but I was happy to learn (after seeing the metrics produced by our new solar system) that we don’t use much power overnight and could easily use less - it’s mostly just our kitchen fridge which is close to end of life anyway and we will be replacing it with a more efficient one.
Overnight grid power can easily be covered by wind/hydro. NIMBY is definitely a struggle there, but it can be managed. And nuclear is even worse - nobody wants to live near a nuclear power plant. Nobody even wants to live near a road that is occasionally used to transport radioactive materials.
But the real deathblow for nuclear power is it takes an average 7.5 years to build a nuclear power plant. That doesn’t compare favourably at all to 4 hours for an adequately sized solar system and anyone building a nuclear power plant runs the risk that by the time they start operations, they might find nobody wants to buy the power they’re producing. In seven years time there’s a pretty good chance I will have added a battery to my solar system and we’ll only be drawing power from the grid if there’s something wrong with our own power system. There’s no way I’d get behind investing billions of dollars in a nuclear power plant - there’s just too much risk.
A huge portion of our overnight power consumption right now is big industry consumers that operate at night because baseload power is really cheap at night. That demand won’t last - as more and more solar is installed those operations are transitioning to daytime operations. It’s already started, aluminium for example is now about a hundred dollars per ton cheaper to produce with solar than with fossil fuels. Which means the entire industry needs to switch over, and fast, or else they won’t be able to find anyone who will buy what they’re producing.
Look into a Tesla powerwall. Not only does it give you a battery for overnight usage, but I don’t even know when there’s a blackout anymore, cause the power wall automatically takes us off the grid when the grid is down. If you’re connected directly to the grid, your panels have to shut off when there is a blackout so they don’t fry the techs working on the needed repairs.
There’s no way I’d get behind investing billions of dollars in a nuclear power plant - there’s just too much risk.
So you prefer coal? Gas? Hydro isn’t that ecofriendly either. Solar and wind are cute but unstable, you need a stable source to keep the grid going - and/or batteries, which aren’t that green either.
Perhaps if all the oil subsidies went to nuclear instead, a lot of way safer reactors would leave the drawing board. Nuclear didn’t stop evolving at Chernobyl you know.
Nuclear does not help. It has nothing to do with safety issues (perceived or otherwise), and everything to do with economics. It has not solved its cost issues, and probably won’t.
Solar and wind want to be mixed with some other tech that can ramp up when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing. Nuclear wants to stay at a steady pace all day long. They don’t work together. What will happen is to increase the times when solar and wind are overproducing and have to be shut off, thereby cutting into their economic advantages.
Fortunately, we don’t have to go all out with solar and wind. Getting to 95% solar and wind with a modest amount of storage capacity is fully achievable in less than a decade. Gas/coal plants would be turned on for a tiny fraction of the year. Getting that last 5% will take longer, but just getting that far will be a huge change.
There is no reasonable plan that gets us nuclear in less than a decade. SMRs are not going to be in full production before then. Traditional nuclear plants have taken at least 10 years to build after serious budget and schedule overruns. If you had all the permits signed and ready to go today, you would not be able to do it.
Now, I do hope we start putting SMRs in some less traditional places, like ships.
Now, I do hope we start putting SMRs in some less traditional places, like ships.
Interesting…
This makes me wonder if we’ll see a return to homes having DC for power instead of AC just to skip transforming DC to AC for homes that go totally off grid.
With high efficiency DCDC converters now cheap and good, we totally could do it.
So the issue is that nothing wants the same DC level. You have one device that wants 12V, another that wants 48V, and another that wants 5V. You end up with layers of conversions that each take an efficiency hit. Better to have one AC line and convert at point of use like we do now.
I can see in the future a standard for DC power with a completely different power socket that saves up the round trip of DC to AC then back into DC for all our electronics. There are fairly substantial benefits to be had but as I think it through the usable DC is 3 to 12V and appreciable load will mean those cables will push a lot of amps. Not sure the economics will work out without it being high voltage and that fits nothing DC today. If it’s high voltage then everything needs a converter again.
Setting a DC standard today will be a world wide nightmare, we need it but it’s got to be dumb for longevities sake. It’s far off I think.
PoE is 48V. That’s high enough to avoid too many losses over wiring distance, but also low enough that it doesn’t have to be installed by a licensed electrician.
POE also is point to point, and currently tops out at 30W per link. You could split it off in a socket - but that reduces the available power per device even more.
Or we could use the current AC cabling where we use a single wire over multiple sockets and get a combined 3600W over a standard 16A fuse over 1.5mm2 wire - which with ground and neutral is about the same thickness as a shielded ethernet cable.
PoE type 4 can go to 90W, and this is plenty to power modern lights and charge smartphones and laptops. It has the side effect that smart devices no longer need wifi/zigbee/bluetooth/whatever; they get power and network from one cable.
12/3 romex costs about $200 for 100ft, or the same length of 14/3 for $80. 250ft of solid copper (not copper clad aluminum) cat6a costs around $200. You don’t need a licensed electrician for 48V wiring. You may not even need to pull a permit on a retrofit. Very few individual things need more than 90W. We can cut the amount of romex going around way down in exchange for a lot more wired networking ports that have other side benefits than just power.
I’ve pulled a setup like this in my own house. Fishing a bundle of six cat6 cables through a hole isn’t much more difficult than a single romex cable.
USB is the new defacto standard DC outlet. It’s only suitable for fairly low power (240W) though. That’s enough to charge your laptop but not enough to run a gaming PC.
USB-C power delivery can charge laptops. If there’s going to be a DC outlet, though, it should be PoE.
Not for the reason you’re thinking. DCDC conversion has gotten more efficient, but the problem is that nothing wants a specific voltage. Your LED strip might want 12 or 24 or 48V. Your phone wants 5V. Your single board computer might want 3.3V. Meanwhile, what’s flying out of your solar panel array might be over 300V (depending on how they’re wired together). You end up with layers of conversions that each take an efficiency hit. Add it all up, and it’s better to convert the solar output to AC and then convert once to DC at the point of use. Which is exactly what we’re doing.
Plus, items with larger draw, like a clothes dryer or electric stove, are going to want AC, anyway.
However, there’s another thing that might make DC lines viable in houses. Power over Ethernet equipment has gotten relatively cheap. The base power levels are easily enough to run lights or charge a phone, and the more powerful versions can handle a laptop. What makes it especially interesting is that you don’t need a licensed electrician to run it. You can’t be a complete imbecile installing it, but don’t need a license, either. That could dramatically reduce install costs in new homes. You need a proper electrician to install the breaker box and run a few high draw lines, but skip the rest.
As a bonus, any smart controlled devices no longer need wifi or zigbee or bluetooth or anything. They’re already connected to the network by being plugged in.
PoE has been mostly an enterprise thing, but mass production for residential use should further bring prices down.
What about all the appliances expecting AC input?
There would still be a need to convert DC to AC, both for that reason and for export to the grid, but the first thing a lot of appliances do is internally convert to DC anywhere. If it became the norm for homes to have a distributed DC supply, there could well be a cottage industry in replacing the PSU component springs up.
There was a time early in the electrification of America with Edison, he pushed for DC over AC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_currents
The last DC utility turned off in 2007. http://www.jaygarmon.net/2010/11/in-what-year-did-last-of-new-yorks-dc.html
As far as answering your question, you can run a transformer, but new construction and new appliances will likely be built with DC service in mind.
Most things with a motor would prefer AC. Alternatively, they use DC, but it’s a brushless motor with more complicated electronics and are more expensive for it. This would apply to anything with a heat pump, which includes air conditioning and hybrid water heaters.
Things that run electric resistive heating is fine with either AC or DC, but it has to be higher voltage. The benefits of DC disappear because nothing wants to run at the same voltage.
Imagine trying to explain to some being from another universe that humanity is literally covered for the entire half of each day with around 1000 Watts per meter squared of energy - for free, with no resource to be consumed, that is already the source of energy for all biological processes, that can be used without waste products…
And yet we chose to spend a century digging for a crude mixture of toxic oils, requiring a lot of time and money to separate and refine, to then create waste products that fuck up our lungs and excess CO2 that is driving a mass extinction event due to global warming.
Solar is pretty neat. Why aren’t all new housing developments done with the roofs optimally positioned for solar panel use?
We could have big south facing (or north facing for those down under) sections instead of a traditional gable roof.
Putting panels on houses is the least cost effective way to do solar. Every house only has so much space on the roof, you have to work around vents and other obstructions, and the inverters will be smaller (meaning less efficient than one big one). It’s a custom project for every single house.
Conversely, if you buy a field, you can make racks that slap on every panel the same, there are fewer obstructions to work around, and you can buy one big inverter to cover the whole thing. This is where solar gets cheap. Really cheap.
I know everyone wants to stick it to power companies and have energy independence. If you want that, look for community solar projects where everyone pitches in a little to get a larger deployment. If your state or locality is blocking those projects, then start going to campaign events and asking them about. Hold them to it with votes and campaign contributions.
Maybe I could look it up, but you seem to know about it already, so how does energy from the local projects get distributed and billed? Does it feed into the grid? If so, how do the people who funded it get billed? Or does it have a separate distribution network for the community so only nearby houses have access? Or something else?
I paid into one that was about $500 upfront, and then I’m locked into $0.13/kwh for the next 25 years for a portion of my bill. Still tied to the regular utility grid. But every setup is going to be a bit different.
So for example, your first 500 kW hr are $0.13 each, then after that you pay market rates?
Something like that, yes. Since solar makes more in the summer than the winter, the exact amount is laid out in a table for each month.
Money. Why spend x extra dollars when you don’t have to?
I think California has a new law that mandates this, but until their is loud and constant consumer demand home builders are going to continue doing the bare minimum.
This was to be expected- if you amortize over the lifetime of the equipment, it’s much cheaper to get your electricity from panels than it is to pay someone to burn fuel and give you electricity. This has been true for years and the biggest obstacle for most people doing it has been available financing to do it. It’s better now but in 2013 when I did my system the financing options were terrible compared to, say, purchasing a car. (I also got a car that year and it turns out that auto sellers have in-house banks to facilitate financing, solar rooftop sellers not so much)
Doesn’t really matter for the environment if power demand also keeps growing at a similar pace…
What do you mean? We totally don’t have datacenters running AI models looking at purchasing small modular nuclear reactors just to run them.
Hopefully my decision to drop 40k on solar panels for my house pays off then. 🫠
How much power are you generating?!? Thats crazy expensive! My 6kW system was 12k AUD removing the aubsidies.
10kw in Minnesota, apparently one of the most expensive states in the US to get solar. I do get 13,000 back in tax credits.
Wow, that is insane. Even more so when you take the currency differences into account. I get why your raging inside.
How can it not? If you have a $40k system, you will make enough electricity to avoid paying for electricity at all. You will probably even get a small check from the power company every month. Add up the check and the old utility bill and I bet it beats bank interest on 40k by a mile. Not to mention you are probably eligible for some tax incentives.
I like your optimism! I do get $13,000 back in tax credit. My math says that I should get my money back in 10 to 12 years.
