[543g43g43]

You miss my point. The reason solar is so cheap right now (along with the huge amount of government subsidies) is that the huge amount of energy required to manufacture them is currently done with very cheap coal in China.

>Cost of current production is an upper bound.

Under the current state of the energy economy, maybe. If we had to replace all manufacturing power sources with renewables - absolutely not.

[moloch-hai]

Power from renewables costs less than from coal.

[543g43g43]

Maybe - with government grants, and coal-powered manufacture of all of the associated generation equipment.

That's not very interesting though - what is interesting, which has been my topic of conversation this entire time, is what the energy economy would look like if it were not still fundamentally rooted in fossil fuels.

Given that coal and other fossil fuels are basically free energy - it does not take much at all to get energy from it (ie, set it on fire), it is not physically possible for PV generation to beat that. Therefore, it follows that renewable power will be more expensive than fossil fuel power. I don't see why this is so hard to acknowledge - we are living in a time of unreasonably cheap power, fuelled by several million years worth of stored solar energy. It can't last.

[moloch-hai]

You make the same mistake fission boosters make. Converting heat to electricity is expensive. Solar and wind skip the expensive step, going straight to electricity. Electric power from solar and wind is already much cheaper than coal, without subsidy, for this reason, and because coal has to be dug up and transported. Coal has a high operating cost. Solar and wind have extremely low operating cost, and also very low capital cost, always falling.

Solar and wind, un-subsidized, are the cheapest power the world has ever seen, and their cost is still falling at exponential rate.

[543g43g43]

>Converting heat to electricity is expensive.

And? Most of our power usage is not supplied through electricity. Solar panels are never going to heat my house.

[Schroedingersat]

Why not? Plenty of places have enough sunlight to do so even in winter. Parts of Alberta have similar sunlight mid winter to PNG mid summer.

Plus storage is a thing. Using a heat pump to dry NaOH or melt Sodium Acetate, or heat a large pond can store low grade heat economically for months. Ammonia, or methanol can do so indefinitely.

Then there's transmission. HVDC can transport energy 10GW pernline for thousands of km at costs comparable to local generation.

I'd be very surprised if you could avoid using a solar panel to heat your home in 40 years even if you go out of your way to do so.

[543g43g43]

We're talking about the cost of power. Putting aside the unbelievable idea that Alberta has as much mid-winter solar energy available as at the equator, using solar to heat my house is more expensive than burning some stuff inside.