[temp9864]

If you put enough solar into an electricity grid you will eventually have coal generators shutting down because the variable pricing will drive them out of business. Watch the wholesale price dashboard for Australia for a while and compare it to local weather if you don't believe me [1]. The other effect will be that 24 hour power becomes prodigiously expensive or not available, which is why the Australian government is funding coal generators to the tune of 1.1 billion this year [2]. Even they are not stupid enough to think an industrialised society can manage without it.

[1] https://aemo.com.au/Energy-systems/Electricity/National-Elec...

[2] https://australiainstitute.org.au/report/fossil-fuel-subsidi...

[toomuchtodo]

As the cost of renewables get close to zero (but never reaching that), the predominant cost will be batteries and transmission. How quickly this occurs is a function of battery cost decline curve and manufacturing capacity ramp.

Coal is already dead based on current trajectories, the body just hasn’t hit the floor yet.

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2023/11/22/former-coal-plant-big...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-07/end-of-co...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-26/how-austr...

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/dec/20/agl-b...

https://www.energy-storage.news/australias-national-cefc-inv...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ianpalmer/2023/07/18/the-us-is-...

[overstay8930]

So why is electricity so expensive in places with lots of renewables? A few of these countries have absolutely absurd pricing of electricity per kwh especially compared to places that just burn coal and natural gas, but your sources say it should be significantly cheaper. Even in the US the only cheap electricity we can get is hydroelectric, but even that is not pushed very much due to ecological concerns.

[tristor]

At least in the US, the difference in cost is mostly taxation and fees, along with profit margins due to utility monopolies and price inelasticity. The reason California has more expensive electricity than Texas is almost entirely tied to the monopoly held by PG&E and high taxes and fees.

[toomuchtodo]

Can you provide some specific examples? I can then provide context per zone/grid.

[toomuchtodo]

Spain: https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Spain-Enj... ("Spain Enjoys Cheap Electricity Amid Record Renewable Energy Output")

> Spanish power prices have tumbled in February to a fraction of the price in neighboring France as record wind and solar power generation in Spain has triggered an extreme slump in prices.

> Day-ahead electricity prices for Thursday settled at just $5.20 (4.80 euros) per megawatt-hour (MWh) in Spain, compared to as much as $68.86 (63.59 euros) per MWh for France, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. France relies mostly on its vast domestic nuclear power generation for most of its electricity needs and is typically a net exporter of electricity to neighboring countries.

> But as Spain’s wind and solar power generation hit new records early this year, Spain has been exporting electricity since February 21, according to grid data cited by Bloomberg. Spain is currently selling electricity even to France.

> Solar and wind power generation in Spain is expected to have hit a record high this month and high output is set to continue into March, per Bloomberg models.

> Cheap power prices have hurt the profits of Spanish utilities but they have been a boon to consumers as retail prices have reflected lower wholesale electricity prices.

https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/ES?wind=false&solar=fal... ("Electricity Maps: Spain")

[bryanlarsen]

In a free market, assuming constant demand, the price is the same as the highest production cost necessary to meet demand. In other words, if 90% of demand can be met by cheap renewables, 10% by expensive natgas and 10% by even more expensive coal, then the price is expensive. The consumer doesn't see the benefit of cheap renewables until they can meet the entire demand.

Obviously electricity isn't anywhere close to a free market, but it sometimes pretends to be one.

Also transmission costs are significantly larger than production costs in most markets.

[ZeroGravitas]

Most places sensible enough to deploy lots of renewables also tax electricity to encourage efficiency since historically it involved burning nasty polluting coal and/or importing fuels.

[martinald]

Coal is not really very suitable for replacing renewables, natgas is much better suited.

The UK is building/planning a lot of natgas peaker plants at the moment, seemingly without anyone realising. One I read about is limited (for emissions reasons) to 240hours/10 days operation per year, which suggests that the price of power when renewables aren't going is going to be extremely high to make it profitable to build a plant that only runs 3% of the time.

[raphaelj]

> is going to be extremely high to make it profitable to build a plant that only runs 3% of the time.

It's probably fine, as the cost of renewable electricity is now lower than the fuel cost (aka the variable cost) of these plants.

In a lot of places, it's now cheaper to run a gas plant with renewables than without, as the build costs of the renewables is lower than the cost of the fuel they prevent to get burned.

[input_sh]

Or... hear me out... nuclear.

Like France, often cited as the the world leader, with around 70% of its generated electricity coming from nuclear. Or Belgium, with around 50%, or Bulgaria around 30%, or Czechia around 40%, Finland around 35%, Hungary around 50%, Slovakia around 60%, Slovenia around 40%, Sweden around 30%, Switzerland around 35%...

Compared to Australia's one nuclear power, which isn't even being used to generate power, or the US' 18%, or UK's 14%, or Canada's 13%.

[sien]

Yep.

If you look at : https://app.electricitymaps.com/map

and look for 1 year as the time period then the places with low emissions from electricity either have lots of hydro, import power or are nuclear powered.

As yet there does not yet appear to be a single place in the world that uses solar and wind and has low emissions for electricity.

Germany's emissions given the Energiewende and the huge cost of that are particularly noteworthy.

[toomuchtodo]

https://reneweconomy.com.au/south-australia-fast-tracks-100-... ("South Australia fast-tracks 100 pct renewables target to 2027")

https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/AU-SA?wind=false&solar=... ("Electricity Maps: South Australia")

https://opennem.org.au/energy/sa1/?range=all&interval=1M&vie... ("OpenNEM: South Australia")

https://reneweconomy.com.au/south-australia-to-reach-100-pct... ("South Australia, the state with a world-leading average share of renewable energy of more than 71.5 per cent in its grid, is expected to reach “net” 100 per cent renewables within four years, according to the state’s transmission company.")

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_South_Australia

I am somewhat disappointed you aren't aware, as an Australian.

[thatfrenchguy]

Average emissions there are 5x the average emissions of France.

[toomuchtodo]

And in four years, they’ll be close to zero. How long will it take France to replace all of its end of life reactors? Decades. France is coasting on fifty year old capital investments and labor.

> The first and only EPR under construction in France is Flamanville-3, a project led by EDF as developer, constructor, owner and operator. This project is an industrial failure with endless delays and substantial cost overruns observed. When the construction of this reactor started in 2007, its commissioning was scheduled for 2012 at a cost of around €4 billion. In 2022, Flamanville-3 is still not operational and it will not be before 2023 – at least an 11-year delay on a five-year project. Its cost has spiraled to more than €20 billion, a multiplication by a factor five compared to the cost estimate when decision was taken. As a result, the generation cost of Flamanville-3 is now estimated at €115-125/MWh. Explanations provided blame for unpreparedness, incorrect technical references and insufficient detailed studies as well as the loss of competences in the French nuclear industry. The absence of skills maintenance, or “learning by doing”, has proven particularly problematic for the quality of welds – requiring repairs, notably.

https://www.renewable-ei.org/en/activities/column/REupdate/2...

[kragen]

conventional fixed nuclear is even less dispatchable than coal; you need totally different plant designs to make it dispatchable. those designs do exist (all naval reactors are highly dispatchable) but they diverged from commercial nuclear power over half a century ago

[temp9864]

It would be interesting to know the potential cost difference between dispatchable and fixed output nuclear is more dispatchable, at least in theory.

[rstuart4133]

The OP's point about renewables fast fluctuations driving coal broke applies twice as much to nuclear. The problem coal has is it takes a few hours to ramp down, and during that time the electricity price is often negative. With nuclear, it isn't 1 or 2 hours, it takes 1/2 a day to ramp down. Worse, while a major cost of running coal generation (digging up the coal) does eventually ramp down, with nuclear the major cost is interest payments. They never stop, so they are paying interest while getting a negative price for the power they are generating (at the most expensive price per kWh of all generation methods).

It's all over bar the shouting for nuclear at this point. But granted, the shouting level seems to be going up not down. You would think NuScale going broke would damper the enthusiasm but no, Dutton's response to that seems to be to shout louder.

As for the OP claim Australia needs coal - South Australia has no coal. It's one of the few places in Australia that isn't build on coal seams. Consequently South Australia is now at 70% renewables, higher than any other OECD place on the planet with a substantial population (including other Australia states). That's 70% average over a year, not peak. Without coal. So much for "needing it".

[pstrateman]

Canada would likely be more than 13% except there was an abundance of easy hydro electric projects.

As the population of Canada grows past the point that the hydro projects provide nearly all electricity, I expect them to start burning more and more natural gas.

Initially this will show as New York state using more natural gas since Canada produces a huge amount of the total power there.

[esarbe]

France is having massive problems operating their reactors and had to shut them down in summer the last few years.

It's also most expensive.

[eqvinox]

> had to shut them down in summer the last few years

Yep. It's sad-funny — they had to shut down reactors because the cooling water was getting too hot. To be fair this seems to be environmental regulations and not the reactors themselves, but then again the water is from rivers and at some point you really grill the river.

https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Heatwave-forces-...

[KptMarchewa]

There's no cheaper stable source of electricity then existing nuclear power plant.

[eqvinox]

https://www.statista.com/statistics/493797/estimated-leveliz...

The only thing more expensive than nuclear — in these stats at least — is small-scale solar installations.

Btw, this widespread (but wrong) belief that nuclear is cheap stems from the fact that a lot of countries heavily subsidized their nuclear industry in order to gain know-how and/or materials for atomic weapon production. It's not even cost-covering at current energy prices without those subsidies.

[KptMarchewa]

The _existing_ is the important part.

[esarbe]

Unfortunately, you cannot build an existing plant. You have to build a new one.

[ViewTrick1002]

Just need half a century of first construction and then amortizing the loans to get an existing paid off nuclear plant.

[esarbe]

Everything is cheaper than nuclear, at this point.

[h0l0cube]

Home battery systems are getting absurdly cheap. Grid scale will follow, but before then it would be cheaper to incentivize rooftop solar and home battery installations in places where there’s plenty of sunlight (e.g., most of Australia)

[itsoktocry]

What's absurdly cheap? What sort of payback period does rooftop solar and storage have?

Last time I ventured into the Tesla subreddit, people were talking about 20 years. That's terrible.

[kragen]

you may be interested to know that the price of solar panels has dropped by half in the last year and a factor of 24 over the last 15; see my summary at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39544358

[h0l0cube]

On top of that LFP battery cells are about half the cost they were when I purchased in August

[wredue]

Holy shite. I had been putting this off cause 45k (when I initially looked) was a pretty tough pill to swallow. We’re down to 15k installed around here (which I suspect is pretty close to the floor, everything else will be profits for installation as years go on).

15k is much more reasonable.

[kragen]

it's close to the floor because the installers are structured for the economic structure they had when it was 45k. you'll see new approaches that make different tradeoffs to reflect the new, lower panel prices

for example, inverters: if your solar installation costs 2 dollars a watt all told, it makes sense to spend an extra hundred bucks on a more efficient inverter if it squeezes 300 more watts out of the panels, but not if the solar installation costs 20 cents a watt. (and maybe you can run some 24-volt dc wiring instead of stepping it up to 120—or put together a constant-current system instead of a constant-voltage one, so the voltage drop in the wires doesn't have to stay within a narrow tolerance.)

or packaging: the glass now costs significantly more than the cells do, and the frames are expensive too—could you make do by gluing the cells to thin polycarbonate, like a compact disc, instead of to glass? even if it cut into longevity

and maybe you can do a rooftop installation of a lightweight installation with a long pole with a hook on the end, or something, instead of having a guy climb up on the roof with a ladder—potentially falling off and dying, which is both a human tragedy and an insurance cost

or hang the cells vertically under the eaves on the east or west side of the house, like wind chimes: no midday sun, and a significantly diminished capacity factor when you do get sun, but also no holes drilled in the roof, no rigid frames, no rain, and no hailstones

[KptMarchewa]

Start using capital letters.

[kragen]

good to see you've got your priorities in order

[quitit]

Standard solar installs for households are designed to pay themselves off in 5 years. After that point they represent a net saving to the home owner.

Source, Australian government via: https://www.energy.gov.au/solar/switch-solar-power/solar-hou...

[aitchnyu]

My 5KW system in India will pay back way faster than 33 months (initial calculation).

[kragen]

wow, that's a 29% annual return on investment. that's unbelievably huge! not in the literal sense, i mean, i believe you, it's just astounding. are you comfortable sharing your calculation?

[more_corn]

Powerwall is expensive.

[raxxorraxor]

I think home batteries are still absurdly expensive for their capacity. The most efficient storage would be for you to buy an electric vehicle and use its battery.

[more_corn]

Solar plus battery solves this problem.

[kgabis]

Yea, good luck with that in places that barely get any sun during winter.

[seoulmetro]

Australia is not a great example as no matter how cheap wholesale prices are, the consumer still gets destroyed by high electricity prices. It's a scam like most things in Australia.

[more_corn]

All the more reason to deploy rooftop solar and a battery. Predatory energy company? Cut them out.

[seoulmetro]

Actually they are cutting you out. Some solar and all battery installations require a backdoor that allows the government to switch your network off at any time.

I'm sure they'll never use it for wrongdoings... but also they probably will.

It's a way to leverage the loads in certain areas but it's dreadful.

But yep. Solar is great for Australian homes. I still think it's weird that we had to solve electricity at the home level though..

[nerdbert]

... in a world where utility-scale battery technology doesn't continue to evolve along its current trajectory because of, um, reasons.

[quitit]

The parent comment you're replying to draws the wrong conclusions from the data. Australia already obtains the majority of its power from coal, altogether fossil fuels represent 91% of Australia's consumed energy, with coal as the majority [2021-22 period, ref 1]. The subsidies provided by the state and federal government represent a -decrease- of 5% year on year. The parent comment seemingly skimmed over that point in their reference materials - they also misread the figure it's 11.1Bn, not 1.1Bn

The subsidies for coal generation are necessary and not a reflection of Australia having a growing need for greater coal production (it does not, consumption is trending lower year on year)[1], despite the lower coal-power generation over the 21-22 period[2], energy output has risen by 1% (primarily to service exports).[2]

Currently Australia is no where near the point of having that wonderful luxury problem of solar/renewable inputs tipping the balance to shut down coal production. Stating as such is merely regurgitating coal-industry propaganda. Rather, Australia is adequately planning for such a transition by significantly investing in battery technology. In the meantime current battery technology already allows Australia to burn less coal while simultaneously resolving coal's supply issues.

The reason why you don't see noteworthy subsidies against battery technology is two fold: they are a fraction of the cost and they pay themselves off relatively quickly. Coal doesn't feature either of these benefits, and must be propped up by tax payers. Due to the small cost, Australian states are implementing large battery schemes without federal subsidies, then growing these when they generate a profit.

To use an example: The South Australian "Big Battery" cost $200M, in a single year alone (2019) it saved consumers $116 million.

[1] https://www.energy.gov.au/energy-data/australian-energy-stat...

[2] https://www.energy.gov.au/energy-data/australian-energy-stat...

[munk-a]

Alternative style batteries also exist (technically they're batteries too but not the kind you'd imagine). Smith Mountain Lake in Virginia has an attached hydroelectric plant and they'll pump water into the lake during off peak hours and run the turbines at peak demand.

[jopsen]

Or wind turbines...

Ofcourse transmission lines might be a bottleneck.

[ClumsyPilot]

> Ofcourse transmission lines might be a bottleneck.

In UK many windfarms wait for years to be connected to the grid as locals protest power pylons 'blighting the landscape'.

[throwaway5959]

Let me guess, the protestors are almost all 60+ NIMBYs with nothing better to do?