[Neywiny]

I think you've missed that all generators have upfront cost. That's why the monetary payoff time for installing solar is non-zero. Versus a backup generator you're paying 2-3x the cost upfront. And yes we know the running cost is almost 0, the maintenance is almost nothing, etc etc, but I could see that argument not holding as much water as we need it to.

[ted_dunning]

The adoption rate in places like Australia and even Texas is what demonstrates that the argument holds water.

People wouldn't be rushing to shift entire markets at the observed rates if the economics were upside down. It is the soundness of the economic model that is driving the adoption even against tariffs and subversion by the current US regime.

[eldaisfish]

How do you explain the fact that the average residential electricity price is higher in Australia than in most of the US?

This is not as simple as people here make it out to be.

Consider also that solar is profitable today because it does not set the price of electricity in most markets. In a world where solar dominates, the prices of electricity could be negative. The economics of negative electricity prices becoming the norm are not yet fully understood.

[tencentshill]

They paid to decommission fossils early, and amortized it over the future. So it's going to drop like a rock once those debts are paid and the last plants shut down, with fewer remaining customers and lighter load on the grid. But until then, consumers will be paying higher bills.

Similar to the UK - See item 18. https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/141240/html...

[eldaisfish]

That is not what your link says?

[teamonkey]

Perhaps they did not mean point 18, but I found it interesting anyway.

The existing gas infrastructure represents a large amount of taxpayer investment, not due to be paid off until 2070. But it’s estimated that there won’t be any users of that infrastructure beyond 2050.

[BobaFloutist]

> How do you explain the fact that the average residential electricity price is higher in Australia than in most of the US?

Transmission costs.

[Retric]

Loans transfer upfront costs into operating costs, thus making upfront costs largely meaningless for anyone with access to cheap credit.

[crote]

Solar also has incredibly low upfront costs: 400W panels are available for less than $100 / each these days.

[runtime_terror]

Are you talking backup generator vs solar for a home?

If so, solar continually supplies power without paying for an input vs a backup generator which is only meant to run infrequently and is costly to run and requires you to pay for inputs and of course maintenance of an ICE.

It's kinda an apples/oranges comparison

[foxyv]

> I think you've missed that all generators have upfront cost.

Why do you say this?

[Neywiny]

Because you said it's the cheapest by far but didn't say "after X years". Did I miss where you acknowledged there's a crossover point in cost?

[foxyv]

Typically power is priced by Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE) where you amortize the total cost of ownership across the total power generated to get a per kwh cost which is what most grid operators care about. After all, large scale investors and governments don't care if a plant costs a billion dollars if it produces 20 billion in electricity.

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

What you are talking about is the Payback Period (PP) or Return on Investment (ROI) which is more important to homeowners adding a solar plant to their homes.

Both of these types of measure take into account both capital and operating expenses.

[eldaisfish]

LCOE is a terrible metric for the power grid because it does not capture the cost of balancing the power grid.

Excess renewable power is great but it creates a problem and the cost of that problem is not borne by the generators that created the problem.

What LCOE captures in this context is that solar panels are cheap and that the fuel cost is zero.

The average price of electricity is greatly affected by this, which is why electricity is Europe is generally more expensive than in North America.

Edit - the response below is also incomplete. The trouble with modelling the cost of balancing the power grid is that it depends on many variables, many of which are difficult to forecast. The primary challenge with depending on the weather for power generation is that the climate is changing. What that change looks like in 20 years is impossible to forecast. A great example is from the winter o 2023, during the "dunkelflaute" in europe. Both wind and solar power generation were low for three days.

The estimates for solar plus battery storage typically only account for eight or twelve hours of storage.

[foxyv]

That is not entirely correct. Typically you will see LCOE for Solar grouped with the LCOE of Solar and energy storage.

EG: > Solar photovoltaic $1,327 $1,333–2,743 $31–146 12–30% > Solar PV with storage $1,748 $2,044 $53–81 20–31%

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#...

[vince14]

> and energy storage

What do you think this means? It doesn't mean what you think it means.

Quoting LCOE and ignoring system costs disqualifies you for any discussion on this topic, sorry.