The fact that writers are actually having to drill down and do the math and see if Solar Power is less expensive in areas where power is cheap and available is mind blowing to me.
I find it fascinating, that, by 2017, there will be areas in Hawaii and Australia, in which you can make an argument that Solar Power is now less expensive that grid power.
What these authors seem to fail to recognize (or highlight) in their criticism - is that these lines are being crossed 10-15 years ahead of time. Nobody expected parity on these edge cases until at least 2025-2030, and we're going to see it in 2016.
And, what they also seem to fail to recognize, is that the curves for solar are going down. This is just the start.
"Deutsche Bank actually predicts that all 50 US states will be at grid parity by 2016 — that’s next year. (Note that it takes several years to build coal, natural gas, or nuclear power plants.)
Deutsche Bank also predicts that ~80% of the global electricity market will be at grid parity by 2017. This is why solar power is scaring coal companies, natural gas companies, and utilities so much, and why you see so many anti-solar myths out there being repeated over and over again… despite being several years out of date."
There isn't any reason for the author to bring up those points because they are irrelevant.
This article is about whether it makes sense to buy a tesla battery right now. It doesn't matter if solar will be half the cost in five years. If that's the case, just buy it then when the numbers make sense.
Let's say someone wrote an article reviewing a new apartment complex opening in the Tenderloin of SF. If they said that the crime there is terrible so people should look elsewhere, would you be complaining if they didn't provide in-depth projects of potential future crime rates in the same area?
It makes perfect sense to bring it up because the massive disruption this will cause to the global energy economy. Oil, coal, the structure of these are going to be altered massively. Think today how gas is used to blackmail the Ukraine and prop up autocratic political systems. There are very significant implications to all of this.
By the time it becomes 'relevant' it will be ancient news to those who appreciate what's going on here.
The interesting question for solar power is not "When will stand-alone solar power be cheaper than coal/gas?". It is "How high can we push the fraction of solar power / total power before the power distribution grid fails?". You need base power generation to augment solar/wind, there's not a serious scientist in the world denying that, and the numbers I've heard quoted say you can't average much more than 50-60% solar and wind combined.
Right now, Germany is charging ahead on solar. Their current peak record is 50.4% of total power from solar, on a sunny midsummer day with low power usage. Meanwhile, all of their neigbouring countries to the east are doing massive overhauls/reconfigurations of their power distribution grids just to be able to supply Germany with enough base power, mainly from nuclear.
The "We can't do everything with solar" was what everyone was saying (correctly) in 2005-2010. But, the entire point of the Powerwall product is that, today (not next year, today), in parts of Australia and Hawaii, it is now less expensive, and more efficient, to go 100% solar. As the prices of batteries drop, and solar becomes more efficient, the number of places where that is true will only increase.
From the perspective of watching trends back in 2005, this wasn't supposed to happen until 2025, so it's arriving 10 years early.
There's nothing that would prevent a good storage system + wind + power from supplying 100% of the power requirements reliably. You just need to scale your Storage system to handle the periods in which solar/wind aren't driving power.
Regarding the Germany Scenario - Let's see how much nuclear they are going to require after they add a few Terrawatt-Hours worth of battery storage to their grid.
Finally, commenting on your "so Serious Scientists" - there are a lot of them that have done the calculations and have come to the conclusion that only a solar solution will supply the world with the power it requires so that everyone can have an first-world lifestlye. In particular, check out Nate Lewis's introduction to Solar Energy - https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodca... ,He "provides a beginner's overview of the concepts behind solar energy generation as well as the current state of the art and its potential role in future energy production."
It's eye opening - even nuclear power plants don't stand a chance versus solar (which, to be honest, is just harvesting the output of a really, really, really big fusion generator)
The missing component has always been storage, and Elon has jumpstarted that conversation. The powerall is interesting, the gigafactory is more interesting, but the fact that he realizes Tesla is only going to be a tiny, tiny element of a much larger industrial transition, is, in my mind, the most important part of this story.
Sorry, that's just missing the mark. In northern latitudes, where most of the world's energy consumption is currently located, the seasonal variation in solar influx means a 100% solar solution needs to do energy storage for months at a time. Continuing with the Germany example, the monthly-average production of solar power in January is ~ 1/15th the production in July.
And I don't believe we will ever be able to get the whole world up to current western consumption levels. More to the point, we really shouldn't, as current consumption levels in the west are clearly unsustainable.
"There's nothing that would prevent a good storage system + wind + power from supplying 100% of the power requirements reliably. You just need to scale your Storage system to handle the periods in which solar/wind aren't driving power."
Nothing, except for costs. Those are going down and are becoming competitive for many parts of the world, but costs will be prohibitive for some climates for quite a while. For example, if you have lots of snow and strong winds in winter, you may need to have _weeks_ of power storage to get reliable power.
Keeping a grid connection for those cases will help, but if lots of people do this, the price of power in those peak periods may surge a lot as your electricity supplier will have to recoup the costs of keeping its plant on standby year round in a few weeks.
That seems fixable by connecting solar/wind systems over large distances, but we have to work on getting a grid that is fed by thousands of suppliers and in which the direction power flows can vary more.
But yes, I think solar and wind are the future and even the near future, even in the less sunny parts of the world.
If everyone took that attitude, Solar would have never have advanced. It's a combination of first-adopters, and strong government support that's gotten us where we are today. I'm not opposed to a writer talking about the practical facts today - I encourage it. But, unless you are a paid advocate of the Koch brothers, you are somewhat obliged to balance out such an article with some context in how far we've gone and are likely to go.
Taking your example - Oakland near Lake Merrit in 17th has some significant crime, but any writer worth their salt taking about it, would compare it to when I lived there, back in 1996-1998, to discuss how far it has come in the last 20 years, and what the general trend is.
If there was massive investment in police and other anti crime initiatives, now would be the right time to buy, by not providing analysis the might be trying to hide those facts for the benefits of others.
Solar skeptics are fascinating. They've been saying the same thing since solar was $1/KWh and they'll keep saying it until solar is $0.05/KWh. However, that won't stop solar adoption from growing, maybe it will just slow it down slightly. The more solar panels (and now batteries) drop in price, the quieter those voices will become. I think in 10 years they'll all just about shut up.
Have a look at Dave Jones' EEVblog video about his solar install, it include numbers from a year on his roof. He exported around $185 worth of power at 6c/kWh. The price of buying from the grid is 25.5c/kWh. In principle with a battery system that would be a saving of $786, assuming optimal charge/discharge (it's about 80-90% efficient I believe).
If you run the numbers, the battery slightly decreases the payback time for that system to ~7 years vs 7.5 with the panels alone. However, once its paid off, it could save almost $1000 a year if you live in somewhere like Sydney. This does make the big assumption that you store the electricity and use it optimally, but it's not unreasonable.
I would argue that in this case, it's definitely worth buying.
It's all about pack life and capacity decrease over time. Those you really need to factor in otherwise the calculations make no sense. Storing and retrieving a KWh from a battery pack has a cost associated with it in terms of wear on the pack.
Even if it is worth buying, the capital costs are steep.
Chris's main allegation seems to be that you have to have a hell of a lot of cash to even hope to make it worthwhile- and considering it's $5k for the cheapest battery setup, plus anywhere from $5-30k for your panels, I think he's not wrong, no matter what your electricity prices are.
Dave's 3kW system apparently cost $5k (Australian) and that included the inverter and decent panels. So call it $10k which puts in on par with a cheap new car or a nice kitchen makeover.
You can think of it as an investment which will take 5-10 years to mature with a secondary benefit of backup power if the grid goes down. Not everyone can afford it, but that's the nature of investment.
Also in Chris' scenario, he's using America as the model. Electricity costs there are just over half those in Australia.
> Chris's main allegation seems to be that you have to have a hell of a lot of cash to even hope to make it worthwhile
Or cheap financing. Other examples of assets that are extremely useful that can be inexpensively financed would be housing or a car. Why would solar be different?
Here in the UK, you can get free solar panels installed in return for cheaper electricity bills, with most of the funding coming from pension companies.
An interesting take, and good to read some skeptical views.
But the economies break down slightly if you are not paying 10c/kWh for electricity. In Australia we pay more than double that, even taking currency exchange into account.
Also, we have to pay a 70-80c AUD "connection charge" for the privilege of paying them for electricity.
Basically, while prices are falling slightly, they won't forever.
I agree that letting others take the risk early on, and hopefully push the storage price down, is a good move though.
I've always opposed selling off NSW's state-owned electricity networks, because that will just lead to price rises in short order (well above the already-high cost of power). However, if storage plus home generation takes off, those networks are going to be worth pennies on the dollar, and we should probably sell them off as quickly as possible... then buy them back when the investors are ready to take a bath.
I appreciate that link. Currently, Solar and energy storage is at 30kwh. I'm sure within five years it will be competitive with the current grid we have in America. First gens are always expensive but at 3k usd, no one was expecting that yet. Tesla looks like they are accelerating the trends.
To add more to the energy debate, I haven't seen too many people talk about replacing ships fuel, since that accounts for ~20% of our CO2 pollution, from sources I read a few years back.
Maybe replacing our grid and all grids is a feasible goal which is why companies are tackling it now?
Trucks, ships, and rockets consume a lot of fuel and are horrible polluters. When we can replace perishables fuels with renewables we will finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.
"I’ll say it another way: unless your solar-powered home is entirely disconnected from the grid, or your solar system is big enough to provide for all your electricity needs, an expensive battery backup system like Powerwall does not make economic sense.
No doubt battery technology is important for the management of the power grid of the future, but at this time the average homeowner should let the big power generation utilities take the risks and bear the costs of perfecting the technology."
The numbers in that article are/were badly wrong. Many numbers are now changed (lines drawn through the old numbers). In particular, the numbers for solar generation have been 'corrected' by factor of 6.7 - the author says he used obviously wrong numbers because the website he copied them from had them wrong.
Although the author has 'corrected' his numbers, he has not modified his conclusions. Someone who does that is not worth paying attention to.
I would like to read a sober and accurate accurate article on Tesla's powerwall, this one is not.
I find it fascinating, that, by 2017, there will be areas in Hawaii and Australia, in which you can make an argument that Solar Power is now less expensive that grid power.
What these authors seem to fail to recognize (or highlight) in their criticism - is that these lines are being crossed 10-15 years ahead of time. Nobody expected parity on these edge cases until at least 2025-2030, and we're going to see it in 2016.
And, what they also seem to fail to recognize, is that the curves for solar are going down. This is just the start.