Nonsense, none of these storage technologies are even close to being proven on the scale needed and won't be for years. Some day yes but which technology will be the best is not currently known which is why subsidies are so harmful. Rather than let the technologies develop and compete governments try to guess (or more likely get paid off) to pick the winning technology which seldom if ever is the right one. If you want to see the "harm" subsidies can do just look at California. Due to massive solar subsidies there is way too much solar capacity during the middle of the day (wholesale rate go "negative" as the grid managers desperately try to unload the extra solar power to Arizona). Then within a few hours as the sun starts to set and people get home from work and turn on their AC there is a shortage of power. Some gas turbine plants can spin up quickly but due to regulations these are being shut down rather than being added to which is what is needed. The large power plants, which were doing nothing in the middle of the day try to ramp up but it is not in their design to go slow and then try to ramp up. The result of all of this is that California has the highest electrical rates in the US (ranges from $.40 to $.60 per KWh) and their are frequent power outages during hot weather and it is getting worse. Adding more solar is certainly not going to help anything but with subsidies you get more of what you subsidize so more solar is what California is going to get.
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What does it take to succesfully transition to a green energy economy?
- Thread starter Marc v E
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I fail to understand the skepticism. Countries like Denmark, the UK, Germany or the Netherlands already have functioning (mostly offshore)wind and solar parks, and the new permits no longer required subsidies but are increasingly profitable. At current prices generating green electricity is highly profitable.
Yes the transition requires new and large scale infrastructure but these are not underdeveloped countries.
It is important to distinguish between inequality within countries and inequality between countries. Inequality between countries has declined but inequality within countries has not (on the contrary). So we now have an underclass in western countries that is poorer than e.g. the Asian middle class.
Best research is by Branko Milanovic at NYU.
That about summarizes it. Europe already has dense urban habitation, of course, so I can ride my bicycle to work. The Netherlands has a very good and still expanding rail network that does not need subsidies. The EU is planning more high speed long distance train connections, plus night trains. There are plans to limit or even ban private jets.
Reducing our poultry and meat industry is politically difficult but very necessary. Here the courts are forcing a reluctant government to do what needs to be done. We shall see how that plays out.
RandomEar
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Evidence seems to suggest that - while power outages are a real problem in California and it is amongst the worst states when counting the number of outages - it is essentially on par with Texas or Michigan, which are not known for having lots of solar power installed. The main reasons for outages are commonly identified as severe weather and wildfires, which, ironically, are more and more concerning problems due to climate change. I could find no reliable info suggesting that too much solar power was a problem for the California grid.
Negative electricity prices during high noon in the summer months are a common thing amongst states and countries with a large base of installed PV power and are not a problem in itself. I generally agree that strong subsidies can be problematic under specific circumstances. But the data suggests that California doesn't seem to be a very good example of that.
Also, all types power plants have been adapted to react faster to changing demand in the last ~20 years, specifically because the challenges of higher power gradients due to renewables were well known for a long time. This should not pose a problem anymore for any well maintained power plant, independent of its type. Utilities also run prediction models for the supply and demand sides of the grid since decades, which have gotten really, really good at preditcing the required gradients for each type of plant hours to days ahead of time. The problems you mention all sound plausible and were somewhat ciritical in the past, but to the best of my knowledge they have been solved for a long time.
Sorry, once again, the power companies lost lawsuits for starting fires that destroyed billions of dollars of homes and businesses and now turn off the power as a CYA because they haven't kept up on maintenance and upgrades. There have been very few if any brown outs. The way that the utilities in California make a profit is by creating infrastructure of which they way behind on. Regulations do not do not let them make very much money on selling power but do for installing infrastructure. The amount work needed, cost of living, labor and land are the driving force in high prices not the abundance of free solar energy. Starting yesterday the utilities will be reimbursing private electrical input from solar at 40% of what they have of what they payed for it last week. This is because solar has been so successful impart due to incentives. California now has 24% of its energy from solar among the highest in renewable energy the US with the exception of the N. West which has a lot hydro-electric.
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The stupid Net Metering 2 (which was a massive subsidy and a big part of the problem with higher costs of solar panels and higher utility bills) as you mention is going away and Net Metering 3, which eliminates the subsidies, is taking over. This is a move in the right direction but the pay back for a solar systems now goes from 5 years to 11 years so suddenly Solar in not so interesting. Everything would have been better (lower utility bills and the environment) if Solar had to compete on its own rather than being subsidized. You can't blame everything on the wildfire lawsuits and while California has the second highest percentage of renewable at what cost? The rates are double to quadruple anywhere else in the country and reliability is not good and getting worse. The "regulations" you mention are all part of the "green energy" subsidies / central planning and by any measure except "percentage of energy from renewables" they have been a dismal failure and a cautionary tale for the rest of the country that hopefully will learn that artificially pushing a technology that is not ready for prime time leads to nothing but high costs and other unforeseen consequences (and little if any environmental benefits which was supposed to be the point). I live in a sunny part of California and have solar panels and a battery and Net Metering 2 and I see first hand how solar is sometimes very good (A sunny and hot day in July) and other times more or less worthless (a rainy week in December). Until storage at scale is available it is counter productive to keep subsidizing solar energy as it only works reliably if you add an almost equal amount of backup which is prohibitively expensive. Since wholesale power rates are near $0 at Noon and spike to $100 to $600 per Mwh at 4:00 PM every day in the summer and no one has figured out how to store power to take advantage of this huge economic opportunity shows how far away storage at scale is. I am not anti green energy but I am pre common sense.
I fail to understand why people think some sort of "transition" is a good or necessary thing...
1. You would literally be abandoning trillions of dollars worth of existing capital equipment, just to repurchase it in some new form
2. The opportunity cost of such wasteful spending is tremendous...look at what the trillions spent in the middle east has done...nothing...that place should be Shangrila, with spectacular infrastructure...it's nothing of the sort...those funds could have been used domestically on health and infrastructure...
3. There is no climate "emergency", CO2 is about 0.04% below 0.02% plants no longer grow...it has been much higher in the past, they just picked a recent minimum as a basis of comparison...during the younger dryas, 12,800 yrs ago, the seas were 400 ft lower and North America was under 1000ft of ice...the warming models don't match the actual data...human impact is minimal
4. I wonder how much of your social security check or net assets individuals are personally willing to give up to fund this fiasco....
5. An EV owner is one battery replacement away from going back to a combustion engine....
1. You would literally be abandoning trillions of dollars worth of existing capital equipment, just to repurchase it in some new form
2. The opportunity cost of such wasteful spending is tremendous...look at what the trillions spent in the middle east has done...nothing...that place should be Shangrila, with spectacular infrastructure...it's nothing of the sort...those funds could have been used domestically on health and infrastructure...
3. There is no climate "emergency", CO2 is about 0.04% below 0.02% plants no longer grow...it has been much higher in the past, they just picked a recent minimum as a basis of comparison...during the younger dryas, 12,800 yrs ago, the seas were 400 ft lower and North America was under 1000ft of ice...the warming models don't match the actual data...human impact is minimal
4. I wonder how much of your social security check or net assets individuals are personally willing to give up to fund this fiasco....
5. An EV owner is one battery replacement away from going back to a combustion engine....
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With enough batteries, a solar homeowner receives the same benefit as net metering. They can draw on their own storage in the late afternoon to early evening. Doing that the customer would not pay the high time of use rate. There will be programs where the utility pays for services using the customer's battery.
Solar costs roughly $2-3/peak Watt to install. Storage today can double the cost. But over time storage cost will decline.
People in many Western states can watch the real time wholesale electricity price here: http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/prices.html.
This company graphs the California (CAISO) and some prices in other parts of the US wholesale electricity price. You can set the begin and end date to see the whole year:
The for-profit utilities in California, Pacific Gas & Electric, San Diego, and Southern California Edison have high residential electricity rates. The non-profits, LADWP and SMUD have much lower rates.
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I live on the coast in Nor. Cal. 300 ft from the Pacific and I get lots of foggy days. I do have a NG furnace and electric dryer in my 3200 sq ft house. At the end of 2019 I had Tesla's smallest solar system and Powewall II installed which at current run rates for 2-1/2 years leaves me 3-1/2 years from free electricity at current rates and Net 2 metering. Last year my wife and I were net electricity producers and get all the power we need at night even with a dryer run. The battery gives us 17-20 hours if we try conserve, using only necessary lighting, two fridges and OLED TV at night during outages. On cloudy or rainy days I get 1/3-1/2 what I get on sunny day stored from the sun. If we get an EV that will change but I won't buy much gas so hope to get an offset. Overall it has zero adjustment in lifestyle and California is reducing CO2 emissions through its rebate programs as planned. So successful that they are vastly reducing them.
The free market oil company's in California the third largest producer state with 16 refineries have colluded to give us the gasoline prices that are at least 20% higher than the nation. I guess that what you get if if you are the fifth largest economy in the world and have a free market with little competition and good lobbying.
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I've thought since the 1970's that one way or another the world will be powered mostly by solar eventually. Now assuming his numbers are correct (I've not checked them) you are talking about roughly 31 billion square meters at a cost currently of at least $40/square meter. Or $1.25 trillion. My guess is that number goes up for all the things needed in a solar facility. Then you'd need the HVDC distribution grid of which I don't know the costs. Put this way it doesn't seem too bad. It would take time to do. It would have been a tremendously better use of a couple or three trillion vs the middle east wars the USA engaged in.
One doesn't have to put all of them in one place of course.
Now, I don't think I believe his battery comments. I've seen articles about a battery large enough to run the country for one day, and they are bigger. Plus the cost of that is way up there. I also believe Musk's comments were a battery 1 mile, by 1 mile, by 1 mile. A mile high battery is a huge thing.
To not have drill, pay royalties, transport, refine, transport and distribute commodities to run your power plants, cars and other equipment and instead get free energy from the sun or wind that goes directly into the wires to customers seems like it should be very profitable in the end. And lets not forget the scientifically demonstrated climate change.
Your synopsis is not correct. California specifies a blend of gasoline sold no where else, so unlike the rest of the country it is not a national market. According to your state government only $1.24 - $1.40 per gallon are in refinery costs.
Estimated Gasoline Price Breakdown and Margins
And the state website doesn't bother to mention the notorious carbon cap and trade program, which is paid by the refiners, so it raises their costs:
Cap-and-Trade Program | California Air Resources Board
The Cap-and-Trade Program is a key element of California’s strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It complements other measures to ensure that California cost-effectively meets its goals for greenhouse gas emissions reductions.
The Wall Street Journal said it adds 24 cents per gallon to gasoline costs, and other states don't have that tax.
Then there's the low carbon fuel regulation (it encourages refiners to use biofuel). If a refinery can't meet it (none do, apparently) they have to buy regulatory credits that the WSJ says add 22 cents per gallon of cost. And if you look at the ca.gov numbers you don't see that tax as a line item, because it's also in the refinery cost line.
And, while California's population has continued to grow (until 2022, when it shrank a bit), no new refineries with large capacity have been built in the state for a long time for two reasons. One, environmental regulations and land costs make building a new refinery very expensive, to the point where energy companies are just unwilling to take the risks, because two: California has passed a law, as you well know, that restricts future ICE vehicle sales, so the gasoline and diesel fuels markets will shrink. Smaller markets attracts less investment.
As for your lobbying comment, I've never seen a less effective lobbying effort than oil companies and refiners have in California. If their lobbying was any good they wouldn't be staring at laws that regulate them out of existence in the long term.
As far as I'm concerned, California has the gasoline market it voted for. I know, I lived there on and off from 1988 to 2018.
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Is getting what you vote for a bad thing? As a long-time CA resident, I'm not in favor of inexpensive gasoline or of local refining. The future of transportation is electric, and the sooner we get there, the better. Apparently, the majority of CA voters agree with me. For those who believe driving a gas guzzler in perpetuity is a god-given right, there are many other states to live in whose politics are more in alignment with that worldview.
I think getting what you vote for is called a democracy in action. We think the state is on the wrong track in many ways that voters approved of, so we voted with a moving van.
Keith_W
Major Contributor
The world IS powered by solar. Every form of energy generation you wish to name (with the exception of nuclear energy) is solar. Yes, even fossil fuels.
Ismapics
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Hello Marc: My take. The big change will happen when the cost of Solar & Batteries becomes equal or lower than the cost of the Electric utility bill. Say I pay $180/M for electricity. When solar for my home hits $21,600 for Panels+batteries+installatioin (currently at $29,500+) assuming a 10 year pay off period it would cost the same as the utility significantly lowering my risks of acquisition. As I see it, we are about 8 to 10 years from that in normal circumstances. However, government incentives can shorten that time to today or a year from now. Which is btw what is happening with EVs and the tax credits. They are there to incentivize the purchase. When that day comes, the incidence of solar at homes will increase exponentially.
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Just for comparison a cube 510 feet on all sides will contain all the oil the USA uses in one day. Do note this does not mean oil energy content equals electricity.
By my calculations using upper end estimates a lithium ion battery holding 4,000 terawatts (roughly one day for USA electrical consumption) would be a cube 6052 feet on each side. So I'm pretty sure Elon Musk did have in mind a battery 1 mile square and 1 mile high. Plus he said this in 2017 when USA electrical consumption was a bit lower.
By my calculations using upper end estimates a lithium ion battery holding 4,000 terawatts (roughly one day for USA electrical consumption) would be a cube 6052 feet on each side. So I'm pretty sure Elon Musk did have in mind a battery 1 mile square and 1 mile high. Plus he said this in 2017 when USA electrical consumption was a bit lower.
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