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Wwize t1_je3bcp0 wrote

>"Renewable energy is now the most affordable source of new electricity in much of the country," added Wetstone.

The market has spoken and it's saying renewable energy is the future. There's no way any other energy source can compete. With renewable energy, we don't pay for the cost of the energy itself, just for the equipment and maintenance. With all other forms of power generation, we pay for the energy in addition to the equipment and maintenance.

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AssortedInterests t1_je4gsd4 wrote

Power systems engineer here. The renewable energy source may be cheaper, but there's a hidden (for now) cost in the intermittent nature of them. Right now we still burn enough fossil fuels that we can dispatch them up and down to balance the system without huge quantities of energy storage, but those days are numbered if we're serious about de-carbonization. Between large scale and long-term energy storage and the transmission reinforcement that will be required to de-carbonize building heat especially in northern climates, there is some serious sticker shock brewing to get us to our 2050 goals.

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Badfickle t1_je4yu04 wrote

eh. Grid scale battery factories are being built quite rapidly and prices are dropping. There's good reason for optimism.

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omar_strollin t1_je52cc4 wrote

And old EV batteries can be used for home storage as they phase out

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trevize1138 t1_je56y5f wrote

I've been told that "dead" EV batteries go to landfills where they leak lead into groundwater. Are you saying that's BS? /s

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omar_strollin t1_je5uw98 wrote

:) for anyone who has been misled, EV batteries are very valuable and often repurposed and, if not, recycled.

Just kidding, they’re thrown into day care center and spontaneously combust, killing all inside.

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trevize1138 t1_je6dlfb wrote

Dead batteries will de-magnetize your credit cards and give your psycho ex your current phone number.

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AntifaDoesntExist t1_je5br3y wrote

these same pricks would be the ones who would thump their chest about nuclear and how "safe" waste storage is.

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trevize1138 t1_je5d3zx wrote

Right? Even if the storage issue were solved and nuclear was somehow safe it's also losing out to solar/wind/batteries now strictly on economics. It's becoming a whole new market where power generation and storage can be done very small scale with home solar being so cheap. Nuclear is old fashioned because it's still just massive grid generation. Power is getting democratized beyond that now.

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altmorty OP t1_je5ydpw wrote

It's so funny watching conservatives bash renewables and storage, and then quietly install it for themselves. This is while they campaign for more nuclear, while blocking its development anywhere near them.

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danielravennest t1_je6nyub wrote

Texas has the most wind and solar of any state in the US. One reason is they have been set up to lease property for oil and gas for a long time. Switching to leasing for wind and solar is straightforward. The land-owners only care that their lease checks clear.

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Layer_4_Solutions t1_je6zxjk wrote

They are being built, but they are not being built rapidly.

Price drops have also slowed significantly the last few years.

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Badfickle t1_je7iwhg wrote

Well we had a huge spike in lithium prices the last two years which has since dropped as new sources have come on line. Lithium is now 50% the price it has been the past 2 years.

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Wwize t1_je52nzn wrote

Renewable energy is cheaper EVEN WITH BATTERIES. So even that "hidden cost" that you mention isn't enough to make it more expensive than coal.

Clean energy is cheaper than coal across the whole US, study finds

>Almost every coal-fired power plant in the country could be cost-effectively replaced by local solar or wind and batteries, according to a groundbreaking new analysis.

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SalsaBueno t1_je4x6mi wrote

So we encourage solar and wind generation on the home scale. Smaller scale battery storage will be easier to attain, and that should fill most of the gap.

Of course there will always be a need for backup power for sensitive locations, so we may or may not ever completely do away with fossil fuels, I feel like we might at least bankrupt OPEC.

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Markavian t1_je4nzqp wrote

Is that fixable with sufficient energy storage and overproduction (spare renewable capacity)? Similar to maintaining a gas fired peaker that you only need once a day?

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ACCount82 t1_je56unt wrote

Yes. But electricity is notoriously hard to store. Building enough storage gets really expensive really quick - preventing it from being competitive with natural gas.

It's not an impossible challenge to solve though.

First, the larger a grid is, the more resilient it is to the intermittent nature of renewables, and the less storage it needs. Being able to shift electricity around at great distances is great for grid stability, and a hypothetical planet-scale grid could go full renewable with impressively little storage. A large and robust joint grid, like that of EU or US-Canada, offers a lot of benefits still. Which is why a lot of industry voices are calling for more grid integration, both within the countries and between the countries - like between US and Mexico.

Second, "smart grid" tech can be used to balance the grid on the demand side instead of the supply side. If electricity prices are allowed to change during the day in small intervals, and consumers, ranging from industries and to home appliances, are designed to take that into account, you can get a lot of flexibility by soft-controlling demand. Raise power prices for 19:00 to 19:30, and watch all the ACs pre-heat or pre-cool beforehand to sit the "expensive" interval out, all the parked EVs suspend their charging process, all the washing machines shift their cycle around, all the home-scale batteries shift to using internal power, all the datacenters undervolt their servers, and so it goes. Thus, you get to "eat" a part of the peak on the demand side, and you need less storage capacity to cover what remains.

Third, "full renewable" is not a good goal to strive towards. Fission or possibly even fusion (not yet, but maybe in 20 years?) could make for "green" baseline generation that can be controlled to cover for deficiencies of renewables.

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Layer_4_Solutions t1_je702fb wrote

Sure, but large scale storage and overproduction significantly increase the cost.

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danielravennest t1_je6n788 wrote

"Other Energy Storage" i.e not pumped hydro, which has been around for decades, reached nearly 9 GW this January. That's nearly double what it was 12 months earlier. To the extent regular hydro is available, it can act as storage by saving the water behind the dam when other renewables are running. The US also has nuclear supplying around 19% of utility power.

The first iron-air (reversible rust) battery plant has started construction in West Virginia. I ron is much cheaper than lithium, but also much heavier. So these will be stationary batteries. The first version is designed for 100 hour run time, vs. about 4 hours for Lithium-ion.

It will still take work to break our fossil fuel addiction, but there are solutions coming along in the near future.

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GrowFreeFood t1_je51z5t wrote

Yeah except for the super obvious solution that no one has thought of but me. And if you want to know the solution. Just figure out how to pay me.

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tjcanno t1_je4dn7u wrote

We need to add batteries. Lots of batteries to store power when generation exceeds demand, to draw from when demand exceeds supply. Need batteries to really make system as available as coal.

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londons_explorer t1_je4l8q4 wrote

Batteries... or transmission (get power from another place 1000 miles away where it is windy right now) or hydro (store up water and use it only when other sources fail), or smart EV's (which charge only when there is spare power in the grid, and perhaps put some power into the grid at times of peak demand), or Heat reservoirs (heat peoples homes with heat pumps when there is spare power, and have big tanks full of a liquid that can store hotness or coolness for release into the home later when desired.

We can use one or all these solutions. We'll probably end up using a mix, decided by market forces.

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mrpenchant t1_je4y5m5 wrote

>We can use one or all these solutions.

Wrong on saying we can use only one of them. Batteries and transmission are both a must. Because of the intermittent nature if we want to continue increasing renewable production we must have batteries. And if we want to do this in a remotely sensible way, we need transmission to move electricity from where it is most efficiently and economically generated to the cities where people are.

By the way, your hydro and heat reservoirs both are just non-traditional batteries.

And only charging EVs when there is excess power is a good way to kill off EVs. I know I would never buy one if that was the case because I don't plan on getting stuck somewhere because no charging was considered a valid option. Economic incentives about when to charge are already being done and are perfectly valid on the other hand.

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danielravennest t1_je6p5er wrote

> We need to add batteries.

Funny thing, that. New US storage increased from 4.9 to 8.9 GW over the past 12 months. Old storage is pumped hydro, which stayed the same at 23 GW

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WeimarRepublic t1_je5ax6i wrote

>The market has spoken and it's saying renewable energy is the future. There's no way any other energy source can compete.

Cool, can we end the subsidies then

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AntifaDoesntExist t1_je5cua8 wrote

If we also end the subsidies on gas and oil? Sure. Renewables is actually cheaper than those as well if we do so.

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Wwize t1_je5cgin wrote

Why? Fossil fuels and nuclear get subsidies too. They get much bigger subsidies. You also seem to be unaware that we have a major crisis with climate change and we need to build renewable energy as fast as possible, so even though it is cheaper, it is in our best interest to subsidize it anyway so we can build it faster. We should stop subsidizing fossil fuels though.

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Diknak t1_je5cnfi wrote

if you want to remove coal and gas subsidies too...it's not like renewables are the only energy subsidies. Hell, the oil industry is the most subsidized industry on the planet.

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SloeMoe t1_je516rs wrote

> With renewable energy, we don't pay for the cost of the energy itself, just for the equipment and maintenance.

We don't "pay" for fossil fuels either. We take advantage of vast geological forces and time that have done the work for us.

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Wwize t1_je52bqf wrote

Mining coal and extracting oil costs money and destroys the environment. It's insane that you didn't know that. The sun and the wind are free, on the other hand.

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Kaschenko t1_je3t6ui wrote

> With renewable energy, we don't pay for the cost of the energy itself, just for the equipment and maintenance. With all other forms of power generation, we pay for the energy in addition to the equipment and maintenance.

What does it even mean?

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GetsBetterAfterAFew t1_je3umqr wrote

Gas needs gas to get to the gas station. Build wires to gas stations once and get electricity for years without gas or semis or trains or refineries that all cost money to run. Its simple really, fewer moving parts, less cost.

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listur65 t1_je4y4cq wrote

Not to mention all of the cost in gathering the coal/natural gas itself.

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UrbanGhost114 t1_je40w25 wrote

The logistics of moving fuel is massive, ongoing, and increasing.

Source:. Deliver fuel to gas stations.

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DMoney159 t1_je3z663 wrote

We don't have to burn stuff to make renewable electricity. That means no constant paying for the coal or gas or other burnable thing, just equipment

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420ciskey420 t1_je3zda7 wrote

It means that the gas (energy) costs money to acquire and consume to generate power.. you don’t have to pay for sun light, or a breeze, or the tide of the ocean.

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everybodylovesraymon t1_je41whb wrote

In Canada we use a lot of hydroelectric for our power. Dams set up on fast moving rivers generate all our power. Only cost is the setup and maintenance of the dams, the source (water) is free. Unlike coal.

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omar_strollin t1_je52jnw wrote

There is some acute local ecological damage as well, but all options have their faults

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Riaayo t1_je4b648 wrote

For gas, coal, or fossil fuels you have to pay to extract, refine, and transport the fuels - then also have to build and run the infrastructure to burn it for energy.

Solar and wind you generate and "extract" in one go. The solar panels/plant is collecting and generating power at once. The wind turbine is collecting and generating power at once. There's no shipping or pipelining sunlight and wind.

The "cost" of mining/extraction is basically non-existent. You've gotta buy fuel to burn it. You don't have to buy sunlight or wind to generate power of fit.

That on top of it being cheaper and easier to roll out solar panels and wind farms than it is these other power plants, and the lower cost is clear.

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Wwize t1_je53t6e wrote

It costs money to mine coal and extract oil. It costs nothing for the sun to get to the solar panel or the wind to get to the wind turbine.

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TheLostcause t1_je452j3 wrote

Everything will have wear and tear as a substantial cost at a large scale.

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Law_Student t1_je3d2o9 wrote

Renewables get more expensive the more of them you use, because you need to start investing seriously in storage if you actually rely on them to keep the lights and heat on as opposed to just using them to replace some natural gas use, and storage is ruinously expensive. Even four hours of storage puts renewables above the cost of nuclear.

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Badfickle t1_je3hnwy wrote

That's old data. Battery prices are dropping and will continue to drop.

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