- Despite all the data about climate change, the thing that is actually shifting us away from fossil fuels is that solar panels are cheap.
- That's the only environmental hope I've been able to hang onto. It's now cheaper in most places[1] for net new energy installations to NOT use fossil fuels. I knew environmentally conscious approaches could never survive being the morally correct yet more expensive option.
[1] IRENA 2023 report shows that solar photovoltaic (PV) generation was 56% less expensive than the weighted average fossil fuel-fired alternatives, despite being 414% more expensive back in 2010. Bloomberg New Energy Finance found in March 2021 that "renewables are the cheapest power option for 71% of global GDP and 85% of global power generation."
- > That's the only environmental hope I've been able to hang onto. It's now cheaper in most places[1] for net new energy installations to NOT use fossil fuels. I knew environmentally conscious approaches could never survive being the morally correct yet more expensive option.
This is one of the best takes I've read about the fossil fuel versus clean energy dilemma. Maybe it's lucky for humanity that moving towards clean energy is becoming so cost effective, thanks to many past government initiatives (from all over the world) that added momentum, and the many green energy related businesses that are now in existence.
- >lucky for humanity
perhaps the word lucky isn't the correct one, since lots of people worked hard to push for the initial government programs that kick-started the economies of scale. And Tesla for making viable EVs both a reality as well as desirable for a growing chunk of the population.
- It doesn’t need to be so hard to admit when capitalism succeeds.
- I find it amusing that it counts as capitalism succeeding when first Germany and now China massively subsidize panel production.
- To your point, it was political will, not capitalism. Capitalism is still slowing the EV transition down in developed countries attempting to protect their profits (tariffs and other protectionist policy) while China prints EVs as fast as they can, and they do not care about profits. Capitalism is also what is enabling oil companies to continue to exist with no recourse for the rest of us. We are succeeding despite capitalism.
- Capitalism hasn’t succeeded yet in this case. It’s set the stage for success, but success in my eyes is measured when we hit net zero. That’s still not inevitable at this point
- Sorry to break your hopes: https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Trade-war/US-sets-tariffs-as...
- Luckily global warming is global and PV installed in countries nearer the equator with dirtier grids have a bigger impact. Chinese PV exports have already become majority "global south".
"China’s surging solar exports to the global south"
https://www.carbonbrief.org/china-briefing-3-april-2025-sola...
America demonstrating how expensive ignoring cheap renewables can be may well do the world more good in the long run.
It not like a few years ago where a country could "cheat" and get an advantage by avoiding renewables, now it's self-sabotage.
- But how much more expensive would it make the power for the last 15% of global power generation?
What is the total cost for both scenarios?
- In the US Nuclear gives about 19% of total generation and hydro another 6%. So you don't have to go beyond 75% renewables to start with.
Long term, we need a combination of the following technologies to get to 100% carbon free electricity with 80% renewables: 1. Long distance transmission lines. 2. Some type of "clean, firm, dispatchable" power. Examples include: Nuclear fission, fusion power, deep geothermal, and space based solar power.
We can certainly use the cost savings from getting to 80% renewables to finance figuring out how to scaling production of one (or more) of the later technologies to lower cost. Simply reducing the regulatory burden on Nuclear Fusion can accomplish that if a society chooses this path.
Lot of work to do. And many economic powers would loose out from this transition (e.g. Exxon or Russia) but totally feasible to accomplish.
If you want to do a deep dive into cost scenarios look at the work of Christopher Clack or Jesse Jenkins.
- > 1. Long distance transmission lines.
Those are really expensive. They're part of the toolbox, but they're not tool #1.
> 2. Some type of "clean, firm, dispatchable" power. Examples include: Nuclear fission, fusion power, deep geothermal, and space based solar power.
If you're relying on that to supply power during those winter weeks without sun & wind then it has to scale up to 100% of power needs. And if it can do that, why build anything else?
To get to 100% carbon free with > 99.99% reliability for under $1T, your primary tool is modelling.
Then you reach for:
- source diversity. Wind is more expensive than solar, but it tends to be highest at dawn/dusk so is a great complement. - overprovisioning. Enough solar to supply needs on a cloudy winter day - storage. - long distance interconnect. There's never been an hour in recorded history where there's no sun or wind somewhere in the continental US.
- > There's never been an hour in recorded history where there's no sun or wind somewhere in the continental US.
But is that sufficient to handle the full load across the entire continental US? And how do you do that without the really expensive long distance high voltage transmission lines?
Where I live, bad winters can see us go for weeks of full cloud cover and little wind in January. If we really get away from fossil fuels and run heat pumps, that means electrical use in winter will rival that in summer.
- No it isn't. That's why I said that modelling is tool #1. The whole US might not go an hour without sun and wind, but your area might go 3 weeks. But the combination of your area and a neighboring area might max at 3 days. So thus instead of building a continent wide interconnect and no storage, you build a regional one and 3 days of storage.
- the sun shines and the wind blows in the winter. Plus, batteries. Giant redox flow batteries are coming online now, sodium batteries, it's not like there aren't options for storage people are working on.
- > Clean, firm, dispatchable power
Besides the examples you listed, there's also synthetic fuels. I don't know if they'll pan out, but the concept is intriguing.
Essentially, the argument goes that there's a critical solar price point at which synthesizing methane from atmospheric gas capture becomes cheaper than drilling. Said methane can be burned for power in existing plants (forming a closed cycle) or refined into heavier liquid hydrocarbons for vehicles and polymers.
The advantage here is that you don't need batteries or inverters - just dirt cheap panels - and the synthesis plants can be engineered to be productive despite only operating during the day.
I know one company is working on this with industrial scale in mind (Terraform Industries), and I believe SpaceX is also pursuing it on-site for Starship (which consumes ~1000 T of methane per launch, all of which currently has to be trucked in at great expense.)
- I wonder if this explains why Prometheus Fuels decided to do methane…
- Probably. Methane is easier to synthesize than fuel alcohols, and has better synergy with existing infrastructure (dead simple, highly responsive gas plants don't care where their fuel comes from, after all - they'll just take the cheapest option.)
- > So you don't have to go beyond 75% renewables to start with.
I think the 75% aggregate over some period. If 25% of your total capacity is nuclear/hydro you will still have extreme shortages during peak times if there is no sun/wind.
That why it has to be gas/etc. which can be scaled up and down very rapidly (unfortunately you can’t “overload” a nuclear reactor to make it generate more power for a few hours on a regular basis..)
- >(unfortunately you can’t “overload” a nuclear reactor to make it generate more power for a few hours on a regular basis..
You could throw excess power away from an oversized reactor and not throw it away when it's needed. Financially not very smart, but technologically feasible
- Bitcoin mining is doing exactly in some cases. E.g. there's a fair number of small, remote, hydroelectric plants whose construction and/or renovation were financed by Bitcoin mining, with the amount of mining declining over time as the community using them grew and ramped up consumption. Also in Canada there's a company working on making finance deals for small scale nuclear energy plants in the far north where the excess capacity will be temporarily used for Bitcoin mining while the community grows and/or industrial uses like mines ramp up production.
Re: the nuclear version, good chance none of it happens due to anti-nuclear sentiment of course. So far exactly zero of these small scale nuclear plants have been built.
- Too little, too late. We should've been switching to solar in the 80s. Even if we could switch to be carbon free tomorrow, the amount of CO2 already in the atmosphere is predicted to cause breadbasket collapses within the next 20 years.
If it makes folks feel better, there's a good chance you probably had no control/influence over this outcome if you were born after 1980.
https://www.sciencealert.com/researchers-weve-underestimated...
- We were trying to switch to solar in the 80s, but it was infeasible. The technology just wasn't there. Now it is and we're adopting it en masse.
- It's not hopeless. The risk of crop failures may be higher than it would be if we were going to experience less warming, but having a bad harvest year isn't existential. We'll work to mitigate things.
- We will spray the atmosphere to buy more time.
People will haggle over it because of the unknowns, but when imminent social chaos becomes obvious, we'll be forced to pull the trigger on it.
- This is why I think we need to roll the dice on geoengineering. We can try to tilt the odds in our favor, but it's still a crapshoot. From what I've read, iron fertilization would be one of the better paths to go. A potentially better path would be the creation of synthetic whale poop.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/scientists-are-cra...
- Use it for the 85% first, and then when that's done, battery prices will have declined enough that the number will be a lot closer to 100%.
- And honestly 85% would be pretty damn good all by itself. That would significantly stem the bleeding and give time to address the long tail
- I thought we were past the stem the bleeding point?
- There are reasons to be optimistic!
Lots of bad things will happen from climate change, but we can mitigate the impact of many of those issues.
- How many people do you think are going to die painful deaths because of climate change?
- IPCC estimates are about a quarter of a million excess deaths per year.
- There’s probably nothing wrong with using fossil for the last 15% of generation for at least our lifetimes. As well as for things like airliners and rockets where energy density is king.
- It makes sense to start decarbonising where it’s easiest (cheapest) to do so.
- >solar photovoltaic (PV) generation was 56% less expensive than the weighted average fossil fuel-fired alternatives
Only if you need electricity during the day.
- I thought solar + battery was cheaper the nat gas now.
https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/lcoe-and-valu...
(If not it soon will be.)
- Depends where you live. If you live here, sun wouldn't be up for a few months at a time, so the battery would have to be pretty big. And it can easily drop below -30C for long periods
- A very small % of the global population lives in those conditions. We can thus safely ignore it as an edge case for now, and still solve for the vast majority of emissions reduction
- *than
- >Despite all the data about climate change, the thing that is actually shifting us away from fossil fuels is that solar panels are cheap.
It also requires the political will. Texas is showing us that the market is in fact not rational, and will absolutely do something that's universally contrary to everyone's best interests for the sake of grandstanding.
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/energy-markets/texas-bi...
- That is not showing us the market is not rational, it is showing us that Texas politics is corrupt. Texas is interfering in the market and picking the winners despite renewables being the favorable market option. Republicans are only in favor of no regulations and letting the market decide when it favors them.
- Texas subsidized wind energy for 30 years now - it was actually George W Bush and Rick Perry's legacy making project when they were Governors of Texas [0][1][2] and made up 20-30% of total energy produced.
Issue is, a significant proportion of Texas's budget comes out of NatGas and Oil revenue, so there's a perverse incentive when renewables end up pricing well below NatGas and Oil, and labor unions aligned to ONG like the UAW, ILU, and affiliates of the AFL-CIO like the United Steelworkers are VERY politically powerful.
This will be a major hurdle in energy exporting countries like the US, Norway, Canada, Netherlands, the Gulf, etc and it can't be handwaved away.
And no - rETraInInG doesn't work when much of the renewable industry is heavily automated, a major reason the ILU, UAW, and parts of the AFL-CIO ended up supporting the Trump admin's tariffs regime: either you drop the unions and cause tens of thousands to lose high paying jobs and radicalize a vast swath of Americans OR you do nothing and let the earth cook.
[0] - https://www.technologyreview.com/2016/08/29/70295/george-w-b...
[1] - https://www.texastribune.org/2013/09/16/book-excerpt-go-get-...
[2] - https://www.masterresource.org/texas/george-w-bush-wind-ener...
- >>That is not showing us the market is not rational, it is showing us that Texas politics is corrupt.
Dear capitalists, this is not a bar:
The first thing proves the second. The market is a real thing that exists in the universe we live in, not just in academic research. The markets are never "rational", because they're just people. They may be "predictable" or even "stable" but humans are not rational. The fact that the market can be manipulated, means that it is manipulated.
- And getting cheaper everyday.
A year ago I paid $8k for 7.8kw on my roof. My Dad just paid $5k for 10kw.
Neither of us will ever pay for power again.
Edit: Western, southern Canada for those asking.
- I believe solar is the future. And hydro where approppriate. China is doing massive things with hydro. The largest hydro power station in the world is the Three Gorges Dam and they've just announced building one three times as large in Tibet for $137 billion [1].
But there's an issue with solar most people don't talk about. Yes it can be variable due to weather and day/night cycles. That's obvious. But a real issue is power lines.
Power lines are built to deliver power to businesses and homes. The cost of that is amortized over the electricity purchased by consumers. If people end up purchasing only half as much power due to more energy-efficient building standards, the use of solar, etc then the cost of the power lines is still the same except now it needs to be amortized over less electricity sold.
This I think is why municipalities tend to limit how much solar power houses are allowed to have. How do you build and maintain a grid when houses are generally self-suficient? Should you? Is it acceptable to not have a grid?
[1]: https://newatlas.com/energy/yarlung-tsangpo-hydroelectric-pr...
- Do you think that will just be moved to the flat connection fee? I had an apt with a gas stove, and nothing else gas. The $8/m connection fee was pretty much my entire gas bill. If it’s $50/m per building to be connected to the grid, plus demand charges, then charge that and pass along wholesale energy costs.
- A connection fee helps but not as much as you think. You could turn that off but there are still pipes built into your house or apartment down to the street. There's still a pipe that runs down the street. There is distribution infrastructure. You might be paying for your connection separately on your bill but you're still amortizing all that downstream infrastructure. If overall usage drops, that connection fee still has to go up.
- The real issue is politics - grids are absolutely going to be required for all the folks who can't generate enough solar on their own roofs, industry, cities, restauraunts, etc. Plus how else are you going to make use of wind, grid scale utility solar installations, etc. I have a feeling many countries in the world (especially china) will not have much trouble forcing the grid to do what's needed and subsidizing shared infrastructure with taxes as a shared societal good. If we insist on not doing that though, the grid system as is is not going to be able to financially and logistically figure out this transition, which is probably a competitive disadvantage for us long term if our own energy grid is stopping us from competing on energy because of the way it's structured.
- China has specific needs that almost nobody else does. Most notably, all of China's power generation is in the west of the country (eg Three Gorges, the new Tibet dam) but all the people are in the east. You lose power with long-range transmission and on China's scale that's a real problem.
So China has largely invested in, deployed and perfected Ultra-High Voltage Direct Current ("UHVDC") transmission infrastructure. China has really shown they think 10, 20 and 50 years into the future with their planning.
As for grids, there are a lot of places that could be self-sufficient with solar plus batteries. A lot of remote towns and houses work this way already.
- While the cost of power will be reduced, I think that's overly optimistic in the long run. Fixing the lines and power distribution systems when they wear out or get hit by weather is really the cost of your electricity bill. You can have a shared power grid, or not pay for it, but you can't have both. Even areas powered by hydro have to maintain cherry pickers for that.
- So you’re saying the equivalent of managing solar panels is the same as what I’d pay monthly?
That’s the first I’ve ever heard this stat.
Right now I pay about $180 a month for electricity. So let’s round it to $2,000 a year.
If I got solar panels, I’d be spending average of $2k a year maintaining them? There are literally no moving parts anywhere. I can imagine having to replace an inverter here and there, or maybe even a panel at some point.
So my guess would be more line $200 a year average, if that.
- No, I think they are saying you will be charged $2k for your grid connection and sporadic use, unless you are legally allowed to fully disconnect.
They are saying the cost for grid running to your house, and for the hydro dams that provide power on a cloudy day are basically fixed.
Net metering doesn't scale at population levels.
- Ah yeah good point.
That’s already happening with EVs. In my state in the US, since they are earning less from the gas taxes (used to pay for roads) from EV owners, they’ve raised the car registration fees for EV owners only.
And at superchargers they’ve raised prices to 45c/KWh.
So eventually I feel it won’t be much of a cost savings to have an EV anymore.
Don’t see why it wouldn’t be the same with Solar.
- Installed?!
Just the electrician's part would be a good chunk of the $5k, where we live (East coast US) before you even get into placing the panels themselves.
I keep seeing cheap panel costs with a "look, now you can afford it!" thing, but for those of us who may be handy but aren't quite willing to do high-power lines & boxes, or confident bolting steel to a roof without either killing ourselves or ruining the roof, the labor costs continue to be very high, and that part's not going down. From what I'm seeing for online "average costs for 10kw in your area" I'd hesitate to pull the trigger even if it were $5k lower than it is, which would probably be an even bigger discount than if the panels and other hardware were simply free.
- Yes, installed with a bit of diy. Licensed solar installer and myself did most of the work. Electrician to actually wire into the house panel was $125 for 1 hour. Permits were $36.
- As one who went diy in your region - keep calling electricians, you'll eventually find one who'll do the job at a fair price. With micro-inverters, there's no power in the lines till you connect into the main panel & you can work that our with a licensed electrician.
- Very good info, thanks.
- Probably helps the Canadian government isn't trying to tariff solar power in the hopes of promoting "beautiful clean coal" instead
- Canada does actually apply significant tarrifs to chinese solar panel companies
- I mean, yes, separately that's going to put solar plans on hold for a lot of people in the US. I just meant that labor costs alone already tended to easily exceed $5k for rooftop solar projects in the US, so I was surprised at that price for that much solar.
- 10kW in South Australia would cost about US$4,990, installed.
https://www.solarchoice.net.au/solar-panels/solar-power-syst...
When we had ours installed on a previous house, the roof installation itself was very fast - couple of hours maybe.
Beyond this, state and council/county authorities often have rebates/incentives to encourage take-up of panels and/or battery systems. Our council (county equivalent, I guess) has had group-buy initiatives, as one example, and a virtual power plant scheme.
- Back in the first Trump presidency, there was a 30% tariff on solar panels and equipment, which has significantly increased the price of going solar in the US.
Couple that with the fact that Canada very likely has subsidies for people adopting solar power.
- Doesn't Canada have 150%+ import duty on solar panels from China ?
- > Neither of us will ever pay for power again.
Seems optimistic? With 2 EVs and almost all electric utilities, I'm well past the ~26 KWH a day electricity your system might generate.
I'm also impressed how cheap your costs are. The install cost alone in the Bay Area is going to be past that. Panels getting cheaper just don't matter much.
- I spent $60k for panels to support 2 EVs and a heat pump. I live in the Northeastern US. I generate ~80% of my electricity.
Assuming the parent doesn't have EVs and uses gas, oil, or wood for heat, the cost makes sense. "Domestic" electricity usage, when you aren't using it for heat and cars, is quite low.
- My system has generated 50kwh on a few day. Many over 45.
- Those are great prices. In the US we are at least double that for an equivalent system. Many solar installers/sellers here are very predatory and have been for a long time. Prices have dropped, but not by enough for it to be worth it for me.
- Meanwhile, new construction in California is required by law to include solar panels, and builders can price them however they want. You will typically see prices of $27,000 for a 5.7 kWh system. You can also choose a lease if you wish, but it's the same as buying the panels, except with a much higher interest rate than including it in your mortgage.
- With solar the power per panel speaks a bit to the labor cost of installation. For one you are less likely to have to go to lengths to squeeze the system onto your roof and gang the correct number together.
- Where are you, geographically? I'm interested in adding them but I have a large tree on the south side of my house that I really do not want to cut down.
- That’s really neat. Can you share what part of the world you live in? I’d love to do that.
- South western Canada in a very snowy mountain town.
- ... during daytime, in summer. Or did you install a load of batteries, too?
- We use the grid like a battery, getting a one for one credit for everything we put in. So during summer/daytime we put in enough to then use up our credit in winter/nighttime.
The power we put in even covers the monthly connection fee.
I’m just about to hit 12 months with mine, 8 Mwh generated, never paid a bill.
In our area the cost of electricity is already Confirmed to increase 5% a year forever, so this will only get better for us.
- Subsidies like one for one credit are generally going away since those are prohibitively expensive and not sustainable when the ratio of renewables start to climb. It can be useful to jump start adoption, but having the government pay the true cost of the grid only moves the energy bill to the tax bill.
- When that happens, I’ll get batteries.
- You'll need a lot of batteries. It might or might not be economical, but definitely not ecological. So... depends on your values and goals.
- Compared to what? Yes, batteries have ecological costs, but compared to fossil fuels it's minor. Home storage batteries will likely be LFP which are all abundant and recyclable.
- A Tesla Powerwall3 (which apparently uses LFP) has a capacity of 13.5kWh
A household uses up at least around 2MWh per year, most of which during the winter, if you don't use air conditioning in the summer and don't have an electric car to charge.
That means you'd need around 150 (!) Powerwall 3 units. At a price of around 10k GBP each, you'd have to shell out more than 1 million pounds just for the batteries. Not to mention the space that they'd have to take, and the increased risk in having something failing.
In the USA, homes are even less efficient (and depending on locale, people run AC all year round, and drive tens of thousands of kilometers on cars which also need to be powered). 2 years ago MKBHD published a video about his experience with the Tesla roof:
In it, he revealed that his yearly power consumption is 55MWh. His battery was able to tide him over the next cloudy day, and during the winter the solar panel wouldn't ever fully recharge again.
Expecting every household to be energy independent year-round via solar is patently absurd. Renewable energy tided over with massive batteries upstream? Maybe that could work, I haven't run the numbers... But you cannot hope to push that responsibility downstream to every household. Reliable baseline is still going to be necessary for the foreseeable future.
- Why would a household need enough batteries to store a year's worth of energy?
- The grandparent comment is arguing about the budget over a whole year
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43751178
> We use the grid like a battery, getting a one for one credit for everything we put in. So during summer/daytime we put in enough to then use up our credit in winter/nighttime.
> The power we put in even covers the monthly connection fee.
> I’m just about to hit 12 months with mine, 8 Mwh generated, never paid a bill.
And later the same commenter argues
> When that happens, I’ll get batteries.
- I am that commenter.
If I have to get batteries one day, I sure as heck won’t get a whole years worth of energy. In summer I’ll only need enough to get through the night ( very little ). In winter I’ll obviously need more, and I would have to carefully look at how much the house is using and how much solar I’m generating, but something like one or two power walls would do it. In five or ten years that’s going to be cheap.
- That make perfectly sense if the climate is right. Energy discussions often get messy when people from different climates are talking about utilizing the same strategy, since different climate has different requirements.
Solar and batteries works great in climates with highly predictable weather and where demand only exceeds supply during very short burst. Europe, especially the northern part, are prime example where this is not the case and where supply shortages can occur for months. This is the reason why a single month of energy can cost more than the collective sum of all the other 11 months, since market prices follows supply and demand. This is where government subsidies will hide things with government funded fossil fueled power plants (under the euphemism of reserve energy and grid stability), and they can also just straight pay citizens energy bill when the price hit certain levels. When the government is responsible for energy storage, the cost is placed through taxes or tax-related fees. A common red flag here is when grid connection fees start to become bigger than actually consumption cost.
- I’m in a very snowy mountain town in Canada.
In 12 months the 7.8kw system has generated smack on 8Mwh.
While the very short days, snow and cloud cover reduce output a lot, it still makes power year round.
- That is very surprising. Looking at the statistics collected from the Swedish grid (https://svensksolenergi.se/statistik/elproduktion-fran-solen... ,first graph), the winter months are close to zero in output. December 2024 were 35 GWH, while May 2024 were 765 GWH. In 2023, December were 14 GWH, while May were 579 GWH
It is not absolute zero, but it kind of close, and there is a large period that storage would need to fill. For Sweden it is also the inverse for the demand spike, with winter demanding more energy than during the summer.
- My 7.8kw system made 1000kwh in July, and 100kwh in December.
November and January were 200kwh each, and October and February were 400kwh each.
So it’s very low in the worst of winter, but it comes back very quickly.
- Looking again at Swedish number, the average house need around 200kwh per month for the period of December to April, and about half that for the rest of the year (https://hemsol.se/wp-content/uploads/Elforbrukning-villa-02....). If your maximum is 1000kwh your battery need for the winter will be around 125-150 kwh, not counting capacity for harsher winters or degrading panels.
Using the power walls examples above, you then need around 10 units.
- > is arguing about the budget over a whole year
How and why does that change anything in any way?
- This is unsustainable: you deliver power when its real market value is close to zero, and you want to take power out of the grid when its real market value is large.
- I don't follow - where I am, peak demand seems to be in the summer during the day when everyone has air conditioning on.
- Sure, but everyone else with solar panels will produce more than they consume at the same time as you.
- At current rates, 5k USD is enough to cover my electricity costs for the next 87 years. Your quoted prices still make them a non-starter in (probably) most of the world.
- A 10kW system produces somewhere between 11,000kWh - 17,000kWh / year give or take. Qatar has one of lowest electricity prices in the world at $0.03/kW
$0.03 * 11,000kWh/year * 87 years = $28,710.
So either you're vastly underestimating the amount you pay in electricity, or you're using vastly less electricity in which case you obviously wouldn't get a 10kW system.
- Many parts of the US have staggeringly cheap power compared to the rest of the world.
Before all this our power bills were smack on $100 per month, so I’ve got about a 6.5 year pay off. Electricity here is 13 cents per kWh, but is confirmed to increase 5% per year basically forever. So my pay off is less than that.
- You are paying less than $5 a month for that level of energy generation?
Thats ummm extremely cheap.
- Indeed, average in CA is $260/month so $5k pays off very fast in some places.
- I live in a locale that has cheap energy, in fact one that makes solar a pretty bad deal. Depending on the real generation numbers of the panels it would take about 20 years for me to payback that level of generation.
So saying most people have an 80 year payback period just feels wildly off (depending on the assumptions in the calculation I think that implies less than a penny per kWh generated).
- That's if the price of electricity doesn't change in the next 87 years
The panels are also a hedge against that uncertainty and provide self reliance
- The more usage of intermittent renewables increases the more your electricity bill is dominated by fixed costs. You still need the grid, which is only growing more expensive.
- Or batteries, which are also getting cheaper.
For places not already on the grid, using batteries instead of paying for a new grid connection is close enough to be a question worth asking, though from what I've seen not a definite "yes" or "no" in general.
- Well how much electricity are you using? If you use much less electricity, then you would need less solar panels which means the system would be cheaper.
I highly doubt there is anywhere in the world where you can buy the amount of energy specified by the parent as cheaply as you said. Like i think it would work out to less then a penny per kwh
If you are not accounting for amount of generation than this is an apples and oranges comparison.
- The parts of the world that use so little electricity are not major contributors to climate change.
- >> solar panels are cheap
I want solar panels, but i'm also a skeptic on the cost, and not enough time has passed to prove how things will go. While I agree the metered cost may now favor solar -- what is the TCO for the average resident? Some things on my mind:
1. Everything seems inexpensive at first, before you have to pay for servicing. Just like with cars, HVAC systems, plumbing systems, or any complex system where you are at the mercy of repair companies that are highly local. With plumbers in our area, you cannot even effectively get multiple quotes because there is a "visit fee" of $125, which gets credited to repairs if you choose the provider.
2. Roofs in general are expensive to maintain and repair. Here on the costs, i've never seen even a minor repair be under 1k. Major roof replacements cost 5 to 15k for average homes. This might be a greater-metro-NY issue though. Part of it is the liability insurance of workers being on the roof, so I'm not saying the cost is unjustified -- just that it is really expensive.
3. What happens when these solar panels need to be serviced? Many of these solar shops are fly by night, looking to cash in on govt incentives. Will they be around to service malfunctioning or panels? What will repair costs be? Who guarantees the warranty? As an example, here in NJ even minor tweaks on a leaking showerhead will cost $500 to $1000. I can only imagine what a broken solar panel will cost.
4. I realize this is a very selfish opinion -- but just from a systems boundary perspective, traditional energy complexity is all upstream and I consume the end-product. Solar energy complexity is all local and I take the risk.
- As someone else points out, this is just a rooftop solar question and utility has better economics unless land is really expensive everywhere or your grid connection permitting regime is broken.
My rooftop solar installation is about 10 years old, has long since broken even, and has required .. exactly one incidence of maintenance, to fit pigeon-proofing. Which could have been done at the initial install time, I just wasn't aware of how necessary it could be.
It has huge advantages against HVAC (and, by extension, all the plumbing-based systems like nuclear) in that it doesn't have any plumbing. The panel is a big photodiode. There is basically nothing to go wrong unless you have serious storm damage - and my panels have survived winds that took down nearby trees and fences.
> What happens when these solar panels need to be serviced?
To a first approximation, they don't. Maybe at the 20-25 "EOL" mark.
(even cheaper option would be balcony solar, but that requires legalization)
- how does pigeon-proofing work?
- Since I have curved tiles, that creates a space underneath that's ideal for nesting in. Since they're a nuisance, the pigeon proofing consists of fitting some combination of wire mesh and plastic around the edges to stop them from getting underneath.
- 1. HVAC manufactures have moved to building proprietary computer controlled HVAC systems which must be serviced by a certified technician. This allows them to build a system of regional service companies who maintain complete monopoly over an entire region. Even if you wanted to open a shop to compete with the incumbent, you can't because the manufacturer wont allow you if another shop in your region exists. The result is gate-kept artificial scarcity of technicians and parts allowing for price gouging. The solution is right to repair and boycotting these clowns.
2. Roof work has always been a huge cost as it's very labor intensive (I learned some flat roof maintenance from a roofer friend.) The issue is we have not developed a roof system that works in conjunction with solar panels. Until that happens roofs and solar will be orthogonal problems no one wants.
3. My work got semi-screwed by this. They used concrete blocks, around 60,000 pounds worth, to hold down metal frames the panels were bolted to. Total bonkers fly-by night operation company disappeared after 2 years and we had to maintain it ourselves. Roof was destroyed after 7 years as it was leaking all over and several cracks formed in the blocks around beams. It was deemed unsafe and the entire 75kW system removed. Building owner spent $200k on a new roof and building repairs then banned solar from being installed again.
4. So is your fancy HVAC system. I believe that electrical generation should become part of a homes infrastructure just like HVAC. It enables authority and autonomy over energy which is something I have wanted. Though I also believe if someone wishes to surrender that autonomy then they should be allowed to do so.
- For your point 2. isn't there a company making solar cell arrays in the form of a metal roof panel?
A quick search shows: Forward Solar Roofing, a San Francisco, USA company (but they seem to have vanished?)
Another company with a similar approach (which is not Tesla) is: https://www.suntegrasolar.com/
- My concern with these systems is what happens if the company goes out of business and you need to replace a proprietary shaped panel?
- The Forward Solar Roofing company had panels which were interchangeable w/ existing metal panels, so could have been replaced (albeit at a loss of capacity).
Agree that's a concern for the other products in this space.
- > The issue is we have not developed a roof system that works in conjunction with solar panels.
Millions of data points suggest your POV is unfounded.
- Please post them.
- Every single solar installation with no reported issues.
- The issue here are current racking systems make service of the roof difficult or impossible without tedious and costly disassembly of traditional solar panel installation. Someone has to go around and unbolt everything. We need a system where you can rapidly attach and remove them without tools. Otherwise roof maintenance becomes roofer + PV maintenance.
- We purchased our bay area house in early 2016, two months after it had a new roof and solar installation added. Total cost to the previous owner was about $30k, for 30yr architectural shingles and a 5.5kwhr array.
It's required 0 maintenance or repair since we've lived here.
I'm under the impression that CA either required - or it was just highly suggested - to only install solar arrays on roofs that were in good shape and less than 5yo. That said, we're about to do a remodel and the array will be removed and stored during the project and reinstalled afterward, with a few more panels and a couple of batteries. I'm not concerned about roof repairability relative to my electricity cost savings in California under pg&e.
- While you have a valid point, how often do people need to reroof their house? Or even repair something that is impacted from a solar install?
My anecdotal understanding is that there are no such complaints from owners.
- I have a friend with a 5 year old roof who had panels installed and now has leaks two years later. He checked the visible portion of the roof and could not find anything. He thinks it could be under the panels but can't see under them. A roofer told him the same. He's still trying to figure out what to do. Plus my story about my work place solar system being installed by a fly-by-night which damaged the roof causing leaks. YMMV.
- >2. Roofs in general are expensive to maintain and repair. Here on the costs, i've never seen even a minor repair be under 1k. Major roof replacements cost 5 to 15k for average homes. This might be a greater-metro-NY issue though. Part of it is the liability insurance of workers being on the roof, so I'm not saying the cost is unjustified -- just that it is really expensive.
Where exactly is this? I have a modest, single story house (1600 sq ft) and most of my estimates are ~$20k. (SW Wisconsin).
- If that's just stripping the old shingles off and placing new ones, you should be looking at around $6-10k.
Is there a lot of rebuilding or something going on around you?
My roof (1200 sq roof deck not house) would've been about 18, but that's because it had cedar shingles under the asphalt. I did it myself for 3 in materials and about 3 weeks of labour. These are all CAD prices.
- There are two layers of shingles underneath and that added $600. I have a separate outbuilding (2 car garage but it's a simple hip roof on the house). The lowest estimate we got was $14,500, but it was an outlier.
- So my experience with a leased solar system installed in SoCal in 2011 and owned until 2018(SunRun). The system ended up costing me a fair amount of money although it let me run my AC all day without thinking about it. Sure I could have turned off the AC but the amount I'd have made from selling electricity wouldn't have been much. I hear the situation is even worse now because of the new plans(and now people in the old plans will be forcibly removed). The system also slightly complicated the sale of the home.
I'll say that one goal of the current administration, assuming they're competent enough to accomplish anything, is to dramatically increase US electricity production and I believe them. So with electric costs predicted to drop I suspect it is a bad time to invest in a solar system. China tariffs probably make this even worse as panels should rise in cost.
I would also defer a solar install until I got a new roof since replacing your roof means paying to remove and replace the solar system.
I'll admit that I am biased, generally, against residential rooftop solar for non-off-grid installs since my personal belief is those panels serve society better when they're filling commercial rooftops where economies of scale can make maintenance overhead per watt lower but I'm sure someone will contradict that belief with statistics. Just throwing it out there.
- Major roof replacements cost 5 to 15k for average homes
I just got some quotes to replace a tile roof on my very average 2400 sqft house in FL: 50-60k. Asked neighbors - seems reasonable to them.
- That's the asphalt shingle price, tile is pricey.
- cant use shingles in FL
- You opinion is not selfish (I'm selfishly taking advantage of low solar cell costs and decent ROI). You are however, quite uninformed about the details. Go ask on /r/solar or some other forums or just ask friends who've installed - most are just silently soaking up ROI.
Three things to keep in mind: * I would definitely install after replacing your roof unless it's like just < 5yr old. * Most solar loans, PPA or leases have significantly bad financial terms so I recommend people to avoid them. * Make sure your utility has some kind of net-metering or you will have to install batteries to make it cost effective.
- > here in NJ even minor tweaks on a leaking showerhead will cost $500 to $1000
Surely that's the "rich idiot" fee. Plumbers charge more when the work is trivial and the customer is wealthy.
- Equipment cost is actually not that much now it mostly labor and marketing. That is the main reason solar makes countries with cheap labor have huge advantage with solar. A similar system will cost $60k in the US to $15-20k in India and China
- Or Australia. For some reason Aussie installers are able to install systems for incredibly affordable prices. I'm always jealous when I see a quote from down under that is like a third of what I paid per watt in the US.
- baffles me! aussie labor is really expensive, so it makes even less sense. What is the US doing wrong?
- I think Australia is doing well compared with the average country (and also US is doing things wrong).
Discussion of what Australia is doing well here from a solar expert:
https://bsky.app/profile/solarchase.bsky.social/post/3lmz5rb...
"hypercompetitive and relatively low-regulation installation industry, roofs well suited to work without scaffolding, fairly standardized systems of average size ~8.1kW so not small"
- Nobody even mentioned rooftop solar.
- Yes, but solar panels are cheap as a consequence of investment, partly supported by many solar promotion policies around the world, that were inspired by climate change concerns.
This is actually a victory lap for political activism, we just need a lot more of it.
- Maybe not shifting, but adding. Alternative energy sources are being adopted in increasing ways, but in absolute numbers traditional sources keep increasing too.
- The shift is about to come now as LCOE of Solar + Bess is cheaper than coal in China now and getting cheaper
- Because we're talking about electricity the total power usage for the US is mostly stable.
It's not declining like the UK (efficiencies mean total electricity production is down about 25% this century despite population growth) but it's growing only a tiny fraction, like maybe 2% in a decade - much less than the amount of new solar and wind.
So it's definitely shifting, the biggest shift is away from coal. Coal is awful, it's too expensive and it's incredibly polluting, some of that shift is towards gas, which is also a fossil fuel but has the advantage that it burns cleaner and is often cheaper - but as we see in this data lots of the shift is to "green" sources.
- That may no longer be true. For example, China's coal usage is down 5% YoY despite increased electricity usage.
https://cleantechnica.com/2025/04/20/chinas-coal-generation-...
- No, it's definitely shifting, based on [0] the carbon emissions per kwh globally are down from 542 g/kwh to 481 g/kwh in the last 10 years, that's over a 10% reduction. Countries that are staying flat are the exception, not the norm.
[0]https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-intensity-electric...
- Yes but climate change made them so cheap.
Lucky enough for us and everyone else economy of scale kicked in. I'm taking it
- s/climate change/China/
The US bungled its lead in photovoltaics and politics prevented us from catching up - so like most other things, China leads the way, and we benefit.
- Germany actually started the push.
- I heard explanation that at some point silicone prices skyrocketed, so Germany shifted RnD from monocrystals to thin film panels
High prices caused an influx of investment - and silicone prices plummeted, which allowed China to get the crown
- Silicone != Silicon. Two different materials. I use silicone caulk to seal things up. I use silicon crystals to make microchips.
- So THATS what I've been doing wrong. I'm telling you guys, we're this close to getting competitive chip production to the west.
- Until then, can I just buy your overstock of amazing heat resistant silicone spatulas?
- SPATULA CITY? SPATULA CITY!
- I have never seen this before. That was hilarious! Now I have to watch this movie.
Thanks for the laughs.
- [dead]
- China literally just subsidized soar panel manufacturing to the time of several billions of dollars with the express goal of killing manufacturing everywhere else and then raising prices once the competition was gone.
- There's really no reason the US or other major economies couldn't have followed suit. The chinese plan only works because the other major economies are more than willing to give them that manufacturing capacity since it means a local (although somewhat temporary) boon.
The whole plan could have been snookered by the US similarly subsidizing their solar production 10 or 20 years into the chinese plan. Which would have put most of the cost onto China while we reaped the benefits of cheap power production.
- The Obama administration tried, but it was too little too late and they were raked over the coals by Republicans for "choosing winners".
But fundamentally solar cell production was (is?) pretty dirty and US environmental regulations were always going to be a stumbling block. One used to be able to spot Chinese solar factories on satellite maps by looking upstream from deadzones, but apparently that has been enough of an embarrassment that even the CCP has started cracking down.
- And choosing "losers", specifically Solyndra was shrieked at along the lines of Benghazi
Basically DOE funded research pretty successfully but it only takes one failure for the loud voices to win
Same program funded Tesla as I recall
Example source: https://www.reuters.com/article/world/us/exclusive-controver...
- > But fundamentally solar cell production was (is?) pretty dirty
There's nothing "fundamentally" dirty about it. It's not like fossil fuel combustion that inevitably produces a large stream of waste (CO2).
- WTO prohibit these types of subsidies. Every other country in the world was trying to follow the rules.
This is why the U.S. was able to impose punitive tariffs on Chinese solar without WTO interference.
- Wow, only several billion dollars? That's like 0.1% of the US federal budget.
- environmental "awareness" doesn't mean dog poo; environment-friendly will only be prioritized when it's cheaper to do so. That's why government subsidies and taxing are REQUIRED.
The western world should have subsidized it too, now you can't dismiss it because it wasn't organic--because it NEVER would be organic.
- China has accounted for the majority of global solar panel manufacturing for over 10 years now:
https://www.statista.com/chart/1576/chinese-solar-photovolta...
Despite that dominance, prices continue to fall:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-pv-prices
As an addendum, the US also saw a rapid increase in domestic solar panel manufacturing in recent years:
https://seia.org/news/american-solar-panel-manufacturing-cap...
But that was due to government incentives that are now under fire from the Trump administration.
- yeah, pretty smart move. We shoulda done that too - controlling the means of production for energy generation is a pretty useful thing imo.
- That's why environmental "awareness" doesn't mean dog poo; environment-friendly will only be prioritized when it's cheaper to do so. That's why government subsidies and taxing are REQUIRED for the switch to more environmentally friendly alternatives--this applies to everything, from fossil fuels to packaging.
- Tariffs are changing this, however. Buy them ASAP if you're building.
- Is it safe to say that would not have happened without China? With all of the strong energy incumbents that the US has and their lack of desire for disruptive innovation I wonder how much the US can take credit for this reduction.
- To my understanding, scaling production to bring prices down due to economy of scale is the part of the initial plan, which was based on the data about climate change. So these things are connected.
- Not to mention how much's been invested in government subsidies to develop that scale. Cheap solar is not a spontaneous occurrence by any means.
- Yeah I'd be subsidising panels coming in from China personally.
- Lol this to me was the greatest stupidity from Europe. I get Petro states like US or maybe even Canada complaining about China subsiding energy and hurting their oil and gas but what the fuck did Europe protect. They even got fucked over by US into a Russian war and now they are stuck buying US gas.
- The Russian war is entirely the fault of the Russians, along with massive complacency after Russia shot down a planeload of Dutch nationals and used chemical weapons in a UK city.
- What's interesting is the US has always been opposed to Europe being dependent on Russian natural gas. And historically the US is an importer of natural gas. so it's not like the US wants to sell it's natural gas to Europe instead.
- any war is fault of diplomacy
it's european version of Cuba crisis - geopolitical enemy in the underbelly of nuclear power
- It really isn't, Russia was integrated in most diplomatic and economic circles before they started to invade multiple neighbouring countries.
This integration is what led to Germany's Russian gas dependency in the end.
- > Russia was integrated in most diplomatic and economic circles before they started to invade multiple neighbouring countries.
...and how did that help solve the "european version of carribian crisis"?
ignoring reasons citing costs only expresses you having different values - but it doesn't solve the problem
there were attempts to make safeguards - to allow Ukraine into EU, but not NATO. Those failed
War is the result of those failures
- > ...and how did that help solve the "european version of carribian crisis"?
Well it didn't, and that's my point. This was the diplomatic route and it completely failed. There was never going to be a diplomatic solution.
> there were attempts to make safeguards - to allow Ukraine into EU, but not NATO. Those failed
Yes, in 2013 Ukraine signed a trade deal with the EU and already at that time Russia pressured Ukraine to renounce this deal. Russia showed their hands at that point and clearly displayed to the world that it had nothing to do with NATO but rather about total control of Ukraine.
> War is the result of those failures
War started 11 years ago, after Euromaidan, at a time where Ukraine wasn't talking about joining NATO yet. NATO became a priority for Ukraine in response to the Russian invasion in 2014.
- > it's european version of Cuba crisis - geopolitical enemy in the underbelly of nuclear power
The Cuban Missile Crisis was about nuclear missiles only minutes from Florida. After the crisis, Cuba continued to host Russian fighter jets, bombers, tanks, and tons of other weapons until the USSR finally collapsed in 1991.
Ukraine had nothing of this sort, and to this day, doesn't have.
It is a lazy comparison thrown around to justify a textbook imperial land grab by Russia.
- > They even got fucked over by US into a Russian war and now they are stuck buying US gas.
Europe was stupid as they let "green" political groups (often historically clandestinely backed by Soviet/Russian government) get nuke plants shut down to shift to coal/gas.
While Europe was incredibly naive to remain so udderly reliant on Russian gas, especially after the the annexation of Crimea and the shoot-down of MH17, the war is 150% the fault of the Russian government and nobody else (USA, NATO, Ukraine, etc).
- The irony that the Chernobyl meltdown was probably the most profitable thing to ever happen to Russia.
- s/Europe/Germany/
- Germany was not the only one, but arguably the worst.
- But it was the conservative government in Germany that shut the nuclear plants down, the Greens were in the opposition at the time. When they were in power, the Greens even pushed back the shutdown. Kinda seems like you're assigning the blame unfairly.
- But that's what it was going to take, economic incentives to achieve a long term goal.
It's also climate change that is pushing for an alternate method to make cheaper.
- Solar panels WERE cheap until 145% tariffs were applied
- What could real push a shift would be thermal longtime storage. Basically heatpump heating with a artificial heat stored underground in the summer.
- If you could figure out a way to do this economically you could have a real winner. Ground source heat pumps already exist, but they're so expensive to install that they basically never make their cost back vs. air source heat pumps.
- What geological impacts does heating the ground cause?
- Yeaaaahhh but the data on climate change informed government policy that subsidized renewable energy.
- We have at least subsidized solar enough to build up enough manufacturing to contribute to that price.
- I'm confused by your statement. What else would it be if not cheaper renewable options?
- You could instead make the fossil fuels cost more.
- Why would you do one or the other? We've done both so far. Let's keep doing both.
- That's all we've ever cared about, unfortunately.
- Oh don’t worry it won’t last, since Trump wants to impose 3000% tariffs on Asian solar panels. He’s doing his best to destroy the world at every level.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Trade-war/US-sets-tariffs-as...
- I personally think that it is amazing that we are likely going to shift away from fossil fuels out of pure capitalistic greed. Trying to convince people to give up fossil fuels out of some altruistic desire to save the planet was never gonna work.
- If you want to change the world you need to align the incentives.
- Capitalism can solve anything it just needs to be directly threatened. Far off future maybes aren’t enough.
- It has been the smart economic decision for a decade or more already. Capitalistic greed caused some to spread FUD around that issue, deny there was a problem and attack several useful tools for dealing with it.
The fact that capitalistic greed has caught up with reality a decade later after most of the hard work was done and is now fighting on both sides of the issue is somewhat tragic.
Doubly so if you consider what it means about every other global problem we face that might affect a powerful incumbent's short term profits.
- even after tarifs?
- China saving the Planet?
How dare you…
- [dead]
- I keep hearing that solar panels are cheap but then I get my PG&E bill every month.
- Solar panels are cheap because of government subsidies.
Goverments subsidize solar because of climate change.
- Confidently wrong. Solar panels are cheap because of manufacturing improvements, and in some (small) jurisdictions they're further subsided. They are not cheap because of subsidy.
- This is well studied so it is you that is confidently wrong.
The government funded research and market incentives preceded the mass manufacture.
> In terms of government policy, Trancik says, policies that stimulated market growth accounted for about 60 percent of the overall cost decline, so “that played an important part in reducing costs.” Policies stimulating market growth globally included measures such as renewable portfolio standards, feed-in tariffs, and a variety of subsidies. Government-funded research and development in various nations accounted for roughly 30 percent — although public R&D played a larger part in the earlier years, she says.
"Explaining the plummeting cost of solar power
Researchers uncover the factors that have caused photovoltaic module costs to drop by 99 percent."
https://news.mit.edu/2018/explaining-dropping-solar-cost-112...
- And you think the manufacturing just spontaneously improved? Governments worldwide have invested heavily into solar production in the last 20-30 years. Cheap panels today are a direct result of that.
- Do you think manufacturing improvements were government subsidised? Does China (the solar powerhouse @78% of the world's supply) get a direct kickback from your government? Perhaps it's market based.
https://www.sunsave.energy/solar-panels-advice/solar-energy/...
- The Chinese government invested $818 billion in solar energy in 2024 alone, but sure, keep telling me about your magical free market.
- Could you provide a reference? The only $818B I can find.. is a purchase of $818B of renewables, not just solar and not a subsidy/tax break. Perhaps you have a better source. Their 887GW of solar capacity alone costs $887B at current market rates.
https://deepnewz.com/china/china-leads-global-clean-energy-i...
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-solar-wind-po...
- And it doesn't make almost any difference, because other countries are building hume amounts of coal plants. China started 95GW of coal plant construction just last year.
- China's coal usage is down 5% in the last 12 months: https://cleantechnica.com/2025/04/20/chinas-coal-generation-...
They're adding coal capacity quickly, but they're lowering the capacity factor of that usage even faster. Those coal plants are peakers that only run when solar & batteries are empty.
- I think it was on Volts podcast where I heard that many of them are built as political insurance for regional governments who don’t want an angry population if they have an unusually cold winter and a lot of them are going to end up as stranded assets which the population gets way less mad about.
- Ironically building coal plants probably helps wean China off coal. They use a lot of coal for heating. But nobody is going to want to switch to a heat pump unless they have reliable electricity.
- to add, given the governing structure in china, the coal plants don't have to make economic sense. one-party politics would thus prefer to overbuild as a hedge against the population getting mad at them.
- Not in the last 12 months. This quarter compared to a year ago.
It was up 1.5% for 2024 compared to 2023: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-thermal-power...
- The top-line number doesn't accurately explain what's going on in China: they have a bunch of coal plans, but many of them operate at 10% or less of rated capacity, probably out of a combination of "these are peaker and/or worst-case (i.e. American oil embargo) scenario energy security plants" and old-fashioned deficiencies in central planning. In any case, you should measure coal burned instead of capacity installed, which is leveling off: [1]
[1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/265491/chinese-coal-cons...
- China is deploying far more solar generation, at an increasing rate. [0]
Increasingly cheap battery storage, also built in China, is also being deployed rapidly.
It all makes a lot of difference.
[0] https://www.pv-magazine.com/2024/02/02/chinas-new-pv-install...
- It provably does matter.
Western transition away from fossil fuel usage is still a reduction in net fossil fuel usage when compared to no shift at all. In other words fossil fuel usage might still be growing, but it is growing at a slower rate. If we accept that fossil fuel usage should be minmized then it very much matters.
Aside from that; this argument reduces to an exceptionally bad moral stance which is: Someone else is doing bad things, therefore that justifies me doing that bad thing. Or as you might phrase the counter-argument to a young child: just because someone else is littering doesn't mean that it is ok for you to litter.
- China also installed way more solar than, for example, the US. Their energy needs are growing quickly as a developing nation.
- China didn't just install more solar than any other country, they installed more than all other countries combined.
- Economies of scale. That's how you win.
- One thing which has not been mentioned in this discussion is that the wholesale market price of power at any given time is substantially driven by the marginal cost of generation.
When renewables (including storage) can't take up the entire load of the system, that marginal generation is nowadays going to be gas power, and right now the global price of gas is unprecedentedly high.
To simplify things somewhat; the larger the fraction of the time gas generation can be turned off, the lower the annualised price of electricity will be. At the moment, we are already seeing renewables taking up 100% of the load for short periods. As more renewable capacity gets built, those periods will get longer and longer, this effect will get ever larger. In some countries this effect is expected to become significant within the next five years, even at current rates of progress, and will only get better as time goes on.
Lower annualised electrical prices will be good for the economy and the individual, and encouraging this should be a priority for any rational government which thinks more than a few years ahead.
- >Lower annualised electrical prices will be good for the economy and the individual, and encouraging this should be a priority for any rational government which thinks more than a few years ahead.
But it will be bad for profits for the private companies who generate power with gas who have been lobbying the government to the tune of billions of dollars to protect those very profits.
Saving money for the consumer is the polar opposite of what these companies , and therefore the government wants.
- This is one of the things I was talking about when I said "simplifying".
That's exactly their motivation, yes. Resisting it requires political will, or we will continue to let the increasingly irrelevant tail wag the dog.
There is definitely a case for subsidising the existence of mostly-idle gas plants to make the costs of keeping them around profitable for the medium term (you can think of them roughly as playing the role of a battery), but indefinitely subsidising the equivalent of buggy-whip manufacturers is not a long-term solution for the economy.
- >and right now the global price of gas is unprecedentedly high.
Have a source for this? Zooming out, looking at gas prices over the past decade, "unprecedentedly high" isn't the term I would use: https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/natural-gas
- One important point that’s not obvious from this article: U.S. pollution from fossil fuels isn’t actually decreasing.
From what I understand (and please correct me if I’m wrong), overall energy demand in the U.S. continues to grow year over year. Most of the additional energy needed is now being supplied by renewables.
So while we’re adding less new pollution—because the new energy is cleaner—we’re still producing the same amount of fossil fuel pollution as before.
The baseline pollution hasn’t gone down; we’ve just slowed the rate at which it increases.
- In the US greenhouse gasses are down across a variety of absolute metrics:
https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-states#what-ar...
In the electricity grid specifically they peaked around 2006 and are 15% below 1990 due to switching from coal to gas and introducing renewables
What you say is broadly true globally but western nations are mostly on the downslope and the globe as a whole is slowing and hopefully going negative soon.
- That's one of the most interesting links I've seen in a long time (regardless of subject).
Thanks for sharing because it puts things in perspective much easier due to the data it sourced.
- If you’re convinced by the materials shared, you may want to consider editing your original content. It’s currently the most-upvoted comment, and is materially incorrect.
- I'm unable to edit.
I did though indicate "please correct me if I'm wrong", in my original post.
Which led to this discussion below that I'm sure people then read (like your comment on this sub-post)
- Texas Attempt to Kickstart New Gas-Fired Power Is Stumbling - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-05/texas-att... | https://archive.today/9jRPq - April 5th, 2025
Solar adds more new capacity to the US grid in 2024 than any energy source in 20 years - https://electrek.co/2025/03/10/solar-new-capacity-us-grid-20... - March 10th, 2025
US is set to shatter grid battery records this year - https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/energy-storage/chart-us... - March 7th, 2025
Solar, battery storage to lead new U.S. generating capacity additions in 2025 - https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=64586 - February 24th, 2025
https://www.interconnection.fyi/ (~1TW of solar in US grid interconnect queues)
(it is expected within the next 12 months we arrive at a deployment rate of 1TW/year of global solar PV capacity)
- I strong suspect that Trump fully intends for tariffs to cripple renewables (they will) and boost oil and gas jobs. The dude is hell bent on returning America to the 1950s.
- Indeed, politicians in the employ of the (traditional) energy sector have gone from mocking renewable projects and decrying them for "requiring subsidies" to demanding their curtailment because they do not.
Alberta's government (whose premier is a former oil&gas industry lobbyist) enacted a "moritorium" on new renewables projects a couple years ago because it had the most active investment in that sector in the country (most sunny days, and very windy). After the moritorium was lifted draconian regulations were placed on potential new sites.
This was done under the cover of "protecting farmland", but this is in a province with a massive abandoned oil well contamination issue, which the private sector got away with and continues to get away with.
And then today/yesterday it came out that the government had hidden the results of public "consultations" on these matters because it was not favourable to them.
The problem with oil&gas is it is prone to the development of parasitical/highway-man type relationships, and all sorts of people get rich quick by inserting themselves in the flow and they will not give up this position without a dirty, dirty fight.
- One of the ironies in the US is that some of the more conservative states with supposedly renewable energy hostile governments are actually deploying more solar than many liberal states. When people want to oppose a solar install for whatever reason they often turn to environmental laws, requiring impact studies or other such red tape, that are much weaker in conservative states. Texas is a champion of renewable installs despite a government that is openly pro-fossil fuel.
- The US had at least one year of solar PV deployment capacity in reserve before tariffs went into effect, ~50GW. It also has roughly the same amount of domestic manufacturing, but not fully vertically integrated. Gas plants are backordered well into the 2030s and coal plants (which only produced ~15% of electricity in the US in 2024) are teetering near retirement. To push either to failure would not be hard, you'd just have to target (legally, economically) specific parts of the supply chains needed for thermal generation construction (Siemens or GE Vernova) and operations/maintenance.
Tariffs and economic uncertainty are pushing down oil prices. The US O&G industry experiences pain below $70/barrel. It is not having a great time under this admin, as of this comment.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43624269 (citations)
'Unstoppable force' of solar power propels world to 40% clean electricity - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43620007 - April 2025
Shift to Clean Energy Will Persist under Trump, New Analyses Say - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/shift-from-fossil... - April 16th, 2025
‘Drill Baby Drill’ Is Drowning in Oil: Trump's tariffs are helping to create some of the worst conditions for the industry so far this century. - https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-04-15/trump-... | https://archive.today/4Qyno - April 15, 2025
Texas Oil Executives Are Frustrated at Trump for Crushing Crude Prices - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-09/texas-wil... | https://archive.today/oHr2w - April 9, 2025
- According to EIA[1] and Wiki[2] fossil fuel electricity production has been rather stable or going slightly down on the last three years. However, US electricity is a small part of the US Energy Consumption. When you take those into account[3], renewables fall from 50% of the energy mix to less than 20% (10% if you don't include nuclear) but overall Fossil fuel usage is stable. The trend is going down if you take a longer time period.
[1] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/Annual/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_of_the_Unit...
[3] https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/sec1_3.pdf
- > overall energy demand in the U.S. continues to grow year over year.
That probably not unique to the US, but I wonder what that energy is used for. Our appliances use less and less electricity, our homes are better insulated, cars are more fuel efficient, so what is using that additional energy?
- It does not attempt to explain it but this lists how much major sectors use: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/ This data presentation shows it seems to have broadly plateaued in last few years with some fluctuations that do not indicate an upward trend as of 2023.
- Electrification (converting things that ran on fossil fuels to electricity) is a net decrease in energy demand but massive increase in electricity demand if you're looking at electricity specifically. Past few years have also had a ton of growth in data centers and manufacturing investments. According to the EIA, they're projecting a decrease in energy demand over the next few years: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=65004
- Commercial and industrial use, as well as increased AC usage. I'm not sure what percentage of the electric market is now for charging cars, but it's not zero.
You see similar use patterns for water. Per capita water use has gone down in many urban areas, especially places like California over the past few decades. You see hard restrictions on watering lawns, showers, toilet sizes, etc. But agriculture just sucks up the rest.
- > cars are more fuel efficient
This is true when comparing the same class of car to previous models, but is it still true overall when we consider the shift to larger vehicles? The Toyota Camry from 1994 is still more efficient than the current 2024 top selling Ford F150.
Jevons paradox is worth considering when reading these stories of increased renewable energy generation and falling prices.
- Yes! Automobile fuel efficiency is now probably the classical example of Jevon's paradox: some cars are more fuel-efficient; and (therefore?) we in the United States are driving 35% more miles each year in 2024 (3.3e12) than in 1994 (2.4e12).
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M12MTVUSM227NFWA
Which makes our total gasoline consumption about the same as or higher than the 1990s, within 10% or so:
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=C...
- I don’t know but there has been a lot of manufacturing construction after the pandemic. Manufacturing construction has doubled since 2021 to the highest levels since 2005. Presumably these projects consume power for both construction and operation. There’s probably also some amount of new industry becoming viable as energy prices fall.
https://home.treasury.gov/news/featured-stories/unpacking-th...
- Bitcoin? "AI"? If this is just electric energy, EV?
- Those new-fangled AI things use a lot of power.
- Server farms in general? Up to 46% of Virginia's electric consumption projected to be data centers in 2030:
https://www.epri.com/research/products/000000003002028905
...see Table A1 on PDF page 29.
- More appliances used more often, bigger homes, bigger cars, longer and more frequent trips.
- Is that a fact or a supposition based on fossil fuel generation continuing to grow? Pollution produced by fossil fuels isn’t necessarily equal. Modern power plants are significantly less polluting, and gas is much better than coal. If coal continued its decline and newer plants replaced some old ones, you could easily have less total pollution from increased fossil fuels generation.
- Related: 40% of world's electricity is zero emissions:
https://cleantechnica.com/2025/04/19/zero-emissions-electric...
- Energy is a frustrating topic because people have some very entrenched but uninformed opinions about it, like hte "energy independence" argument. We're clearly energy independent but people will look to see that we still import oil and natural gas and say we're not. That's a business. Refining is a business. Making LNG is a business. Canada has no real way of exporting oil and natural gas so we buy it, process it and either use it or export it.
Another: peak total and per-capita greenhouse gas emissions in the US peaked in about 2007 and has decreased ~10% since then [1]. We still produce the most per-capita so there's a long way to go. China leads the world on renewable energy builds by a mile. It's not even close. Yet their usage of coal is still increasing as is their greenhouse gas emissions (total and per-capita) due to a still industrializing population.
Electricity costs continue to increase [2]. Some blame this on renewables. It's not. This is a longstanding trend. It goes beyond inflation though. Utilities are generally regional monopolies. For some reason we've decided that privatizing these is somehow a good idea (it's not). The need for ever-increasing profits just means things will continue to get more expensive.
[1]: https://www.wri.org/insights/charts-explain-per-capita-green...
- China's coal usage is estimated to peak in the next few years and projected to start dropping there as well. Possibly a lot faster than they announced a few years ago as it seems they too underestimated their own ability to do things better and cheaper.
A lot of the story in the US is not about the amount of energy used but about the amount of energy wasted. Most of the energy used in the use is simply heating the universe without doing anything useful whatsoever. The US is very inefficient with it's energy usage. Heating/cooling barely insulated buildings, moving around in stupidly heavy vehicles, etc. Per capita, the Chinese are doing way better per kwh. They pay less for and do more with their kwh.
Cost of energy in the US has more to do with it's bloated system than with technology. Outdated/broken infrastructure, restrictive/backwards policy, inefficient equipment, obsolete technology, etc.
- > [China] usage of coal is still increasing
China's coal usage is down 5% YoY. https://cleantechnica.com/2025/04/20/chinas-coal-generation-...
- According to wikipedia, as of 2023, the US ranks 17th in greenhouse emissions per capita.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhous...
- > Canada has no real way of exporting oil and natural gas so we buy it, process it and either use it or export it.
Just to be clear, you mean "we" as in the USA? So the USA basically manages the exports of Canadian fossil fuels?
- Yes, I mean the USA. Here's a presentation on the Canadian oil and gas industry [1]. You can see that a very small portion is exported directly. Almost all of it is via pipelines to the USA.
This is a huge strategic benefit to the US, which is yet another reason why alienating Canada through tariffs and other policies is such a laughably ignorant and terrible idea.
It's also why anyone pointing to non-zero US imports of oil and gas as damning proof of the US not being energy independent is incredibly ill-informed.
[1]: https://www.capp.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Canadian-Expo...
- China is ramping up imports of Canadian crude.
https://financialpost.com/commodities/energy/oil-gas/china-u...
- I see the announcements of China importing more Canadian oil to be largely performative.
Canada lacks the facilities to export oil so they'd have to build them when there are existing piplines that export it to the US. That's a hard to justify expense, particularly because Canada-US relations could change any moment. LNG is even worse because those facilities are expensive.
China is going to get its oil from Russia, Iran and Venezuela, like it already does. Russian oil can be imported overland. Sanctions are laughably avoided by simply laundering oil exports through Malaysia and elsewhere [1].
This also suits China's strategic interests of not having a unipolar world.
But long-term China seeks to end its dependence on imported oil, just like the US did, except China is doing it with hydro and solar and by decreasing demand by electrifying transportation.
[1]: https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/chinas-march-ira...
- Westridge Marine Terminal back in Burnaby (right outside Vancouver) can handle APAC oil exports.
That said, Canada is ambivalent about negotiations with China as much of Canada's automotive industry would be destroyed in a liberalized trade deal with China, just like what happened to Australia after their FTAs with ASEAN, China, India, SK, and Japan.
China was also caught trying to influence Canadian elections by the CSIS [0], so trust is limited.
[0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/canada-spies-found-ch...
- > That's a hard to justify expense, particularly because Canada-US relations could change any moment.
I don't see relations improving much for at least two years? Building up alternative export capabilities seems a decent way to support the economy.
Of course no one really trusts China, but at least you have a reasonable idea of what their plans are.
- Canada *can* export its oil and natural gas, but mostly doesn't because the economics haven't historically warranted it. Most Canadian Oil is relatively heavy, which the gulf refineries in the US are tailored to refine when mixed with Texan and Oklahoman oil (for historical reasons the heavy mix was Canadian and Venezuelan, but the latter is not a factor with the combination of mostly being sanctioned as well as lower output levels due to mismanagement).
The gulf refineries are designed to have a decent chunk of heavy oil, so the historical price discount that Canada gets is less compared to if it shipped it elsewhere. It's similar for natural gas - we just didn't extract enough of it to justify dedicated LNG terminals, not to mention the extra pipelines to ship it to them. The price delta didn't have an ROI compared to just piping it south.
However, with Trump the economics are all now shifting. It now may very well be worth it. There are recently completed pipelines from Alberta to the Pacific and there's now (very, very early) serious talk of more going east, along with terminals.
- I wonder what next month will be. April / May tends to be the months that I generate more electricity with my solar panels than I consume.
Winter: Not a lot of sunlight, and I heat with a heat pump.
Summer: A lot of sunlight, but my AC eats a lot of the power.
- I'd like to get solar, but I'm starting with a battery pack and a smaller solar install to cover those things that I would normal use a diesel generator for. It's amazing that the "cleaner" energy deniers won't be able to hold back cheaper energy.
- Oh man, didn't the president just re-activate coal mining? What are they going to do with all that coal? Asia might of wanted it before the trade war, but not anymore?
Oh. I guess we can feed it into the AI data center generators.
- If you go look at the price of some of the mid-high end Chinese panels, you could pay 200% in tariff costs and still be getting a bargain. Check out LONGi for example.
I'll be ordering a bunch of these for a renovation I'm doing this year and I'll be installing quite lot of capacity, it's a no brainier to go solar, especially considering the price of energy now days.
Maybe people doing this will be labeled radical, extremists or activists for installing panels on their roof soon but I don't care, it's my roof.
- Note also that tariff is paid on the _import price_, which is a fraction of retail. Many people do not understand this.
- This is why Chinese social media is communicating to consumers to buy direct and cutout the developed world middle man.
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/chines... | https://archive.today/rVvix
https://x.com/abby4thepeople/status/1911238808018014587 | https://archive.today/dwyw7
- That depends on what the retail markup is on any item?
I don't think it really matters because if I buy $2000 worth of panels directly, I'm still getting hit with ~ $800 of tariffs.
You point out an interesting point here though, this plan will backfire even harder for the USA in my opinion because it sounds like American middlemen are now absolutely screwed. We will all just be buying from China directly and boosting their online retail capability.
- The implication being that those panels aren't really $2K when they cross the border. They're more like $500, at most. And that's what the tariff gets applied to. People think 100% tariff means the price doubles. But it shouldn't, especially on the various tchotchkes which are bought for a buck and sold in the US for $5. Note that "shouldn't" ≠ "won't". Greed is a thing.
- You're still paying the tariff...nothing negates the fact that you're now paying $800 extra for the panels for no reason at all.
I'm already buying direct anyway...I don't see why you're bringing greed into it. It sounds like you might be trying to help people feel positive about paying more in taxes?
I can still pay the tariff and get great panels at an affordable price anyway...
- Trump can say what he wants, but the market has moved on from coal.
- Except in India and China: https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/fossil-fuels/chin...
- At least the percentage of renewable energy generation in China is steadily increasing. It has gone from 17% back in 2008 to 32% in 2024. And solar and wind are growing at a rapid pace.
- Both countries are smart enough to know that being reliant on foreign oil and coal for everything is stupid, they are moving away to solar and wind, not just for security reasons but also because they produce most of the panels already so they supply their own demand then use the extra capacity to profit via exports.
It's done.
- What does "clean" mean here? Wind and solar are 24.4% and "fossil" is 49.2% so what's the remainder? Are they counting natural gas as "clean"? It's not...
- Natural gas is considered a fossil fuel, per Wikipedia. Unless you mean biofuels like methane, at least - but as far as I know, those are scarcely used anywhere on a large scale, certainly not the US.
"Clean" sources are generally anything that isn't burning hydrocarbons. This includes nuclear, hydro and geothermal.
Edit: See also a previous comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43755528
- They're not counting natural gas, and I imagine they also don't include "clean coal". The remaining 26.4 is probably a mix of nuclear and hydro. Which lines up with historical US generation percentages.
- Nobody includes "clean coal" because it is a myth the fossil fuel industry made up to try to keep their business alive and to give politicians cover.
There are around three tiny "clean coal" plants in the world, all together producing only a tiny fraction of a percent of the energy on the grid.
- Fully agreed on all points!
- Hydro is a big slice out west and they’ve likely included nuclear.
- wonder how this plays into the mix?
US sets tariffs of up to 3,521% on South East Asia solar panels
- Last month 18.2% of the US's electricity was generated by nuclear (61.8TWh), according to the media pack "All electricity sources data.csv".
Renewables (110.6 TWh) = Wind (51.6 TWh) + Solar (31.1 TWh) + Hydro (27.9 TWh)
Clean = Nuclear (61.8 TWh) + Renewables (110.6 TWh)
- Drill baby drill. 401k retirement savings being drilled right now.
There's less oil drilling than Biden's time. Weirdly a good thing for the planet, just like Covid allowed many ecosystems to recover.
I am no degrowth fan. However I do believe we ought to use our brains to build technology that allows us to live sustainably with the planet while harnessing more energy and automation.
- And Energy prices are at an all time high— go figure!
- not sure if you meant to link a different chart - that chart is the electricity component of CPI-U (an inflation measure) meaning it's by definition not inflation adjusted - you'd probably want to find a chart of nominal values for electricity spending and adjust for inflation to see whether or not it's at an all time high. Which, recently it's run ahead of inflation because of the overall surge in demand and investment in upgrading aging infrastructure/adding new capacity, but long term it's pretty flat/down
- What happened in 2022? Does the graph not account for inflation?
- that graph is of one of the components that is used to calculate inflation
- Correlation is not causation. Energy companies have increased their prices largely to increase profits.
- Is it bc solar is subsidized or is it bc it's cheaper? Every time I walk into Lowes I'm sold on solar but they say it's bc the government is heavily subsidizing it
- It's cheaper and they're all subsidized. Solar is subsidized, oil and gas is subsidized, nuclear is subsidized. Fracking recieved significant subsidies to develop the market initially. Right now, solar/wind is cheaper than fossil fuels by a lot, which is why it's the largest percentage of newly added energy capacity worldwide. Cheaper, faster, and after installation, the power plant doesn't need to keep getting fed with a consumable (incredibly low variable costs are causing issues where markets are getting messed up and going into 0/negative prices since power plants are competing to dump energy it doesn't cost them anything to generate)
- It is still subsidized, to the tune of 30%. However, that subsidy is mostly because rooftop installs have very high labor costs in the US. Solar farms pay far less per watt.
The actual hardware, especially the panels, have dropped so much in price that if you're capable and willing to do the work yourself you can have a solar install paid off in 2-5 years, depending on how much sun you get and how expensive your local power is. I've seen homebrew setups down south that were paid off in just over a year, but those were guys who live way out in the desert and were getting ripped off by their power company.
One thing you don't see anymore is fancy sun-tracking mounts. Back when panels were expensive they sometimes made sense, but these days it's pretty much always better to just install more panels instead. You can even point them differently, with half facing SE for morning sun and the other half facing SW for evening sun, flattening your production curve and allowing you to use a cheaper and smaller inverter.
- It’s both. The subsidies help the solar power market develop. Supply lines of panels, installation, etc. as these grow and mature prices come down. We subsidize fossil fuel production as well with similar results.
- If you look up your address here it will give you the cost breakdown. (https://sunroof.withgoogle.com/) I just checked my house again and it’s $30K for 10kW, but there is a $10K tax credit, so the subsidy is a 1/3 of the cost.
- Am I reading that chart incorrectly, why summer months has a drop of green energy generation?
- How much lower would we be without all the GPUs?
- Was wood and coal burnt for heating homes in rural areas accounted in this data or we talking electricity only?
- [flagged]
- Had to check, and was surprised to see that new reactors have actually come online in the last couple of years. https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=228&t=21
Hydro still growing too despite the occasional dam removal project: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61883
But the reason wind and solar are winning is that they're so, so much easier to deploy. More countries should legalize balcony solar, too.
- The interactive data from Ember shows both US nuclear and hydro generation as flat over the last 25 years. Hydro has more variation over that time but is actually down slightly overall.
They make it really hard to link to specific graph configurations though
- Is hydro growing or is it simply the change in rainfall year to year causing the fluctuations. Hydro is not that great for the surrounding environment.
- One of the limitations of hydro is that most of the good spots are already in use. And that doesn’t account for environmental impact or age of damns.
- Most of the good spots for hydro for generation are already in use, but there are 100X as many good spots that could be used for storage.
- I believe Georgia, my home state, has installed 2 new reactors in the past few years.
- It would also be correct to say that Georgia has built 2 reactors in the past 35 years.
- Yes and those two reactors make up two thirds of all new nuclear reactors in the US in the last 29 years. There is no nuclear renaissance in the US and it really doesn't look like there will be one in the (near) future. Especially given how extremely badly the construction of those three reactors (and the two cancelled reactors) went.
- Nuclear is no use for the grid as it can't flex. Sometimes a grid needs 80 units, sometimes 50 units. Nuclear can't provide 80 units all the time as its unaffordable, can't increase or decrease output economically, and only makes sense when they're run 24/7 (except when it has to go offline for maintenence or other issues like heatwaves [0])
[0] https://www.euronews.com/green/2023/07/13/frances-nuclear-po...
- I must have missed the news about solar and wind being able to flex.
- Unless nuclear power can provide for 100% of the demand for 100% of the time there will be a need for dispatchable power.
In the UK that would mean 48GW of total capacity. Worst case Nuclear capacity (when plants are offline etc) currently generated by the 5.6GW peak is about 3.8GW (95% of the time nuclear generated more than 3GW, 85% at least 3.7GW)
So that would mean 13 times as much nuclear production in the UK as it currently has to reach 100% use.
Which would generate about 500TWh per year, for a demand of about 250TWh per year, and a peak amount of about 73GW of capacity.
That means the real cost of a nuclear only grid would be twice as much as nuclear currently costs per MWh. Given that nuclear isn't economical today that doesn't really sound sensible.
As both Nuclear and Renewable thus both need "peaker plants" to flex the grid, the "baseload" argument is rather meaningless.
- Both of them can be trivially downregulated.
- Theres a upper limit though and they don't provide a great baseload, which is nuclear's specialty even among non-renewable resources nuclear is a clear winner in baseload management.
Also nuclear is a non-renewable just a long, nearly impossible to empty one, especially with the longer isotopes of thorium and uranium.
- Nuclear with breeder reactors can run with known resources for 4 billion years. Renewable doesn't mean infinite (nothing is infinite). The sun will run out of its wholly finite fusion fuel in about 5-6 billion years, and will consume earth well before that. I think nuclear fission with breeders is therefore just as renewable as the solar-derived energy flows.
- Renewable is a great base load power option. You supply your base load with your cheapest available supply, which is usually renewable.
You then supply all power needs above what can be provided by your cheapest power with dispatchable supply. If your base supply is intermittent, that means your dispatchable supply has to be able to supply 100% of peak.
- It's that upregulation that's hard.
- "in current market conditions"
Nuclear plants can load follow at around 3-5% full power per minute. They choose not to due to current market conditions that do not value their ability to provide 24/7 clean heat and electricity, but markets could be changed.
- The problem is:
How will you force me with solar panels and a battery to take your extremely expensive nuclear power off your hands?
We are already seeing old paid off nuclear plants being forced off the grid because no one wants their electricity. Let alone insanely expensive new builds.
- Nuclear excels at providing that 50 (or 40 or 55) though.
- As long as you can force customers to pay more for their electricity than using renewables.
And new built western nuclear power requires yearly average prices of 18-20 cents/kWh.
- It’s essential for charging all of the planet saving humongous electric SUV’s the car companies that fund our politicians want us to buy though.
- Using expensive nuclear to charge a big battery is uneconomical. Use the expensive reliable energy for things that need reliable energy (like hospitals) and the cheap intermittent energy to charge cars.
- The risk premium for nuclear gets left out of the discussion for a seemingly disconnected set of reasons: Cost overruns due to bad project management are not factored in to budgets because the Bad Things that happen to projects are not on the bill of materials, and decommissioning cost overruns are so far in the future that we'll all be dead by then.
Neither technology, nor economic systems can fix that. Nobody has a repeatable recipe for success.
- Project risk and financing is a big problem in nuclear for sure.
Decommissioning nuclear is paid for by a decommissioning trust fund that is paid into by law by rate payers during operation of the plant.
The recipe is sort of understood though: choose a good enough tried-and-true reactor and serialize production of it. This is how France built 50 reactors in 15 years. It's how China is now building several dozen.
- With negative learning by doing in the French case.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014...
Compared to China’s grid size they are barely investing in nuclear power.
Likely landing around 3% nuclear power in their electricity mix given the average of 4-5 construction starts per year since 2020.
- China is only building enough nuclear capacity to roughly keep nuclear‘s share of overall electricity production stable at around 15%, if I remember correctly. And that’s probably mostly to keep the technology alive for military and strategic reasons. China’s actual energy demands will be met by Wind and Solar.
- It is at 4.4% and shrinking from its peak of 4.8% in 2021.
- One can point to examples of successful reactor construction projects. But despite those examples, they are no more repeatable than cold fusion experiments. People keep trying, and failing. Often these supposedly successful examples fall apart when you examine decommissioning costs, which in France look to be about four times the amount budgeted.
- Solar and wind are responsible for the majority of the change. We're not building new hydro and nuclear is growing very slowly.
The shift from fossil fuel is mostly towards wind and solar. That's the news.
- What’s your point? Hydro and nuclear are pretty dead technologies. Hydro hurts the surrounding environment and nuclear has massive cost overruns and may require water for cooling. Wind and solar comparatively are much easier to deploy and recoup costs.
- Nuclear is politically dead, maybe, but it's absolutely the technology we need right now and should be using a hell of a lot more than we are. Solar and wind are great, but they need massive grid storage systems that we don't really have great options for. Nuclear is the consistent, safe power that everyone should be using as their core power solution, with solar & wind augmenting it.
- It cannot be the technology of "right now" because it takes way too long to build. The UK has had a plant under construction for about a decade.
- Sure it can, just look at France, it had over 70% electricity from nuclear in 2018.
Now sure the best time to have invested heavily in nuclear reactors was 30-40 years ago, but we still could today. The payoff won't be for 5-10 years, but wind & sun are never going to have continuous availability until we figure out space solar, after all.
- That tells you they were the tech of when they were built. Current French nuclear power shows nuclear could've been the tech of the tomorrows of decades past, not today.
There's two different ways for wind and sun to be available continuously:
While I like the idea of a global* power grid, and have in fact done the maths on it working just fine and not being silly cost or ridiculously long periods of global aluminium production, geopolitical realities prevent it.
Storage is the other. The storage requirements for electrified personal transport are so large, several dozen kWh even for a small family car and much more for professional vehicles, that mere normal electrical usage is something you can do with spare capacity.
* Regional grids also help reduce the influence and severity of Dunkellaufe, but the models I've seen for dealing with these cost-effectively is "overbuild capacity by a few hundred percent because it's cheap, then add a few days worth of batteries because they're relatively pricy", so I count that as primarily option #2, storage.
- New surveys just came out showing record breaking support for nuclear. 61% approval! It's even seeing potential revivals in Germany. There's strong bi-partisan support for nuclear in the US. I don't think calling it politically dead is right these days.
- > It's even seeing potential revivals in Germany.
No, it isn't. The CSU ran with nuclear revival as one of their campaign promises and there seems to be some support for it among the population but it's nowhere to be found in the coalition agreement between CDU/CSU and SPD. Söder (the leader of the CSU) already backpaddled as well.
Really the only possibility for a nuclear revival in Germany would be a coalition between the climate-change-downplaying CDU/CSU and the straight-up-climate-change-denying AfD and I doubt that would be good for Germany's fight against climate change.
- Power grids need a mix of sources and nuclear is best suited for handling a baseline of power while batteries, wind, and solar handle the flexible portions.
- You seem to be working backwards from having decided that we must give enormous handouts to the nuclear industry.
Oil has in all but name stopped being used as an energy source. There is no inherent need for nuclear power, especially not at modern western new build costs of 18-20 cents/kWh.
What you are saying is that renewables and storage will at their most strained be able to handle the peaking load. In California the base load is ~15 GW and peak load 50 GW.
So with your logic the renewables can when they deliver the least handle 35 GW of peak load.
Why would we use extremely expensive nuclear power for "baseload" when the way cheaper and more effective technology literally handles 2x the power when it the most strained?
- I think we can all agree that the reporting should at least mention what makes up a full half of the clean energy being celebrated.
- The more important headline is this: https://cleantechnica.com/2025/04/19/zero-emissions-electric...
America might get a sizeable portion of it's clean electricity from nuclear, but the rest of the world certainly doesn't.
- The entire point of the article is that renewables are growing and that growth is entirely due to solar and wind.
- We have 2 billion new watts of nuclear on the grid in the last few years, and more coming with uprates and massive demand from hyperscalers. The goal here isn't wind and solar. It's clean energy in general.
- > We have 2 billion new watts of nuclear on the grid in the last few years
Because two nuclear reactors came online in the last two years (after massive delays and cost overruns). In the last 29 years the US built three new nuclear reactors (the construction of two more was cancelled). How many watts of nuclear were shut down in that time span?
> and more coming with uprates and massive demand from hyperscalers
I'll believe it when I see it.
> The goal here isn't wind and solar. It's clean energy in general.
I agree. I don't think nuclear is bad. I'm just describing what is happening in the US: Solar and wind are growing fast, nuclear is struggling.
- Hydro and nuclear are expensive and have large constituencies against them. Solar and wind are cheap and projects are small enough to avoid opposition.
- Doesn't mean hydro and nuclear don't make half of the clean energy being discussed. Also, expensive is debatable when you consider full systems costs, including transmissions and dealing with daily and seasonal intermittency.
- Amazing what can happen once you shift most of your industrial pollution to China and pretend it's not yours.
340 points by xnx 3 days ago | 343 comments
