Based on current deployment rates, it is likely that solar will surpass wind as the third-largest source of electricity. And solar may soon topple coal in the number two spot.
Looking ahead, through July 2028, FERC expects no new coal capacity to come online based on its “high probability additions” forecast. Meanwhile 63 coal plants are expected to be retired, subtracting 25 GW from the 198 GW total, and landing at about 173 GW of coal capacity by 2028. Meanwhile, FERC forecasts 92.6 GW of “high probability additions” solar will come online through July 2028.
That’s actually a problem.
All realistic plans for 100% renewable (or even 95% renewable, which is substantially easier) rely on a multipronged approach of wind, water, solar, and grid upgrades. Each one has upsides and downsides, but you can use the upsides of one to cover the downsides of another. Combined, you get a reliable grid based on intermittent but cheap sources.
Capitalism sees this plan and decides to deploy the one with the best immediate ROI. Which happens to be solar. Problem is that you can’t just rely on solar. The grid is hitting limits where electrical production is sending prices to basically zero at certain times, but not able to provide enough the rest of the time. That will shift the economic incentives. Eventually.
It’ll figure out what researchers have already written down, but it’ll take too long to get there.
Batteries
Batteries are nice, but they’re insanely expensive at this scale and ruin the entire point of helping the environment. Carbon emissions from huge batteries are unbelievable.
What batteries exactly? The capacity required is huge.
They can be distributed though. I Install solar, most of the systems we install with batteries end up selling back a significant portion of their charge to the grid (iirc our system wide average is 40% nightly resale)
So not only is each house with a battery not using grid power at night, its powering almost half of an equivalently sized house.
Granted, batteries are still on the expensive side, so these systems aren’t coming enough ( I think we’re at ~10% of our systems have a battery)
A competent government that believes in basic science, would give tax breaks to encourage this.
Sure, but even then we don’t have a solution today. It’s all in the fuzzy future.
Yeah, that’s a step in correct direction, but can you guarantee that everybody can be powered 24/7 through renewables/batteries, specially during winter? Unless that’s the case you still need a shit-ton of non-renewable energy that’s coming either from fossil fuels or nuclear. And if you want to avoid (co2) emissions, then you need nuclear to cover everybody, and if you have nuclear then it has to run 100% 24/7. OTOH if you don’t have nuclear, you’ll emit all sort or crap during those periods. And so on. Also, it’s not just that batteries are sort of expensive, they are big. Also you are talking houses, but masses live in apartments where placing solar panels or batteries isn’t possible (at least in quantity).
No one will ever have the idea of simply having more batteries right? It’s all in capacity not quantity, because quantity would be to easy right? Got it.
Where do you have TWhs of batteries? As you said, both quantity and capacity matters, when lower capacity you need bigger battery which is harder to put somewhere.
Also not renewable, are incredibly environmentally destructive, and have short lifetimes - kinda the opposite of what the push for “renewables” is supposed to be about lol.
Are you talking about batteries?
Yes.
I think you are wrong then. First, even Li-ion batteries are recyclable to a huge amount, usually the problem is that different manufacturers pack them differently without any blueprint and then it’s much harder to recycle them. Then there are a ton of different chemistries with ones really harmless (i.e. using sodium instead of lithium) but they come with less energy density. Which isn’t that important when it comes to energy storage for the network purpose but it’s important when it comes to cars and portable electronic devices. Also different chemistries have different lifetime, i.e. LFP batteries have better durability and are less fire prone than the standard li-ion.
Being “recyclable” doesn’t mean that they get recycled, because it’s often not economically feasible - like with solar panels. Are there lots and lots of recyclable materials in them? Absolutely. Does it cost more to extract them out than it does to buy a new one? Absolutely.
Most batteries, especially those used for home batteries, will never be recycled. They’ll end up in landfill, leaching toxic chemicals into the earth.
Also the materials used to make new batteries are not renewable. There are finite resources of them. They require mining. Mining equipment and trucks aren’t running on solar or batteries. As more and more are needed, more and more mining is needed.
The entire “renewables” push is based around endlessly manufacturing non recyclable things that end in landfill, using non-renewable materials, creating large amounts of toxic emissions - but the ones pushing it don’t care because the emissions happen somewhere else by someone else so they can claim to be carbon neutral.
You have some valid points. Yes, economical aspect is crap, countries should push laws demanding that producers guarantee recycling and/or state clear lifecycle of the battery (actually it should be applied to all products). Even still, there are companies that do recycle batteries for profit, so it’s not that absurd. But you miss the whole other aspect with different chemistries, many even harmless to the environment. You are focused only on current li-ion it seems which are not very network storage friendly anyway.
SoCal has a huge amount of wind and solar right now. Utility sized battery installations are going in to deal with the times those two aren’t producing.
Even home battery solutions. We have solar panels & a Powerwall. Were part of a Virtual Power Plant along with around 1500 other Powerwall owners in the region. During peak usage in the summer all our PowerWalls feed back to the grid so that our utility provider doesn’t have to spin up expensive (and dirty) peaker plants. We get paid a premium for the power we provide during these events.
I saw articles here on Lemmy just a month or two ago that Tesla successfully tested a VPP in California that consisted of 100,000 PowerWalls.
The ones they’ve installed near us are Siemens and the only reason we even know they exist is we went by often during installation. The cabinets are now hidden behind a high wall. I’m guessing they’re going in all over the place. Strange that I’ve never seen them mentioned in the news anywhere.
While your power company is taking your power from your battery, where does your power to power your house come from? How much do you pay for it, what are your daily charges etc?
Our house is still powered by the panels and/or battery as well. We typically use 1 to 5 kWh, and during these events the batteries are discharging up to 10 kWh. Whatever we don’t use goes to the grid. Last year we received a payout of $1450 for 45 hours worth of energy, probably in the neighborhood of 300-350 kWh.
You get $4/kWh?! We get 2c here in Australia lol
Is it? Wind is 10% and solar is 4%
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-in-the-us.php
Yes, and we’re already seeing prices go negative with that mix. This shouldn’t happen (at least not very often) if it’s built properly.
Well that’s an average and it will differ greatly with seasons. What percentage is problematic?
It’s not really a ‘problem.’
If push came to shove, we could just wait before putting the panels online.