Falling panel prices lead to global solar boom, except for the US
arstechnica.com202 points by Jtsummers 5 hours ago
202 points by Jtsummers 5 hours ago
As I wrote elsewhere, the US government and economy are now essentially a private equity takeover for a large segment of wealthy business: Squeeze out as much money as possible short term - including by issuing debt againts its assets, slashing and burning any costs regardless of ROI and with no regard for the future, and leave the bankrupt husk for someone else to deal with.
The treatment of fossil fuels and renewables fits: Block the obviously more economical and better long-term solution in order to shovel money toward the entrenched wealthy. That it sabotages the future due to climate change and economic inefficiency doesn't seem to be a significant factor to them.
I forgot, one of the entrenched corporate wealthy told us that climate change isn't a big deal, and we should send money to his and his friends for solutions.
I'm not anti-business; in fact, quite the opposite: These policies block a free market and the brilliant new businesses that can thrive and deliver solutions to everyone.
It's an old strategy https://www.milwaukeeindependent.com/thom-hartmann/two-santa...
> This produces three results: it stimulates the economy thus making people think that the GOP can produce a good economy; it raises the debt dramatically; and it makes people think that Republicans are the "tax-cut Santa Clauses."
I don't disagree but it seems this time the good economy part only exists in their rhetoric.
You forgot using your digital infrastructure for extractive rent from your partners, driving them to build their own sovereign digital infrastructure.
If only Musk didn't turn out to be such a twitt, Tesla was really supposed to be part of the solution but somehow Musk managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
The future is pretty much in China now as far as green energy tech and consumption goes. Two bad elections and the US has basically lost world leader status in just over a decade.
I have to agree with you. I've heard competing claims that Musk is doing, with Tesla, something similar to what he did with Hyperloop: Promise a futuristic but ultimately impractical solution to forestall those trying to proceed with proven solutions (i.e. bullet trains) that might compete with his own business.
However, it's becoming increasingly apparent that the above paragraph ascribes genius to what is more simply explained by incompetence. It's more likely Musk believed he could make Hyperloop work, but couldn't. Similarly...
- Musk thought he could buy an election and gain the inside track for his companies, but was too witless to maintain good relations with the politician he bought.
- He bought Twitter seemingly on a lark and proceeded to rapidly run it into the ground.
- He put a bunch of script-kiddies in charge of DOGE, which promptly made a mess of an entire government and created a historically massive deficit while gutting government services.
- He alienated the core customer demographics that had formerly been one of Tesla's mains sources of income. (The other being government grants and subsidies which... whoops.)
Now, Tesla's shareholders are weighing whether or not a man with Musk's recent track record is worth a trillion dollar pay package[1]. It's gobsmacking that they even need to think about this.
So, no, Musk is not some evil genius undoing green energy by deliberately creating a false solution that fails to deliver. He's just a garden variety mediocrity who has been promoted far past his capabilities or character and has been utterly undone by the resulting ego trip. He's an object lesson in just how much damage the wrong person in the right place and time can do to the world.
[1]https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/musk-could-leave...
Musk is a nogo poisoned brand in Europe... that damage his needless psychotic attacks have done won't be forgotten anytime soon. I'd happily buy chinese car instead of tesla just because of above, if prices were same. But they are far from same, and seeing their progress they may soon be better products overall.
Same, if it was a choice between American and Chinese - then Chinese but realistically we also have other options as well.
I wouldn't drive a Tesla if it was free, I'd just sell it for whatever - that brand is torched for me.
No shit, but he didn’t have to do those things. He had Tesla in a great position and decided to eradicate any goodwill they had accumulated.
If anyone is the public embodiment of the damage social media can do, it's Musk.
> Musk is a nogo poisoned brand in Europe... that damage his needless psychotic attacks have done won't be forgotten anytime soon. I'd happily buy chinese car instead of tesla just because of above, if prices were same. But they are far from same, and seeing their progress they may soon be better products overall.
This more-or-less summarizes American geopolitical and economic attitudes towards China from 1970 until 2016.
"Sure, they're problematic, but so are we, and their product is cheaper, so..."
"The product is cheaper" is why combustion engines were dominant over batteries and renewables for so long, and also why they're now being displaced so rapidly by them.
Batteries were not a viable technology for a variety of reasons until recently. Cost is only one of a number of show-stopping problems with battery technology before circa 20 years ago.
Musk chronically over-promised and terminally under-delivered. There was no world where he didn't end up being a twit, just one where we aren't stupid enough to fall for his lies.
Tesla, in particular, boils down to how Americans respond to marketing. We love the idea of buying organic, environmentally-friendly technology that makes us part of the solution. It doesn't matter if Congolese children are dying in the cobalt mines to make EV-grade lithium ion batteries, us Americans need to virtue signal with our wallet. Buy the latest iPhone, save up for a Tesla, it's all part of the new-age jewelry we wear to make ourselves feel worth something.
It was damn good marketing.
> Americans need to virtue signal with our wallet
The only realistic alternative - not "virtue signalling" and instead buying polluting ICE vehicles - is far worse. I'm ok with virtue signalling. It's not like America is going to get walkable cities and world-class public transit anytime before 2060.
I wouldn't be so pessimistic. Here in Oregon we're working pretty hard at doing that, for instance.
I'm definitely ok with 'virtue signalling' though. It's a lot better than vice signalling.
> I'm definitely ok with 'virtue signalling' though. It's a lot better than vice signalling.
Both inflate the ego.
which part of Oregon is that though? The part that is on fire and suffering from massive insurrection, or the part that wants to secede from the state and become part of Montana? Either way, your optimism seems very out of place. Even if one city makes changes, that doesn't define it as a trend. The rest of the country is not following
edit the embarrassing
> The part that is on fire and suffering from massive insurrection
I assume you’re talking about Portland. Speaking as someone who lives in Portland, you’re grossly misinformed. It’s time to change your filter bubble.
hey, i'm getting my info from the leader of the country. you're saying we can trust our dear leader?
i really wish /s wasn't so damn necessary
> that wants to succeed [sic] from the state and become part of Montana
If joining Montana is "success" you've set your sights too low
/s (no offence to Montanans, it's a beautiful state. I just couldn't resist)
They want to 'succeed' in Idaho in any case, not Montana, which does not share a border with Oregon.
I'm also curious about the 'massive insurrection'. Is that like the guy in the frog costume?
> It's not like America is going to get walkable cities and world-class public transit anytime before 2060
I wouldn't be so pessimistic! The inevitable swing towards authoritarianism in the US happened much sooner than I expected, which also means it'll swing back again much sooner too, likely to be way before 2060. I'll throw out a prediction and say that the soon-to-be-authoritarian state that is under construction right now might fall as soon as 2035-2040, and it'll be a wild swing the other way once it happens.
That scenario assumes that history will work the same way it did in the aftermath of WWII. There is no guarantee of that. America could become another Russia, where the collapse of the Soviet Union led to secession of several republics. The new democratic government was too weak to face the challenges of successive financial crises and active civil wars. Eventually power falls back into the hands of s strongman who scales back democratic reforms to maintain power.
Hand Maid's Tale doesn't seem so fictional after all of this in how the divisions would reshape the country
Meh, I feel we’re entering an era where only the elite will be able to realistically check authoritarians, and they will just be lesser
Think more of the earlier end of medieval era, where the peasant class was mostly incapable against feudal armies, even in many cases with massive numbers on their side.
There’s an entire surveillance state, eyes everywhere, gait recognition, massive intelligence networks all at a scale unimaginable by kings and dictators of the past.
Once you “swing” to authoritarianism the authoritarian doesn’t let you swing back.
what makes you so sure it'll fall? plenty of autocracies last for decades, or generations
Incompetence, our "leaders" are woefully incompetent. MAGA, GOP and the right are filled with idiots. The Liberal and Neoliberal Democrats at least were a little better at stealing everything from us and delaying progress. They would bury people in culture wars and keep their followers busy with DEI rules. They used legitimate racist issues and then said everything was caused by racism and not that the 1% was just stealing everything.
I bet the blow back will be sooner than that. I don't expect Trump to serve out his term; he looks and sounds terrible. And Vance doesn't have the mojo that Trump does. Once Trump is gone the Republicans will start eating their own.
The car is pretty good to drive and it genuinely changes my life. No more gas stations unless I want to go there to buy snacks and drinks.
However, I won't be buying a Tesla again. I would also not buy another car if I can help it, but I need a car to see family and do relatively long distance tasks.
I really like EVs, and the Congolese kids dying to make EV-grade lithium has always been FUD made up by the anti boomer crowd (77% of the world's lithium comes from Australia and Chile, and I know they aren't importing Congo kids to mine it, and then China, Argentina, and Bolivia, again, completely Congo kid free). You probably meant Cobolt, and they are transitioning to LFP chemistries because it is impossible to force the Congolese to use industrial mining rather than small holder artisanal mining (where parents are likely to make their kids mine without supervision).
> us Americans need to virtue signal how much we love green energy and saving the planet.
Again, more FUD made up by the anti-EV crowd. Most people who buy EVs buy them because they are just better cars. In China, EVs are more of a national security concern: they have to import oil, which exposes them to international conflict. Importing less oil = less exposure, which is a big win for the country. The US has a lot of oil-entrenched interests.
The cobalt goes in the NCM lithium batteries.
It also goes in lots of other stuff, and is basically a byproduct of Congolese copper production.
The kids are doing artisinal mining because when capitalism doesn't need you to make money, you are pretty fucked. The big mines can make plenty of money with very few workers, leaving no need to build a decent civil society. Something to bear in mind for when our glorious AI future arrives.
Every chance that some countries become the Norway of AI and everyone is rich while others become the resource cursed Congo of AI and a tiny minority become rich and others are left to rot.
congo is also a classical example of the resource curse.
Congo is so resource rich, that the state can sustain itself easily with simple, low skilled extraction of resources, without the need to invest in its populace to increase economic output through other, more difficult means.
That first paragraph would send the average liberal running for the bus stop. It's no wonder conservatives are the only one willing to chart out a path for the EV industry...
As for the second paragraph, I mostly agree but nothing you said obviates the virtue signalling that people endlessly associated Tesla with pre-2015. I say this not because I think EVs are bad, but because so much of America's congestive dissonance is rooted in the "Tesla good" aphorism burned into their brain for no reason besides feel-good marketing.
> nothing you said obviates the virtue signalling that people endlessly associated Tesla with pre-2015.
Pre-2015 the best selling EV in America was the Nissan Leaf. Source: https://afdc.energy.gov/data/10567
During Tesla’s ascent, who was delivering better all electric cars than them?
Everything was lining up perfectly, then they lost the plot by creating the cybertruck, humanoid robots, and it's been all downhill since then. This jumping of the shark coincides with Musk's mental decline.
> Musk chronically over-promised and terminally under-delivered
To be fair, most CEOs does that, but I think his downfall was really everything that he did besides just over-promising and under-delivering. He could have continued as-is, without all the political stunts and activities, and I'm sure Europeans would still have bought Teslas sometimes. Now the brand is poisoned pretty much world-wide, which wouldn't have happened just because of "over-promise and under-deliver", it takes a lot more for stuff like that to happen.
How many CEO promise full self driving, robo taxis, humanoid robots that are only 6 months away for 10+ years?
The equivocation here is quiet something.
Toyota has been promising solid state batteries in 2-3 years for the last 15.
They weren't promising they'd be in the car you already bought though.
The CEO of fusion startups have always said fusion is 10 years away. While 10 years != 6 months, it's the same thing
Musk's over promising and under delivering was fine when it was still above and beyond what anyone else was doing. It's all the other crazy stuff he started doing that was the problem.
> It doesn't matter if Congolese children are dying in the cobalt mines to make EV-grade lithium ion batteries
For what it's worth there are battery chemistries now that don't require cobalt - LiFePO4 for example, which are already being used in vehicles. And sodium based batteries suitable for vehicles are around the corner as well, these don't even require lithium, all you need for these is table salt or desalination brine.
Anyway, the alternative to batteries is combustion, and that's just as nasty - we're paying the people that attacked the US (9/11), Israel (Oct 7th) and a sovereign European nation (Ukraine) billions upon billions of dollars each year for their oil and gas. Thanks but no thanks, we got to get rid of fossil fuels because with the exception of Norway and the US, almost all major relevant suppliers of them are religious autocracies and/or kleptocracies.
Sodium ion doesn't require cobalt either (no nickel as well in the newer designs), CATL is pushing that and iirc they have energy densities to a point where low end EV's can use them.
By bulk they use sodium, aluminium and iron - all of which are very abundant.
China is dominating that field as well.
>the people that attacked the US (9/11), Israel (Oct 7th) and a sovereign European nation (Ukraine)
What does anyone care about the people who attacked Israel? The Arab Gulf has rivers of oil required for driving human economic progress forward. they have been consistent about suppressing Islamists within their borders. The Saudi security infrastructure had voided Bin Laden's citizenship since the 1990s and notified the US & their Western partners.
Pinning Hamas on the Arab Gulf might advance your narrative, but it's provably false for anyone willing to actually probe that claim.
>we got to get rid of fossil fuels because with the exception of Norway and the US, almost all major relevant suppliers of them are religious autocracies and/or kleptocracies.
LMAO. Imagine a (likely) Western European preaching about morals after ethnically cleansing three entire continents? If morals ever mattered to anyone, we'd have known before now.
> What does anyone care about the people who attacked Israel?
I want to see theocracies gone.
> The Arab Gulf has rivers of oil required for driving human economic progress forward.
Solar energy is cheaper and it doesn't need to be trucked around on ships, threatening insanely expensive disasters.
> they have been consistent about suppressing Islamists within their borders.
... and instead funding them in Western countries, yeah. Saudi funded madrasa schools or imams funded by oilsheik countries are a massive problem, although I admit a part of that is our fault as well for not running theology studies in our universities for Islam (unlike for Christian denominations).
> Pinning Hamas on the Arab Gulf might advance your narrative, but it's provably false for anyone willing to actually probe that claim.
Well, Hamas is strongly supported by Qatar and Iran.
> LMAO. Imagine a (likely) Western European preaching about morals after ethnically cleansing three entire continents?
Just because we did massive mistakes in the past, there's no reason we have to continue doing them now.
> I want to see theocracies gone.
Israel has a long list of their own theocratic traits, fwiw. Unless you just don’t allow religious people to vote you’re never going to get a perfect secular government anywhere.
>I want to see theocracies gone.
How they choose to organize their society is none of your business. Whenever any Arab society becomes democratic, it's almost guaranteed they'll vote in Muslim Brotherhood types that'll be joined at the hip with Islamist movements. So, you don't want rapidly liberalizing benevolent monarchies, but rather democratic Islamists? Wasn't it the Americans who nudged the Egyptian military to topple Morsi after the Arab Spring brough an Islamist to power? Democracy until whoever we dislike is elected by the people.
It was the Western powers messing around with Mossadegh's democratically-elected regime in Iran that led to its fall and later down the line, the rise of the Shia-extremist Iran.
You westerners are so full of hubris. You don't know how to leave well-enough alone.
>Solar energy is cheaper and it doesn't need to be trucked around on ships, threatening insanely expensive disasters.
That's none of your business either. No western country is accelerating the renewable transition. Stay out of the way of those doing it, and don't pontificate to those providing energy for civilization now.
>... and instead funding them in Western countries, yeah. Saudi funded madrasa schools or imams funded by oilsheik countries are a massive problem, although I admit a part of that is our fault as well for not running theology studies in our universities for Islam (unlike for Christian denominations).
That's a YOU problem! Western governments hold a monopoly of violence within their own borders. You can simply shut down Islamist mosques. If you refuse, you implicitly permit their activities. There's a reason why extreme preachers are imprisoned/executed in the Arab Gulf, but they find an audience in the West. You allowed it; it's a you problem.
>Well, Hamas is strongly supported by Qatar and Iran.
And Israel too, right? Are we going to gloss over that? That these fighters are mostly orphans, whose parents and grandparents where marched out of their homes at gunpoint and had their homes stolen?
>Well, Hamas is strongly supported by Qatar and Iran.
You're still making these mistakes now, like the ongoing genocide in Gaza. You don't get to pontificate or preach. You don't have the moral capital. No one takes the West's moral posturing serious. The only people who do are developing countries paying lip service so they can get aid handouts. No one cares. Pack it up.
> We love the idea of buying organic, environmentally-friendly technology that makes us part of the solution
Telsa sells a huge number of vehicles to Americans who couldn't care less about the environment but do care about buying a car that can rip through 0-60 in under 3 seconds.
ICE vehicles are simply inferior for most use cases now. They're only holding on because a huge number of people would be out of work if we abandoned obsolete transportation technology. Continuing ICE mass production is an actual socialist make-work scheme at the end of the day.
I don't think people are deciding what car to buy based on how much labor market churn they'd feel responsible for.
They do look at prices though. Notice you can't buy a cheap Chinese EV in the US. That's the government propping up the existing auto manufacturers.
> If only Musk didn't turn out to be such a twitt, Tesla was really supposed to be part of the solution but somehow Musk managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
this was never going to happen. the capitalist class are never going to be the ones to get us out of debt; they cause and benefit from it. it's his entire business model.
Debt isn't what's wrong with Musk.
Not that his own debt isn't going to cause him problems when the TSLA share price stops defying gravity like Wile E. Coyote, it's just that his problems are shaped more like "being a cult leader".
Americans get what they vote for - it's not like any of this is a surprise, Trump is a well understood entity.
I mean... sort of.
But let's look at the structure for a bit...
- Citizens United has allowed unfettered amounts of dark money to flow into our elections, disproportionately benefiting the uber wealthy
- The Senate greatly favors rural states, sometimes 60 - 1 by vote weight
- The House is pretty much a race to the bottom in terms of gerrymandering, where many districts are pretty much unloseable
- Many states purge rolls and make it harder to vote by closing polling places, restricting early access, adding id requirements, and restricting mail in voting. Combined with the fact that election day is on a random Tuesday which we don't take off as a nation to go vote
- Education is... not in a great place. Many many people have _no idea_ how the system works at all, or what's happening within it day to day. But they are getting inundated with 7 second flashes of information and misinformation on infinite feeds which bubble their users, lead them to increasingly extreme content, and make it hard to distinguish between fact and fiction
So yea, he's well understood in that half the country has no idea he's all over Epstein's list and think the felonies he's been charged with are bogus while cheering on the prosecution of Letitia James for renting out an apartment that said she could rent it out in the contract she signed
And we voted for him in the sense that only 7 states seem to matter in our presidential elections, and we're constantly inundated with information about how our votes barely matter cause of all the imbalances in elections at every level
Much less well understood by folks who get their news from Fox News, News Max, or bro podcasts.
Everyone understands Trump is the racist president who will screw over "those people" for you. Even rural Mongolians get it. It was clear from day 1 when he came down the stairs calling Mexicans rapists, almost 10 years ago. They just like to cheer tariffs and govt firings and grants cancellations, then smirk and pretend they don't understand it.
Well as we see in the article, this world is very interconnected and you can't hurt your neighbor without hurting yourself.
Most everyone. Rural Mongolians arent getting their news from US propaganda. Oh, and how could I forget the most racist propaganda spewing one of all, X. People who get info from these sources have been manipulated to shut down their own critical thinking and just react for decades. Half of them probably don't even realize how racist-fascist their views have gotten.
PG&E's most transparent fraud is by forcing people to move everything to electricity and then forcing them to use less electricity, and then complaining they aren't making enough money so that they raise electricity rates. Last year, PG&E raised rates 6 times. I'm now paying double the per kWh rates from only 4 years ago.
PG&E now wants to charge solar panel owners $100+/month just for the privilege of being connected to the grid. This is on top of their $0.41-54/kWh they already charge, the highest in the nation.
PG&E is a government-supported scam that is charging people whatever prices they want with no protection from our politicians because they are all on the take.
Isn't a lot of this the government insisting that PG&E act as the de facto California wildfire insurance provider and collect the premiums out of everyone's electric bill?
You have wildfires caused by, basically, climate change causing there to be an abundance of fuel (dead wood) waiting for any spark, exacerbated by decades of the government putting out every wildfire when in the natural environment the last fire would have cleared out the dead wood before the next one, causing fuel to accumulate even more.
At that point it doesn't matter what the ignition source is, that much fuel is going to burn, soon. If it isn't some piece of PG&E equipment it will be a lightning strike or something else. But if you can pin it on the power company because a tree caught fire from falling on a power line then the fire insurance companies can sue the power company instead of filing for bankruptcy, and then all you have to do is pass on the cost to ordinary people as $500/month electric bills.
This is a mischaracterization of the liability of PG&E for those fires. All of the PG&E-caused wildfires were due to inadequately maintained equipment operating well beyond its service life. The reduction of maintenance budgets to improve free cash flow and return capital to investors was a conscious decision by the company officers [1].
As you stated, PG&E was held liable for billions of dollars of compensation for the impacted people. This led to negative earnings zeroing out the profits of the previous decade [2]. Furthermore, the stock's price is far lower than it was during the hayday of deferred maintenance.
Since the involvement of California state government in PG&E operations, maintenance has improved dramatically. Furthermore, PG&E again has positive earnings, demonstrating that the long-term viability of the company is improved with adequate maintenance budgeting.
Now to address the counterfactual, "the fires would have happened anyway": no. The leading cause of wildfires in California in general, and impacting people and infrastructure in particular, is electrical equipment. This is empirical; after PG&E began cutting power during high-fire danger days, the number and severity of wildfires dropped dramatically [3].
1. How PG&E missed its chance to prevent the Camp Fire: Damning report on utility’s negligence, https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/fires/article24357122...
2. Pacific Gas & Electric EPS - Earnings per Share 2011-2025 | PCG, https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/PCG/pacific-gas-el...
3. Human-caused ignitions spark California’s worst wildfires but get little state focus: In 2019, utilities turned off electricity during high-wind events, and California had its mildest fire season in eight years. Was that a coincidence?, https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2020/01/05/human-caused...
> All of the PG&E-caused wildfires were due to inadequately maintained equipment operating well beyond its service life.
That sounds like something lawyers say when they want to sue somebody.
Who determines the "service life" of a conductive piece of metal with no moving parts?
> Now to address the counterfactual, "the fires would have happened anyway": no. The leading cause of wildfires in California in general, and impacting people and infrastructure in particular, is electrical equipment. This is empirical; after PG&E began cutting power during high-fire danger days, the number and severity of wildfires dropped dramatically
Nobody disputes that power lines can be an ignition source. The issue is that there are also other ignition sources and dead trees will eventually burn. Causing the fires to be less frequent actually makes the problem worse, because then when it does happen there is even more fuel, which makes the next fire bigger and harder to contain. It's the same failure mode as putting out natural wildfires and leaving all that fuel to accumulate for next time.
Removing some of the ignition sources means you're going to have fewer small fires this year, but at the cost of having bigger ones later. That's not a win.
> Who determines the "service life" of a conductive piece of metal with no moving parts?
Perhaps you might start by explaining how that question is in any way relevant to the current discussion.
The part that was found to have failed was a wire hanger that wore through as it swung in the wind (hint: a moving part) and allowed the power line to fall on the ground.
Somehow (magic or the occult probably) SC Edison and LADWP have not had failures of their physical plant which bankrupted the company. They also had higher maintenance budgets. Hmmm… nope, can’t see how these things are connected.
PG&E instead of constantly upgrading and maintaining their distribution system, decided to pay out dividends and buy back stock, as well as pay their CEO $50 million per year. That's why their outdated equipment kept starting fires.
They took a risk by underspending on upgrading, and we as Californians are paying for them paying out their shareholders.
Power transmission is not a technology with a high rate of change. It's basically a wire on a stick. If a tree falls on it the tree catches fire because it carries high voltage and the tree creates a path to ground. What is "upgrading their equipment" supposed to do?
They were supposed to bury them underground but they didn't. This is a well known issue that they ignored because they didn't want to spend the money and instead paid dividends and did massive stock buybacks. Now, 20 years later, the costs have skyrocketed because of inflation.
Burying power lines is extremely expensive and does nothing to actually prevent wildfires, which existed in California before the advent of electric utilities. You're complaining about a $50M salary while insisting that they do something ineffective that costs $20B. Then you'd get to pay the cost of burying the power lines and the cost of the fires. Is that actually better than just moving the cost of the fires back to the insurance companies to begin with?
You are literally uttering nonsense.
No one is blaming PG&E for all wildfires. We are blaming PG&E for the wildfires THAT THEY CAUSED. These fires could have been prevented if THEY BURIED THEIR POWERLINES back in the early 2000s when it was far cheaper and like they promised. They instead decided to ditch that and instead buyback stock and pay lucrative dividends.
Burying powerlines would 100% prevent wildfires which were caused by sparking or broken power equipment, which has been the documented reason why several extremely large and fatal wild fires were caused by.
Basically PG&E was horribly mismanaged for decades, that mismanagement lead to billions of dollars of damages and those costs were shifted onto the customers and the management got off scot free.
There are a bunch of places in California where humans shouldn't live that PG&E is required to provide electricity to and then getting blamed for setting fires... which I suppose it did set those fires but much of the state is being required to subsidize these inhabited uninhabitable places either through paying for fire damage or paying the incredibly expensive process of burying power lines which doesn't fundamentally alter the risk or rate of wildfires.
One of the many questionable political situations in California.
Renewables could be used to power these remote locations, or at least allow utilities to abandon them (with some warning.)
I live in CA, but am lucky enough not to be a PG&E customer. My winter off-peak rates are $0.12, compared to $0.43 for PG&E. On the other end, my summer peak is $0.36, vs $0.56. Absolutely absurd.
The arbitrage opportunities here are insane. You should install an electric charger or two in your front yard and charge people 50-100% premiums to use your power :)
I live 20 minutes north of you. My power is in fact 4 times expensive in the winter.
BRB, Shopping on amazon for a 20-mile long extension cord
Palo Alto municipal power right?
I moved across the road from this government owned power company so i was just out of Palo Alto municipality and suddenly had to pay 4x the price. Sigh.
It's a weird thing moving to the USA. Everyone's been brainwashed "anything government run is more expensive" yet every example I've ever looked into proved the opposite to a dramatic extent. Government run institutions lead to lower overall costs.
I never understand how people can't see that private companies have a "must make a profit" motive while a non-captured government has a "must help citizenry" motive. Essential services being privately owned means they are incentivized to squeeze more profit in any way they can, to the detriment of their captive customers.
I'm guessing the upper-class managed to convince people of that as well as they managed to convince them of "the dangers of unions". There seems to be (at this point) almost an innate reaction to just hearing "union" or "general strike" that makes people recoil, even though they're necessary part of a society where capitalism exists, otherwise there is no way of stopping it when it outgrows any other concerns.
I thought maybe you were in Santa Clara, but you've got even better rates than that.
I would expand our solar installation as we expand our house over the next few months, but PG&E would force us into a less advantageous electricity scheme if we add panels, so shrug
NEM eligibility is controlled by CPUC, not PG&E
The CPUC is fighting on behalf of PG&E. It is headed by Newsom's buddy and they have let PG&E raise prices without pushback.
Newsom is the governor of California and has been for quite a while. The President of CPUC was the long-time climate advisor to Jerry Brown and Deputy Attorney General under Schwarzenegger. The constitution guarantees PG&E rates that offer a return on investment. It's silly to try to make it a personalist conspiracy.
https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/about-cpuc/commissioners/page-conten...
I'm not engage in a "conspiracy". She was appointed by Newsom in 2021. This coincides to when the prices started skyrocketing.
Then she is part of the conspiracy to lower rates in 2026. How deep does the rabbit hole go?
If the electricity bills ever drop I will eat my hat. Even if they drop the rates, they will increase the connection fees to make up for it.
> forcing people to move everything to electricity
Can you say more about this? I don't live in California, so I'm not familiar with what you mean.
In my area, the government passed the law prohibiting replacement or installation of new gas appliances starting a year and a few months from now.
https://www.finegroupre.com/blog/no-more-gas/
This is all the while cost of the alternative -- electric power -- goes up at least 10% YOY
A lot of new homes don't have natural gas hookups, and there's been various state and local regulations wrt natty gas applicances
Also, they charge natural gas rates that are ridiculous compared to the current price of natural gas. They give rebates on electrically powers appliances and then jack up the prices on electricity, and then tell us not to charge our cars during the summer because the grid can't handle it. These are all excuses on how to keep raising electricity prices instead of dropping them.
I'm guessing they're talking about phasing out natural gas in some places?
I read it as promoting electric cars and heat pumps over ICE vehicles and furnaces.
PG&E should be expropriated by the state, but your 2nd point is just homeowner propaganda. NEM account holders really are free-riding on the grid in a way that is deeply unfair to the rest of PG&E ratepayers.
Why so?
Residential electricity service from PG&E has never properly separated the fixed costs of service delivery to a location (maintaining poles, transformers, and wires) from the cost of marginal energy consumption. It has folded much of the fixed infrastructure costs into the per-kilowatt-hour unit price. This functions as an implicit subsidy for households that need grid tied electrical service but do not consume much electricity from the grid.
These implicit subsidies used to mostly benefit lower-income households (though not always: properties like seasonal vacation houses also benefited). Now, higher-income households are more likely to benefit from this structure because they are more likely to install rooftop solar (reducing kWh consumption) but still need the grid to work at night. Crediting solar households for grid exports makes this problem especially acute but it would also exist even if solar households were merely reducing the kWh drawn from the grid during daytime.
One remedy could be to fully separate the costs of fixed infrastructure from per-kWh unit charges and set prices directly proportional to costs. But that is probably politically unfeasible because there will be outcry that prices proportional to costs would hurt low-income, low-consumption households.
Another way to remedy it would use the previous approach but give offsetting vouchers to households that would face financial hardship as a result of the change in pricing structure. I don't know why the underlying issue has remained unaddressed in favor of patchy solar-specific changes to the law.
This is the exact issue in most grids TBH. Not sure I've seen one that has properly priced fixed costs with properly priced usage costs. My grid has the split, but the costs seem out of proportion. I'd say if the concern is low-income pricing, factor out fixed costs and rates so the the mean low-income prices stay the same. Mix that with only offering wholesale rates for customer backfeed and some reasonable controls about how much and when customers can backfeed.
> maintaining poles, transformers, and wires
The things that PG&E has notably been neglecting, resulting in highly destructive wildfires?
The idea that it costs every single ratepayer $100/month to maintain the infrastructure is ludicrous. It's just attempting to deflect blame from PG&E's horrible mismanagement to environmentalists.
In places with honestly run utilities that cost is closer to $5-$10/month per household.
Wow that makes sense yeah, and it’s difficult because you don’t want to disincentivize solar but socializing the grid costs, which would normally be a good move, does have that effect when done like this.
At this point it just isn't grid costs though, it's paying for PG&E's long history of enormous liabilities in connection to wildfires.
I wouldn't care if the money were actually going to improving the system but it's not, it's going to shareholders and paying for their crimes. The fact we have to pay for their crimes and their CEO and execs and shareholders can continue to increase their salaries and bonuses along with our rates just makes me very angry. The entire company should be held responsible and things like THEIR bonuses should be withheld until the company has fixed everything.
Grid costs a lot more money than power generation. It’s 60+% of the bill. Really wish they went with fixed grid hookup costs that includes delivery and usage for power generation.
That would fuck over poor rural households right?
At this point many should just be given a check to convert to solar. Maybe microgrids in small clustered enclaves.
I'm not familiar with Cali's NEM scheme...but does it work like this?
- Electric utility must make up to _forward_maximum_kW of electrical energy available to customer, 24x7, at _rate
- Customer may force electrical utility to accept up to _reverse_maximum_kW - without notice, at his sole discretion, and without regard for electrical utility's needs or wishes, at _rate
If so, just talk to any sane businessman about the viability of being stuck on the utility's end of such a deal.
By not aligning economically to other country's markets, US companies are in a real pickle.
Imagine you're a US car manufacturer. You see EVs growing around the world, and stagnating in the US. Do you:
(a) Double-down on investments in EVs (billions of USD!), even with a soft US market for EVs, hoping you might compete globally.
(b) Become a parochial, US-only, business hoping to squeeze what you can out of a gradually shrinking industry
When other countries subsidize consumers to buy EVs, and the US does not, it effectively creates a self-own trade barrier for domestic companies.
The US seems to be at risk of becoming a Japanese style economy in the coming years. As in they focus on tech that sells well locally, but is of no interest outside the country. And that can work for their economy and is a nice way to package protectionism. But eventually, people years down the road see how much better tech is in the outside world and jump to it and never look back. Then your own industry starts to drown and is only held up by a class of elderly people afraid of change.
Examples are the strange Japanese flip phones and the computers with CF card and floppy drives with a 1.5 ghz single core CPU selling for twice the price of a MacBook Pro.
With BYD selling globally now, and Boeing losing its reputation, American vehicles of all sorts are at risk.
And the sad thing this will just lead to a vicious cycle of protectionism for these companies. Their quality will decline. They’ll be more expensive than global products. US consumers will be the ones that suffer
On the other hand if I can buy a house for $75k, it might be worth it.
As long as you already have $75k, but I think it would make it harder for those that don't to ever accumulate that much.
Wow why do Japanese consumers buy those computers over the cheaper MacBooks and foreign PCs?
The USA is a services based country, not manufacturing. Call me when Big Finance, Big Law, Consulting and Big Tech are threatened. Right they're doing quite splendid with cash rich piles.
Yes, they've been using the Japanese model since 2020, and Japan only got there by making many huge mistakes. But essentially growth is dead and the entrenched businesses aren't going anywhere, they won't innovate and they won't be allowed to die, zombies.
Well, in order to compete, they'd have to cut costs.
You can't cut costs infinitely. You still need to pay people, suppliers, and above all, people who had nothing to do with the company but hold a piece of paper saying they're entitled to profits.
It's probably the case that you cannot do that enough to compete with the Chinese if you're in the US, so they won't try.
We're in a post-"what about the long term economic outlook of our country"-era and have been since the 1970s. John Q. Public in the US and Helga Öffentlich in Germany don't care that their purchase of a Chinese EV hollows out their country's industrial base, they just care that they spent less on the EV. And why shouldn't they? The countries themselves are lead by people who do the exact same thing on a massive scale.
The primary risk that China's auto industry poses is to Japan, South Korea, and the few parts of Europe with large scale auto manufacturing.
The US domestic auto industry was hollowed out decades ago. Germany's domestic auto industry is just starting to be hollowed out, that process is in the early days. China's auto rise will ravage European manufacturing, not US manufacturing. Auto manufacturing is a small share of the US industrial base, it's a large share of the German industrial base for example.
Boeing and Airbus will both lose large chunks of their global airplane business to cheaper Chinese competition over the coming decades. It's definitely not exclusive to Boeing. The US airline market is far more lucrative than the European airline market, US carriers like Delta are very profitable and can more or less be forced to not buy from China.
Easy. (b)
I can continue to milk a specific market while my competitors do other things.
Yeah eventually that will be dried up, but by than point enough wealth has been accumulated for generations of me and my family.
Plus if the worst comes too quickly there’s a fair chance I’ll get bailed out by my long time buddies in the government.
Well, EV with a good range still costs more then a plugin hybrid with a small battery. Why US government should spent money on technology that is presently inferior to plugin hybrids? In few years this will change when the latest battery technology will be scaled up, but then EV will be able to compete against ICE or hybrids cars on its own without subsidies.
And in retrospect subsidizing EV by governments around the world could be a bad decision. If instead fuel taxes were raised or at least the subsidies went to development of more economical cars, then total CO2 emissions could be lower at this point.
> (a) Double-down on investments in EVs (billions of USD!), even with a soft US market for EVs, hoping you might compete globally.
> (b) Become a parochial, US-only, business hoping to squeeze what you can out of a gradually shrinking industry
It's (c) invest in plug-in hybrids that work everywhere. US customers demand something that can do a road trip without stopping to charge? No problem, and on top of that it will get 40+ MPG. European customers paying high gas prices? No problem, it has a 150 km all-electric range so if you keep it charged you never have to put gas in it.
hybrids are option (b), a dead end parochial technology. Pure evs will strand that technology very quickly. BYD already has 1000v / 5min charge.
Plug-in hybrids are EVs that have a gas engine in place of a larger battery. It means you're acquiring the knowhow and manufacturing capacity to build electric motors and batteries. If the market shifts you just take the engine out and put more batteries in its place, or offer that as a trim level in the places that want it.
PHEVs are universally bad EVs. Terrible capacity, slow / low power charging infrastructure, minimal use of electric engines at higher speeds. They are essentially a lie to get green subsidies & tax breaks, achieving only ~19% less emissions than their gas equivalents in the real world [1]
They don't have to be bad EVs, you could theoretically make one with a good EV powertrain, but then it would likely be more expensive than a pure EV. And battery prices drop substantially every year, and ranges are increasing fast.
They're a dead end.
(1) https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/oct/16/plug-in-...
In places with good charging infrastructure, absolutely. In large parts of the US, not so much.
There's always option 3.
Keep product lines and factories semi targetted for their individual markets. Ford discontinued the Fiesta in North America but they are still being built in the EU AFAIK. Major car markets product their domestic auto industry anyways so you're probably going to have to setup local production in any case.
Doesn't change your overall point, but just to comment on the Fiesta case (of interest to me since I drove one of the first model year's return to North America - 2011 - until earlier this year) - it only survived 4 extra years outside of NA - it's discontinued worldwide as of 2023.
The surviving vehicle(s) on the platform are the Ford Puma and Puma Gen-E, which are subcompact crossovers not sold in North America.
Ah, I wasn't aware the Fiesta discontinued outside as well. AFAIK Ford did so to retool Cuautitlán Assembly plant in Mexico from the Fiesta to the Mach-E. Looks like Cologne Body & Assembly is going to be producing Ford's EU electric CUV's instead of the Fiesta.
Do US car companies compete globally anywhere? Chinese people aren't buying GM cars. The US car industry hasn't been competitive globally since Toyota started making cars.
GM sold 4M cars in China in 2017, its peak year. While BYD is indeed eating their lunch, they still sold 1.8M cars in China last year: https://stockdividendscreener.com/auto-manufacturers/gm-chin...
American brands were considered prestigious as I understand it.
> American brands were considered prestigious as I understand it.
For automotive, kind of but not really (excluding Tesla).
Volkswagen Group was the primary foreign manufacturer that was also a status symbol in China.
Some Ford models still compete with Asian cars in foreign markets. Smaller Ford models mainly, but the Falcon was popular with a certain demographic.
Chinese people bought about 1.8 million GM cars last year, which is down significantly from about 10 years ago before BYD and other domestic brands started putting out competitive alternatives but far from 0.
Tesla is a US company?
One reason for this that often goes unmentioned is the shale gas/fracking boom that made the US the world's #1 energy producer. That macro-level development allows the current administration to act as it does. If gas was less plentiful, more expensive, or primarily sourced from unstable regions, the economic math would be against them already. Western Europe and China do not have large fossil fuel reserves. For them, switching to green energy sources is not just an economic bonus, it's also a national security imperative.
Domestic sources of cheap, plentiful energy helped the US economy grow beyond expectations over the past decade, but it might prove to be a short-term boon that leads to long-term issues if the rest of the world's economy pivots away from fossil fuels.
Which is even more stupid, because more solar means they can sell more gas/oil to everyone else including gas starved Europe.
City gas was actually the first industry that proved the more you make, the more people demand. If we make more power, we will use it.
Then consider that AI datacenters as big as NYC will need as much power as possible.
> more solar means they can sell more gas/oil to everyone else
A glut in supply drives prices down. Oil extraction and refining doesn't have constant costs, as it is heavily dependent on geography as well as the physical characteristics of oil itself.
This is why there was a 3 way gas price war between the US, Saudi Arabia, and Russia in the 2010s.
Lots of articles about how solar panels are even less expensive than traditional fence panels; it's incredible. If I had a suitable property I would be installing them even in Seattle area where it's cloudy and dark for a significant part of the year (summers are pure sun though!).
Slight aside, but fence panels in the US have a monopoly problem: Most of the manufacturers got taken over, consolidated, and owned by private equity. That's why they're so expensive.
Animal vets, plumbers, HVAC, and other industries too.
Funeral homes preserve their original names, but are mostly owned by private equity now.
A fun one is ask and Australian
How much it costs to sell a house. Then tell him in that in the US it's 6% of the sales price.
How much it costs to install solar and heat pumps.
Costing less per square meter than plywood was the most recent comparison that stopped me in my tracks.
80% of the supply chain for solar is based in China[0]. As long as this is the case, it is unlikely there will be as much demand in the US for it due to new Cold War and bipartisan efforts to tariff solar panels from China
The article seems to leave this important detail out, despite talking a lot about China
0. https://www.iea.org/reports/solar-pv-global-supply-chains/ex...
EDIT: it looks like the article does mention it, I just missed it:
> The huge surfeit of production capacity in China, which produced about eight out of 10 of the world’s solar modules in 2024
I didn't expect China to become the solution provider for global warming while USA contribution to the world is mostly climate change denial. Yet here we are...
The fact that the US shifted their pollution away from something that causes obvious to anyone issues like acid rain to something that is more easily deniable makes it easy to deny climate change. The hole in the ozone layer stopped growing as well. Maybe it will take that level of problems to start in the US again for changes to happen??
There was already an op-ed writer during Dubya's admin (remember when he was the dumbest president?) writing how their denial and non-investment in green tech was going to lead to China to be leaders in that space.
Sigh, without the Brooks Brothers "riot", the guy people insulted for talking about climate change would've been president...
Why not? China has/had the problem in their own backyard and we're likely acutely aware of the impact it has. Wouldn't that hasten their need to come up with alternative solutions?
Meanwhile the US is full of hubris and can't see beyond their own nose.
They installed 67% percent of it this year so that seems reasonable amount for them to build.
The full solar supply chain is currently being produced in the US, with low capacity but more planned.
SEIA has a solar and storage supply chain dashboard that they update with operational and planned capacities.
But clearly recent moves by the current admin are undercutting this progress.
I'll care when they hit (inflation-adjusted to now) 10ct/Wp for n-topcon (or better) glass-glass framed modules FOB by the truck/container load.
Because that (in Rotterdam) is the normal for central Europe these days. Except that they're already in a warehouse/container pile after their ocean voyage.
When one government bet on solar power failed (Solyndra) the message from the right in the US was, "look what a waste it is for the government to invest in solar technology," instead of taking the appropriate lesson. That lesson was that we weren't spending enough backing solar companies.
China shoveled billions into developing solar manufacturing technologies, and as a result they figure out how to cheaply mass-produce solar cells. Solyndra failed because they couldn't compete against the resulting cheap solar cells.
But solar panels are undergoing involution in China while there is mass youth unemployment. Alot of these are zombie companies selling at a loss and propped by provincial debt.
You're measuring success only in with regards to how it might benefit you as a foreigner, but dosen't necessarily mean it was wholly successful for the China.
We'd be similarly behind with self-driving tech if it wasn't for the endless investment by megacorps.
The more depressing problem is that the US is raising trade barriers for solar equipment made outside of China nearly as fast. I think that the current administration just dislikes solar power, and only a part of that animosity is due to its tough-on-China stance.
"South Korea files WTO complaint over US solar tariffs"
https://www.pv-tech.org/south-korea-challenging-us-solar-tar...
"US DOC issues steep AD/CVD tariffs on Southeast Asian solar cells"
https://www.pv-tech.org/us-doc-issues-ad-cvd-tariffs-on-sout...
The US Department of Commerce (DOC) has issued anti-dumping and anti-subsidy tariffs against solar cell imports from Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and Cambodia.
"A Casualty of Trump’s Tariffs: India’s Nascent Solar Industry"
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/27/climate/india-solar-panel...
"Solar products from Mexico and Canada slapped with tariffs for first time"
https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2025/02/solar-products...
I’d be curious how much of the goal of the tariffs is for solar actually produced in those countries vs just slightly modified goods from China. That’s one reason tariffs don’t work when they aren’t applied universally
I don’t doubt that another benefit is the current admin just simply doesn’t like solar of course
I know that at least Malaysia, Mexico, and South Korea had genuinely independent solar manufacturing that was not just repackaging Chinese components. In reading the solar industry trade press, I haven't seen indications that the new tariffs are targeted to fight "leakage" of Chinese products via intermediary countries. They seem aimed at keeping import prices elevated across the board.
In India's case it appears to be an attempt to strongarm a trade deal - Indian energy firms that have invested heavily in the solar and renewables manufacturing chain like Reliance Group and Adani Group are diversified energy companies that are also competing against American ONG majors like Exxon and Chevron.
Heck, the additonal 25% tariff on India for Russian oil imports only came up after Exxon started lobbying to re-enter the Russian market [0], but the Russians sold Exxon's Russian assets to India's ONGC [1].
[0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-09-18/exxon-say...
Has storage been solved yet? In my experience US power companies hate crediting pushback to the grid because it all happens at the same time during peak sunlight hours and then customers get to use those credits at night and during the winter which the power company thinks is unfair. In Idaho at least the power companies were able to change the laws so that you get much fewer credits for solar panels on your roof which means they aren't great unless you can figure out how to store the generated energy inexpensively.
Personally I like the idea of an electric car doubling as a house battery but so far I think only the F-150 lightning is capable of doing that.
Places in California has this problem too. Installing solar panels today could result in a larger electricity bill than not having them.
Getting solar panels forces you onto a plan in which they charge more per kwh pulled from the grid. The surplus electricity is only credited at the generation cost which is only 1/4 the total cost per kwh. (Delivery costs is 3x the price of electricity).
So if you want to go solar to save money you need both batteries and solar panels which is not an insignificant amount of money.
> Has storage been solved yet?
In general yes, grid solar + grid batteries are cheaper than any peaking power plants. So now 24/7 batteries + wind + solar generally outcompetes nuclear, coal, or natural gas on price as long as there’s no tariffs involved.
This isn’t enough to make batteries + solar viable in Alaska but long distance transmission lines could solve that issue cost effectively.
Solar is actually viable in places like Alaska and Finland. It just isn't viable in the winter, but in the summer it is extra viable. Greenhouses (another form of solar) also work wonders in Alaska, and outside they can grow the biggest pumpkins you'll ever see anywhere.
You can just put solar fences in Alaska....
Half of Germany is north of the straight part of the US/Canada border...
Ketchikan is about the same latitude as Copenhagen. You actually have enough easy to access hydro on the panhandle that solar isn't going to be very competitive. Fairbanks and up is where solar is viable in the summer and not in the winter.
OK, but nobody has enough batteries to store enough for the winter. Overnight? Sure. Winter? That's a whole different deal.
You always combine solar power with wind power, that already solves more than 90% of the storage problem. In places like Europe the darker winter is usually quite windy.
For example, last Sunday Germany covered more than 100% of its own power load with renewables even though winter is approaching. Only a small part of that was solar power, most electricity was generated by wind turbines: https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c...
In the lower 48 you'd just size the solar to handle winter and find a way to use summer electricity, like electro winning metal from ore or running low-capex high-power chemical synthesis steps like making ammonia without natural gas.
Having energy cost related scheduled (winter) downtime gives the plants proper maintenance windows.
With free power but only during surplus peaks in summer when the grid can't transmit a large utility solar farm's entire production, and the day/night/weekday time shifting batteries are also already fully active, you could (looks like the math checks out) electrolytically refine iron ore into iron metal (for later smelting in an arc furnace) just about cost-competitively with (coal-fired) blast furnace operation. The key is to skip most overhead by operating them only to eat otherwise-curtailed production and connecting them to the DC bus between the MPPT and the grid inverter (same as the day/night shifting battery).
First, the only reason solar isn't so common in Alaska is that hydro is even easier to get power from, so your outback communities will often use small scale hydro instead of solar (especially in southeast Alaska).
Communities in the north will use diesel generators in the winter (nothing else is viable). Again, I assume you are talking about off grid communities, which is basically all of them except a few cities (and most cities have their own grids disconnected from the rest, especially Southeast Alaska).
That's why you generate hydrogen during summer for gas power plants during winter.
What mass of hydrogen is needed per house to last a winter?
rough math: 1000 kwh / mo / house, ~30kwh/kg hydrogen so 30kg H per mo per house. idk how long winters would be, 8 months is 240kg of hydrogen, which if compressed to 10 bar is roughly 300 cubic meters of storage. kinda a lot of space. compressed to 100 bar is like 10kg/m3 which sounds more manageable
Round trip efficiency on hydrogen is horrible. Local hydrogen production could make sense because importing fuel into remote off grid communities is extremely expensive.
Rather than building 10x as much solar in the north + battery systems + winter hydrogen storage etc long distance HVDC to cities and the surrounding grid just makes so much more sense. Even better because the state is huge and the population is tiny they can go nearly 100% hydro.
Where batteries could be useful is operating those long distance power lines at nearly 100% 24/7 then load shifting via batteries to match local demand.
> Round trip efficiency on hydrogen is horrible.
For seasonal storage, round trip efficiency is mostly irrelevant; the relevant metric is capex per unit of stored energy.
I used to think hydrogen was the front runner for this storage use case, but as I've pointed out previously on HN it's looking like ultra low capex thermal storage will be superior.
Hydrogen containment isn't long term, every atom we use to make hydrogen tanks are much larger than hydrogen, so they leak no matter what.
Are batteries cheaper than pumping water up hill?
Do you have a place to store that water up hill already? Then no. Don't have a place to store that water already? Then yes. Pumped storage is great if you have reservoirs or a place to put them, and the water to pump between them. But those conditions don't really happen that often.
I have seen some really shockingly cheap homemade stored water systems on YouTube (I’m into that kind of thing so there’s a lot of it in my feed) so if you own a hill and have sufficient recharge even in winter then it’s super cheap install that makes even a meagre battery seem expensive. But you have to have the terrain.
Cheap in terms of capital, but home hydro tends to take quite a bit of labor and maintenance over time. If you look at that stuff as a fun hobby or YouTube content it’s no big deal, but economically your labor isn’t free.
I’ve got an usually good location for small scale hydro, there was even a mill on the property, but it just doesn’t seem worth it to me.
Yeah different perspectives. Some people find diy easy and are quite happy to tinker with things. Where I live is currently suffering a wild boar infestation and I’m happily setting up an electric fence system for basically no money at all whilst a neighbour just paid a lot of money for someone to install it for them. I wish I had a good property for hydro or stored water batteries!
*as long as there's no tariffs involved and no entrenched power monopolies taxing folks for installing solar. Looking at you, Southern Power Company.
The most likely is that storage will never be "solved".
We will run with 100% renewables for years, and there will still be people asking if storage has been solved already. We will just solve every large issue, and suffer lots of small issues.
Also, if you are using your car as a battery, you can't use it as a car. It's more likely that you will have extra batteries at home so that you can charge your car when you want.
Net metering is unrealistic.
Maybe just force grid-connected solar installations that want credit (any size) and even those that just want to be grid-tied (beyond some small size like maybe 5 panels/2kW worth of MPPT) to use a registering meter that meters net energy for each like 15 min interval (that's the granularity we use in central Europe; I assume the US would have come to a similar choice of granularity), and bills energy according to market rate and appropriately handles connection capacity/transformer capex by like taking a histogram of those individual measurements or otherwise letting a few isolated bursts through while ensuring transformer capacity is paid for by those responsible for the (hypothetical, until it's not) transformer upgrade.
> Has storage been solved yet?
No, but it's cheaper than it ever was and panels are so cheap that they can have ROI even without storage. That said, grid solar makes the most financial sense if you're not in an off-grid location.
Carful when saying it’s not cheaper, it’s generally profitable to add some batteries to a solar power plant.
The economics on storage only kicks in after scaling the grid with a lot of solar, but adding solar to that point is itself profitable almost anywhere.
I've always been confused by the insistence on storage. Saturate 100% of the daytime loads with solar, curtail at peak, it's still cheaper than just about any other source. Save all the hydro power, gas, and other standby sources for before and after sunset.
Once you're curtailing a bunch of power during the daytime, then you can add storage as a no brainer bonus and stop curtailing.
Yes, and if peak solar generation exceeded demand, and were priced appropriately, I think we'd find that some workloads could be timeshifted (e.g. precooling homes).
> Has storage been solved yet?
If it wasn’t, parts of the country wouldn’t be invested in adding it.
Recent discussion on HN on a similar topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45706527
> *which the power company thinks is unfair"
The way you worded this implies that you disagree. Are you aware of why wholesale prices aren't constant?
I assume that the extra regular (daily?) cycling of the battery in your car would have a notable effect on your vehicle battery's longevity. (But I'm very fuzzy on how battery improvements in the past ~decade have applied to "cycle life", or really even what the cycle life means, e.g. is end of life when it's something like 70% of total original capacity?)
> unless you can figure out how to store the generated energy inexpensively
Like solar panels, also tariffed.
Rooftop solar is nice for resiliency and can have its place in a grid, but it's not cost effective. Grid-scale solar is what most folks are talking about when they say solar boom. Even in the somewhat backwards US, where Solar in total is ~340TWh, the majority (~250TWh?) comes from grid-scale interconnected solar and solar+battery installations. Hopefully this gap continues to grow as the Biden-era IRA fueled grid-scale solar projects mature through their design/build/deploy pipelines in the coming years.
Thinking of national policy from a home owner perspective is expected, but it isn't always instructive.
For the latter item, my Rivian has a relatively paltry 1500W inverter with standard 110W plugs in the back seat, truck bed, and gear tunnel, but I can use a rectifier/power supply to pull a constant 1kW, step that back to DC and feed it into my home's battery backup system. My whole house tends to use ~2kW at peak, and obviously can conserve in outages. So I get my normal 4kWh battery bank with solar hookups, but can splice the 141kWh Rivian battery in, too, for a good chunk of off-grid power.
> In my experience US power companies hate crediting pushback to the grid because it all happens at the same time during peak sunlight hours and then customers get to use those credits at night and during the winter which the power company thinks is unfair.
I'm pretty sure PG&E pays back something like only 5% of the generation of my solar panels. I'll end the year with $400 more generated than used, and I'll get a check for $20...
Yes. Cheap batteries distribute storage at the end user location, flattening the demand curve and stabilizing the grid at economically viable prices.
No matter how fast you run, you won't win a race where you're just going back and forth nonstop.
It really does feel like the US is completely hosed when it comes to energy (and thus, industrial relevance broadly). Every 4 years we make a bigger bet in the opposite direction of the last, and meanwhile the entire world moves on without us. At least now it feels like no matter what the US does we'll make progress on climate goals as a species, even if in 50 years the US is still building coal plants and criminalizing home solar.
In California getting solar doesn’t pay off. You have to install battery backup to reduce your energy bill now. People here aren’t happy about it.
In California getting solar doesn’t pay off. You have to install battery backup to reduce your energy bill now.
China is dumping panels in Europe as they have immense overproduction of panels and their building industry has cratered (reducing internal demand massively). The Chinese government is facilitating this dumping with tax credits and other forms of subsidies to keep them from having to close up shop.