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Solar Is Cheapest Electricity in History, U.S. DOE Aims to Cut Costs 60% by 2030

(cleantechnica.com)
131 points mg | 5 comments | 26 Mar 21 20:07 UTC | HN request time: 1.663s | source
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rich_sasha ◴[26 Mar 21 22:13 UTC] No.26597628[source]▶
If solar were free, but we still needed to pay for battery storage, how would it then compare in cost to fuel-based alternatives (fossil fuel, nuclear etc)?
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turtlebits ◴[26 Mar 21 22:29 UTC] No.26597783[source]▶
People use way too much power for battery storage to be viable. The average household consumes 28.9kwh in a day (in 2017), which is way more than rooftop solar can provide.

Maybe when we have smaller houses and don't have a bajillion devices plugged in all the time.

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hn_throwaway_99 ◴[26 Mar 21 22:48 UTC] No.26597927[source]▶
Most people will have a big battery in their garage capable of powering their house for days pretty soon.
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1. turtlebits ◴[26 Mar 21 23:14 UTC] No.26598116[source]▶
Unless battery prices drastically drop, 2 days of power is 60kwh (quoting earlier figure), even if batteries were $100/kwh, that's $6000 in batteries (or ~$9 if you're on grid)

edit: bad math, had $60k

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2. makomk ◴[26 Mar 21 23:26 UTC] No.26598217[source]▶
I think you're off by an order of magnitude there? $100/kwh * 60kwh is $6000, not 60 grand.
3. nicoburns ◴[26 Mar 21 23:38 UTC] No.26598312[source]▶
What makes you think they won't drop significantly? PV panel costs have dropped by dramtically due to efficiencies of scale, and batteries are only just seeing production begin to ramp up.
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4. rhodozelia ◴[27 Mar 21 02:33 UTC] No.26599365[source]▶
how long before I can buy a Tesla for 50% of what one costs now? If the batteries are going to get so cheap we should be seeing some great price drops in electric cars. If not ... why not? And that reason will probably apply to battery energy storage too.
5. hn_throwaway_99 ◴[27 Mar 21 21:41 UTC] No.26605896[source]▶
I should have been more explicit in my post. I was talking about car batteries. Tesla cars have batteries in the 60-100 kWh range, and Vehicle-To-Home (V2H) power is becoming a real thing, and I predict over the next few years it could have a large impact on the ability of the grid to use that energy storage to help even out renewable power variability.

See https://electrek.co/2020/05/19/tesla-bidirectional-charging-...