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Why everyone missed solar's exponential growth

(www.exponentialview.co)
43 points xbmcuser | 3 comments | 21 Nov 24 01:35 UTC | HN request time: 0.667s | source
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Quothling ◴[21 Nov 24 06:49 UTC] No.42201788[source]▶
Working in an investment bank that's build around 800 solar plants over the world in the previous decade with steep competition from a lot of other investors I'd argue that not everyone missed it. The next big boom is in battery storage, but the projects and investments took off a year or two ago with production factories nearing completion. Part of what shot it up was when various EU countries raised their green energy targets from 60-80%. In Germany alone that will require a 800% growth for battery storage financials before 2030.

I'm not sure which semi-professional to professional investors missed that here in Europe though. In fact we've seen so many companies shoot up around these things that the recent economic downturns is causing quite a lot of bankruptcies. Which are then bought up by larger investment funds.

From a tech perspective... There is going to be a lot of potential in building the technical layer between a plant and the "internet". None of the current systems, including market leaders that I'm not going to name drop, aren't very good. Part of the reason is because things like inverters and other solar plant tech has absolutely no standardization. They are ridiculously different, meaning you need actual programmers to onboard each plant unless someone builds some form of engineering standard. Currently it seems like each piece of tech basically has it's software designed by the individual engineer who made it. What is even more hilarious is that the systems made for solar, wind, batteries and so on don't work together.

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1. adev_ ◴[21 Nov 24 07:54 UTC] No.42202080[source]▶
> Currently it seems like each piece of tech basically has it's software designed by the individual engineer [...].

> ... There is going to be a lot of potential in building the technical layer between a plant and the "internet"

These two statements are contradictive. What you need here is exactly the opposite of one-more tech-layer.

What you need is not one more bullshit startup that try to bring one-more of its proprietary tech stac to unify them all.

What you need is international standardization and protocols. Exactly like that the IUT is doing in the Telecom domain.

> In Germany alone that will require a 800% growth for battery storage financials before 2030.

Great to see additional public money to be spend to enrich private investors due to the German nuclear phase out. The 400 billions from the Energiewende are indeed not enough when we see the current carbon intensity of the country. #irony

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2. oezi ◴[21 Nov 24 10:12 UTC] No.42202754[source]▶
> Great to see additional public money to be spend to enrich private investors due to the German nuclear phase out. The 400 billions from the Energiewende are indeed not enough when we see the current carbon intensity of the country. #irony

As the nuclear plants were also owned and operated by private investors, I don't see why the German people shouldn't be allowed to say that they don't want nuclear power in their backyard. This certainly set back the climate goals of the country as did Putin's war of aggression in Ukraine.

400 bn EUR is indeed not a lot if you consider that it was spent to be part of an effort to kickstart solar and wind industries. Which worked and delivered a downward trajectory for LCOE which put solar, wind and soon batteries on the map.

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3. cjblomqvist ◴[21 Nov 24 12:36 UTC] No.42203722[source]▶
jQuery proved that it can be a fully reasonable way to achieve standardization.

Then of course there's the classic xckd about standards. There's no one true way.