←back to thread

177 points belter | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.001s | source
Show context
melling ◴[] No.43621706[source]
“ And solar was the fastest-growing electricity source for the 20th year in a row.

It now provides 7% of the world's electricity”

replies(6): >>43622242 #>>43622629 #>>43622634 #>>43622643 #>>43623460 #>>43624364 #
Night_Thastus ◴[] No.43622643[source]
The economics have shifted. It used to be that solar or wind were more experimental, and lacked any economies of scale. Their production was poor and less was known about how they fared in the long term.

Now, their prices have gone down, their generation per unit has gone up, and much more is known about how they behave long-term.

The world has a LOT of power generation. It will take time to replace. But with every time that some existing power generation source shuts down due to age, or expansion occurs somewhere, it will inevitably be done with solar/wind. It's just more cost effective now.

In the end it is not environmental concerns that will cause solar and wind to become commonplace. It's just economics. Slapping down something that generates power for 20-30 years with no input fuel is just way more economically feasible than anything that requires fuel. They still have maintenance costs, but it's nothing by comparison. They can completely undercut other sources of power.

replies(6): >>43623196 #>>43623299 #>>43623348 #>>43623458 #>>43624182 #>>43627249 #
tracerbulletx ◴[] No.43623299[source]
Storage capacity on the grid will need to massively increase as well for solar to go much further.
replies(6): >>43623375 #>>43623522 #>>43623632 #>>43623767 #>>43623935 #>>43626756 #
1. wongarsu ◴[] No.43623522[source]
It is increasing. At the moment it is slowed because for the longest time we were fine with just hydro, pumped hydro, gas peaker plants and the natural inertia of the power plants' turbines and generators. Now demand is big enough that even lithium-ion is deployed for grid storage, despite lithium-ion being optimized for the opposite use case (light portable power storage). Lots of options that are more optimized for grid storage are in various stages of development, but it takes time for them to be brought to maturity and for operators to gain experience and confidence with them.