The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months

Re:The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months by femto on Tuesday May 03, 2016 @08:31PM (#11625337)

Though you need less volume if it is only being used for overnight storage rather than long term rainfall storage. For example, to store enough energy to produce 1GW for 1 day (~10^5 seconds) with a head of 100m, use Pt=mgh to work out you need to store:

m = 10^9.10^5 / (10*100) = 10^11 kg of water. = 10^8 m^3

This is not a big reserviour, being 1/20th of the size of Warragamba dam's reserviour (in Sydney). One valley could provide 20GW for a day. Compare that with demand for where I live:

http://www.aemo.com.au/Electricity/Data/Price-and-Demand/Pri...

Peak demand for 7.5M people is 9GW, with an average closer to 7GW. One valley could provide overnight storage for over 20 million people, with first world demands (all of Australia). The limitation is transmission and generating/pumping capacity, rather than storage volume.

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Re:The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months by ldp01 on Tuesday May 03, 2016 @09:09PM (#11625484)

Note that's a winter peak you're looking at.

The highest summer peak appears to have been just above 13GW. http://www.wattclarity.com.au/2016/02/highest-electricity-de...

However your point still stands I believe.

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Re:The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months by imaginenore on Tuesday May 03, 2016 @09:51PM (#11625615)

But the summer peak is due to air conditioning during the day, when there's tons of "free" solar energy.

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