Solar power grew faster than any other fuel in 2016

Re:Solar power grew faster than any other fuel in 2016 by epistasis on Wednesday October 04, 2017 @09:09AM (#15400177)

The levelized cost of solar is already less that the fuel and maintenance cost of coal, for many locations. However that’s the levelized cost, which means that it has to be used when the sun is out in order for solar to be competitive.

It’s why the DOE is ignoring the findings of their own baseload reliability study to try to impose coal and nuclear subsidies:

http://www.utilitydive.com/news/how-does-baseload-power-rule...

The weird and arbitrary “90 days of fuel onsite” requirement says nothing about reliability, but it is a way to define what coal+nuclear can do (though I wonder if coal plants keep 90 days onsite these days...)

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Re:Solar power grew faster than any other fuel in 2016 by dx034 on Wednesday October 04, 2017 @10:00AM (#15400485)

While coal is more expensive, natural gas plants can still be cheaper for many locations. And older nuclear plants presumably have extremely low ongoing costs (as they don't pay for storage of waste in most countries).

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Re:Solar power grew faster than any other fuel in 2016 by epistasis on Wednesday October 04, 2017 @10:25AM (#15400632)

Yes, and since most natural gas plants are fed by pipeline, the subsidies seem designed specifically to exclude natural gas.

This is despite coal stacks freezing during the last polar vortex, causing much of the reduction in resiliency.

(Side note: though many old nuclear plants are still cost competitive, utilities seem to favor fossil fuels to the extent that many if not most of them are at risk of being decommissioned. And in competitive energy markets, many of these old plants can't bid on price any more either, leading to many proposed nuclear-specific subsidies in particular markets.)

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Re:Solar power grew faster than any other fuel in 2016 by ZeroGravitas on Wednesday October 04, 2017 @10:45AM (#15400791)

Nuclear and coal often can be shut by warm weather too, if their water supply is affected.

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Re:Solar power grew faster than any other fuel in 2016 by KirinDave on Wednesday October 04, 2017 @11:34AM (#15401195)

I'm not sure anyone is upset about the idea of having to build new mass storage stations for major grids and sell storage for new homes.

Distributing the grid COULD be the next big infrastructural push for the western world, if folks could just agree to stop propping up the fossil fuel world's influence.

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