Plunging costs make solar, wind and battery storage cheaper than coal

Re:Plunging costs make solar, wind and battery storage cheap... by maoistinquisitr on Monday January 29, 2018 @12:55PM (#16259228)

These claims are based on simplistic spread sheet models. We have REAL WORLD DATA. The real world experience throughout europe and the USA shows net losses. I repeat: if it worked the plants would be profitable and they would be going up without tax subsidies. Do you dispute this? Does the legal environment somehow prevent entrepreneurs throughout the western world from selling solar power into the grid?

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Re:Plunging costs make solar, wind and battery storage cheap... by telchar on Monday January 29, 2018 @01:12PM (#16259362)

If you think tax subsidies have anything to do with EROI (i.e. EROEI) you are very confused. This is calculated on the basis of Wh/Wh. Simple dimensional analysis shows that $ doesn't show up at all in the calculation.

Of course tax subsidies are useful to bootstrap on a $ cost basis, but with current costs and rate of falling costs even that will soon become unnecessary (let's get rid of fossil fuel subsidies to make this "real world data" comparison fair though).

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Re:Plunging costs make solar, wind and battery storage cheap... by maoistinquisitr on Monday January 29, 2018 @01:20PM (#16259435)

Cash flows are in fact a reasonable proxy for energy in many cases. Manually tallying up the uses of energy and materials is a handwaving exercise at best, but net losses of cash in the energy industry indicate with certainty that you not yielding net energy to society as an enterprise.

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Re:Plunging costs make solar, wind and battery storage cheap... by politician on Monday January 29, 2018 @01:15PM (#16259388)

Can you review this [1] and ELI5 why solar seems to work in China, but the Sun doesn't shine enough to make the economics work in the west according to your research?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_China

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Re:Plunging costs make solar, wind and battery storage cheap... by the_why_of_y on Monday January 29, 2018 @05:10PM (#16261089)

> if it worked the plants would be profitable and they would be going up without tax subsidies.

No, it's the other way around: fossil fuels are subsidized by governments to the tune of $4.8 trillion a year, so solar needs to be subsidized as well to be able to compete.

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=42940.0

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Re:Plunging costs make solar, wind and battery storage cheap... by chimmy_chonga on Monday January 29, 2018 @01:12PM (#16259368)

> they would be going up without tax subsidies.

They don't even build Walmarts without tax subsidies these days.

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Re:Plunging costs make solar, wind and battery storage cheap... by dtech on Monday January 29, 2018 @01:35PM (#16259544)

Can you link real world data?

Are externalities (CO2 output) taken into considerations in your unsourced REAL WORLD DATA!!~!

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Re:Plunging costs make solar, wind and battery storage cheap... by Brakenshire on Monday January 29, 2018 @01:17PM (#16259405)

> I repeat: if it worked the plants would be profitable and they would be going up without tax subsidies

Right, so on that basis these bids below the grid rate indicate that they now work?

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Re:Plunging costs make solar, wind and battery storage cheap... by ams6110 on Monday January 29, 2018 @02:17PM (#16259915)

Bids are speculations.

Bidders are very frequently unable to actually deliver. See pretty much any highway project ever.

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Re:Plunging costs make solar, wind and battery storage cheap... by Brakenshire on Monday January 29, 2018 @09:20PM (#16262418)

Agreed on that.

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Re:Plunging costs make solar, wind and battery storage cheap... by bufferoverflow on Monday January 29, 2018 @01:12PM (#16259360)

Nothing prevents anybody from selling solar power. Lots of solar farms are live and many more are being built.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_photovoltaic_power_sta...

(note how the biggest ones are all new)

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Re:Plunging costs make solar, wind and battery storage cheap... by rconti on Monday January 29, 2018 @03:46PM (#16260496)

I would have bought a house without a tax subsidy.

But there is one, so I'm sure as hell taking it.

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