Daytime energy is soon going to be free in much of the world. The advances in green tech, especially solar and batteries, are real. Much faster progress than even the optimists were predicting a decade ago. The revolution is reaching a tipping point where it becomes self-sustaining and requires no state subsidies. I am not a tech utopian, and this alone will not save us. But there’s no denying it’s good news. It’s all happening far too late but it does look like humans are going to kick their fossil habit after all.
Inconvenient footnote: thank China.
It’s gotten so good that China might be restricting output to keep the prices high…
(their onshore wind, and pumped hydro storage, are also great success stories, as is the EV industry there)
Indeed. China is such a paradox. An absolute anathema in terms of culture and politics. It’s almost impossible for us Westerners to grasp how a people could accept that level of authoritarianism, how they could value their personal freedom so little. And yet, and yet. Without China we would be royally screwed. They are pulling the weight of the green transition basically alone. So personally I’ve decided to hold off on China-bashing for now.
Westerners to grasp how a people could accept that level of authoritarianism,
So personally I’ve decided to hold off on China-bashing for now.
You just did, according to .ml users, because ACkShuLly cHiNa iSnT aN AuThoRitArIaN CounTRy
Joke’s on them: not only authoritarian, but capitalist authoritarian.
Optimistic of you to assume pricing is cost-plus not willingness-to-pay. US utilities (and their foreign counterparts) will only too gladly keep charging you
Agreed. In theory that problem can be dealt with by properly regulated competition.
But regulation is the enemy and only serves to harm the poor, poor multinational conglomerates!
Best I can do is more bitcoins
Is there a good place to ask about independent (non-grid-connected) solar for an otherwise grid-connected structure? I’d love to set something like this up, but can’t find any systems which don’t require wiring into the gird.
Best ask in a more specialized forum. Personally I rent so I have to take what I’m given.
Capitalism only encourages innovation when its profitable. Its a bit of a flaw.
People can talk shit on China from a geopolitical stance and I’ll agree with them, but yeah, they picked up the slack where other countries were lacking when it came to green progression. Technically our (US) own fault too. Greed ruling over progression really fucked us.
Can’t wait to get charged $0.50/kWh by PGE for energy they generate for free, weeee.
Battery prices are collapsing and we are at an inflection point where electric vehicles will soon be more economical to purchase, drive and maintain for a much greater number of people. This is as inevitable as the phaseout of coal.
Solar panels also seems to be on a tipping point
Oh it tipped a few years ago. It’s just still being implemented. There may be less startup to ramping up fossil fuel plants still, but solar is cheaper to build and operate
So I guess what kind of tipping point we’re talking about, I meant we’ll soon be drowning in cheap solar panels, it’s just as you said not yet at capacity.
I looked at adding solar to my house 6-7 years ago and it was going to cost $60k. The return on investment would have taken 25-30 years.
What does it cost these day?
To give you an Australian perspective here are some current indicative prices for solar installations over here. https://www.solarquotes.com.au/panels/cost/
Yeah, I was shopping for lithium on phosphatase leisure batteries maybe two years ago and was looking at spending over £1000 per battery. Now those batteries are not much over £100 and prices still seem to be falling.
What would one use lithium on phosphatase leisure batteries for? I’m not familiar with those
LiFePo (Lithium Iron Phosphate) is heavier than traditional Lithium Ion batteries for the same amount of energy storage, but doesn’t degrade when discharged to zero the way traditional Lithium Ion does.
Well, you know…sometimes you just need a vibrator that can go a continuous month between recharges…
Yeah, but that will be true for the electric cars made in the coming years, not the ones made in the past few years. People were right to be put off by the prices.
And even then, will these new cheap batteries be durable? I worry a lot about all these EVs becoming unusable in 10 years because the batteries are ruined, just like my 10 year old laptop
People who didn’t lease will lose their shirts but the price of new cars is the primary driver for the price of used cars. New, cheap, and more useable EVs will make used ones cheap.
As to the reliability, it remains to be seen. Considering the size of a vehicle I think an aftermarket will pop up for refurbishing and replacing batteries like it has for the earliest modern EVs in the us, the leaf.
Unless you live in the US where tarrifs will keep that from being a reality.
There’s too much money in renewables for rich people. The tariffs may or may not happen, but the renewable switch is a runaway train, and almost entirely in the country.
On the electricity futures market, wind producers regularly sell their power for negative prices (paying transmission companies to take their power) because it’s so cheap for them to make, with such negligible overhead; since the government subsidies are based on the mWh they produce, they can sell it at a loss and still make money. But even if those subsidies go away, renewables can still easily undercut every other producer on the grid.
That’s just one example. The same tipping point is approaching fast all over just about every industry. Obama and Biden got the renewable energy industry over the hump of research and infrastructure outlay, so now Tr*mp gets to take the credit for their work while it all falls into place; and because the rich people are benefiting from it financially, they’re going to protect the industry.
The tariffs may or may not happen
The 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs already happened in September. Joe Biden announced them in May and they kicked off already. I don’t expect Trump to change anything with that.
I’m talking about batteries, specifically. And the US is decades behind on batteries.
Definitely true, though Elon paid enough money to Trump that he’s probably going to make sure there’s a cutout in any tariffs for Tesla’s batteries (which are largely made by CATL in China). Besides, cheap power means that even with tariffs raising the prices of batteries, BEVs are still going to be worth driving.
I’m about to go to sleep
Good night sweet prince
Goddamn you DrSleepless, your name checks out, why can’t I fall asleep
Because you’re doomscrolling on your phone
Donny was a good bowler, and a good man
Hopefully we’re about to have dozens of Luigis. That’s something to celebrate.
People now about solar but I think most people don’t know that the 21st century will become dominated by solar really fast. The growth will be exponential and in the coming decade we’ll really see it happening at a ridiculous pace.
It’ll also be really cheap and complemented by cheap storage. It always sounds like it’s 50 years away but in reality electrification is coming in so fast and cheap where the developing world will leap frog fossil fuels.
If you’re a homeowner you can almost certainly buy solar in a manner where the monthly financing will be similar to what you save in monthly electric bills. So it’s a wash.
This year.
The difference is that electric bills will go up, while the financing terms stay the same.
Looked into this a few years ago and you could have said the same then. The problem was the deal with the financing had all these weird caveats when you looked into the details like you didn’t own the panels, and any cost would transfer with the sale of the house, it was like a forever rental with no upgrades ever.
When we get to the point that you can get solar added, and own everything, and can pay for it without financing with a positive ROI in 3 years, that’s the tipping point.
I’m projecting inflation adjusted prices of energy to go down in the coming years as well as financing costs. The energy market is stabilising with the Ukraine war and central bank rates are also going down right now. Outlook is pretty good economically right but Covid and Ukraine really threw a wrench into the works and fucked up 4 years so far
Yeah i wouldn’t be surprised if the next 4 years saw natural gas and coal plants being torn down because they can’t be subsidized cheaper than solar.
5 words never written in sequence by a utility provider:
“We are lowering your rates”
I am about to go on a date!
Have a great time and be sure to tell lemmy all about it afterwards!
How did it go?
Well, I was worried that I had forgotten the art of dating, but it seems that there will be another! I don’t know how it will end up, but for now I’m happy!
I was worried that I had forgotten the art of dating
Peepee go in vajayjay. You’ve got this.
I hear crickets…
The corporate real estate market is going to tank, people are going to turn their empty office building caused by everyone working from home into apartments, and rental prices are going to crash because of how desperate the corps are to bring in any money. Once rental market tanks, housing market tanks, and all those massive investment firms buying up neighborhoods are going to see their investment shrink like a cold Wang doodle. Expect crying ceo’s and a massive government bailout in the next 4-7 yes for this exact scenario.
I know turning office buildings into apartments seems like a fantastic idea on the surface but there are a LOT of reasons this doesnt work, ranging from fire code issues, utility service locations and access and HVAC design. Sorry.
you are not about to be kicked in the nads by me…
…but one of you will be.
Extinction of mankind.
Hate to break it to you, but short of something sudden like our sun exploding, getting directly hit by a cosmic ray or giant asteroid, it’s incredibly unlikely.
We have reached a technological point where we could save ourselves from our own extinction, caused by us or not. It’ll almost certainly be a tiny fraction of today’s population though, but enough will survive to avoid extinction
Humans can do a lot of things that they aren’t.
That technology requires massive manufacturing capacity that requires civilization. When water and food become scarce from a changed climate, there goes that.
We won’t go extinct for a time, agreed. We’ll cling to our hardened structures and aging tech for as long as we can.
But humans thrived on easy mode. In a climate we evolved to thrive in. Without that, we’ll become subject to nature’s whims once again.
This is precisely why “we’re going to colonize Mars” is a hilarious pipedream. We couldn’t make a practically infinitely forgiving environment that automatically recycled our waste, water, and air work. We stressed it as hard as we could for as long as we could until it started pushing back, yet we only increased our attack.
A few peak humans growing potatoes on mars is a cute “yay humanity” moment. But you’ve met us. A colony of hundreds, or thousands, some born into what would inevitably be a highly class segregated system that demands their servitude, given the private profit egotists now in charge of such things, where anyone making a mistake or having had enough easily leading to boom everybody dead try again? Yeah, that’ll go swell.
