Solar power expected to dominate electricity generation by 2050—even without more ambitious climate policies::In pursuit of the ambitious goal of reaching net-zero emissions, nations worldwide must expand their use of clean energy sources. In the case of solar energy, this change may already be upon us.
Its not directly in the article but the primary reason Solar is its a lot cheaper than electricity production from fuel, something like 1/4 - 1/10 the price depending on where in the world you are. An energy company is basically foolish to invest in oil based electricity production when Solar is so competitive and cheap and easy to maintain. Wind is a little cheaper where there is good airflow but the maintenance cost is higher especially for offshore. Both however are so much cheaper than Nuclear and especially than oil/drilling fuels that its hard to see much real investment in those older technologies.
There has been a lot of recent complaints around the UK’s granting of further drilling rights in the North sea for Oil. I think the companies taking those up haven’t yet come to terms with the fact there is a good chance those ventures drive their companies to bankruptcy because they wont be competitive as EVs and Solar/Wind take over due to cost savings.
The cost of solar and wind is becoming so attractive, it’s hard to see why anyone would do otherwise.
The elephant in the room (at least for the US; I’m not as familiar with UK policies) are the subsidies. It sparks new investments because many of the incentives are specifically related to new projects. Other ones mess with the valuation of the equipment, making long term tax burden much lower. It’s not the only energy industry to receive subsidies. But it’s pretty asinine to continue to support the one that’s destroying our world.
“In one case, it’s going to profit, amplifying the incumbent status of the oil and gas industry. In another, under more aggressive decarbonization policy and low oil and gas prices, it’s actively working against the climate goal by spurring additional production.”
UK we do a reverse subsidiary system, the most expensive method of production sets the per unit price for all methods. So we effectively apply tariffs to the consumer for renewables as they are usually our cheapest method of producing energy. Yes its as fucking stupid as it sounds, and yes it is on purpose that we have yet to address this.
It kind of makes sense at the start as it incentivized companies to invest in renewables and it was much more expensive to produce back then, but now it has become a lot cheaper for renewables it should be urgently fixed as we still have excessively high energy pricing. However we have a Prime Minster who thinks being anti green means votes so we get the opposite.
Thanks for sharing that info. Definitely sounds like it might have been a good idea in the past but now overdo for a change. Sad that the current PM wants to continue destruction to get votes.
Seems like a good example of how policies need to be implemented with a forward-thinking mentality. Can’t rely on future changes.
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Most of the technologies we benefit from today have been either entirely funded by some government or at least partially funded by them.
There are exceptions, but I mean… I’d argue vaccines and the internet are more important than double-sided tape and a VCR for sure.
This makes me wonder if we’ll see a return to homes having DC for power instead of AC just to skip transforming DC to AC for homes that go totally off grid.
I can see in the future a standard for DC power with a completely different power socket that saves up the round trip of DC to AC then back into DC for all our electronics. There are fairly substantial benefits to be had but as I think it through the usable DC is 3 to 12V and appreciable load will mean those cables will push a lot of amps. Not sure the economics will work out without it being high voltage and that fits nothing DC today. If it’s high voltage then everything needs a converter again.
Setting a DC standard today will be a world wide nightmare, we need it but it’s got to be dumb for longevities sake. It’s far off I think.
What about all the appliances expecting AC input?
There would still be a need to convert DC to AC, both for that reason and for export to the grid, but the first thing a lot of appliances do is internally convert to DC anywhere. If it became the norm for homes to have a distributed DC supply, there could well be a cottage industry in replacing the PSU component springs up.
There was a time early in the electrification of America with Edison, he pushed for DC over AC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_currents
The last DC utility turned off in 2007. http://www.jaygarmon.net/2010/11/in-what-year-did-last-of-new-yorks-dc.html
As far as answering your question, you can run a transformer, but new construction and new appliances will likely be built with DC service in mind.
Imagine trying to explain to some being from another universe that humanity is literally covered for the entire half of each day with around 1000 Watts per meter squared of energy - for free, with no resource to be consumed, that is already the source of energy for all biological processes, that can be used without waste products…
And yet we chose to spend a century digging for a crude mixture of toxic oils, requiring a lot of time and money to separate and refine, to then create waste products that fuck up our lungs and excess CO2 that is driving a mass extinction event due to global warming.
This was to be expected- if you amortize over the lifetime of the equipment, it’s much cheaper to get your electricity from panels than it is to pay someone to burn fuel and give you electricity. This has been true for years and the biggest obstacle for most people doing it has been available financing to do it. It’s better now but in 2013 when I did my system the financing options were terrible compared to, say, purchasing a car. (I also got a car that year and it turns out that auto sellers have in-house banks to facilitate financing, solar rooftop sellers not so much)
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How can it not? If you have a $40k system, you will make enough electricity to avoid paying for electricity at all. You will probably even get a small check from the power company every month. Add up the check and the old utility bill and I bet it beats bank interest on 40k by a mile. Not to mention you are probably eligible for some tax incentives.
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