Thread by @AukeHoekstra

Interesting analysis of @ramez on the strongly reducing price of solar and some nuance from @solar_chase.

Allow me to add some observations in this thread.

TL;DR I think it's increasingly about changing our energy system (adding flexibility and storage) instead of solar costs.

https://twitter.com/solar_chase/status/1261195647333662720

First off: I've been publicly saying you should use learning curves and this will make solar panels really cheap (I said 1 ct/kWh in 2030) since at least 2007.

I've shown the @IEA underestimates this

https://twitter.com/AukeHoekstra/status/1064529619951513600

but some others (e.g. the IPCC) are actually worse.

So yes, this future is racing towards us and fossil fuel is increasingly dumb.

However, how much it costs to buy (=Capex) solar cells is increasingly irrelevant. That's simple logic: as cells get cheaper, other components get *relatively* more expensive. Let me give an example.

When solar panels where still $77/Wp in 1977 (easy to remember!) cell price dominated.

E.g. assuming 25 years of service with 1 kWh/Wp/year that translates to $3/kWh without capital cost etc.

Now that panels are $0.20/Wp (300x cheaper or <1ct/kWh) other costs start to dominate.

I think our building sector (including the architects) needs to innovate faster. For me it was a lot of hassle to completely replace shingles with solar panels (they finally installed all of them yesterday!) but in the future, a solar roof should basically give you free energy.

A calculation we did for the province of Brabant (brabant.nl/-/media/9b0c67…) shows covering all roofs in solar would generate most of the energy the province needed. So not just electricity but all energy for industry, (electric) transportation and heating in an optimised system.

Adding some solar fields (which can be combined with agriculture) and windmills (e.g. at sea: and I'm a fan of airborne wind energy for that ). Boom: more energy than you need.

B.t.w.: wind energy is solar energy too because wind is caused by solar irradiation.

Basically, with a modicum of innovation, producing more energy than you need from solar and wind is perfectly possible and the cost per kWh of generating will be low. That's huge news that many still don't grasp.

Unfortunately it's only half the story.

Wind blows and the sun shines irrespective of when we want to use energy. And where fossil fuel is basically canned energy, solar and wind are uncanned flows.

So we have to do two things:
1 Be flexible and exchange with neighbours.
2 Add storage.

Being flexible means charging our electric vehicles at night and in the middle of the day.

It means not using our heat pumps all at the same time.

It means melting metal at night (wind) or the middle of the day (solar) and keeping it hot for when it's needed.

Etc. Etc.

Being flexible also means changing how you consume energy. E.g. replacing a gas heater with an electric heater is usually very inefficient. Much better to replace it with an electric heat pump that only uses a fourth or fifth of the energy.

Etc.

Exchanging with neighbours makes this flexibility collective. It's a shame not to trade if you have solar energy in excess and your 'neighbor' (can be in another country) has need of it.

Long distance high voltage direct current (HVDC) lines can scale this up with low losses.

Adding storage is the second option. In other words: canning solar and wind energy and turning it back into electricity later. E.g. with batteries and hydrogen.

Batteries are insanely great for fluctuations that occur often and costs are plummeting in a way comparable to solar.

Seasonal fluctuations require large energy deposits that are used once a year. That's not a job for batteries but for chemical storage. E.g. hydrogen. You lose over 50% of energy this way but we will still need it and it will be an important part of the total system.

By the way: the closer you live to the equator, the lower your seasonal fluctuation. And since income is often lower closer to the equator while both solar and seasonal storage are cheaper, solar could be a great help to many currently relatively poor countries.

Tying this together I conclude that solar and wind will replace fossil fuels but we must look to people responsible for the electricity system and ask them to reform the system in a way that's more flexible and adds storage at lowest costs.

At the moment this process is maddening. At least to me. I think progress is mainly stalling due to legislators that don't understand this future system (at. all.) and dislike change. So instead of working towards the Paris goals they are braking with all their might.

They way I feel it, a couple of thousand of possibly well meaning legal experts worldwide are causing many millions of real deaths and trillions in costs this century.

And why? Because they don't care to understand how the system they are responsible for is changing.

Fortunately there are many people who do understand what needs to be done. Here are examples (from the top of my head).

The best models of future energy systems I know are from @ChristianOnRE and @mzjacobson.

Best interconnection calculations in Europe by @nworbmot.

Best new thinking on solar by @vsiv @solar_chase @ramez

On EVs @colinmckerrache

Best ways to avoid climate change: @GlobalEcoGuy/@ProjectDrawdown

Great popularising overall system visionaries: @AmoryLovins/@RockyMtnInst @MLiebreich @chrisnelder

We are arguably on the cusp of the greatest transition in human history.

Currently we are destroying nature by burning it for energy.

In the future we will have abundant cheap energy that we get directly from the source: the sun.

Let's not mess this up.