This has been relatively clear for a while. Solar is dirt cheap per kwh produced. The only real technical impediment at this point, as the article mentions, is energy balancing (both through the night and seasonally).
It's interesting that uptake is slow in developing countries - If anything I would expect solar to actually be quite beneficial in places like Africa without well-developed grids, since it's so easy to set up in an independent manner - I guess it might just be down to insufficient income to manage even that :(
Pakistan has seen a big jump in installs over the last year.
Pakistan is now the third-largest importer of Chinese solar panels, buying an incredible 13 gigawatts (GW) in just the first half of this year. To compare, the United Kingdom is expected to add only 1.5-2GW of solar capacity this year and the United States added 32GW in 2023. This likely makes Pakistan the sixth-largest installer of solar panels in 2024 but locally, the impact is even bigger
In six months, Pakistan imported solar capacity equal to 30% of its total power capacity, which was 46GW in 2023.
Solar is really popular in Africa, but on a very small scale, just small panels to charge devices.
The problem is that if you want to use solar for something more serious, you get hit with an impenetrable wall. You can't use solar for something like air conditioning or cooking without having a grid-tie inverter (expensive) and a grid. And completely stand-alone systems with batteries are completely out of the question, for now.
I suspect the wall is more about the amount of power an AC needs vs a cellphone/battery powered lights etc.
A ~200$ UPS may only have minutes of batteries, but it got all the electronics for inverting 1.5KW and safely connecting to the grid which would let you run an AC.
I’d expect there to be a market for a cheap box where you can just plug into a wall outlet run in some DC lines from a PV, and then keep an AC running when either the grid or solar panels are supplying power no need for batteries or a knowledgeable electrician. Even just leaning solar panels on the side of your house and running a cord in through the window would work.
There are plenty of such devices (they're really popular in Ukraine right now). Ecoflow, Deye, etc.
The problem is that there aren't that many loads for them (well, maybe a fridge). Even a small AC needs at least 1.5kW of power, so for 16 with little-to-no sunlight you'll end up needing a 24kWh battery. This is a pretty huge battery.
Saving money on the electricity bill and having improved resilience in a power outage occurs even without batteries.
Panels are like 1/3 the cost of a normal home solar system. With this plug in your AC in the summer and Resistance heater in the winter and even though you’re losing money when nothing is using that 1.5KW the dramatically lower install costs probably make up for it.
Batteries are obviously better for outages, but you could also plug this into a generator and save on gasoline when the sun is shining.
I bought some cheap panes on Ali express. I think the battery controller was $.99 the inverter was a couple bucks. I run a small, cheap mini split off it ($500 retail in the us). Strangely I wasn’t able to find a dc powered mini split. I guess they make em for RV use but they’re more than twice the price of the one I bought.
My whole system is off grid. I run 12v lights and even have a redundant battery system. You can do lot with cheap Chinese parts.
The next step might be standalone solar products that are prebuilt to avoid permitting costs and delays.
How about a device you roll out into your yard and fold out some giant panels to charge your ev. You get to benefit from cheap solar without dealing with getting a bunch of laborors up in your roof, and negotiating with the power company.
What’s the assumption that causes them to find there’s still a market for fossil fuels at all by 2060?
I’d be surprised if its share of energy generation doesn’t drop to practically zero. Why would we think it flattens out?
With some technology transitions there’s some benefit of keeping old technology around. But for coal and oil, there’s huge costs associated with digging/drilling the fuel out. Without the economies of scale that the oil, gas and coal industry has today I would be surprised if the whole thing doesn’t collapse completely in a fairly short time.
sodium,and/or, lithium/sulfer batteries, combined with solar/pv are about to create distibuted power
at any scale for most of the planet.
There is very good reason to believe that nextgen
solid state batteries combined with the build out of ultra high voltage transmissiin lines will then
create a grid that can aproach CO2 ZERO, but it is very questionable as to if this is in time to prevent a "planet wide climate restructuring", ha!
ya lets call it that
This has been relatively clear for a while. Solar is dirt cheap per kwh produced. The only real technical impediment at this point, as the article mentions, is energy balancing (both through the night and seasonally).
It's interesting that uptake is slow in developing countries - If anything I would expect solar to actually be quite beneficial in places like Africa without well-developed grids, since it's so easy to set up in an independent manner - I guess it might just be down to insufficient income to manage even that :(
Pakistan has seen a big jump in installs over the last year.
Pakistan is now the third-largest importer of Chinese solar panels, buying an incredible 13 gigawatts (GW) in just the first half of this year. To compare, the United Kingdom is expected to add only 1.5-2GW of solar capacity this year and the United States added 32GW in 2023. This likely makes Pakistan the sixth-largest installer of solar panels in 2024 but locally, the impact is even bigger
In six months, Pakistan imported solar capacity equal to 30% of its total power capacity, which was 46GW in 2023.
https://www.weforum.org/stories/2024/10/distributed-solar-en...
Investment is the challenge to solve for in Africa for more rapid solar PV adoption.
https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2024/06/18/... | https://archive.today/iqE4Q
https://www.inonafrica.com/2024/10/09/africa-moves-to-finall...
Solar is really popular in Africa, but on a very small scale, just small panels to charge devices.
The problem is that if you want to use solar for something more serious, you get hit with an impenetrable wall. You can't use solar for something like air conditioning or cooking without having a grid-tie inverter (expensive) and a grid. And completely stand-alone systems with batteries are completely out of the question, for now.
I suspect the wall is more about the amount of power an AC needs vs a cellphone/battery powered lights etc.
A ~200$ UPS may only have minutes of batteries, but it got all the electronics for inverting 1.5KW and safely connecting to the grid which would let you run an AC.
I’d expect there to be a market for a cheap box where you can just plug into a wall outlet run in some DC lines from a PV, and then keep an AC running when either the grid or solar panels are supplying power no need for batteries or a knowledgeable electrician. Even just leaning solar panels on the side of your house and running a cord in through the window would work.
There are plenty of such devices (they're really popular in Ukraine right now). Ecoflow, Deye, etc.
The problem is that there aren't that many loads for them (well, maybe a fridge). Even a small AC needs at least 1.5kW of power, so for 16 with little-to-no sunlight you'll end up needing a 24kWh battery. This is a pretty huge battery.
> aren’t many loads for them
Saving money on the electricity bill and having improved resilience in a power outage occurs even without batteries.
Panels are like 1/3 the cost of a normal home solar system. With this plug in your AC in the summer and Resistance heater in the winter and even though you’re losing money when nothing is using that 1.5KW the dramatically lower install costs probably make up for it.
Batteries are obviously better for outages, but you could also plug this into a generator and save on gasoline when the sun is shining.
I bought some cheap panes on Ali express. I think the battery controller was $.99 the inverter was a couple bucks. I run a small, cheap mini split off it ($500 retail in the us). Strangely I wasn’t able to find a dc powered mini split. I guess they make em for RV use but they’re more than twice the price of the one I bought.
My whole system is off grid. I run 12v lights and even have a redundant battery system. You can do lot with cheap Chinese parts.
Stand alone systems are much advertised on Alibaba eg https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/AC-DC-Solar-Panel-Pow...
Says "100% Off Grid Solar Air Conditioner" I've no idea how good it is.
The next step might be standalone solar products that are prebuilt to avoid permitting costs and delays.
How about a device you roll out into your yard and fold out some giant panels to charge your ev. You get to benefit from cheap solar without dealing with getting a bunch of laborors up in your roof, and negotiating with the power company.
It’s already pretty easy to ground mount some panels with something like: https://integrarack.com/ir-45-ballasted-racking
There are already solar panels you can just plug into a normal electrical socket. I'm not sure they're an amazing idea, but there definitely already is consumer-grade tech: https://www.solarreviews.com/blog/dont-invest-in-plug-in-sol...
Wow thanks for sharing. How is this possible? This seems like it would really take off when cheap enough.
Related:
https://news.exeter.ac.uk/faculty-of-environment-science-and...
from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37934146
Previous:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41431901 - Sept 2024 (2 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37934139 - Oct 2023 (1 comment)
Did you realize that the first link points to the paper that is the link of this HN thread?
Yes.
What’s the assumption that causes them to find there’s still a market for fossil fuels at all by 2060?
I’d be surprised if its share of energy generation doesn’t drop to practically zero. Why would we think it flattens out?
With some technology transitions there’s some benefit of keeping old technology around. But for coal and oil, there’s huge costs associated with digging/drilling the fuel out. Without the economies of scale that the oil, gas and coal industry has today I would be surprised if the whole thing doesn’t collapse completely in a fairly short time.
>huge costs associated with digging/drilling the fuel out
The costs are very variable. Some stuff is very hard to get to, some pretty much comes out on its own.
This paper uses actuals that end in 2020. Things are happening fast enough to make that dated. Especially in batteries.
sodium,and/or, lithium/sulfer batteries, combined with solar/pv are about to create distibuted power at any scale for most of the planet. There is very good reason to believe that nextgen solid state batteries combined with the build out of ultra high voltage transmissiin lines will then create a grid that can aproach CO2 ZERO, but it is very questionable as to if this is in time to prevent a "planet wide climate restructuring", ha! ya lets call it that
It might be solid science, but not delining data from projections is such a basic mistake that I'm disinclined to take any of it seriously.