When utility-scale PV is cheapest

[Hedges]

Falling solar prices give Biden a head start on push for 100% carbon-free power by 2035

Data: Wood Mackenzie; Map: Danielle Alberti/AxiosWe've written plenty about the big institutional and political headwinds facing Biden's agenda, so here's one of the tailwinds: falling prices for zero-carbon power tech.Driving the news: A new analysis looking at one of them finds that...

news.yahoo.com

Of course, at some point PV would approach 100% of consumption during productive hours (or 100% excluding other baseline sources.)
A bit of overpaneling would fill in for partially overcast periods.
Beyond that, value of the produced power would plunge. Unless large-scale storage was competitive with other power sources, or consumption could be encouraged to shift to PV peak times.

Western US is shown as reaching this point in 2020 or earlier. We have a significant amount of PV, but fully saturated yet. Occasional times of excess production.

 

[svetz]

Hopefully they get an expert on board who can force things through.

I've been trying to find details on the "new" plan as the June plan cost a lot, but in the end didn't actually do much for us. Done right, you could reduce the average taxpayers power bill to < $200/yr (that is, just paying for the transmission line upkeep). The last plan was spending a small fortune buying land and setting up facilities to install solar/wind and only making a small dent. Putting that money into incentives would get more people to put solar on their roof and export, so no need to buy the land and the total pool of $$ increases as $ are being matched by home-owner DERs.

Not an expert, but the real problem as I see it is energy storage. Building more solar/wind does diddly because you can't get rid of non-renewables until you have a sustainable supply during non-solar hours. This is why FERC mandated price hikes on some renewables.

FERC at least understands the issues, recently they opened the doors to DERs: https://www.ferc.gov/news-events/ne...ributed-resources-landmark-action-breaks-down

I think congress understands too, the problem is the optics don't play as well as adding more renewables.

 

[HRTKD]

What is going to win the day? Idealism or pragmatism? So far, it looks like the former.