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Comment by Retric | Hacker News Reader

Electrical grids change slowly, over half of all electrical equipment worldwide is 20+ years old and solar only very recently became cheap. Many places are seeing lower rates due to recent renewable energy investments, others are seeing higher costs due to heavily subsidized early adoption. Some like Germany have both effects at the same time.

So remember, the economics going forward on a 20+ year time horizons look very different from existing infrastructure. We still have extremely overpriced concentrating solar installations that are not even vaguely competitive with sub 2c/kWh PV solar. However when you sign a 20 year contract for all power produced at price X you don’t get to drop it when something else becomes cheaper.

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There actually already instances of things being shut down early because the savings from new renewables are so great it is in everyone's interest to buy out the existing contract early.

Obviously that applies more for things with high ongoing fuel costs but I wouldn't be at all surprised if this applied to some early concentrating solar plants, particularly if they can reuse the land and grid connection for new renewables.

But where has this led to actual savings for ratepayers?

Everywhere? Even if you only look at energy prices it's probably fairly clear trend, once you start accounting for pollution, climate change, lower peak loads etc. The savings quickly run into Trillions.

If it’s everywhere, can you name one country where retail electricity rates went down as share of renewable electricity in the grid went up?

Texas. Many of them think they're a separate country. :)

Norway and Iceland come to mind. However, they obviously don’t use much solar power due to location. In terms of recent technology, Iowa is probably the clearest US example.

More generally you need to look at wholesale prices and more specifically inflation adjusted wholesale prices to see large drops from the recent solar price drops.

How about the US?

https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-10/mobile/trends-in-elec...

Of particular note is the graph showing prices in areas heavily reliant on coal, vs those with a high renewable usage.

Conclusion:

> Regions with higher use of natural gas and renewable fuel for electric power generation, in particular hydroelectric power, have seen prices rise more slowly than prices in regions that have predominantly used coal. Although it is not possible to attribute the differences in the retail price development solely to fuel mix, the significant role that capacity investment and fuel costs play in determining distribution rates suggests that at least part of the variation between these regions is explained by capacity shifts in the industry.

That is a massively misleading way to frame it. Hydro is well known as one of the cheapest sources of energy period. The problem being if you happen to have a river of energy. Bundling hydro (and natural gas!) into “renewables” to claim that all renewables lower grid prices (when most people take it to mean solar and wind are impractical) is misleading.

They have graphs for both renewables with hydro and renewables without hydro, the effect is there for both. They also have a separate gas graph too.

But, hydro and gas pairing really well with solar and wind is an actual thing that helps lower energy costs so I don't see why that should be totally ignored.

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