Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

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The cost of firm renewables is approaching a point where they are cheaper than fossil fuels. Firm renewables are dispatchabale because they're battery backed. Refer to the NextEra slide graphic in my comment below [1]. Maybe you need some natural gas or transmission in there to meet extreme shortfalls, but this is baked into the costs.

There's roughly 430GW of storage currently in US ISO interconnect queues wrt to your comment about supporting storage [2]. If the grid is unreliable, funds will be spent on storage to make it reliable, because the alternatives are uneconomical (Hawaii's Oahu island is replacing its last coal fired plant in the next 60 days with Tesla Megapacks for grid services, for example [3]). The demand for this is fairly evident [4].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31926560

[2] https://www.energy-storage.news/estimated-427gw-of-energy-st...

[3] https://electrek.co/2022/06/27/tesla-megapacks-replace-hawai...

[4] https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-megapack-demand/

The NextEra graphic says "near-firm", not "firm". Some dispatchable generation is absolutely required.

The estimate is for late 2020s costs, which is not too far away. I'm guessing they ignored the end of the solar subsidy, and all the necessary grid changes to reach 100% renewables.

The O'ahu batteries replace the last coal plant, but not the last fossil fuel plant. Also, it's meant for black-start.

Nobody knows exactly what the last mile will look like yet. The graphic doesn't claim to know either. As a reader, you should not extrapolate those near-term forecasts and anecdotes all the way to the end.

Agreed no one knows what the last mile looks like, but all data demonstrates fossil fuels have very little role in that last mile. Your splitting hairs while the data is a bazooka of good news (with regards to cost decline and tech/manufacturing learning curves).

I didn't think I was splitting hairs. The data does not suggest what you say because the foundational assumptions stop being true the closer we get to the finish line. That's why you can't extrapolate the current trend all the way. It will take a different path.

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