Solar-plus-storage technology is improving quickly
242 comments
·July 21, 2025trunnell
bluefirebrand
Yeah
Unfortunately, California is a terrible benchmark. It is as close to ideal for Solar as it gets. Most places are not going to see this kind of performance
It's the same kind of thing we see with self driving cars. They can navigate sunny California streets so "self driving" must be so close! But put them anywhere with snow, rain, fog, or even just grey skies and they struggle heavily
California represents the easy 80% side of the Pareto curve for a lot of this stuff
trunnell
Respectfully disagree -- solar isn't the big story here.
One could argue that batteries will have a bigger impact than solar. Batteries obviously let you decouple power generation and consumption, shifting anytime production to peak-time demand.
Less obvious is that local demand can fluctuate 2x. It usually dips mid-day and peaks 5-9pm (see the charts at www.caiso.com) when people come home and turn on their lights, oven, appliances, etc. This pattern happens throughout the year.
So forget solar for a moment; the ability to shift energy that was produced mid-day (even by a natural gas plant) to the evening would allow you to build fewer power plants. Nuclear + batteries might also be a good combination. Batteries get you closer to being able to solve for "average demand" rather than "peak demand."
This has nothing to do w/ California. California is just on the leading edge of battery installation. Solar just exacerbates the issue of the peak-to-trough ratio (evening vs. mid-day demand) due to mid-day solar "overproduction" causing it to be uneconomical to run gas plants mid-day. But solving for "peak demand" is still a problem in the absence of solar.
Still: most of the complaints about solar are answered when paired with large battery systems.
DoesntMatter22
Yup by far batteries are the bigger deal. If battery prices were minimal then it makes household solar far more feasible to begin with.
Yoric
I seem to recall that one of the main reasons to doubt batteries was that they relied on minerals that are just too rare on Earth to consider scaling them up to the entire grid.
Was my understanding incorrect? Or perhaps have new technologies emerged that work around this limitation?
sealeck
> Unfortunately, California is a terrible benchmark. It is as close to ideal for Solar as it gets. Most places are not going to see this kind of performance
We can also build power lines! Between different places! Such as the places with lots of sun, and the places without lots of sun!!!
bryanlarsen
Solar has gotten so cheap that it's cheaper to just overbuild solar in cloudy places than to build long distance HVDC lines between sunny and cloudy locations.
https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2020/12/27/the-future-of-...
Aurornis
The great thing about solar is that you can put it nearly everywhere. Avoid the transmission losses and put the panels close to the load, even if it’s not as ideal as one state over.
It’s easy to put extra solar panels into a system to make up for reduced average sunlight. It’s standard practice to have a ratio of PV capacity to inverter capacity of something like 1.2:1. In a low sun location you could bump that up to 1.5:1 or higher.
bluefirebrand
It consumes a lot of power to transmit over long distances. From what I understand it's basically always preferable to generate power as close to where you are using it as possible.
asdefghyk
RE ".....We can also build power lines! Between different places! ...."
We certainly can. However it is expensive. In my country (Australia) is is estimated to be cira $20 Billion
cperciva
You say that, but recent regulatory history suggests that building power lines in the USA isn't necessarily something which can be done.
nudgeOrnurture
one state supplying the rest is not what you want, especially if there are chances that something will disturb that states grid.
I remember the uni day discussions about Africa supplying the rest of the world with solar energy and that the material requirements for such an infrastructure should become a thing around 2025 - 2035 ... then someone explained climate change and hinted at the exponential function ...
back to topic: you'd have to maintain an "inert" backup, which isn't portfolio-communist-economically "viable". or you share the load "as much as necessary", which would still become an issue if any of the suppliers have a fallout ...
JimDabell
The white paper they are discussing [0] includes multiple cities around the world:
> Las Vegas can reach 97% of the way to 1 GW constant supply and Muscat in Oman – 99%, using 6 GW solar panels and 17 GWh battery. Even cloudier cities like Birmingham [UK] can get 62% of the way to a constant supply every hour of every day across the year.
[0] https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/solar-electricity-e...
bluefirebrand
62% is a long way from 97%
I'm all for not letting perfect being the enemy of good, and I used to work in solar. I'm very in favor of it. I just really think people need to be realistic about this stuff
Aurornis
> Unfortunately, California is a terrible benchmark. It is as close to ideal for Solar as it gets. Most places are not going to see this kind of performance
There are many place that get a lot of sun. As solar panels come down in price, it becomes even easier to compensate for deficits with additional panels.
It’s common practice to install more solar panel capacity than inverter capacity because panels are rarely operating at peak output anyway. If you’re installing 100kW of inverters, you might install 120kW of panels. The panel array wouldn’t exceed 100kW most of the time anyway.
In a location with suboptimal sun, you might install an even higher ratio of panels to inverter and battery capacity.
Some people get bothered by this because they feel like some of the solar power is wasted at peak capacity, but you have to consider that the inverter and battery capacity is also wasted when you’re not sending enough from the panel array. It’s a balancing act.
You also have to consider that the same sunlight that makes California good for solar also creates additional demand for air conditioning. A location with less sun would have less solar heat gain, which is easier to serve for many reasons.
supplied_demand
==California represents the easy 80% side of the Pareto curve for a lot of this stuff==
It also represents 12% of the country's population, which makes it a better benchmark than just being 1 of 50 states.
onlyrealcuzzo
It's also not too dissimilar from Texas, Arizona, Oregon, Nevada, and Utah - which together are a much larger part of the US - and not too far from being able to ship power not too expensively to even more areas.
Florida and Colorado are not much farther below California in total solar radiation per year per sq meter, either.
Ditto for even Idaho and Oklahoma.
bryanlarsen
> fog, or even just grey skies
So San Francisco?
haiku2077
Electricity can be moved long distances over wires.
icelancer
Western Washington is a great contrast. We get a decent amount of sun (despite the reputation), however, our electricity prices are insanely low due to close-proximity hydroelectric power.
As a result, solar is rarely cost effective even with subsidies, and basically never without them.
Doesn't mean people don't install it for various other reasons, but it serves as a good contrast to California despite similar political landscapes.
hvb2
Which is perfectly fine? You're just using what's abundant to you? And even better, hydro has the ability to control how much it generates. You have a surplus? Let less water flow through the turbines. So it can regulate, something solar can't do, it needs batteries to do that.
The one big upside that I haven't seen mentioned is that rooftop solar is local. So what I overproduce doesn't go on the big grid, it's probably consumed by my neighbor or someone in my street.
All those big power plants, and big consumers of electricity (because they're switching from their current source), will lead to net congestion where you need to decide if you want to increase net capacity... Which is slow and $$$
destitude
> But put them anywhere with snow, rain, fog, or even just grey skies and they struggle heavily I have winter basically 5 months of the year where I am and have no issues being fully off grid with only solar and batteries as energy sources. You do have to compensate for winter by having more panels and more batteries but easily doable.
bluefirebrand
"You have to compensate for winter by having more panels and more batteries" is exactly the point I was making
:/
Nicholas_C
That is much higher than I would have expected. Good news. What are they using to charge the batteries though? I wonder if it's offpeak renewables or mostly natural gas?
mjamesaustin
Daytime solar, in the summer especially. Power demand yesterday was negative from 11:30 to 3:30, for instance, meaning batteries can charge for free to absorb excess solar generation during those hours.
gpm
If you scroll to the "Supply trend" graph you can see when the batteries were charging and how electricity was being generated at that time.
It's the renewables during the day while the sun is shining.
reactordev
It's the imports that get you. The energy marketplace is all over the place in regards to price because of the demand for energy.
UltraSane
That is impressive but California electricity is pretty expensive compared to most of the rest of the US.
woodpanel
Aww, that old „pick a specific timeframe on a specific day, preferably summer, to get an convenient picture“ trick. incompleteness by design.
Supply itself is an inadequate metric. Yet convenient to obstruct the view upon CA that beacon of the future, suddenly being littered with third world brown and blackouts.
Aurornis
Solar and batteries are still more expensive than gas (as the article admits) but prices are continuing to decrease.
Sadly, the US is hitting a hiccup as the current administration is going out of their way to make solar installs harder and more expensive. Putting tariffs on solar equipment imports is an insane self-defeat. We should be importing as much cheap solar and battery gear as we can get our hands on.
Give it a couple years of price progress and political turnover and I think we’re going to be in a great position.
gpm
> Solar and batteries are still more expensive than gas (as the article admits)
On the contrary
> The sunniest US city, Las Vegas [...] It could get to 60% solar+storage at $65/MWh — cheaper than gas.
The article asserts that until you are generating the majority of your power from Solar+Storage, at least in favorable places, solar is cheaper than gas...
And it reached that conclusion under the incredibly unfavourable assumption that all the solar is in the same place, not being distributed around by a grid averaging out the amount of cloud cover over space.
null
pydry
also waaaaaaay cheaper than nuclear power.
MostlyStable
In a thread decrying policy choices that are artificially making one particular kind of power generation more expensive than they have to be, this seems like a weird comment to make.
rozap
More expensive than gas, if you power 98% of the grid with it. But if you power 60% of the grid, it's cheaper than gas. Useful distinction imo.
bryanlarsen
The linked white paper says that the cutover point is at 97% for sunny locations in the US, and more surprisingly, 90% for cloudy mainland US locations.
onlyrealcuzzo
The great part is... we already have more than enough Nuclear, Hydro, Wind, and Geothermal power for that other 10% - so going 100% solar would be asinine.
jillesvangurp
> Solar and batteries are still more expensive than gas (as the article admits) but prices are continuing to decrease.
Exactly, gas is heavily subsidized and government supported in the US. And even with that support it only barely scrapes ahead. Courtesy of current and future tax payers coughing up the interest payments on the trillions of dollars in debt. That's not going to last indefinitely. The key point here is that the difference is a bit artificial.
In the rest of the world where installing solar is something like a third of the cost (no tariffs, less installation bureaucracy, less crippling rules and legislation, etc.) and where batteries can be imported closer to cost price from China, the picture is very different. If it's importing LNG vs. cheap solar panels + batteries, the latter is already very attractive in many places. Even at higher latitudes than the 49th parallel below which most of the US is.
And it's on track to get a lot better. Production for sodium ion batteries is starting to come online in China. It will be a while before those make it to the US due to the politics. But some are now projecting cost as low as 10$/kwh for those mid term. 1 mwh battery would cost about 10K$ at those prices. And they have quite long lives (thousands of charge cycles). You can run a house on one of those for well over a month in the US. Much longer in places where houses are better insulated and more efficient. It will be a few years before we can get these obviously. But it's a nice mental model for what a reasonably affordable battery will be able to do soon.
bjourne
> And it's on track to get a lot better. Production for sodium ion batteries is starting to come online in China. It will be a while before those make it to the US due to the politics. But some are now projecting cost as low as 10$/kwh for those mid term.
Is that a typo? Just a year ago ago batteries were expected to drop to $80/kWh around 2026-2027... $10/kWh in the near future is absolutely insane.
nicoburns
What counts as "soon" is pretty subjective of course, but $10/kWh is only 3 halving's from $80/kWh. So it wouldn't be too surprising if $80/kWh in 2026 corresponded to $10/kWh in 2030.
null
PaulKeeble
I don't think the USA is costing in the political risk of not converting to green energy. You do not want to be the only country emitting significant CO2 in a decades time when everyone else has transitioned. Partly it will be more expensive to keep burning fuel especially when the economy of scale decreases but also the political risk of sanctions will be very high.
jillesvangurp
It's the long term economics that the US should be worried about. Just because the US is sticking its head in the sand doesn't mean the rest of the world is slowing down investments along with it. Other countries are investing heavily in becoming energy independent which means they'll be building the infrastructure to generate lots of cheap energy to power their economies rather than depending on expensive fossil fuel imports. Part of which currently come from the US. The recent tariff madness is actually speeding all this up.
The US as an manufacturing and export country already doesn't make much sense. And that will only get worse. Industry depends on energy and if that energy is locally more expensive than abroad, that puts any energy intensive business at a disadvantage when other countries start running on really cheap renewables and battery.
If you look at this globally, there are a lot of emerging markets that never imported that much oil, coal, and gas to begin with that probably never will. They'll be growing fueled by cheap locally generated renewables. And then there are countries all over Asia and Europe that are mostly importing their fossil fuels that are going to decimate what they import over the next decades. All of that will shift the economic balance in their favor. Any one exporting fossil fuels (including the US) is going to have a rather big problem with shrinking exports.
Places like China are far ahead of everyone else here. And an increasingly large part of their economy is actually selling their tech to other countries to get to a similar level.
jayd16
It'll be a long tail. The less people rely on fossil fuels, the cheaper it will get (until it gets so underused you start lose economies of scale). But even without any proper political leadership, America will follow the money and pick the most profitable choice.
bityard
> Putting tariffs on solar equipment imports is an insane self-defeat. We should be importing as much cheap solar and battery gear as we can get our hands on.
The tariffs are going to impact me heavily because I had planned on buying a shitload of solar in the next 3-5 years. If the price on solar triples in that timeframe (as the price on other things has in the last few years), I will not be "going solar" after all except for a few small hobby projects.
That being said, we should not lose sight of the fact that the REASON solar is cheap right now is because it manufactured almost exclusively in the far east, at cost, subsidized by a communist state, to stifle worldwide competition. I don't think that is good for the world either. There is likely (hopefully) a middle ground here somewhere.
nicoburns
> subsidized by a communist state, to stifle worldwide competition
I don't think "to stifle competition" is right. I suspect China would love it if other countries were investing in solar as much as they are. They just want the tech ASAP.
throwaway473825
> subsidized by a communist state, to stifle worldwide competition
China primarily wants to cut oil and gas imports. Exports are a bonus.
philipkglass
China was a big solar exporter before it was a big solar installer. China had a small solar manufacturing capacity in 2003. By 2008 it was number one in the world for solar manufacturing and it has remained there since:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_China#/media/Fi...
But it didn't start installing large quantities of solar power domestically until 2013:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_China#Solar_PV_...
Before that, solar power was too expensive for large scale use inside China. Chinese renewable energy growth was mostly hydropower and wind before 2013. Now of course China is by far #1 in yearly solar power installations as well as solar manufacturing, and that in combination with electric vehicle adoption is helping to curb oil demand:
"China’s electric car revolution hammers demand for oil"
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/china-electric-car-revolution...
billy99k
"Sadly, the US is hitting a hiccup as the current administration is going out of their way to make solar installs harder and more expensive"
The other group has been trying to tax solar for years: https://solarrights.org/blog/2025/05/06/solartax2024/
Why no outcry on HN?
hn_throwaway_99
As someone who greatly supports solar power and the rights of homeowners to install solar, I think your link is total bullshit and calling it a "solar tax" is disingenuous by people that want something for free
The fundamental problem with net metering is that it is obviously unsustainable and unfair. People who are hooked up to the grid benefit from more than just the energy they consume, but the hookup costs and maintenance of the grid is a real cost that power companies need to pay for. Perhaps even more obviously, any company that is in a retail business can only survive if they buy a product at a (cheaper) wholesale rate and sell it at a (more expensive) retail rate. Net metering is exactly the same as forcing power companies to buy energy at a retail rate. Again, this is obviously not sustainable.
As a homeowner, of course I would love net metering, because I'd be getting a sweet deal. But it's not hard for me to see how this can't continue as solar power installations increase. Austin, TX, was one of the first locales to use "value of solar" pricing, and yeah, while it sucks for the homeowner, it is also fairer and more sustainable. I'm also not saying this is the only way to do things (e.g. you could have a monthly connection fee and a separate monthly power charge), but this "solar rights" group is just spinning bullshit because their sweet deal is about to come to an end.
oceanplexian
The electric company isn't "entitled" to their subscribers either.
My city recently enacted a tax on solar called a generation fee or something like that. That is, if you put up solar panels, generate all your own power, and export ZERO back to the grid you need to pay them "fee" for every kWh generated because they are making less back in distribution costs to their subscribers since you stopped buying their power.
Sounds to me like their broken business model is their problem. After doing the math in some places it make sense to disconnect completely, avoid the interconnect fees, and run a standby generator for the edge cases where solar doesn't work. I've heard this is becoming popular in places like Australia and California more recently (Of course, then the government tries to make living off grid illegal to protect electric company profits)
megaman821
Austin's "value of solar" is the opposite of net metering. 100% of the solar you produce goes back into the grid, which is bought at some cheap rate, and then you buy back your own electricity at retail rates. You litterally lose more money at tier 3 rates than you get paid.
billy99k
"As a homeowner, of course I would love net metering, because I'd be getting a sweet deal. But it's not hard for me to see how this can't continue as solar power installations increase. Austin, TX, was one of the first locales to use "value of solar" pricing, and yeah, while it sucks for the homeowner, it is also fairer and more sustainable. "
Solar should be saving the homeowner money and not risking increased taxes in the future, especially if the homeowner has to foot the bill for thousands of dollars it takes to install the panels/system.
"Net metering is exactly the same as forcing power companies to buy energy at a retail rate. Again, this is obviously not sustainable."
Why prop up power companies if the business model is unsustainable? Especially if you want to convert to something like solar? Why should I, as a homeowner, be forced to pay the power companies just because they can't change with the times?
empath75
> The other group has been trying to tax solar for years: https://solarrights.org/blog/2025/05/06/solartax2024/
Sorry, what other group. Power companies?
billy99k
HEH
"They unsuccessfully tried again in 2024, working with Governor Newsom to try and slip a Solar Tax in his proposed budget."
behole
Ah more mental gymnastics in chat. Trying to tax solar and flinging around tariffs backed by extreme climate change denial are not exactly the same thing.
NM-just perused your HN comments and they are littered with dog whistles and talking points. Gymnastics seems too generous.
billy99k
"Trying to tax solar"
We are specifically talking about the increase costs in solar. Taxing is definitely one of them.
"dog whistles and talking point"
You have 3 comments. You also keep using that phrase 'gymnastics'. Do you even know what it means? It doesn't appear so.
bmelton
I haven't heard anyone say it out loud, but I'd wager it's in large part related to things like Chinese solar panels containing remotely triggerable kill-switches and/or having the ability to function as unauthorized mesh relays
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/ghost-...
jandrese
You can trace out the circuits on a traditional solar panel. They aren't complex devices. If someone managed to hide some kind of control chip in there and also some sort of connectivity to trigger it then my hat is off to them.
I would worry more about the inverters, including microinverters.
Also consider that if someone is doing industrial sabotage on that scale it would be much easier to attack the fossil fuel and nuclear power plants and their enormous computer controlled generators. Even hydroelectric would be susceptible. Or maybe attack the substations. There is nothing unique or special about solar panels that makes them a good target, and their highly distributed and diverse nature actually makes them more difficult.
ben_w
Other targets may be more appropriate, but:
> and their highly distributed and diverse nature actually makes them more difficult
Distributed doesn't make it harder, if/when there's a common failure mode. See e.g. this with the power grid which is obviously as distributed as any PV connected to it: https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/01/could-hackers-use-n...
EvanAnderson
I could see subterfuge in the inverters, but aren't panels themselves electrically very simple? I would think a rogue device within the panel itself would be apparent.
It's still worth examining the panels in minute detail. I just think it would be a ton more difficult to hide much functionality within a panel.
05
Reds under beds, again?
datadrivenangel
The S in IoT stands for security
LastTrain
This isn’t a thing. As in - try sitting in on a power purchase negotiation where the minutiae of every conceivable risk is debated for hours on end and this never even comes up.
BoxFour
If I were a VC or PE firm, this is exactly where I’d be putting a lot of money in the next year or two. Right now there’s a lot of fear given the stance of the current administration, which makes it pretty ripe for smart money willing to play the long game (as Buffett famously noted).
The technology keeps improving, clean energy is increasingly shaping up to be a new arms race with China, and politics these days tend to swing back and forth wildly. By 2028+, it’s very plausible we’ll see things 180 and there'll be plenty of government attention given to clean energy. Even the current administration could change their tune if it's positioned as "beating China" (or even for no reason at all, because who knows with them).
Spending a couple years to prop it up and become a well-established player by then could be a huge advantage.
fromwilliam
Do you mean investments in solar panel manufacturing, or something else? From what I understand solar panels are somewhat commoditized, and China has massive subsidies for their manufacturers. I wouldn't want to get in that game. If you mean battery R&D + manufacture, I think that could be promising
dv_dt
On solar panel investments, at the time TSMC got into the chip game, I think most people might have said something very similar to a TSMC. Chips are commodotized, and the existing entrants are highly capitalized, and why TSMC do you think you can outdo the likes of 1987 Intel TI, Motorola, NEC et al.
Perkskovites to name one tech, will probably be a generational shift in solar panel technologies, the US would be stupid to miss it if they want to be a future world energy player outside the slow inevitable decline of fossil fuels.
For who has the stomach to fund it, there is available maybe another order of magnitude in cost performance in solar, and say two or three orders of magnitude of cost performance available in batteries?
thijson
Brookfield is investing in it:
perihelions
There's something that struck me about the recent controversy with the Memphis datacenter. The one rolling out 2 gigawatts of on-site natural gas to power itself. It's this: that the CEO-who-can't-be-named, happens to own one of the largest lithium battery makers in the US; and makes utility-scale grid storage batteries; and also, for completeness, owns a solar photovoltaic plant. If anyone would be using solar+storage for economics, it would that datacenter in sunny, southern USA—but that CEO would rather buy gas than his own product.
It's not a one-off datapoint: none of the other upcoming massive AI datacenters, that I've read about, are built for solar power. Amazon's in rural Illinois (2.2 gigawatts), was also on HN, also going with natural gas.
I'll believe in this when the ruthlessly optimizing FAANG's believe in it, with their own money. Clearly they do not.
eagerpace
2 gigawatts of output would require about 8,000 acres of solar panels. The energy density just isn't there compared to gas.
throw-qqqqq
It requires some square kilometers of panels yes, but it’s definitely possible to do solar farms at that scale.
E.g. the Al Dhafra Solar PV project in the UAE has a capacity of 2 GW and covers over 20 square kilometers, using ~4 million panels.
eagerpace
Of course, but not in the footprint available at the data center
ben_w
How big is the gas field which supplies the gas turbine?
nehal3m
If they were ruthlessly optimizing they wouldn't be jumping on the AI train at the scale they do, and then they wouldn't need those DC's in the first place.
megaman821
The xAI datacenters do use batteries though. The batteries have advantages for providing a clean power supply and not tripping the grid when large workloads start or finish.
According to the article, 2 GW would require 8-10 Solar GW and 35-40 GWh of batteries to achieve high 90's availability. I would guess finding enough land close by might be a challenge.
selimthegrim
Louisiana also has industry who would love more solar deployment but is getting kneecapped by Entergy who will ask how high when Meta says jump.
siliconc0w
Solar is a lot easier and faster to deploy - no turbine needed, just convert photons to electrons. The US has sadly decided to shoot itself in the foot by electing an Administration bankrolled by the fossil fuel industry so they're doing everything they can to stymie solar.
pchristensen
If you're interested in this, I recommend reading Casey Handmer's blog. Here is one of several pieces about cost curves and learning rate for solar and batteries: https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2024/11/09/solar-and-batt...
jmpman
I want a solar powered greenhouse in AZ, where the solar panels are used solely to run an AC unit, keeping temps down during the day - without using inverters or batteries. With some large water barrels in the greenhouse, it should maintain temps down during the night. Is this practical? The solar panels don’t necessarily need to be on the greenhouse itself, as I have plenty of land. Trying to do this as cheap as possible. Any ideas?
deepnotderp
This is a lot of words to say “solar + battery lcoe is $70/MWH and gas is $40/MWH, but most places outside the U.S. don’t have access to tons of cheap gas so it’s more expensive there”
And no, they are wrong, gas is still currently cheaper ($40 is less than $70)
triknomeister
In other places outside US, cost of gas electricity is not 40/MWh. In Germany for example, the cost of natural gas power plants is 110 to 170 Euros/MWh.
For solar in Germany, it is 37 Euro/MWh to 80 Euros/MWh not including storage.
NalNezumi
Where did you get the 110 - 170 figure from?
According to [1] (figure 5, 6) its at the maximum, around 80€ MWh. Am I looking at the wrong stats?
[1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
marsokod
Not the parent, but I believe they were talking about LCOE, or total cost including building the plant and operating it. So that will be the cost of natural gas plus the rest amortized.
rapsey
Yeah ok but without storage you are comparing apples to oranges. Even with storage it is barely comparable. Since even with batteries you can't provide power 24/7.
toomuchtodo
This is factually inaccurate. At solar and storage costs today, they are cheaper than existing fossil generation in all of Europe. In the US, even at today's low fossil gas prices, they are competitive. They will become even more competitive over the next several years as the price of solar and batteries continues to decline, and the US fossil gas market is exposed to global demand via LNG exports. Renewables prices will keep going down, fossil costs will keep going up, very broadly speaking.
Base load is a myth; as long as you can orchestrate low carbon energy (nuclear + renewables + hydro), storage (hydro and batteries), transmission, and load shifting and shedding, the grid will continue to operate at expected service levels. Europe demonstrates this today with high renewables penetration in Portugal, Spain, the UK, and Germany, and nuclear in France (with robust exports to adjacent grids). "Excess" renewables that are curtailed during low demand seasons solve for near term storage as the storage manufacturing/deployment ramp curves upward and the price decline curves downward.
https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2025/07/01/solar-cost-of-electri...
https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/solar-electricity-e...
https://ember-energy.org/countries-and-regions/european-unio...
https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/solar-is-eus-bigges...
destitude
Not sure why you say this. I'm on solar + batteries 24/7 365 days a year. Use no fossil fuels. Even had utility company remove power poles from my place.
ben_w
More like comparing fresh apples to preserved dried apples, in that PV is still useful even without storage until it exceeds ~100% of daytime demand; and even then pumped hydro is like a fridge or something similar to put the fresh apples in, because you got it anyway for unrealated reasons.
burkaman
Where is your $40/mwh figure from? The claim in the podcast is that average LCOE for new gas in the US is "around $76, $78" or "around $70".
zdragnar
Combined cycle can be as low as $37 during low price periods of natural gas; combustion cycle is around or higher than the $70 in the podcast. Dedicated peaker plants can be much more expensive depending on the design.
burkaman
Where are your numbers from? "during low price periods" doesn't really make sense here, we're talking about LCOE which is the average cost over the lifetime of a plant.
rstuart4133
> This is a lot of words to say “solar + battery lcoe is $70/MWH and gas is $40/MWH,
No, that isn't what the article says. I'll quote it for you:
I think it was around $70 for new gas. It was a weighted US average — from memory, but I might be wrong on that.
jakedata
Meanwhile in the WSJ opinion section there is a hit-piece warning of power shortages because of wind and solar subsidies. We should be subsidizing gas turbines, if only the market would listen!
"The Real Risk to the Electric Grid" https://archive.ph/avp9N
Ooga-Booga!!!
tetha
Off-topic, but why is these no scrollbar on the transcript in firefox? I smacked my keyboard and now I've lost my position and it's going to be a pain to find it again.
Besides that, I was going to note: Yes, solar isn't necessarily great in northern Germany and further north. But us and the Scots and the Brits have one super-power up our sleeve: Shitty weather made of rain, wind and misery. Meaning, we put up wind turbines up here. We got like 33% of our power from these turbines over 2024 and apparently, expansion of wind capacity in 2025 is happening very quickly.
It's somewhat amusing, because the amount of wind power and planned offshore wind capacities are currently forcing rather large infrastructure projects to move all of this power south. My parents are living right next to where Nordtrasse A-Nord is going past. That is a _huge_ construction site.
darknavi
> Off-topic, but why is these no scrollbar on the transcript in firefox? I smacked my keyboard and now I've lost my position and it's going to be a pain to find it again.
I see a scrollbar in Firefox on Windows but it's quite small due to the article length + comments at the bottom. Maybe 5% of the height of the whole scroll bar.
errantmind
This article fails to mention that a lot of current commercial scale battery co-locations' purpose is to capitalize on rare but highly profitable periods where demand spikes and spot prices go up by, sometimes, multiple orders of magnitude.
The idea is to store the power until these events. A lot of money is made from these.
profsummergig
Where are they getting all the lithium from, anyone know? I thought we would have a major shortage by now.
philipkglass
The top lithium mining country is currently Australia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_lithium_p...
Here's a USGS report on global lithium from 1996:
https://d9-wret.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets/palladium/...
And the same report from 2025:
https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2025/mcs2025-lithium.pd...
Over those 29 years world production shot up from 6,300 tons in 1995 to 240,000 tons in 2024. At the same time reserves grew from 2.2 million tons to 30 million tons.
How can reserves go up even as we're mining lithium faster? It's because reserves are defined by a combination of economics and technology. The Earth's crust contains 20 ppm of lithium now and in 1996 (or a million years ago, for that matter). The geology doesn't change but the effort put into identifying potential sources of lithium and means of extracting and purifying lithium does change. Geologically speaking, the Earth has a lot of lithium. World lithium reserves have been increasing faster than they have been depleted, because the industrial demand that causes reserve depletion also spurs additional research to identify potential lithium sources and extraction processes.
profsummergig
Capitalism doing its (positive) thing. Awesome to hear, thank you!
standardUser
Mostly Australian mines. There's no projected shortage that I have ever heard of. There's plenty of Lithium in them there hills.
profsummergig
> There's plenty of Lithium in them there hills.
Good to hear!
Reason why I thought there was a shortage was because there was a major push to recover Li from old phones a few years back. I have 4-5 old unused phones lying around my house. (Mostly because there's old text messages in them that I'm hoarding.) I presume it's the same for others. And I was wondering whether there's enough Li for new phones.
bryanlarsen
The nickel, cobalt, manganese and copper in old batteries is valuable, not the lithium.
jillesvangurp
You thought wrong. There's plenty of lithium on this planet. And we keep discovering more convenient sources and ways to extract it. We have a surplus. That's why kg prices have come down.
profsummergig
Good to hear!
They mention California. https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook/supply is a dashboard showing electricity demand and supply, real-time and historical.
Yesterday evening's peak demand was between 7-8pm at 30.7 gigawatts. Supply breakdown around 8pm:
This is a remarkable development. All of the peak demand supplied from batteries used to be supplied by natural gas just a couple years ago.