Analysis finds anytime electricity from solar available as battery costs plummet
31 comments
·December 13, 2025aswegs8
Am I dumb or does that sentence "Analysis finds anytime electricity from solar available as battery costs plummet" make no sense grammatically?
ttul
If they were going for maximum confusion, why not write, “Solar battery costs plummet analysis findings back anytime electricity availability”?
Subject (((((Solar battery) costs) plummet) analysis) findings)
Verb [back]
Object (anytime (electricity availability))
Garden path sentence structure trap creation relies on initial word parse error encouragement. Brain pattern recognition system default subject-verb-object order preference exploitation causes early stop interpretation failure.
Solar battery costs plummet phrase acting as complex noun modifier group creates false sentence finish illusion. Real subject findings arrival delay forces mental backtrack restart necessity.
Noun adjunct modifier stack length excess impacts processing speed negatively. Back word function switch from direction noun to support verb finalizes reader confusion state.
We write to be understood. Short sentences and simple words make the truth easy to see.
FfejL
The actual headline is:
Analysis finds "anytime electricity" from solar available as battery costs plummet.
Those missing quotes go a long way to making the headline make sense.
malfist
Its still really confusing. A better title would be "When solar power from batteries are available, costs plummet"
Or since power has no provenience, "When batteries are available, electricity prices fall"
bee_rider
This doesn’t really capture their meaning though. They are describing a change in how the solar generated electricity can be treated due to the changing battery prices.
Arguably your edit is more factual. But part of the job of the title in an editorial like this is to tell you what their perspective is.
fweimer
I assume the intended meaning is “reduced battery costs make around-the-clock solar-generated electricity possible”. I don't think it's possible to predict how technical changes in electricity production and storage impact prices.
k1t
I think they meant "viable" instead of "available"
hammock
Just read the subhead. It explains everything.
Ember’s report outlines how falling battery capital expenditures and improved performance metrics have lowered the levelized cost of storage, making dispatchable solar a competitive, anytime electricity option globally.
evrimoztamur
Baseload, ideally.
Etheryte
Falling battery prices make storing solar electricity for later use economically viable. This means we can use electricity from solar anytime around the clock. Even accounting for the cost of batteries, it's still competitive with other sources of electricity.
pqdbr
Came in the comment section looking to see if it was just me. Had to read it 4 times
fweimer
I think “anytime electricity” is a noun phrase, and the rest is just the usual headline shortening. So something like this:
(Analysis finds ((anytime electricity) from solar) available) (as (battery costs) plummet)
In the unsuccessful parse, “anytime“ introduces a relative clause.
(Analysis finds [that] (anytime ((electricity from solar) [is] available))) ???
codersfocus
Does anyone know whether it makes sense to setup solar arrays closer to users or to concentrate them in sunny places and send them throughout the country?
e.g. an analysis of whether we should setup all the solar farms in Nevada for the whole country... set them up in the general south and transmit north... or will each state have their own farms?
ericd
[delayed]
estimator7292
We don't put all our coal and gas plants out in the desert, they're next to and within our cities.
Physically transporting electricity across distance is very expensive and a not-insignificant amount of power is simply lost on the way. These problems only get worse as the amount of power goes up, and the danger grows very quickly as power goes up. Plus the strategic and logistical benefits of distributed generation.
Simply put you can't centralize generation for the entire country. There's no practical way to actually transport that much power. Not with the technology we have today. If we had high-temperature superconductors then it would make more sense. But with standard metal wires, it's not happening.
hn_throwaway_99
High voltage transmission lines are really quite efficient, and concentrating generation is usually the right choice.
That said, it doesn't make sense to have just a single place for the entire country, as there are multiple grids in the US (primarily East, West, and Texas), and with very long transmission you can get into phase issues.
aaronblohowiak
technically or politically?
ramshanker
Has any production battery become cheaper than LEAC ACID for computer UPS ? I have not seen new cheaper UPS getting launched.
fyrn_
Many "solar power stations" can be used as a UPS, with competitive switching speed. Just not sold under that label. You can even get one made entirely in the US, but it will cost you: https://enphase.com/store/portable-energy/iq-powerpack-1500-...
But yeah, the cheap chinese "power stations" run circles around most UPS capacity wise. UPS market is very complacent.
jcheng
Seems like an opportunity for someone
PaulKeeble
Lead Acid as far as I know is about $500 per KWh of usable space due to their depth of discharge being limited to about 50% and then they last about 3 to 5 years if they kept within their 500 cycles at most. Whereas a LiPho battery will last 10-15 years, 6000 cycles and costs about £120 a KWh. So I have no idea how UPS based on lead acid is ending up cheaper, its not based on the battery tech cheapness.
rightbyte
UPS is kinda different since they are hardly used. I haven't done the calculation but it would guess lead acid is still cheaper?
JoeAltmaier
$33 per MWh for solar. What is it for coal or natural gas? Maybe half that?
fyrn_
In the US as of June 2024: Gas peaker plants are: $110-228 And Gas combined cycle: $45-108
PV in the US is also more expensive than globally however: $38-171 for Utility scale with storage, when including subsidies, $60-210 when not.
Coal is so much worse in every cost metric than gas combined cycle it's not worth considering, even leaving the pollution aside.
https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2024-12/34-%20Exh...
mullingitover
It's already cheaper to demolish an existing coal plant that's already paid for and replace it with solar + battery. Solar and battery brand new buildout, plus their maintenance overhead, dominates coal even when you only count coal's maintenance cost.
People have it in their heads that this is some bleeding heart, don't ruin the planet thing, but it's plain economics. Non-renewable energy is simply inferior, and will only become more so.
Panino
Why would you think that? Solar and wind are both far cheaper than fossil fuels even ignoring the problems caused by coal and methane.
mikeyouse
Fuel cost for gas/coal can be rounded to $2/MWH - so then you need to amortize the cost of the plant over all the energy produced and you get to roughly 2x fuel cost for nat gas plants and 3x - 5x for coal ones. See page 10 here for sensitivity to fuel costs though;
https://www.lazard.com/news-announcements/lazard-releases-20...
toomuchtodo
Solar and storage is the cheapest form of power now.
Battery storage hits $65/MWh – a tipping point for solar - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46251705 - December 2025
xbmcuser
$100+ meh for natural gas. Solar and battery is so cheap that arab countries are now building large solar and battery systems to save money instead of burning oil and gas. Where as in the US the other big oil and gas producer wholesale electricity prices for Natural Gas is around $100-150 mwh which is cheaper than coal and the major reason coal got pushed out. Then we have China and India where coal is around $40-50 mwh.
So solar and batteries are now cheaper than all other forms of energy/electricity the only problem is finance for poor countries as you need to spend for all the 15-20 years of electricity in one go where as for coal and gas you will spend the same amount over 10-15 years. For rich countries the problem is mostly protectionism as cheap energy would destroy a lot of wealth of people in power.
The scaling up of battery manufacturing for EVs and now solar storage has lead to prices I would have never imagined I'd see in my lifetime. It's one of the success stories that, having lived through it, has been a real joy.
I know that folks might have been able to point to a graph years ago and said we'd be here eventually, but I had my doubts given the scale required and hacking through all the lobbying efforts we saw against solar/battery. Alas, we made it here!