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It seems highly likely to me that it is possible to make solar panels using nothing but solar energy for input.
Is that a goal you would find worth pursuing?
You must consider that if you use a source of energy that can't control the input, then the difference between the input profile and the output profile becomes too great.
It can be done, but it's a lot more expensive than a mixed combination.
One of the reasons is because solar+wind has a better match to our demand curve than any of them alone.
Also, they have a lot of times where if they lack one you have more than the other (anticyclons usually reduce wind but increase solar, while storms increases wind and decreases solar).
Still, it's not a perfect match, so other techniques and technologies are suited for different profiles of offer-demand coordination.
For example, the classic duck-curve of solar is better suited to be matched via batteries as it's a very frequently circumstance and the storage required is way below a day. (Still needs lower prices for batteries, but the goal of 50$ per kwh for sodium ion seems a LCOE of cycled kwh good enough).
The small variations and clear differences between seasons are better mitigated through some levels of curtailment with the participation of new consumers designed for very low fixed costs that can operate a small numbers of hours per year to reduce the costs of the energy generated over the unregulated demand.
While very low generation days, the infamous dunkelflaute can be solved via some generation backup through fuel and demand management.
For example you can pay to some industries that accept the accord, of being disconnected when the generation is extremely low.
That comes from the circumstance that if the number of hours per year is very low, is a lot cheaper to adapt an industry to turn of for some days per year, than pay the equivalent storage just to be used a very low number of days.
It's the smart and big equivalent to an offgrid model where the consumer adapts to the availability of energy to certain extend, to reduce the requirements on the storage.
It's not that you can't build the storage. But reduce the consumption is just cheaper if it's a small number of times per year.
Calliban,
He doesn't seem to understand that we're saying LCOE of wind and solar plus storage, which becomes a hard requirement for a 70% renewables grid, is far in excess of the cost of all other competing options. We're also stating that the EROEI of photovoltaic electronics are far too low, unless ideally located in a desert, which excludes most parts of the world where people actually live.
These are two different debates.
An overall LCOE is different than a LCOE value standalone. And an integrated costs depends a lot of what kind of configuration you can build.
As I said before, current storage is still non competitive. You can build a model with only wind+solar+storage+curtailment but it would be significantly more expensive than current values.
BUT there are multiple configurations and multiple promising storage technologies claiming prices that reduce that price dramatically. Not only through batteries, but also other technologies.
In the meantime, overall LCOE analysis (not specific PV LCOE) using current prices, points a mix of natural gas with renewables as the cheapest combination, at least when natural gas prices are contained, and that's the reason why we are adding more and more renewables to the mix.
That's the "here and now".
The way I can tell that the LCOE, whatever he thinks it is, is still far too high, is that the rates paid by consumers have doubled or tripled anywhere there is a lot of renewable energy on the grid. True cost is not so easy to hide. Someone must always pay the bill for the equipment and services provided, and the consumer is always "that person".
He thinks the argument is being shifted, despite the fact that he's the one that keeps going back to LCOE, as if it makes EROEI irrelevant, to avoid addressing the fact that the LCOE is too high and the EROEI is too low, all at the same time. He's using future LCOE projections, which cannot be used to construct a new energy system, in the here and now. He's saying EROEI doesn't matter or that the calculations are wrong.
You are shifting because you claimed that the EROEI low values come from the high energy costs of the PV panel , while the LCOE of the PV itself is cheap.
There is no need to calculate a EROEI of PV + STORAGE for a full 100% model, as already LCOE of that model says that it's non competitive so only heavily subsidized pilot plants are mostly installed. Sometimes just for frequency because the cost for peak plants and regular storage has two different prices.
Well... Now we are installing the firsts renewables+storage, but the data is still coming, as it's too recent. That's because cheap batteries are also just too recent and the price still fluctuates, not a clear goal that has been surpassed and can be taken for granted.
This is what hard core "green energy denialism" looks like.
That's how the "skeptic" movements works.
He seems to have bought into the idea of the future possibilities of wind and solar, because he has no coherent arguments about the "here and now", unless all data that doesn't show what he wants it to show is wrong / bad / lies. He called the charts I posted "FUD", because they came from a website that doesn't support his beliefs about energy, but then provided a link to a study a couple of posts later, which used the exact same numbers from the website I posted the charts from. It's ridiculous.
Not only my "beliefs". But also a bunch of links of a lot more trustworthy source that a guy that name itself as "The Fracking Guy" on twitter with values a lot higher than any common source.
Spaniard,
Do you understand what LCOE and EROEI mean? Do you understand that these are two different things? EROEI is a ratio of useful energy out / required energy in. Levelised cost of energy is measured in dollars, pounds or euro per MWh. It is an estimated monetary cost of energy. Two different things. A low EROEI may have the effect of increasing the LCOE. But that isn't automatically the case in all situations. It will depend on the cost of the energy used to make the energy source and the cost of labour. Do you understand why that is the case?
I know how it works. Still, PV "skeptics" wants to use China as a escape goat.
But that argument drops when you compare old chinese costs with recent chinese costs.
Of course skeptics always force western vs China to make like the argument has weight.
The net energy study at the head of this thread is less than 24 hours old. It pretty much confirms the most pessimistic EROEI calculations for PV. Poor EROEI is not contradicted by a low LCOE calculation. It happens because the energy used to make the panels is cheap.
I'm gonna explain it in a simple way.
When Prieto & Hall claimed that 2008 Spain PV EROEI was around 2, PV had a LCOE around 200-400$/Mwh
So they claim that at least 100-200$ where energy costs.
Now the PV panel costs around 30-50$. So they can't have more than 50$ in energy costs. And obviously can't have so much. Probably around 20$ at most and going down.
If the energy costs drops x5, and the panel generates similar energy, How it's possible that the peakoil community claim the same EROEI?
--- EDIT ---
Here I did a mistake.
"So they claim that at least 100-200$ where energy costs." -> That sentence is not true. It's not "at least" but "as maximum"
As there is a fraction of non-energy and energy costs, only the fraction of energy costs should be applied to the EROEI factor.
Still, to claim that the EROEI remain fixed, something like claiming that in the past, most cost was non related to energy, and now it's is needed to force the result. There is no reason that to be true.
Any how know something about the inside PV knows that the manufacture of PV, mainly drive by manufacturing costs (including energy) has gone down, to the argument remains almost the same.
Spaniard wrote:LCOE is based on cost, so a lot can affect. But one thing is sure. Costs include energy costs. So it's impossible to cost less than the energy embedded on it.
Agreed.
Spaniard wrote:So if LCOE is cheap then the EROEI is a lot higher than claimed.
Not true. As I have said before, the Chinese are making their polysilicon in Xinjiang. They are using forced labour to extract coal which is then burned to produce electricity in powerplants at the minehead. This results in some of the cheapest electricity in the world. It is entirely possible for panels to have an EROEI that is <1 in many locations, but still to be cheap to buy. This happens because the energy being used to make the panels is so cheap it is almost free. The problem is that the panels can only remain cheap if the coal based energy used to make them remains cheap.
You are saying two incompatible things.
While I don't agree with your exaggeration about China, it doesn't matter. Just for the sake of the argument I will ignore it like it were true.
Still, you are claiming low EROEI, while the LCOE is less than the energy you are assuming it has. It doesn't matter if they use magic free robots that move the coal from the mine to the furnaces, the energy of the raw materials is still there. It is not possible so low LCOE JUST ONLY ACCOUNTING THE ENERGY YOU CLAIM IS USED IN THE PROCESS. Because if you calculate that energy as coal, copper, etc. costs in the market, you obtain more money that TOTAL LCOE. That's even removing labor costs so the slave work argument doesn't change anything.
LCOE includes a lot of other concepts and it was getting cheaper and cheaper. Are you claiming that China used better labor BEFORE and it's worsening to pay the gap?
Because wages were only increasing. LCOE under the Prieto & Hall was done in a time where PV costed around one order of magnitude higher.
The first post in this thread, which I posted only yesterday, is a net energy analysis that I carried out for solar PV built in UK and Spain. It is based upon embodied energy data from University of Bath. It confirms the EROEI calculated by Prieto and Hall. You can check the data yourself if you like. The discussion has shifted to LCOE because that is what you stated that you consider to be important.
But you are shifting my argument from PV along to PV + STORAGE.
LCOE is based on cost, so a lot can affect. But one thing is sure. Costs include energy costs. So it's impossible to cost less than the energy embedded on it.
So if LCOE is cheap then the EROEI is a lot higher than claimed.
But because my argument is about the energy embedded in PV, the LCOE should be also about PV alone.
If you change the debate speaking about PV + STORAGE, you aren't rebating my argument against PV EROEI, because you are speaking about a different thing.
Also I must notice how the debate has changed to deviate from the original intention.
Lets remember how it was.
Calliban - PV can't reduce cost and are fossil fuel extenders because they use a lot of energy to build the materials. (EROEI studies linked)
Me - That EROEI studies are outdated or wrong, because the energy involved in PV using that studies contradict LCOE values of PV. They aren't even enough to pay the energy claimed embedded in the EROEI studies.
Now another thread about EROEI is opened.
But to claim that LCOE of PV is high, they don't use LCOE of PV standalone, but PV + STORAGE. And the raise of the price is in the storage part, not the PV that is dirty cheap.
But the argument about low EROEI was claimed about the energy costs to make the PV panels, not the storage part.
Isn't it obvious that the argument has changed?
The EROEI of PV ALONE should be compared with LCOE of PV ALONE. Not to mix debates and use the values of one case to another.
LCOE of PV ALONE is pretty cheap, and that's a fact of the (recent, yeah) past. That means that EROEI of PV ALONE should be a lot higher than you claim.
This a very interesting report about the same matter
https://iea-pvps.org/wp-content/uploads … ration.pdf
It's a compendium of studies, that includes the link to your previous study.
But it includes some others, a lot more optimistic.
Seriously kbd512. Are you unable to recognize a FUD site that only spread lies full of (intentionally) bad data?
Video Explains How Having More than Enough Renewable Energy Capacity Can Make the Grid More Flexible
What the video doesn't explain is who is paying for all that extra grid capacity that is not required when it's provided by a reliable energy source, such as a nuclear reactor receiving the same level of subsidization as solar. It also doesn't explain where all that extra material is coming from.
From the same site we obtain current materials. Why they need to answer an obvious question? Why you repeat the same question over and over again like it weren't answered?
You can disagree with the answer, but it's tiresome to return to the same question again and again.
The extra grid capacity also is needed to the electrification anyway. Remember that we want to remove fossil fuels from the mix for multiple reasons. We can do it slower or faster, but it's need to be done.
Also there are multiple studies around renewables+storage. Because YES, storage is A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT MATTER.
It's connected, of course. We already know that for high mix of renewable storage is a must. And storage is still non competitive although costs are changing quickly.
But use storage as a sure thing for blame solar to have a high cost is not how it works. Because that costs depends on a lot of factors.
Network capabilities. Total storage capacity and kind of storage. Demand flexibility. Etc. etc.
That's the reason why electricity network coordinators are limiting the quantity of renewable integrated in the networks, and working in the best way to adapt all of this. While the storage is limited or too expensive, they just won't allow integrate more renewables.
Still, there is plenty of room for growth, while storage technology become cheaper.
Some countries has a better situation than others. For example, in my country, Spain, we have some pump hydro and there are proposals for a significant increasing of that.
Curtailment is generally low. Just a minor number of days. And it's clearly a symptom that we lack storage. We all know. LCOE usually already integrate in their predictions moderate levels of curtailment. Because it's low, it does affect little and it's still far cheaper than other sources of energy.
If the levels increases in the future, the speed of renewable installations in my country will slow because we have already a high penetration level of renewable. The government will limit the ability to add more renewable into the network. We will continue to use a mix as we have now.
Still the renewables will continue to grow as we add electrification of things, so while the percentage of renewables could stuck until cheap scalable storage becomes available, a lot of old fossil fuel will be changed by a mix with high levels of renewable.
And that's my country. In the planet, there is plenty of countries with networks still to integrate that levels of renewable.
There are multiple calculations there.
It depends on multiple variables. If you consider the price of energy extremely cheap or a lot cheaper than storage, then high levels of curtailment has more economic sense.
As there is a lot of debate which level of price we can reach in any of the technologies involved, this needs to be taken with a pinch of salt.
Also "curtailment" is generally accepted as "energy dissipated". But there is an immense potential for the concept of "under LCOE generation". Curtailment could be seen as a extreme case of that.
The concept of "under LCOE generation" is that it's cheaper to create non-optimal but cheap consumers adapted to absorb generation peaks.
Anyway, this study take the things to the extreme. Put solar without storage and try to produce the demand curve. It's most a theorical thing that anything.
It's obviously a lot more reasonable a good combination of some curtailment, storage and demand adaptation. The problem of the projected costs in that study are that they are based on old data of storage. Things have changed a lot. Although still not enough.
Because storage prices are not in the competitive level, that's the reason why electricity renewable penetration remains currently limited.
And the LCOE is low, not that absurd numbers of the FUD.
You are NOT going to have a functional grid without electrochemical batteries, because nothing else except a supercapacitor or flywheel can respond that fast to a PV power output drop of that magnitude and speed. The total capacity of all super capacitors and flywheels is even more insufficient than batteries. You will cease to have an electric grid without one of these technologies.
That's the reason why some operators are demanding a minimal level of storage on close to saturation networks.
But that level of batteries are not very expensive, as I posted earlier.
It's not the same the storage need to regulate frequency than to fill the network to 100% renewables.
You can check the experience of Australia with Tesla Megapack. The model works. I insist, not in the price we really want, although batteries are already very close to competitive level if it's for frequency/peak manage.
Sorry, but this doesn't work. If you have to charge $2.50/kWh because you have to over-build the PV
That numbers are not realistic, at least, not with current prices. It could be right using old data.
Current batteries are already at 100$/kwh and going even lower. We will see what price we can reach with sodium-ion.
So when you divide by the cycles that it can support, let's say 1000 (and stationary storage usually can do better) you have 0,1 $/kwh
To reach 2,5 you have to add a lot more costs. That's not current costs of solar + some hours of batteries.
That's the reason the link I post before projected around 60$/Mwh WITH BATTERIES.
But as anyone can see, to dismiss PV, a lot of assumption of future model is used. Instead of current LCOE and reasonable analysis about how to build a profitable model, it's needed to project absurd curtailment levels of old storage prices instead of projected curves of expected future storage costs.
Oh. About the author of that article
https://www.americanexperiment.org/abou … /isaac-orr
Isaac has written extensively on hydraulic fracturing, frac sand mining and electricity policy, among other energy and environmental issues. His writings have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the New York Post, The Hill, Orange County Register, The Washington Times, and many other publications.
https://www.google.com/url?q=https://tw … 4Y_Nh4HnNo
TheFrackingGuy
How surprising, a advocator for massive fossil fuel industry to reach a LCOE 5x-8x higher than any serious study and real confirmed projects reach.
If you think that FUD is a myth, here you have a clear real example what a FUD spreader is.
Well... It seems that the source of data matters.
While "badboysenergy" claims PV LCOE of 471$/Mwh
Here I come with different sources
Projected 2027 (USA) - (including extra costs like network)
Solar standalone - $36.09 $/Mwh
Solar + 4hr battery - $58.62 $/Mwh
https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/el … ration.pdf
Out World in Data. 2022, worldwide 0.05 $/kwh (second cheapest after onshore wind)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/leve … ?tab=table
Lazard - Utility scale from 24 up to 96 $/Mwh
https://www.lazard.com/media/2ozoovyg/l … l-2023.pdf
In 2020. Past confirmed data
$56/MWh average in Spain $68/MWh in Italy
https://www.argusmedia.com/en/news-and- … -in-europe
OR... you can believe BadBoysEnergy and think that Solar costs 471$/Mwh with a methodology of their own invention that nobody uses to obtain a value that nobody in the market cares.
we developed a model to calculate the levelized cost of intermittency (LCOI)
That's how FUD works.
Spaniard, EROEI tells us how viable an energy source is as an energy source.
The EROEI you are insisting is more and more difficult to conciliate with the data of the constant advancements and renewable forecasts of Terawatts of new power.
I already told about it. The industry focus on LCOE, because that's the important number for investors to calculate their return of investment.
But continuous improvement of LCOE are incompatible with fixed EROEI. More and more excuses are needed to "explain" why this happen.
While the answer is simple although some people dislike. EROEI data is obsolete or wrong. Sometimes even intentionally manipulated. After all, one of the most focused community around this value is the peakoiler community and their discourse depends on that value to be bad.
Otherwise the renewables would be perfectly fine to replace our current energy model and their proposition for "degrowth" is unnecessary.
For the same reasons, other groups how dislike the competition of the renewable in their markets also uses this to justify attacks and stops to the renewable initiative.
But... whatever. If you want to believe that EROEI calculus are in the right, and LCOE are just temporary, suit yourself waiting for the renewable to fail.
Some 20% of the world's refining capacity is at risk of closure.
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-Gene … osure.htmlMostly in OECD countries. The official stated reason is declining demand due to EVs. Saying that makes people feel happy about it. But so far this is having a minor effect on petroleum product demand. Product demand has been dropping in OECD countries since 2008. At this time, EVs were little more than prototype curiosities. One real factor behind declining demand is declining prosperity for the majority of people. As people get poorer, oil products become less affordable. Couple that with demographic ageing in the western world and you have a perfect recipe for falling demand. Falling EROIE of petroleum is making it less affordable to a poorer population. At the same time, workforce is shrinking. Declining oil demand is therefore a harbinger of economic ruin.
I seems I lost my last response.
Anyway, as I said before, investors doesn't look EROEI. Investors only care about return of investment. They will only see if the investment will be good or bad. As the number of voices against the usage of fossil fuels grows, and it exists a growing risk of fossil fuel bans or massive investment on replacement, the risk of investment on oil also raises.
Besides, BEV are not the only technology that reduce oil. Hybrids, while only reduce a fraction, that reduction is also noticeable. But the greatest reason is not CURRENT data, but bad FUTURE perspectives. This kind of infrastructure can have amortization periods of three decades, so the risks are high.
Investors will wait in countries where the growing demand is not clear, waiting if the prices raises. With higher prices, the amortization period shrink and also the risk of investment.
OR... the demand will really shrink, and the new capacity won't be needed. The old capacity will probably be extended beyond their optimal lifetime because there is no enough time to the new capacity to amortize, at least at the same levels than the previous years.
I personally expect a mix of both. If the BEV replacement come sooner, oil prices should maintain or even reduce a little, but I expect to maintain and even increase a little because the infrastructure becomes old and cost more to maintain. Also the reduction of oil investment will generate a cascade of reduction of scale that will hit against it.
But it's also true than if we replace fast enough, the first oil wheels to close will be the least profitable (so, most expensive) so there are a mix of variables in both directions.
I expect slightly raising price in oil, while contained, as too high will push the BEV replacement sooner. Still, there is a limit to the speed of the replacement because multiple bottlenecks, so there will be multiple spikes in prices as the change is very fast and not enough and too much offer and demand can change very quickly.
The same can occur in the renewables/EV side. In fact, there is currently growing voices warning about a lack of lithium PRODUCTION. Nothing about reserves, but a possible surge in BEV interest beyond some predictions that will require to use more lithium than current investment in the lithium industry.
That can surely occur, and the reason is basically the same. Contradictory projections about the future. Most investors prefer to wait than risk in a investment that it's not clear.
If the EV expand more than the conservative projections, they will soon lack lithium production, raising the prices, generating a new wave of investments that will drop the price sometime later.
These phenomenons are not energy related, but pure economic.
Much depends on how long the Chinese system holds together. They are using forced labour to convert stranded coal into a product (PV modules) that they can ship out by rail. It is an innovative, though inhumane, approach. But it does offer some insight into how stranded fossil fuel reserves can be exploited in other places. Most other places on Earth have no equivelant of Uiyger forced labour. Nor would it be acceptable in most countries.
https://tradingeconomics.com/china/wages
Wages in China has being on the rising all of these years, and coal in the mix has slightly lost weight (relative. Of course, in total consumption they have grown because total energy has grown more than the change of the mix).
You can check the mix here.
https://ourworldindata.org/energy-mix
Although you need to select manually China instead of worldwide and relative instead of absolute. Then the trend is clear.
So both arguments, worsening labor conditions and more coal usage doesn't match the data on China.
https://medium.com/@erofeev.yury/solar- … 711debf309
Solar photovoltaic energy is growing at a monstrous rate. For example, BloombergNEF expects that about 400 GW of solar energy capacity will be commissioned around the world this year.
One of the factors for rapid growth is the reduction in prices for equipment and solar panels.
Aside from a two-year bump between 2020 and 2022, when solar module prices rose more than 50%, the cost of photovoltaic systems has fallen steadily since the mid-2000s, averaging about 10 to 15 percent per year.
In 2023, module price declines resumed, reaching an all-time low of around $150/kW (15 cents/W) — a staggering 42% drop from the January 2020 price.
Rethink Energy predicts that wholesale solar module prices will halve again by 2040 in a new report.
The decline in silicon prices through 2030 will be driven by “a wide range of incremental technology upgrades that will continue at a slower pace through 2040.”
“By 2040, silicon-perovskite tandems — perhaps some will even be silicon-perovskite-perovskite — will account for 61% of the market share,” the authors say.
A report from Rethink Technology Research predicts that the price of PV systems, based on the current “off-the-line silicon solar module cost in China” of US$154/kW, will fall again to US$92.2/kW by 2030 year and 71.1 US dollars/kW by 2040 — a decrease of 53%.
Prices of renewables haven't been plummeting during the past 4 years. They've been going up. I published a link to an IEA report asserting that renewable prices will go down in 2024, whereas they've gone up for the past 4 years, from 2019 to 2023.
Just a little comment to end. Your own link also said that remain competitive.
What increased was transportation costs... by a lot, which make then more expensive outside of China. BUT it also happened the same for fossil fuels. Most countries also needs to transport fuels. So as expected, impacted more on fossil fuels than renewables, so they remain competitive.
Renewables are cheaper than having no energy at all, but they are not cheaper than coal, obviously, else China wouldn't still be using any coal to make them. The evidence backing that statement is the number of brand new coal fired power plants being constructed in India, China, and other countries in Asia and Africa.
The only reason why China don't replace coal for renewables, it's because they didn't produce enough renewables.
Scale factories takes time. They are scaling factories at an impressive speed but it's still not enough, and of course it continues to grow.
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2023/06/08/ … w-by-2024/
The issue with cost, which you seem to be working overtime to ignore, is the cost of not having any energy. Renewables without storage are an absolute guarantee of having non-functional electric grids. After we do an LCOE on photovoltaics or wind turbines and batteries or any of the other storage solutions proposed by our green energy fans, you no longer have an argument to make about the cost of renewables being cheaper than the cost of hydrocarbon fuels.
They are two different markets. A market with a mix of non-dispatchable renewable (as solar and wind) with others that it can do it (like hydro or natural gas) and as the market move through more and more wind and solar, storage and other techniques needs to be added.
We are way below the level of require storage in most places of the world, so expect renewable to continue, while at the same time storage continue their advancements lowering the costs, waiting to reach the competitive goal of renewable+storage to beat natural gas.
What we can expect in coming years are a reduction in coal for electricity, replaced by renewables.
Spaniard,
The prices of metals is going up, not down. Green energy machines require metals. Now that input materials cost is 70% to 80% of the cost of these green energy machines
All of this projections are based on things you are assuming. There is no need to repeat, we already told our points before (change materials, quality, energy assumption, etc)
Lithium was already double before. Because price is a mix of variables, one compensate others. The reserves had increased because we found new lithium faster than we are currently using it.
There are a bunch of variables to play, and that costs are not as fixed as you said. Otherwise it wouldn't have a reason to coming down again.
Yes... there will be spikes in prices from time to time. Still, as the prices doesn't come as high from raw material as you said, and a lot of players in the market knows possible movements if there is a bottleneck, reacting investing in possible solutions like I mentioned before.
As speaking about the future is cheap, we could continue this loop forever, so as we aren't adding new information, I don't see the point about continue this.
Only we can do is to wait... and this is slow so... stay tuned.
Spaniard,
If the materials to produce something don't presently exist, and the green energy metals do not presently exist in the quantities required to do what you want done, then that material must be pulled out of the ground and processed into brand new green energy machines. Those processes require enormous amounts of energy, far above what was required with hydrocarbon fuels, so the energy cost of creating these new machines is a non-trivial matter.
You can claim whatever you want. Yes, renewable require a lot of new things. But also fossil fuels require a constant influx of fuel and infrastructure. Nothing new in our way to do things.
Renewable are cheaper, because the total numbers are better than fossil fuels. You can doubt and claim whatever you want. There is no magic involved.
Market does a thousand times better calculation than you can do with lots and lots of studies.
Studies are there (when they are well done) for doing forwards moves and investments. Market tells you CURRENT costs, not future costs, so studies are still important to help us to do future moves.
But things like the plummeting price of renewable in past years it's a FACT. It's already past. And claiming that EROEI hasn't change regardless that fact it's not backed up by reality. And if you search enough you will found more and more discrepancy. The reason is that EROEI is mostly pushed by the people that want to discourage the investment in renewables and the conclusion was decided from the start. That's the reason you can't expect that people to give you good numbers.
Industry and investors are focused on LCOE, because real world move using money, not complex energy formulas. LCOE convince investors, not EROEI.
Still, you will have to search more and more excuses why the supposedly embedded energy in renewables, that low EROEI proponents claim is enormous, has more monetary value than the infrastructure itself. It's like a godly miracle of multiply bread and fish, just with kwh.
Instead of searching excuses like massive subsides, all has a lot more sense when you assume that people that claim higher and growing EROEI on renewables are on the right.
Then, the lower cost has sense. Also continue to investment on renewables, as they will pay their own cost. Renewables moved by renewables. Just we are starting. You can't request to move on renewables TODAY when renewables are still growing and we are still waiting just to reach the point where renewables grow more than the current growth of energy consumption.
Although that moment maybe will be soon enough to the forum to see it. Another thing completely different is to REMOVE all fossil fuels from the mix. I doubt not only the forum, but us will live enough to reach the zero emissions moment.
In any case, invest in renewables is a lot better than do it on fossil fuels. And the people that claim that nuclear is a lot better, only have to invest on nuclear and demonstrate that they can reach better LCOE in real projects.
They won't lack investors if they can back up their claim with real proof.
The difficulty with EROEI calculations, is always where to set system boundaries. It is entirely reasonable to factor things like roads into EROEI calculations, if they were built specifically for the powerplant or if the presence of the powerplant increases maintenance burden in a way that can be quantified. It is also quite reasonable to factor labour into EROI calculations. Labour is a resource after all. People paid to do a job are giving up time to do it and are paid in money which is used to buy energy products.
First... you shouldn't compare values obtained through different methodologies. It's an apple to orange comparison.
Second... How do they know how the roads are using? Did they go one by one installation checking if the road was used exclusively to that renewable installation?
Of course not. They will just get some generation places as a template, get the costs of the project, doing "conservative" assumptions and extrapolate to the whole infrastructure.
These "refinements" are not that. They are just numbers adding to the input to obtain the EROEI that they want. That's the reason they change the methodology constantly and the reason they insist in almost fixed EROEI values with a clear pattern of lowering costs in the real world.
Labor costs weren't ever accounted in classic EROEI calculation. The reason is simple. People need very little input. The salary is unconnected with the human needs to make the work there.
Computing salaries has sense in a cost model like LCOE, and of course it's computed. Not only for renewable, but every source of energy.
But in terms of energy, what sense it has you said that in a poor country they uses X energy and in other a total different value just because they paid differently. How that change the energy involved in the installation?
The purpose of energy installations is to generate energy for the society. And workers are just part of that society. If you account the energy for the workers as energy used in the input, you should then remove that energy from the requirements of useful energy needed to generate in the output net energy of the source, that of course, they won't do.
Because of that, count salaries as energy input is double accounting.
We've become much more efficient at manufacturing photovoltaics, but to my knowledge there's a thermodynamic minimum energy to melt Silicon, or any other metal for that matter.
It's easy to miss important things when you aren't an insider, and an insider only knows in detail about the process he is involved.
For example, of course heat something has a minimum thermodynamic value. That's physics. Still, a manufacture process could need less than that quantity per unit of weight processed for example, when they use heat recovering.
It's a common process in the industry, although still has a margin of improvement. 50-60% energy recovery is not uncommon in high temperature process as energy in so much quantities has a significant impact in the final cost.
That's it, once the process at the high temperature has ended, and the final product is hot, that temperature is exchanged with new input raw material in a continuous process. So you don't need to input the 100% of the heat, but just the part lost in the exchange (it can't be 100% efficient).
While the raw material requires that heat to work, heat recovery lower the input of a continuous process by a significant fraction. The heat exists, just it's not new generated heat but recovered (at least a fraction of that).
--- EDITED ---
I checked multiple sources and I found clear discrepancies about the values. From 10-20% in another sources to 70% in others. It's complicated because they can referring to different things (like overall improvements vs process specific recovering) so take the numbers with a pinch of salt.
Anyway, waste heat recycling & recovery are active fields of energy reductions. Real numbers, as always, are more complex than you can.
Here there is a link that claims a very high value (80% estimated from their proposed method), for example
JoshNH4H,
I found a document on OSTI, dated back to 1977, about the embodied energy into different manufacturing processes to produce Silicon wafers for photovoltaic panels. I looked at one of the then-experimental processes and couldn't help but notice that the embodied energy figure looks remarkably similar to the figures quoted by Silicon wafer manufacturers today. We've improved mass manufacturing of semiconductors since then. The energy required to melt a kilo of ore hasn't changed one iota. The kerf rates are the same. The rejection has undoubtedly improved. The labor is cheaper because it's China. The energy is cheaper because it's coal.
China has used coal since the beggining. And labor costs has only increased there. But PV panels has been reducing their price constantly, with no relevant changes in the mix and increasing labor costs.
That excuse could hear well in people that only thinks that PV has become cheap because they have being outsourced to China, but anyone that could check Chinese numbers knows that it's not right, because that variables has been static or worsening there while costs had plummeted. Not a minor change, but a radical one.
You are getting wrong numbers in some place, because the conclusion doesn't meet the reality. For example, a way where they have optimized in silicon is reducing the weight of the material used for capture. Even if the weight/energy ratio wouldn't change (that I doubt it) if you use less weight because the wafers are a lot thinner, obviously the total energy get reduced by a lot.
Solar panels aren't getting cheaper because labor costs or because they are made from coal as you said. That hasn't changed in China for decades.
So you are accounting 212 kg per kw.
But 1 kw of PV are aprox. just 3 standard 60 cell panels of 18 kg per unit. A total of 54 kg.
Even if you argued that the panels aren't the total weight of a PV installation, to multiply that number by 4, a lot of inefficient things are being done to reach that values.No, not really. All you have to do is assume a capacity factor of 25%. Which for solar would be a really good capacity factor; in Britain it's more like 10% (but we're not exactly the sort of place you'd put solar if you were thinking straight).
I was comparing two different sources of data. The weight from current PV specifications and kbd512 data both for materials used in a certain power of PV.
So here it has no sense to speak about capacity factors. Unless you are suggesting that kbd512 data are not for 1 GW PV for real, but 1GW equivalence of 100% capacity factor.
That argument would turn in favor of my argument. But I don't think it's the reason of our discrepancy.
The most probable reason is that the numbers are not PV generic, but for installations on ground (otherwise they aren't concrete, or it's averaged the numbers would be lowered significantly), AND the numbers come from outdated technology. That would explain why the numbers of glass weight are higher than current standards.
PV panels hasn't become cheaper for nothing. The energy involved in the process has to become a lot less too.
In fact, I used your numbers and the result is even more extreme. Look.
Tons Mwh per ton Mwh Percentage
Glass 70000 9,7 679000 3,79%
Steel 56000 13,9 778400 4,34%
Concrete 47000 6,96 327120 1,83%
Aluminum 19000 64 1216000 6,79%
Silicon 7000 2100 14700000 82,05%
Copper 7000 16,2 113400 0,63%
Plastic 6000 17 102000 0,57%
Total= 17915920 * 320 = 5.733.094.400 MwhUsing your numbers, I obtain 5.733.094 Gwh which is even more extreme than what I said.
Although if you see the numbers with care you will notice that mods energy come from silicon.
That was usually the thing in the past. Everybody that knows a little about the PV industry knows that the PV cells are the most expensive part of the whole infrastructure, and the piece that has become cheaper in these years.
---
I have edited to add the percentage.
Spaniard,
Spaniard wrote:216*24*365*0,2*20 = 7.568.640 twh
Total global annual electric power consumption is 25,000TWh.
7,568,640TWh / 25 years = 302,745.6TWh <- This is 12X total global annual demand for electricity over 25 years
Your math is wrong. Try again.
That unit is gwh, not twh. But it's just there where I put the wrong unit. As you can see later, when I divided by 4 using EROEI to calculate what it was supposed to be spent under that numbers, I write gwh.
I will edit the post now.
On other order of things, I must said that I knew personally met Pedro Prieto in my youth.
Remember when I told in the other thread about my past as former peakoiler?
Well... He was one of the most important voices of the peakoiler movement in Spain.
https://www.15-15-15.org/webzine/es/author/ppp/
Besides, the numbers are based on old data.
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/S … fbc2dbef9a
Calculating the Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROI) for Spain's Solar Photovoltaic Energy in 2008
His numbers are always like that. He always took the worst possible numbers. And when even with that it wasn't enough to met the value he want, then he changed the methodology.
Instead of a classic EROEI as it was more common in oil, he did a "new concept" (I don't remember if he was the first, but the first time I met that was through his work), something that they named "EXTENDED EROEI".
That concept is non serious. It's based in add a lot of energy to the input under the excuse that "it's needed" with doubtful formulas to convert that concepts into energy.
I read forward "calculations" about this new EROI and it was coming more and more ridiculous. Adding costs like labor costs to energy (that energy is what we use with the output energy, it's never accounted as an input in other energy), stealing (if they steal the panels, the panels are working in another place. That's not an energy concept, but a business one), even roads! (man... the roads are not only used for installing PV, you can't account that energy as it was done exclusively for photovoltaics).
This is not the first time there is a fight among the numbers.
Here you have an example.
This is a response against a similar study that used the methodology that I was referring.
https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy17osti/67901.pdf
Inappropriate comparisons of results from their ‘extended’ system
boundary analysis to those of other differently bounded analyses of
conventional energy systems;
• Utilization of incorrect data (either because it is out-date or simply
wrong) for determination of PV system parameters (including
annual electricity yield)
• Several incidents of double-counting energy contributions (e.g.,
adding contributions that are already included in the embodied
energy of materials).
Our revised EROI and EROI EXT values for PV systems in
Switzerland, 3 calculated according to the formula adopted by Ferroni
and Hopkirk (i.e., as the ratio of the total electrical output to the
‘equivalent electrical energy’ investment), but based on the arguments
and numbers presented in this paper are, respectively, EROI≈9–10
(when adhering to widely adopted ‘conventional’ system boundaries as
recommended by the IEA (Raugei et al., 2016)) and EROI EXT≈7–8
(when instead adopting ‘extended’ system boundaries that also include
the energy investments for service inputs such as ‘project management’
and insurance). It is especially noteworthy that even the latter EROI EXT
range is one order of magnitude higher than 0.8 which was obtained by
Ferroni and Hopkirk.
This is a response to another work, here from "Ferroni and Hopkirk" that reached even lower EROEI.
I can't quote the original Prieto & Hall work, because it's paid. But I can say you that the original data it was quoted, 2008, the prices has already dropped by more than one order of magnitude since then.
There were a lot of critics about that 2008 bubble in Spain. But by then it wasn't rare that the government paid up to 300€ per Mwh on subsides. Now they are installing PV without any subsides with an estimated LCOE under 30 €/Mwh.
EROEI numbers become unusable long ago when different sources obtain so different numbers.