[Karter2]

I've been saying on this forum for years that batteries and solar are on an exponential decline, and that by 2025 solar + batteries will be cheaper than anything else for energy. Probably sooner.

I seriously want to know if you have any evidence to support the idea that batteries and solar will not continue to decline exponentially in price, and if so what that evidence is.
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by definition "exponential" implies a "continual rate reduction" ..ie, each year the reduction in cost is less than the previous year....such that effectively the cost will eventually reach a "floor" and drop no further.
What level that floor is , is the question ?....its going to be dictated by factors like cost of materials, labour, manufacturing and transport costs , etc etc.
The graphs i have seen for pv panel cost, suggest that the "floor" is nearly there at about $0.5/W.
All the low hanging fruit has been harvested !

FYI... This year alone, there have been 17 new papers published in Scientific journals that prove CO2 is not, and cannot be, a GHG. !!

 

[Karter2]

But what you are saying is that some new unproven ,( but also ultracheap) ..solar collection system, and some new undeveloped (ultracheap) battery technology..........will be cheaper than any current alternative !
Wow ! ..some smart prediction.
What about the as yet uncommercialised LSR..or Advanced SC coal plants, or come to that existing, old tech , Nuclear generators that are progressively being relicenced to extend their working life to 80 -100 years !

Solar (and wind) are useless as a mainstream grid source without large scale storage (thousands of GWh) and there is nothing currently available that can provide that realisticly .

 

[Karter2]

There has been no significant advance in commercial batteries since Lithium ion technology was commercialised in the late 1980s
Costs have reduced, but basic technology is the same...40 years.
Maybe there will be a new tech some time soon, but it has yet to become commercially / financialy practical so far.
If you want to bet, i would wager the LSR is far more likely than any new solar or battery tech for lowest cost utility energy supply.
..and Advanced USC is certainly cheaper than NG for large scale generation.

 

[Karter2]

A nice thought but, i suspect you are thinking of manufacturing cost rather than the actual market price , since You are ignoring all normal market logic.
Take conventional flashlight cells, AAs, or similar.
They have been around for ?.. 50, ..60+ years and are made in huge numbers by fully automated plants , etc etc..so their cost is minimal...
...but their market price is higher now than it was 20 yrs ago..because of market forces. !
Pick some other common man made comodity ?? House bricks ?
How have the price of those continued to fall over the past 20-50 yrs ??
..it hasnt,..its increased, because the market sets the price, not the value of the materials or the cost to manufacture.
Infact, earlier this year, the price of PV panels increased 10% for a while because of the huge demand from China's solar program reduced availability in the rest of the world.
Supply and demand will be the primary factors controling prices over the next few years
..and $50/kW would not even cover the shipping costs from factory to point of use !

 

[Karter2]

No Duncan, i am not talking of buying a panel at the local Bunnings...
i am refering to the price of a truck full of product delivered to a commercial site. IE that includes the wholesale price (market determined) shipping, handling, insurance, storage , duty, tax, delivery, etc. etc ...all those costs you never see detailed, but are wrapped into that final invoice.
Materials and manufacturing costs are a small fraction of any comodity item.
Fyi, currently, many PV panel manufacturers are shutting down due to the uneconomical level of prices being dictated by Chinese producers (all the usual reasons,... cheap labour, minimal regulations, cheap power, etc),..

This article. ( as well as several others) Suggests that prices are reducung at 6-7% pa , so its going to take a while to reduce to 50% of todays value..
https://cleantechnica.com/2016/09/29/the-cost-of-half-a-billion-solar-panels-keeps-going-down/

 

[Karter2]

24M building 3 plants in Australia, process should result in batteries at 25% of todays' cost. If that works, pattern continues irrespective of any other pending breakthroughs. Do you have some evidence that they will fail?

No, and the last "News" item on their website still says they will be producing cells in 2019.
But, the local Darwin news in August just mentioned that the local government were advising on aproval requirements and planning processes, so i doubt if they have started any construction yet.
Also their stated plan is to make containerised battery systems for remote supply such as Telecom relay towers etc in Australia and Asia
And the ultimate capacity of the plant would be 1GWh per year,..so not a huge volume for any major projects.
https://renaissanceone.com.au/energ...uild-1gw-lithium-ion-battery-facility-darwin/
No mention of other sites though.
If this is truely new tech, i would have expected a pilot production line somewhere with trial packs etc proven well before investing in a production plant in a foreign country