Alas is right, China is poised to dominate battery, solar, and EV technology and to translate it to military technology as well. Meanwhile the Republicans are blowing up US alliances and sabotaging the battery/EV industrial development policy that was actually making progress in giving the US hope in catching up.

You are certainly not alone in your beliefs, but it always amazes me which technologies get the benefit of doubt and which are severely penalized by unfounded doubt. Solar and especially batteries are completely penalized and doubted in a way that defies any honest assessment of reality. The EIA and IEA forecasts are as terrible as they are because the reflect this unrealistic doubt (random blog spam link, but this observation is so old that it's hard to find the higher quality initial graphs)

https://optimisticstorm.com/iea-forecasts-wrong-again/

Similarly, nuclear power gets way too much benefit of the doubt, which should simply vanish after a small amount of due diligence on construction costs over its history. It's very complex, expensive, high labor, and has none of the traits that let it get cheaper as it scales.

In addition to coming so far down in price, it's amazing to me how good the technology has gotten. Batteries that can easily discharge 5C in cold weather, cycle 10000 times, survive harsh conditions with zero maintenance. Panels that last for decades.

Which is why it makes me especially angry that the current US government is throwing away this gift in order to appease a bunch of aging leaders of petro-states. Literally poisoning the world for a 10-15 year giveaway to the richest of the rich.

I take some solace knowing that fossil fuels are now a dead end. And even though certain people are trying to keep the industry going, that end is sooner than ever.

Yes! It's awesome!

(Also, "alas" is a lament, expressing sadness, which is clearly not your intent.)

In general it's obvious this is the trend & amazing.

It is a little surprising to me that some markets don't see the benefit. I was pretty delighted ~8 years ago to get some 4500mah 6s batteries RC (under 100Wh) for ~$65 but the price doesn't feel like it's changed much since, based on some light shopping around. Just wanted to note what I perceived as an unevenness. https://rcbattery.com/liperior-4500mah-6s-40c-22-2v-lipo-bat...

They have a new kind of R&D organization that may be worth emulating.

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/china-has-invented-a-whole-new...

(partially behind paywall, sorry)

It's amazing what you can achieve when you control everything in a nation and can execute anyone who disagrees.

I think long range transmission remains a thing anywhere having a local grid remains a thing (which will be most places for other reasons).

Load-balancing the area having a cloudy few days and the area having a sunny days and the area having a windy few days and so on will remain extremely valuable. It lets you install a lot less batteries and isn't that much infrastructure given that the last mile problems are dealt with already.

I don't think this makes sense. Rail freight is about 20x more expensive than transmission at current battery densities.

Transmission: $41.50 per MWh per 1,000 miles. https://docs.nrel.gov/docs/fy22osti/81662.pdf

Rail freight: $160 / ton per 1,000 miles. At 220 Wh/kg a ton of batteries is 200kWh. So rail costs $800 per MWh per 1,000 miles without considering the cost of the batteries themselves.

Not having to burn gas is cheaper than burning gas. There will be a decade or two of transition with rarely used gas turbines getting their yearly packet in a short amount of time. Eventually other tech will take over, or the gas infrastructure will pare down and be cost optimized for its new role or rare usage.

Europe, and Germany and the UK in particular, are really poorly suited to take advantage of this new cheap technology. If these countries don't figure out alternatives, the countries with better and cheaper energy resources will take over energy intensive industries.

This is not a problem for solar and storage to solve, it's a problem that countries with poor resources need to solve if they want to compete in global industry.

From a global perspective, people living in temperate areas are actually the exception, not the rule (if a disproportionately economically successful exception).

The likely implication of this is that, long term, unless wind power starts going back down the cost curve, or you're fortunate enough to have lots of hydro power, Northern Europe, Canada, northern China and so on are going to have much more expensive energy than more equatorial places.

Wind power. Mix with emergency reserves running on open cycle gas turbines, if deemed necessary, preferably running on with carbon neutral fuel. Optimize for lowest possible CAPEX.

That is contingent on that we’re not wasting money and opportunity cost that could have larger impact decarbonizing agriculture, construction, aviation, maritime shipping etc.

One of the few problem of nuclear is summer time water use. Combining solar with nuclear would be the best option in my opinion.

This probably depends a lot on how close you are to the equator. Here in Germany output of solar in winter is negligible, and if there is no wind, which can happen for several consecutive weeks, we need a backup. No utilities company will build a fossil power plant that will be used only a few weeks per year, so our government will have to step in to make sure this happens.

On top of this you have very high costs for an increasingly complex grid, which needs to be built and then maintained. Prices will never again be as low as in the fossil/nuclear era.

Distributed. New transmission lines have big nimby issues, and many existing corridors are already getting overloaded. There are recurring attempts to reform the permitting process (in the last Congress it was called EPRA/energy permitting reform act), but… we’ll see.

Bureaucracy is the main thing holding back clean energy right now, rather than economics. You can see this in how Texas, which has lax grid regulation but isn’t biased towards clean energy has far surpassed CA, which subsidizes and got a big head start, in wind/solar generation in a few years.

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.

Casey Handmer is a huge solar bull and his estimate is that solar becomes cheaper than any other form of electricity even when generated from northern states by 2030 (likely sooner)

Iirc solar is meaningfully more efficient (30-50%) in southern states, so it will likely make sense to place energy intensive workloads in locations with more direct sun.

However, the cost of transmitting additional power is interesting and complex. Building out the grid (which runs close to capacity by some metric^) is expensive: transmission lines, transformers or substations, and acquiring land is obvious stuff. Plus the overhead of administration which is significant.

So there's a lot of new behind-the-meter generation (ie electricity that never touches the grid)^^

With all that in mind, I expect energy intensive things will move south (if they have no other constraints. Eg cooling for data centers might be cheaper in northern climes. Some processing will make sense close to where materials are available) But a significant amount of new solar will still be used in northern states because it's going to be extremely cheap to build additional capacity. Especially capacity that is behind-the-meter.

^ but not others! Eg if you're willing to discuss tradeoffs you might find dozens of gw available most of the time https://www.hyperdimensional.co/p/out-of-thin-air

^^ patio11 has a good podcast about this https://www.complexsystemspodcast.com/episodes/the-ai-energy... Disclaimer: my employer apparently sponsored that episode

The transmission network is underbuilt, so it's mostly best to generate closer to where it's consumed (especially for data centers).

We'll continue to see a mix though of Residential / Commercial & Industrial / Utility Scale

There are about 7,000 Utility scale sites in the US right now, so even the big boys there are fairly distributed.

If you would have a high voltage DC transmission line already, linking the dessert and the clouded cities far away, then it makes sense. I think it is worth building them, but it is a big investment. Many lines are proposed, some already build, but with the current US administration I don't think it is a priority.

So decentral is the current way to go.

That is the current state in the US

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HVDC_projects#/map/3

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.

technically or politically?

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.

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.

Do not try this at home, but I replaced the lead acid battery in my UPS with a LFP battery. From what I read online, the charging curves for lead acid batteries and LFP batteries are very similar. The LFP batteries have a slightly higher charging voltage, so I expect my LFP battery to only charge upto about 80% capacity or so due to the charging voltage being slightly too low. I'm hoping the battery will last 10 years instead of 2 or 3 years.

Do not try this at home, as changing battery chemistry is quite ill advised.

Some of the power stations from Ecoflow/Anker/Bluetti are competitive in terms of price and capacity while still having a fast enough switchover for UPS purposes.

They tend to have features that may not be necessary for a UPS (eg solar or DC input), while lacking some features that are more common on UPS (eg companion app to turn your computer off when UPS gets low, although you might be able to rig your own solution)

Eaton and APC at least have models with LFP chemistry, with comparable prices across power ratings. The LFP will be more expensive though due to the increased longevity, at least until lead-acid ones stops being produced.

UPS is kinda different since they are hardly used. I haven't done the calculation but it would guess lead acid is still cheaper?

Problem with Lithium ones is that they tend to be quite flammable. Lead acid is mostly inert I believe?

A very large part of the people on this planet have (almost) no winters.

We could start with those ~3 billion people.

Also wind has proven to be a very good supplement to pv.

Just build more solar. You generate excess electricity in summer and enough in winter. This isn't a problem.

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.

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.

Came in the comment section looking to see if it was just me. Had to read it 4 times

The source report

“How cheap is battery storage?“ https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/how-cheap-is-batter...

In short: Cheaper batteries plus already cheap solar means that solar is now a cheap source of “anytime electricity”.

To me the context string is just a bit...lumpy or something, I don't think it's directly about the grammar. I would have written something more like: a battery costs plummet, analasis finds "anytime electricity" is now available from solar.

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.

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))) ???

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...

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.

Why would you think that? Solar and wind are both far cheaper than fossil fuels even ignoring the problems caused by coal and methane.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source

Solar and storage is the cheapest form of power now. Prices for both will continue to decline.

Battery storage hits $65/MWh – a tipping point for solar - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46251705 - December 2025

$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.

Curious, where do you get your news? What gives you the impression that coal or gas would possibly be cheaper than solar?