With $40/kWh batteries available soon, i think even having 100 kWh of storage for a house will be rather common. With 14.4kWp solar, 5 MWh of electricity use per year and 100 kWh at 50€/kWh of battery you have 90% autarky and a time-to-value of 8-9 years. Pretty sweet.
Really, every one interested in renewables and net-zero should listen.
IIRC, my own take aways from this interview:
At the time of this interview, in the USA, because of subsidies and tariffs, only natural gas (IIRC ~$70 gWh) is cheaper than solar + battery for new generation.
Battery storage costs continue to drop faster than any one has anticipated. -40% in 2024 alone. Wow!
Even people savvy about our glorious renewable energy future don't fully appreciate just how quickly how fast both solar and batteries have and will continue to improve.
I don't remember the specifics when where wind is preferable to solar. IIRC, even in Finland solar + battery still pencils out.
Since solar + battery only gets us ~90% (?) to net-zero, we'll still need wind. (Ditto adv geo therm, heat batteries, pumped hydro, etc. Because we'll need A LOT more of everything for net-negative, to restore 360 ppm for CO2 and other GHGs.)
Personal note: Am very eager for Jenny Chase's yearly report on solar. Especially prospects for scaling up wind generation. Chase previously expressed concern about wind lagging behind solar. Which is bad, because we'll still need a lot of wind (at northern latitudes).
Having quickly scanned prior comments here, my impression is that u/epistatis is spot on.
In other words, most everyone's priors need a major update.
It'll be interesting if the sodium ion battery hype can combine with solar and give real base power alternatives. I think claims of cheapest don't really count unless it's qualified as non base power.
> These hybrid setups, which combine solar panels with batteries, are now standard in many regions and allow solar energy to be stored and released when needed, turning it into a more reliable, dispatchable source of power that helps balance grid demand.
On one hand, I think people underestimate how much energy our grids demand in a 24 hour cycle. The amount of lithium it would take to handle an unusually cloudy week would be astronomical.
On the other hand, one of the ironies of electric cars is that they are one of the least effective uses of battery capacity. A Tesla with a 60kwh battery is probably touching less than 20kwh of capacity every day.
So theoretically if you use the batteries for grid storage and actually cycle them regularly from 80% down to 20%, the battery capacity would be well over 2x - 4x more effective at offsetting carbon sources. (Even more so if you are offsetting worse sources like coal).
It should be noted that those low costs for solar installations are not including consumer rooftop solar. The consumer rooftop solar cost is usually one of the most expensive ways you can generate electricity - often several times the cost of utility solar installations:
The high rooftop solar price is usually hidden because no power source has been as subsidized as rooftop solar. Besides direct subsidies, wealthier home owners have often been paid the retail rate for the electricity they sell to the grid which causes higher electricity bills for those who can't afford to put panels on their roof. Also, in almost all cases, the home installation doesn’t have enough battery power to actually last through inclement weather and so is free riding on the reliability provided by the grid, putting more costs on the less well off. The whole thing is sort of a reverse Robin Hood scheme.
Any subsidies for solar power should go to utility grade solar. Money is limited and is fungible - a dollar spent subsidizing utility solar will go much, much, further than a dollar spent subsidizing wealthy homeowners who install panels on their roof.
It has become so incredibly cheap that in some parts of the world it has started eating itself, called solar cannibalization.
https://www.aalto.fi/en/news/rapid-growth-of-solar-power-in-...
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/plunging-solar-captu...
With $40/kWh batteries available soon, i think even having 100 kWh of storage for a house will be rather common. With 14.4kWp solar, 5 MWh of electricity use per year and 100 kWh at 50€/kWh of battery you have 90% autarky and a time-to-value of 8-9 years. Pretty sweet.
Interview with paper's authors:
Solar+storage is so much farther along than you think / A conversation with Kostantsa Rangelova and Dave Jones of Ember. [2025/07/16]
https://www.volts.wtf/p/solarstorage-is-so-much-farther-alon...
Really, every one interested in renewables and net-zero should listen.
IIRC, my own take aways from this interview:
Having quickly scanned prior comments here, my impression is that u/epistatis is spot on.In other words, most everyone's priors need a major update.
The actual paper seems to be available only as a docx file.
I've converted it to pdf.
https://files.catbox.moe/tfoim0.pdf
It'll be interesting if the sodium ion battery hype can combine with solar and give real base power alternatives. I think claims of cheapest don't really count unless it's qualified as non base power.
> These hybrid setups, which combine solar panels with batteries, are now standard in many regions and allow solar energy to be stored and released when needed, turning it into a more reliable, dispatchable source of power that helps balance grid demand.
On one hand, I think people underestimate how much energy our grids demand in a 24 hour cycle. The amount of lithium it would take to handle an unusually cloudy week would be astronomical.
On the other hand, one of the ironies of electric cars is that they are one of the least effective uses of battery capacity. A Tesla with a 60kwh battery is probably touching less than 20kwh of capacity every day.
So theoretically if you use the batteries for grid storage and actually cycle them regularly from 80% down to 20%, the battery capacity would be well over 2x - 4x more effective at offsetting carbon sources. (Even more so if you are offsetting worse sources like coal).
It should be noted that those low costs for solar installations are not including consumer rooftop solar. The consumer rooftop solar cost is usually one of the most expensive ways you can generate electricity - often several times the cost of utility solar installations:
https://www.lazard.com/media/xemfey0k/lazards-lcoeplus-june-...
The high rooftop solar price is usually hidden because no power source has been as subsidized as rooftop solar. Besides direct subsidies, wealthier home owners have often been paid the retail rate for the electricity they sell to the grid which causes higher electricity bills for those who can't afford to put panels on their roof. Also, in almost all cases, the home installation doesn’t have enough battery power to actually last through inclement weather and so is free riding on the reliability provided by the grid, putting more costs on the less well off. The whole thing is sort of a reverse Robin Hood scheme.
Any subsidies for solar power should go to utility grade solar. Money is limited and is fungible - a dollar spent subsidizing utility solar will go much, much, further than a dollar spent subsidizing wealthy homeowners who install panels on their roof.