Have renewables decreased electricity prices? Empirical evidence in the US over the past 24 years points to yes.

6 comments

1. Well we can’t have that! /s

2. “Utility scale renewables are generally what reduces costs; in the US rooftop solar is quite a bit (~3x) more expensive than utility scale today, unfortunately. We should try and learn the lessons of Australia, which has succeeded in making rooftop solar almost as cheap as utility scale.”

   Big takeway is rooftop could be cheaper in the US. Less wasted space with just solar panels or need for agrivoltaics if we can use rootop. Tbh i didn’t think it could be cost competitive with utility.

3. And if you go back further, electricity prices have gone UP on average ~7% per year in California. Outpacing inflation by about 5%.

   So to remove that 5% increase would already be a big win! The fact that prices decrease is HUGE.

   As with any resource the price to extract a little more goes up over time, so this is triple good that we can still harvest renewables at a lower cost than yesterday.

4. In Norway other countries going for intermittent renewables has basically torpedoed our competetive advantage with cheap electricity from hydropower.

5. We finally decided to go solar here at our house. The average drop in monthly electric utility cost rund $100-$150 per month compare to our Solar equipment monthly payment.

   Solar has no moving parts, the fuel is free, and the Solar investment and expansion across our country is bringing down the price or at least slowing the constant utility price increases.

   Unfortunately, oil and coal companies have a lot of money and use it to influence legislation and elections by spreading nonsense that is easily converted into facts by advertisers and the media itself. I still hear the proponents of oil and coal spread fear and deception about any cleaner technology echoed in much of the public sentiments.

   So now we face a huge doubling down in anti renewable energy campaign that would increase energy prices and continue the damage to our out of control weather and climate.

   Solar makes power more reliable and cheaper. At home, we don’t even notice when the energy grid goes down, which during stormy conditions, it often does.

6. Not surprising, Solar is like Nuclear, high up front costs, but huge production once built for a fraction of the resources.

   Solar is actually better than nuclear because it has very few moving parts and far less energy loss via kinetic and thermal exhaust. The only real resource that gets used would be batteries, and those can be recycled if built correctly.

   Solar is also incredibly portable and makes sense as a kind of decentralized power production. decentralized means a blackout is less extensive because Solar can be brought in from multiple sources.

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