Quote:
Originally Posted by accord1999
You have exponential growth, until suddenly you don't. 2018 Solar PV new capacity additions barely changed from 2017, and wind peaked in 2015.
Not surprisingly, this has been heavily influenced by China, where wind peaked in 2015 at 34 GW new capacity and is trending towards 21 GW this year, and solar went from 17 GW (2015), 34 GW (2016), 53 GW (2017), 45 GW (2018) and only 11.4 GW in the first half of 2019. This trend is completely normal, years of boom then a bust such as that seen in Germany.
But Q3 2019 vs 2018 unit sales in the US have fallen significantly, and global units are almost exactly the same, even though Tesla has opened new markets. And China New Energy Vehicles sales have fallen dramatically, like everywhere else, as government subsidies were withdrawn earlier this year, with a 34% drop in sales for September 2019 compared to 2018.
https://www.ft.com/content/adeb6c18-...4-b25f11f42901
Until they realize that a kWh produced at one time period doesn't always have the same value as a kWh produced at another. And then you have to add in the cost of reliable generation, or storage to make up for the unreliability of wind and solar, and the economic disruption of brown outs and black outs.
And you see the consequence, staggeringly expensive electricity every where solar and/or wind have high penetration, Denmark, Germany, Australia, California. |
Quote:
Originally Posted by accord1999
You have exponential growth, until suddenly you don't. 2018 Solar PV new capacity additions barely changed from 2017, and wind peaked in 2015.
Not surprisingly, this has been heavily influenced by China, where wind peaked in 2015 at 34 GW new capacity and is trending towards 21 GW this year, and solar went from 17 GW (2015), 34 GW (2016), 53 GW (2017), 45 GW (2018) and only 11.4 GW in the first half of 2019. This trend is completely normal, years of boom then a bust such as that seen in Germany. |
Net new additions in capacity was largely flat, but production increased over 30% for solar. I agree things increase exponentially until they don't, but it's not likely they've hit that point as process continue to decrease and storage solutions are only now beginning to enter the equation.
Quote:
But Q3 2019 vs 2018 unit sales in the US have fallen significantly, and global units are almost exactly the same, even though Tesla has opened new markets. And China New Energy Vehicles sales have fallen dramatically, like everywhere else, as government subsidies were withdrawn earlier this year, with a 34% drop in sales for September 2019 compared to 2018.
|
You can't really cherry pick one quarter and one country to show a long term global trend though. Tesla took more orders than they could produce in q3 and expect the same in q4. Once production goes up...
https://www.ft.com/content/adeb6c18-...4-b25f11f42901
Until they realize that a kWh produced at one time period doesn't always have the same value as a kWh produced at another. And then you have to add in the cost of reliable generation, or storage to make up for the unreliability of wind and solar, and the economic disruption of brown outs and black outs.
And you see the consequence, staggeringly expensive electricity every where solar and/or wind have high penetration, Denmark, Germany, Australia, California.[/QUOTE]
This correlation, not causation. Changes in production to renewables do cause a one time increase in fixed costs for transmission and technology, so short term costs may go up. But really, production costs =\= consumer costs. In all those places the electricity market is a free market and costs are subject to supply and demand. Government mandates curbing traditional generation lead to gaps in production and process fluctuate. Coal plants close to hit mandates before there's proper production in place. None of that means the costs to produce have changed. As these technologies get deployed and storage solutions become more common, these fluctuations decrease.