I know some people who are adamantly against solar and wind

(personally I like both but I can see some shortcomings - for example I have heard that ai datacenters are using gas at times because of its flexibility)

So what are some of the best talking points to "sell" solar and wind to the unconvinced?

Or will they just adopt it once it's seen everywhere?

Solar/wind is the cheapest form of power generation by far. You just can't beat it because they don't have any fuel costs. Gas peaker plants will always make sense until we have enough grid scale batteries. They will hold on for now until the price of natural gas hits rock bottom. But with the current advances in low cost battery technology I see them becoming less and less necessary. They would probably already be dead if hydrofracturing hadn't propped up the cost of gas.

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

I recommend this video from YouTuber Technology Connections: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtQ9nt2ZeGM

I appreciate his ability to talk renewables for almost an hour and barely mention climate change. This video has a bit of a twist ending, but he gives you a solid out before he becomes political if you're showing it to someone who won't be receptive to that messaging.

I don’t know how you can be against solar unless you’ve been given some uninformed talking points.

Are they against solar subsidies or other policy provisions? It’s hard to understand someone who is against passive energy collection.

I think there are 2 good and important points that make me re-think things some:

First is technological advancement. It seems solar and wind and the supporting technologies, including battery storage and grid firming, are advancing very fast to become cheaper, more powerful, and more reliable. What was a reasonable argument ~15 years ago might actually be out of date today. To form a reasonable argument for today, you need to know the types of hardware, costs, and specs for what's on the market today.

Second is that the recent improvements are all independent capitalistic companies building things for their own profit. They're not going to do things that are unprofitable, and if they did, they'd go out of business pretty fast. It is fair to criticize pushes by Government and activists to build this stuff, since both of them have advocated for unprofitable things plenty of times and suffer no consequences if the things they push are a terrible or unworkable idea. When it's an independent company, though, it's none of our business. I'm for success and functional systems, not ideology; if you want to build this stuff, believe you can make a profit doing so, and take ownership of the consequences if you are wrong or fail, then by all means go to it, and I'll cheer if you succeed.

"I know some people who are adamantly against solar and wind ..."

Ignore them because it doesn't matter.

Physics causes finance, which causes politics ... and their politics will immediately change when the finance crosses whatever threshold they happen to be anchored to.

That's different for different people and different situations but you can be sure it will happen. Those people will not pay markedly higher electrical bills or have a (relative) doubling of their cars TCO for their politics.

Just be patient.

We have already reached the point where solar and wind produce new MW of power cheaper than any other power source you can build.

Of course that energy generation comes with the caveat of being variable with sun and wind. It can still be a net benefit to the grid but the variability means alternative energy sources are still needed.

The cost trend of installing solar/wind plus enough storage capacity to provide steady grid power will eventually cross over to also being cheaper than other sources of energy. At which point the only reason to be against it is if you prefer artificially subsidizing another energy source.

If people have strong opinions about renewable energy, just don't waste your breath. You can't reason someone out of an opinion they arrived at unreasonably.

>they just adopt it once it's seen everywhere?

Maybe not even then. Some still refuse to believe the Earth is round. They can die before they admit they were wrong.

- cheaper - much less upfront capex, lower operating costs

- removes nasty geopolitical dependencies on eg gulf state oil and gas; costs are more predictable

- easier to plan and build because the base units are much smaller

Variability remains a valid objection, to which the main answer today is "batteries. Lots of batteries. And other cheaper longer duration storage, like sand heat storage, vanadium flow, and good old pumped hydro."

> So what are some of the best talking points to "sell" solar and wind to the unconvinced?

Ensure that the prices decrease for people with existing contracts. The hatred comes from people being told that it's better and cheaper now while the price is significantly higher than before.

If I didn't have solar panels on my roof that basically cover all my energy needs, I'd be absolutely furious seeing politicians pat themselves on the back for shutting down nuclear power plants and talking about how energy is now cheaper at some foreign exchange where I can not buy while I pay more and more every month.

I do not think the two should be lumped together. They do both need storage but solar is more predictable. Winds can be low for extended periods.

LCOE is the talking point that should shut down all others along with LCOS of LFP batteries

My understanding is the AI data centers use LNG just because it's the fastest way to spin up a lot of power without using much land/permits. Solar panels would be cheaper but it still requires a lot of land and permits, plus batteries for smoothing.

I don't know why people would be "against" solar and wind. Even if they think global warning is a hoax, at a certain point (which was like 10 years ago) they're the cheapest option. So why not use them?

You can't "sell" the opposite to someone who is expressing a loyalty belief. If their tribe believes in the opposite, then no amount of logic will change their minds - only a change of their or their group's allegiance will change their minds.

> I know some people who are adamantly against solar and wind

let me guess... they sell oil?

> So what are some of the best talking points to "sell" solar and wind to the unconvinced?

Increasing utility energy prices worked for me. I wasn't anti-solar, but it didn't seem worthwhile for me. When the utility price doubled over three years (or just about), the math makes sense now. I'm not looking for solar to acheive grid independence though, I already have a whole house generator for that, because utility power is two nines reliable around here.

I almost feel like it doesn't matter if Joe-public is on board or not at this stage. For as much as capitalism kinda got us into this mess, at this point the flywheel is going in the other direction and it's a natural market consequence that renewables will win. Lack of priced in externalities created the problem but the same economics will now save us.*

The money men have no moral attachment to any source so given how cheap this mix has gotten it basically wins.

* I'd point out without China and its Leninist command economy (as well as publicly funded research) getting the price of these technologies down to where it is now we'd still be doomed, but we are where we are so now the system necessarily will act in its own self interest to use the basically free energy. Is it going to be enough at this stage? Who knows, but I see reasons to be optimistic.

check volts.wtf and notably these recent podcast episodes:

https://www.volts.wtf/p/sooner-than-you-think-electricity

https://www.volts.wtf/p/giving-clean-electricity-a-political

The sun will last forever (at least from our point of view).

>> I know some people who are adamantly against solar and wind

Sounds like they have more serious issues going on there... :-)

A few different things would help.

First would be to be clear and unambiguous when it comes to building gas/oil thermal power plants in order to deal with the intermittence problem of solar and wind. Political strategies in wind and solar is built on trust, and people will quickly become unconvinced when politicians are dishonest/ambiguous about the requirements that is needed to support a grid with a high ratio of wind and solar.

Using fossil fuels as the reserve energy for when the weather is bad allows the producers of reserve energy to demand high market prices, to the point where a whole month in EU can cost as much as a full year. Even if solar and wind would put the grid costs to zero for 90% of the time, it doesn't make the cost for the consumer any lower if the fossil fueled "reserve energy" can increase their price by 10x. Selling solar and wind require some kind of solution here.

Reserve energy also want to be paid if they are expected to stand-by 365 days a week, which is a big reason why EU subsidizes to fossil fueled thermal power plants are not decreasing when the ratio of wind and solar goes up. That costs is then added as a grid fee/taxes, hiding the true cost. Paying first to keep the fossil fueled power plants warm and ready when solar and wind is producing, and then pay them a second time for whatever the market price is when they are producing is a very costly way to operate a grid.

And last is the transmission costs. Switching between multiple different energy sources depending on the weather has a high demand for a very flexible infrastructure in terms of transmitting energy from where it is being produced to where it is being consumed. In south of Sweden as an example, the cost of transmission infrastructure and the cost of reserve energy is now the majority of consumers electricity bill, with cost associated with production of energy being a small minority.

Solving those issues is what will convince people of the viability of wind and solar.

Put it on your roof. Never pay for power again.

Pretty easy sell for me.

Why would you be adamantly against solar? That sounds like someone who is of the opinion that solar is NEVER a good idea. Nonsense.

if you require a stable energy source, neither wind nor solar (nor both) provide a complete strategy. they can be a part of a composite strategy, though.

for both wind and solar, they're also quite taxing on the environment during manufacturing. the "true cost" is rarely reported.

nuclear energy has a different set of problems (including social / political ones). here's that industry's take on the economics of wind energy: https://www.ans.org/news/article-638/the-economics-of-wind-p...

it depends. some places it makes sense, some places it doesn't.

it will be adopted when the money speaks. the good news is that money is a reasonably close proxy to "environmental benefit" (balancing the environmental costs of green infra production versus dirtiness of gas generation)

Most likely their opposition to renewables is ideological and can't be cured by reason.

Imagine being opposed to solar and wind....

Do people people really hate sun and clouds and stuff?

Or are they against the physical capture of geographical processes? ...

I've heard "muh birds" a few times. Ironically, it seems only those who eat chicken who seem to be worried about it :/

In Australia conservatives with solar on their own roof continue to complain about renewables generally. It's just a weird cultural thing for some people.

Why doing so? When there are so many people irrationally against something, there's always some upside in being closer to truth than the crowd. It's arbitrage.

https://xkcd.com/3226/

PV is getting on the range where it pays for itself in 3 or 4 years. If somebody is just "against it", well, I have to agree with the sibling that said you can't reason with that person.

You need to include batteries in the equation: solar, wind, water and batteries.

What California and others have shown is that you can replace natural gas peaker plants (literally - tear out natural gas turbines) with batteries and get both superior cost dynamics and "dispatchability" (aka turning them on and off). Batteries have millisecond level dispatch, peaker plants have hours level dispatch.

I'm going to guess they are against it because it's "woke".

A question might be "why is it woke?"

And if it's because libtards like it, then you can point out that libtards like coffee, beer, sports, etc -- so when will they boycott those?

I find no arguments against solar. I can put it everywhere and has no moving parts. Once storing is solved, perfect.

But wind?? Huge nature areas are destroyed by beton fundaments, rotors break, and just in germany was a scandal lately about recycling, as the first structures need to be renewed.