Energy in 2030; 15 year prediction

[macpacheco]

Very clear. Why does Florida generate so much power, and why so much by oil?

Not Oil, Natural Gas. Looks like 65% NG, 18% Coal, 13% Nuclear.
Florida is great for Solar PV, specially southern FL, go Solar Florida go !

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I suspect the government's cozy relationship with Petrobras clouds the energy market in Brazil somewhat. That said, it's my understanding that Brazil is starting to move into wind power somewhat. I'd be surprised if panels & batteries aren't appearing in the favelas.

Across the mountains, Chile is fast emerging as the South American leader in solar with a GW of utility-scale installed so far this year, the Atacama is certainly a good place for it. Remote mines are adding solar as well to reduce the need for diesel generation. The economics are just too compelling to ignore.

As for fixing the incentives for utilities... As costs get cheap enough, the ones pursuing the "keep raising costs" model are going to find themselves in a death spiral as customers flee to cheaper off-grid systems leaving the utilities to cover increasing costs from a shrinking customer base. Left alone the market will sort itself out eventually, but smart regulations would speed things up while preventing a lot of bankruptcies and investments turning to sunk costs, as well as climate and investor harm.

Even with the serious Drought Brazil is in, Brazil's electricity is still massively Hydro, over 50%. When (if) precipitation returns to normal, we'll be back to at least 75% hydro electricity.
Brazil also has a lot of biomass from Sugar Cane plantations that used to being burned in massively polluting and wasteful fires, it's now forbidden to burn it out in the field, so Sugar Cane farmers have a huge incentive to use that to generate electricity.
We also have a lot of natural gas. I wish we had more solar, wind and nuclear, stopped using NG almost totally for electricity and shifted all of it towards transportation and process heat. It would leave Brazil with a grid cleaner than Canada or France.

The big problem with solar here is we have no local PV mfg local and our massively incompetent politics drove our currency to the craper, so solar panels are way too expensive, plus Brazil doesn't have import incentives for Solar PV (import taxes are usually 100% for resale, 60+% for personal consumption).

If the political / economical situation normalizes and our exchange rates return to a normal situation (USD - BRL shot up from 1.60 to 4.00 in the last 5 years, normal might be 2.50).

to add insult to injury the electrical local distributors used to be local State owned, in the 90s they were all privatized, but states got the privilege to charge VAT over electricity sales, so when micro/mini generation was regulated, states imposed VAT even over electricity generated and consumed by customers (you're forced to export all to the grid, and then import, with the total import being used to tax you), VAT is between 24 and 32% depending on the state, so that just aggravates the situation. A few states got wiser and gave a temporary incentive so VAT isn't charged for a few years.
That's why I hope Tesla Energy becomes affordable so we could run our houses like a big UPS, without ever exporting self produced energy back to the grid, probably cheaper than being gouged by 25% (my state's VAT, no incentive here). With the option to switch from self produced PV to charging from the grid when solar is insuficient to power the house.

 

[Bangor Bob]

I've been seeing quite a few articles recently about PV capacity auctions in Brazil, so it sounds like things may be starting to move forward.

CleanTechnica Brazil

A manufacturer setting up too, 180MW/year in Sao Paolo. Not huge, but it's a start. Largest Solar PV Manufacturing Facility In Brazil To Date Inaugurated | CleanTechnica

 

[macpacheco]

I've been seeing quite a few articles recently about PV capacity auctions in Brazil, so it sounds like things may be starting to move forward.

CleanTechnica Brazil

A manufacturer setting up too, 180MW/year in Sao Paolo. Not huge, but it's a start. Largest Solar PV Manufacturing Facility In Brazil To Date Inaugurated | CleanTechnica

Brazil's total electricity market is peak 100GW demand.
We have 15GW worth of hydro dams in construction. A 1300MWe nuclear reator in construction.
We have local 3MW wind turbine manufacturing and our northern coast near coastal urban center is great to install those.
I think we're adding many GWs / year worth of name plate wind turbine capacity.
180MWp/year solar production is a little step forward, I'll take it, but it's too little. We need 10x as much. But the cost of doing business in Brazil is overwhelming when you must compete with imports. European style taxation and regulation with Africa level benefits to business. BAADDD !

 

[Carlios]

Solar power will rise for sure, but I would have a limited forecasts on its rising. Oil is in abundance at the moment (prices are low) and as other energy sources are trying to replace it, it will keep the value low. That in turn makes incentive for other energy sources to grow their market share smaller; they have to compete with lower prices. So the advances in solar power industry will depend largely on market problems (high prices of other fuels). I would make predictions more conservative than OP for solar power.
Nuclear power will (unfortunately) not go away. It is currently one of the cheapest ones, so it will go away only slowly. Wind will not surpass solar. Toyota will still dream about hybrid cars...

Just my own opinion what might happen.

 

[Johan]

Solar power will rise for sure, but I would have a limited forecasts on its rising. Oil is in abundance at the moment (prices are low) and as other energy sources are trying to replace it, it will keep the value low. That in turn makes incentive for other energy sources to grow their market share smaller; they have to compete with lower prices. So the advances in solar power industry will depend largely on market problems (high prices of other fuels). I would make predictions more conservative than OP for solar power.
Nuclear power will (unfortunately) not go away. It is currently one of the cheapest ones, so it will go away only slowly. Wind will not surpass solar. Toyota will still dream about hybrid cars...

Just my own opinion what might happen.

Your opinion does not seem very fact based. Nuclear is going because it's expensive. Oil demand will keep falling even as the producers try to mitigate it by lowering price. Solar will soon take off for real. We are reaching grid parity very fast in more and more places.

 

[nwdiver]

Energy PRODUCTION;
- Nuclear power will only exist in tightly regulated markets. ~1/3 of the current fleet will be shut down. Vogtle and Summer will be the last fission plants ever built.

New prediction: >90% of the US nuclear fleet will be shutdown by 2030... IMO we will have 5-10 online units... down from ~99 today.

The economics of nuclear power is looking increasingly dire...