I chat with Kostantsa Rangelova and Dave Jones, authors of a new Ember report, who find that solar-plus-storage costs have declined so much that it can now provide baseload-level power in sunny cities for less than the cost of new nuclear or even new gas. We discuss why even energy pros are behind the curve on this, how quickly the technology is improving, and why most of the world doesn't see natural gas as a viable option the way the US does.
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Text transcript:
David Roberts
Greetings, everyone. This is Volts for July 16, 2025, "Solar+storage are so much farther along than you think." I'm your host, David Roberts. As anyone who follows energy debates knows, the biggest and most immediate objection to solar power is always: the sun doesn't shine at night. Here's the thing, though: it is possible to attach batteries to solar panels that will store some of their power during the day and release it at night. If you attach enough batteries to a solar panel, you can spread its output over an entire day.
Voilà: a 24/7 "baseload" source of power. Problem solved, right?
Well, no, skeptics argue. By the time you've added the cost of batteries to the cost of solar panels, the power plant becomes too expensive to compete.
In their defense, skeptics were correct about this until very recently. But, as I say over and over again on this pod, solar and batteries are both getting cheaper so consistently and so quickly that it is literally difficult to keep up. Even energy professionals have trouble keeping up.
Kostantsa Rangelova and Dave Jones
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