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How Cheap Can Solar Get?

rameznaam.com

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Re: How Cheap Can Solar Get?

#111

Post by tired_man »

RealityVoid wrote: post #108
hwstar wrote: post #103

I have a 1kW solar panel battery storage system which I use to power my computers and servers. I installed it a couple of years ago to help mitigate the $0.37 kWh top tier rate that SDG&E charges. In California, a minimum charge was introduced and will be $10.00 starting in 2016. I suspect that this charge will be jacked up in increments till it is a significant fraction of the monthly bill. If this does indeed play…

What you're saying does not make sense from the utilities point of view. Why, if they have superior competition, would they make themselves more uncompetitive? Besides, centralized energy systems have certain advantages that household operations do not have. Maybe even better ones will arrive once solar becomes more accessible. SO it makes sense that they will stay at least as competitive as off-grid systems.

Can't keep customers? Then charge the ones you do have even more to make up for that shortfall.

Businesses trying to keep their outdated business models alive do that sort of thing all the time. Just look at the music and movie industry's continued flailing as they try to keep CDs/DVDs profitable while their customer base wants files that they can play on _any_ device they own, not a physical copy or some DRM-laden crap that forces them to use it on one system.

Re: How Cheap Can Solar Get?

#112

Post by lost_name »

brrt wrote: post #58
redcalx wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you factored in the CO2 footprint of solar panels? Producing pure silicon is energy intensive, then there are various metals involved, so you've got mining, refinement, smelting, and bulk transport costs. The panels also have a limited lifetime so you need to think about the disposal or recycling cost in 15-20 years. Pretty sure I've missed a load of costs too.

This is calculated in energy return on energy invested (EROI). Solar is doing.. ok in that regard: http://rameznaam.com/2015/06/04/whats-the-eroi-of-solar/ The comparable number for fossil fuels (in this case, oil) is 'well to tank efficiency', which amounts to about 25% for oil, if i recall correctly. So 1/4th of energy contained in oil is already spent to bring it to market. Notably, wind energy has a far more favo…

To be clear, the article you link is arguing against the graph at the top.

> Solar panels, according to Weißbach, generate four times as much energy over their lifetimes as it takes to manufacture them. Unfortunately, Weißbach also claims that an EROI of 7 is required to support a society like Europe. [...] For solar, which I know better, this paper is an outlier.

> If we used only the estimates from 2010 on, we’d find an EROI for poly-Si solar of around 15. If we used only the 2013 estimate, we’d find an EROI of around 25.

> In summary: The Weißbach paper is, with respect to solar, an outlier. A more realistic estimate of poly-Si solar EROI, today, is somewhere above 10, and probably above 15. And it’s rising. Solar panels generate many times more energy over their lifetimes than is used to construct them and their associated hardware.

Re: How Cheap Can Solar Get?

#113

Post by ZeroGravitas »

nell wrote: post #98

If solar is really that viable of an option, India should be investing a lot in this research. Power is a huge problem there. 24 hours of power supply is a luxury even in top cities. Small industries in rural parts operate around availability of power. There are a lot of wins here. And guess what, there is a lot of sunlight in major parts of the country throughout the year.

There's a lot going on (note that wind is currently cheaper)

http://cleantechnica.com/tag/india/

Re: How Cheap Can Solar Get?

#114

Post by davegardner »

meragrin wrote: post #70
mtgx wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The very least the governments can do is eliminate all subsidies to coal, oil and natural gas. They've had them for decades. I don't think it's healthy for a society to prop up an industry that long with subsidies, especially when it's one of the most profitable.

Could you list the subsidies you're against? All I ever find is general business items or for non-conventional fuels.

The IMF recently published a working paper[1] on energy subsidies at global and regional levels that might be of interest. They do use an fairly broad definition of what counts as a subsidy (including cost of damages environmental damages and global warming effect of CO2 emissions).

[1] http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=42940.0

Re: How Cheap Can Solar Get?

#115

Post by hwstar »

tired_man wrote: post #109
hwstar wrote: post #103

I have a 1kW solar panel battery storage system which I use to power my computers and servers. I installed it a couple of years ago to help mitigate the $0.37 kWh top tier rate that SDG&E charges. In California, a minimum charge was introduced and will be $10.00 starting in 2016. I suspect that this charge will be jacked up in increments till it is a significant fraction of the monthly bill. If this does indeed play…

That's San Diego Graft and Extortion you're talking about, right? This movement is going to put the skids under the home solar company's pitch that you'll be able to feed electricity back and sell it to the power companies.

Yep, that's the entity I'm talking about.

Unless the utilities decide to become more competitive, the only way to win in the long term is NOT to feed the energy you make back into the grid.

Re: How Cheap Can Solar Get?

#116

Post by mark_l_watson »

I installed solar a few years ago. I didn't do it for economic reasons, rather because I wanted to.

There is now push back by the dominant power company in my area against solar. When I got solar they gave me a small grant.

Solar is the future I think. Too much potential danger from nuclear and coal polutes too much.

Re: How Cheap Can Solar Get?

#117

Post by logfromblammo »

Retric wrote: post #100
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all PV panels, wind turbines or EV car designs use rare earths e.g. Tesla doesn't use any in their motors. Also, lots of other things that aren't good for the environment use rare earths. Kind of weird and illogical that people only care about it when you're trying to do good.

People are terrible when dealing with large scale diffuse issues. Coal might be 30 times as bad as solar, but that's not zero and most of coal’s harm is spread over a large area. In 2003, China had 4,143 coal related accidents that killed 6,434 people. But, installing rooftop solar also kills some people so it must be the great evil. PS: A report by the World Bank in cooperation with the Chinese government found that…

I would rather have 0.1% of the Earth be made toxic enough to kill me in 600 seconds than have 100% of the Earth be made toxic enough to kill me in 600 months.

The pollution from solar cell manufacture is mostly near the mines and chemical processors, and the effects are mitigated if you don't go near there or live downstream. Pollution from coal burning affects everyone who lives downwind of any furnace, and those are located near the users to cut down on transmission losses.

Natural sources of pollution, like volcanoes, are not much of a concern, because most of the biosphere chooses not to live near them. So an artificial zone made more inhospitable than the surface of Venus, confined somehow, and situated far from civilization, is a bit less of a concern than the air quality index of Beijing.

Would it help if the raw materials were mined from asteroids, the finished product manufactured in space, and then dropped to the surface by nontoxic ablative shields and parachutes? If the answer is yes, being able to confine the pollution to specific areas on Earth is almost as good. (But the confinement is the hard part.)

Re: How Cheap Can Solar Get?

#119

Post by RamezNaam »

newman314 wrote: post #8
RamezNaam wrote: post #7

Hi. I'm the author of this blog post. Happy to answer questions people have, as time allows, on Wednesday. Upcoming posts will look at the future of wind power, the future of energy storage, and what the missing pieces are. If you don't want to wait, you can read my thoughts on energy storage here: http://rameznaam.com/2015/04/14/energy-storage-about-to-get-...

So given the Fed 30% solar subsidy is set to expire at the end of 2016, have you modeled (or know of a model) that shows when the price of solar will crossover the loss of subsidy? I.e. I'm trying to figure out if going solar now is better (in California) or just waiting a few more years. I'm in no particular hurry since my electric bill vs. sq/ft is already pretty good.

UBS has done some modeling on this for their clients. They believe utility-based solar will take a hit for a 2-3 years and then rebound. The Fed ITC will drop from 30% to 10%. Making up that 20% cost change will take a little over one doubling of solar scale.

Rooftop solar will probably also take 2-3 years to make up for the cost lost to the subsidy reduction. It may even be 4. So after 2016, I'd expect rooftop prices to rise before slowly dropping, and getting back to 2016 levels around 2019 or 2020.

Re: How Cheap Can Solar Get?

#120

Post by RamezNaam »

vilda wrote: post #41
RamezNaam wrote: post #7

Hi. I'm the author of this blog post. Happy to answer questions people have, as time allows, on Wednesday. Upcoming posts will look at the future of wind power, the future of energy storage, and what the missing pieces are. If you don't want to wait, you can read my thoughts on energy storage here: http://rameznaam.com/2015/04/14/energy-storage-about-to-get-...

The price of energy storage, an impact of energy storage technologies to environment, and costs of unpredictable energy distribution in the network does not seem to be calculated at all. They are not trivial. Germany claims one trillion EUR direct costs on network upgrades to cope with renewable energy. They do not take into account energy storage costs. Even now (at least in my country) 75% of energy costs are distr…

Germany gets roughly as much sunlight as Canada, and started installing solar when costs were 5-10x what they are today. They paved the way for future installations at lower costs, but their experience isn't directly applicable.

Energy storage is indeed going to be vital once solar exceeds 10-20% of capacity. Energy storage, fortunately, is also dropping fast in cost:http://rameznaam.com/2015/04/14/energy-storage-about-to-get-...

I have future posts coming with closer looks at the future of storage prices, wind prices, and possibly one on nuclear.

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