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The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months

electrek.co

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Re: The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months

#101

Post by elif »

alex20 wrote: post #48

And here in the USA some states are punishing solar customers who sell their energy, by taxing them on infrastructure costs, to protect the big energy companies. Their reasoning for taxing them is to "maintain the lines and equipment". The counter-argument to that is, "customers who consume pay taxes and fee's to maintain the lines, and on top of that, the government is giving them tax breaks to help "maintain the li…

Oh boo hoo.

In my state, we are not allowed to tie into the grid at all.

Re: The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months

#102

Post by peppaz »

jmcgough wrote: post #80
alex20 wrote: post #48

And here in the USA some states are punishing solar customers who sell their energy, by taxing them on infrastructure costs, to protect the big energy companies. Their reasoning for taxing them is to "maintain the lines and equipment". The counter-argument to that is, "customers who consume pay taxes and fee's to maintain the lines, and on top of that, the government is giving them tax breaks to help "maintain the li…

My gf is an electromechanical engineer at a solar power startup (and obviously supportive of solar power initiatives). Just asked her about this, and she said that: 1) the electrical grid wasn't designed for transferring power this way, and it can damage the grid 2) because solar power isn't a constant power source (say, a cloud blocks the sun for a minute), power companies need to keep power available for someone wh…

Good thing Tesla is making huge battery packs for our homes so we can ditch the grid entirely.

Re: The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months

#103

Post by ChuckMcM »

The aggressiveness of the price drops on solar is pretty amazing. I just lost one of the inverters on my grid-tie system after it had run trouble free for 13 years. So we're looking at the first "major" repair to the system I installed in 2003. And in 2003 my 5.2kW of panels on my roof cost $38,000 before subsidies and $19,000 after. 28 panels, two 2.5kW inverters, net about 4.2kW of generation.

I priced out replacing all the panels (now I can do in 10 panels what used to take 28) and the inverters with a single 5kW inverter, $7,000. My price, no subsidies. That is over 80% reduction in cost, over 13 years, of the list price of $40K.

And that is why it is a huge problem for the power companies, it makes less sense now to not have panels on your roof.

Re: The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months

#104

Post by Declanomous »

savanaly wrote: post #58
d_theorist wrote: post #45

This might seem like a weird thing to complain about, but am I the only person who is sick to death of headlines of the form "X just did Y"? It's the "just" I object to. It seems to be some sort of trend over the last couple of years. I think it's to make it seem more dramatic or something. It just happened! My god! In this case it is especially ridiculous, since the article describes something that happened over the…

I think it's just a more casual and less formal way of saying something happened. I can't picture an illustrious newspaper of yesteryear ever writing a headline of the form "X just did Y". But due to the rise of social media and the progressive commoditization ( not using either of those terms as an epithet as so many do!) of news stories, users respond better to headlines that read like it's something their friend w…

"X did Y" works equally as well as "X just did Y." I'm sure they use 'just' to make the article seem more immediate. "The Price of Solar Power fell 50% in 16 months" has a markedly different tone than "The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months". The headline with the work 'just' seems like breaking news. The other variant seems like a normal report that you can pick up an read at your leisure.

Most articles in a normal newspaper don't do this because they don't have to. Only the headline needs to be sensationalist to sell the paper. On a website, every article needs to drag people in. The current headline is click-bait. That would be forgivable if the entire article wasn't terrible as well. There is very little content or analysis, everything is cribbed from other sources, including the charts. I will give the author credit for linking all of their sources, but that is where my praise ends.

Re: The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months

#105

Post by ProAm »

alex20 wrote: post #48

And here in the USA some states are punishing solar customers who sell their energy, by taxing them on infrastructure costs, to protect the big energy companies. Their reasoning for taxing them is to "maintain the lines and equipment". The counter-argument to that is, "customers who consume pay taxes and fee's to maintain the lines, and on top of that, the government is giving them tax breaks to help "maintain the li…

> The counter-argument to that is, "customers who consume pay taxes and fee's to maintain the lines

It's not consumption anymore, but usage. You are using the grid infrastructure you should be required to help maintain it. It was just never an issue before now. Everyone uses the grid, the community needs to help maintain it.

Re: The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months

#106

Post by tanderson92 »

epistasis wrote: post #96
tim333 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case: >DEWA invited developers to submit bids for configurations made up of three sub-phases: a mandatory 200MW to be commissioned in April 2018, and another two optional 300MW tranches in 2019 and 2020, respectively,” the firm said in an analysis of the results. so it's not being built for 2 or 3 years and they are probably hoping costs will continue dropping during that period. The details of the situation…

As far as energy goes, that's still very near term. But costs will continue to drop in that time period, without a doubt. Perhaps as important, they're hoping that interest rates remain low for the next few years.

Don't see why they would need to hope that interest rates remain low. Interest rates are already low, so they can sell debt at current interest rates for the term needed. I do think you're correct that low interest rates are a factor.

Re: The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months

#107

Post by warmwaffles »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #103

The aggressiveness of the price drops on solar is pretty amazing. I just lost one of the inverters on my grid-tie system after it had run trouble free for 13 years. So we're looking at the first "major" repair to the system I installed in 2003. And in 2003 my 5.2kW of panels on my roof cost $38,000 before subsidies and $19,000 after. 28 panels, two 2.5kW inverters, net about 4.2kW of generation. I priced out replacin…

How long until you start seeing a return on investment? Right now my electricity bill for my home is ~100 a month in Texas. I would need to keep the same panels without maintenance fees for 33.33 years by your price point of 40k

Re: The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months

#108

Post by schrodinger »

warmwaffles wrote: post #107
ChuckMcM wrote: post #103

The aggressiveness of the price drops on solar is pretty amazing. I just lost one of the inverters on my grid-tie system after it had run trouble free for 13 years. So we're looking at the first "major" repair to the system I installed in 2003. And in 2003 my 5.2kW of panels on my roof cost $38,000 before subsidies and $19,000 after. 28 panels, two 2.5kW inverters, net about 4.2kW of generation. I priced out replacin…

How long until you start seeing a return on investment? Right now my electricity bill for my home is ~100 a month in Texas. I would need to keep the same panels without maintenance fees for 33.33 years by your price point of 40k

You can also sell electricity generated by your panels back to the grid.

Re: The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months

#109

Post by qaq »

warmwaffles wrote: post #107
ChuckMcM wrote: post #103

The aggressiveness of the price drops on solar is pretty amazing. I just lost one of the inverters on my grid-tie system after it had run trouble free for 13 years. So we're looking at the first "major" repair to the system I installed in 2003. And in 2003 my 5.2kW of panels on my roof cost $38,000 before subsidies and $19,000 after. 28 panels, two 2.5kW inverters, net about 4.2kW of generation. I priced out replacin…

How long until you start seeing a return on investment? Right now my electricity bill for my home is ~100 a month in Texas. I would need to keep the same panels without maintenance fees for 33.33 years by your price point of 40k

Y but now it's 7K and not 40K.

Re: The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months

#110

Post by DamnYuppie »

peppaz wrote: post #102
jmcgough wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My gf is an electromechanical engineer at a solar power startup (and obviously supportive of solar power initiatives). Just asked her about this, and she said that: 1) the electrical grid wasn't designed for transferring power this way, and it can damage the grid 2) because solar power isn't a constant power source (say, a cloud blocks the sun for a minute), power companies need to keep power available for someone wh…

Good thing Tesla is making huge battery packs for our homes so we can ditch the grid entirely.

You don't need to wait for Tesla, you can buy Lithium battery packs now. Heck even AGM or wet cell batteries work fine. I have about 800 ampH and I can do pretty much anything I want except run an AC off of it.
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