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

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

#361

Post by tedsanders »

coryfklein wrote: post #215
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…

> And that is why it is a huge problem for the power companies It is a problem, but not necessarily in the way you may be thinking. Peak residential power usage is in the evening when solar isn't available. Power companies therefore end up spinning down coal and natural gas during peak solar, then just spinning them back up again as the sun begins to set. [1] So you haven't replaced the coal and natural gas plants, y…

This claim about peak power usage is untrue, at least for California. For the past 20 years in California, the annual peak electricity usage has ALWAYS occurred between 2pm and 5pm.:

https://www.caiso.com/Documents/CaliforniaISOPeakLoadHistory...

I used to work at a power company as well.

(It's true that the daily peak is in the evening and that won't be helped by solar. But capacity is built to handle the annual peak, not the daily peak, and because the annual peak tends to be hot afternoons, solar actually will replace other generation in the long run.)

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

#362

Post by ssmoot »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #352
ssmoot wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your car isn't at the house while solar is being produced though for many/most people right? This seems unrealistic.

Its probably sitting at your employer's lot. A lot that that would have charge stations.

None that I've worked at. And aren't small businesses the biggest category of employer?

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

#363

Post by ssmoot »

eru wrote: post #338
ssmoot wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your car isn't at the house while solar is being produced though for many/most people right? This seems unrealistic.

A lot of cars sit in carparks during the day.

I guess the implication being there'd be a massive number of charge spots and you could swipe your card to pull off the grid what your home is putting on.

But this would mean turning a car-park with just 40 plugs into needing 1,600 amps at 240v. With those grid connected homes having modest 2kWh solar installations you're talking 80kw/h. If you only spent 3kWh getting to work on average (double that for the round-trip) you'd fully charge the cars in a couple hours.

So I guess the goal would be to run your home off the unused capacity. But then you're putting a far heavier duty cycle on those batteries. Whose going to pay for them when that $10,000 pack needs to be refurbished in five years? Or do we just accept EVs depreciating down to zero when the pack replacement cost exceeds their value?

There may well be good answers to all this. Just some things that popped into my head.

It would seem at first glance to be very costly for the car park, the grid and the consumer. I'm not sure any technology with the depreciation schedule of lithium batteries makes sense financially or environmentally?

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

#364

Post by toomuchtodo »

afarrell wrote: post #341
eru wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead (or rather in addition) to storing power, we can also get better at coordinating demand. There are already programs for industrial users to get electricity for much cheaper, if they can tolerate power cuts during peak demand. Those programs will become more and more rewarding to join and extend and automate as supply gets spikier.

Is there a way to coordinate demand without asking thousands of people to give Alice the ability to shut off their appliances?

No, although the current system is pretty tame. The electric company can turn your electric water heater or air conditioner (depending on geography and utility) off for 15 minutes at a time, and in return you get a credit on your electric bill. Its opt in.

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

#365

Post by martinald »

This headline is beyond misleading. The reason this bid was so low that it is financed by a state owned company in Abu Dhabi.

"One can suspect that Masdar had access to long-term financing through the wealthy emirate of Abu Dhabi that no commercial banks, the primary source of capital for the other bidders, could match in cost."

The cost of capital is the most important thing on these projects. If you're getting below market capital financing then no shit, prices are going to fall a lot.

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

#366

Post by toomuchtodo »

gonzoflip wrote: post #202
harryh wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone who tells you to expect a 10% annual return from the S&P500 is lying to you. And probably trying to sell you something.

Really, I do not understand your reasoning since the S&P 500 has an annualized return of >10% since 1970. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%26P_500_Index#Annual_returns

Just because the S&P has seen such returns over the last 40 years, doesn't mean you'll see those returns over the next 40 years. The US economy is aging out, has stagnant wages, etc.

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

#367

Post by jessaustin »

Spooky23 wrote: post #360
eru wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear could be made cheaper (even with Uranium) by updating regulations. Fission plants are held to a much higher standards of safety in terms of eg decrease in quality adjusted life-years per Gigawatthour than any other form of producing electricity. Even solar. (Though most deaths and injuries from solar come from people slipping off their roof when installing residential capacity. If memory serves right.)

A nuclear plant today would cost something like $6B that's not a regulatory tweak. The problem with nuclear is waste disposal (still not figured out, and a will be a problem for decades/centuries after the plant is closed) and amortization of billions of capital costs. With the price disruption potential of other technology, it's a bad bet, and has been so for many years.

Nuclear was only ever "viable" for political reasons. We had to have enough nuclear weapons to extinguish mammalian life nineteen times over. Eighteen times would have been pathetic. It was all a boondoggle anyway, so the war pigs were happy to spread a bit of cash on the civilian side...

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

#368

Post by jfoutz »

coryfklein wrote: post #215
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…

> And that is why it is a huge problem for the power companies It is a problem, but not necessarily in the way you may be thinking. Peak residential power usage is in the evening when solar isn't available. Power companies therefore end up spinning down coal and natural gas during peak solar, then just spinning them back up again as the sun begins to set. [1] So you haven't replaced the coal and natural gas plants, y…

Well, you could just massively overproduce solar, and use the excess to pump water up a hill. Also, I think there are certain externalities with coal that your friend never had to pay for, like Mercury poisoning. Reducing the amount of time coal plants run may be beneficial to reduce those externalities.

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

#369

Post by dredmorbius »

krstck wrote: post #44
SwellJoe wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of farmland and ranch land in the US that shouldn't be farmland or ranch land. They're too dry, too hot, and competing for water resources with people and natural (sometimes endangered) ecosystems. So, maybe it's something that should be encouraged; the food those farms and ranches produce would need to be replaced by food grown in more appropriate climates, and we'd need to rethink our recent "local fo…

My understanding is that transportation is actually a small factor in total food emissions. It seems that promoting "local food" without paying attention to whether that food can be optimally produced locally, might be more environmentally unfriendly than simply producing it wherever it is most efficient to produce and then transporting it.

For rail or ship delivery especially, yes. For trucks, somewhat less so, and for air, generally not.

Ships and rail both favour crops which store well (grains) or can be shipped frozen or refrigerated. For fresh fruit and vegetables, time is critical, and you generally want to be on store shelves within at most a few days. That's where trade-offs between location, farming costs (particularly for greenhoused or hydroponic farming) vs. transport start to get factored in. There are reasons why a generation ago you simply didn't have fresh produce out of season.

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

#370

Post by toomuchtodo »

dragontamer wrote: post #188
kragen wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US$40K was the cost when Chuck did it in 2003. Now we're talking about US$7000 over 25 years, which is US$23 a month. US$23 a month is not "well outside of the typical person's price range" in the US. If you want to "save up for your kids", the way to do it is to invest your money in the investments that have the highest ROI, as long as you have enough liquidity to weather emergencies. Pay off your 23% credit card be…

> US$40K was the cost when Chuck did it in 2003. Now we're talking about US$7000 over 25 years, which is US$23 a month. Chuck is replacing a $2000 inverter in just 10 years. If your emergencies include "fixing the damn solar panels that you bought", that's your own damn fault. In any case, when middle-class Americans start buying solar en masse, I'll admit I'm wrong. But for now, I'm going to bet you that this is a l…

> In any case, when middle-class Americans start buying solar en masse, I'll admit I'm wrong.

Promise? Because that day will be here sooner than you think.

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/The-U.S.-Solar-M...

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