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US solar plant costs fall another 30 per cent in one year

reneweconomy.com.au

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Re: US solar plant costs fall another 30 per cent in one year

#41

Post by dogruck »

s0rce wrote: post #32
redwood wrote: post #8

Flying recently from Phoenix to San Jose I was amazed by the size of the solar arrays I saw in the desert. I wasn't sure that that was what they were; but I found some of them on Google maps satellite after and confirmed it (cool time we live it). Good news is that there's so much more room to build more!!! Edit here if anyone's curious: https://goo.gl/maps/SjzWw9b2dSH2 Edit 2 - as an aside, when I first saw, I could…

Sadly, there appears to be many environmentalists and conservation people against large desert solar arrays claiming it threatens habitat of whatever lives there. It probably does have an impact but at this point unless population declines or energy use dramatically decreases I think we need to focus on minimizing human impact on the environment and not stopping everything that isn't completely harmless.

Why is that sad? Are you more knowledgeable than said environmentalists, or do you simply assume that they are wrong?

Re: US solar plant costs fall another 30 per cent in one year

#42

Post by cup »

dogruck wrote: post #41
s0rce wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, there appears to be many environmentalists and conservation people against large desert solar arrays claiming it threatens habitat of whatever lives there. It probably does have an impact but at this point unless population declines or energy use dramatically decreases I think we need to focus on minimizing human impact on the environment and not stopping everything that isn't completely harmless.

Why is that sad? Are you more knowledgeable than said environmentalists, or do you simply assume that they are wrong?

I'm guessing theyre sad because they don't value desert habitats highly nor appreciate them and are probably raised to think deserts are "empty" when thats far from the truth.

Re: US solar plant costs fall another 30 per cent in one year

#43

Post by epistasis »

hwillis wrote: post #36
epistasis wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US at least, a huge fraction of costs for residential solar are in customer acquisition. Something like 20%-30% of the cost of a residential install goes to paying for lists of potential customers and marketing to them! This makes US residential solar much more expensive than in many other countries. After that cost is reduced, there may be room for innovation in reducing install costs by bundling solar with r…

> In the US at least, a huge fraction of costs for residential solar are in customer acquisition. Something like 20%-30% of the cost of a residential install goes to paying for lists of potential customers and marketing to them! Page 22 of the report[1] estimates sales and marketing/customer acquisition for residential solar to be 12% of the price, and says Vivint and Sunrun report it as 17% and 22%, so I think your…

Ah yes, 30% was too high. But 19% is what's reported by other analysts, such as GreenTechMedia [1]. Like you, GTM also expects customer acquisition costs to remain high, which I find to be unfortunate. As pointed out above [2], Australia manages to have an industry with less money spent on marketing.

[1] https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/costs-to-acquir...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15290269

Re: US solar plant costs fall another 30 per cent in one year

#44

Post by mc32 »

taneq wrote: post #5
mc32 wrote: post #2

On the one hand it's great to get Solar below cost _at someone else's_ expense (Chinese over producing manufacturers), on the other hand I'd prefer that some of our own PV mfgs remain afloat. Ultimately the goal is to wean off of fossil fuels, but if all our R&D is unprofitable we may miss some breakthroughs.

"Over-producing" isn't really a thing. You're complaining about supply outstripping demand causing prices to fall - that's always going to happen with any mass produced goods. It sounds like the real issue is that doing R&D in the U.S. is uncompetitively expensive compared to doing the same work in China.

Germany was once (ten years ago) the top PV panel producer. All it's MFGs, including SolarWorld[1] have gone under because of dumping and flooding the market with cheap PVs. This subverts R&D in panel technology both in Germany and in the US. In addition, some German PVs were hacked[2] and had their IP end up in the hands of CN MFGs, again, that subverts German (and any other MFG) R&D efforts in PV tech. So we may end up with retardation in PV R&D which is not a good outcome.

[1]https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/last-major-german-solar...

[2]http://time.com/106319/heres-what-chinese-hackers-actually-s...

Re: US solar plant costs fall another 30 per cent in one year

#45

Post by flgb »

D_Alex wrote: post #30
sounds wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inflation-adjusted residential costs according to nrel.gov are shown in the chart on page vi of https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy17osti/68925.pdf The raw costs, not adjusted for inflation: Q1 2014: $4.52/W total for $1.03/W modules [0] Q1 2015: $3.09/Wdc total for $0.70/Wdc modules [1] Q1 2016: $2.93/Wdc total for $0.63/Wdc modules [2] Q1 2017: $2.80/Wdc total for $0.35/Wdc modules [3] Conclusion: Even if the modules cost…

Based on the Australian experience, the next wave of price declines for residential solar will indeed come from balance-of-system cost declines, increased installation efficiency and lower profits. Current costs in Australia are about A$ 1.70 /pk-W (~US$1.35), pre-subsidies, split roughly into 35% modules, 10% inverter, 10% mounting system, 10% other hardware (cabling, switchboard etc), 10% installation and 25% "vend…

Energy costs are significantly lower in the US.

Re: US solar plant costs fall another 30 per cent in one year

#46

Post by Tsagadai »

s0rce wrote: post #32
redwood wrote: post #8

Flying recently from Phoenix to San Jose I was amazed by the size of the solar arrays I saw in the desert. I wasn't sure that that was what they were; but I found some of them on Google maps satellite after and confirmed it (cool time we live it). Good news is that there's so much more room to build more!!! Edit here if anyone's curious: https://goo.gl/maps/SjzWw9b2dSH2 Edit 2 - as an aside, when I first saw, I could…

Sadly, there appears to be many environmentalists and conservation people against large desert solar arrays claiming it threatens habitat of whatever lives there. It probably does have an impact but at this point unless population declines or energy use dramatically decreases I think we need to focus on minimizing human impact on the environment and not stopping everything that isn't completely harmless.

Do those same people get sad when they see arable land being used for food production or large cities from space? They probably need a reality check on their understanding of humanity. We have always been modifying the environment to suit our needs, every species does this.

Re: US solar plant costs fall another 30 per cent in one year

#47

Post by sapote »

s0rce wrote: post #32
redwood wrote: post #8

Flying recently from Phoenix to San Jose I was amazed by the size of the solar arrays I saw in the desert. I wasn't sure that that was what they were; but I found some of them on Google maps satellite after and confirmed it (cool time we live it). Good news is that there's so much more room to build more!!! Edit here if anyone's curious: https://goo.gl/maps/SjzWw9b2dSH2 Edit 2 - as an aside, when I first saw, I could…

Sadly, there appears to be many environmentalists and conservation people against large desert solar arrays claiming it threatens habitat of whatever lives there. It probably does have an impact but at this point unless population declines or energy use dramatically decreases I think we need to focus on minimizing human impact on the environment and not stopping everything that isn't completely harmless.

There are studies that have found that the net carbon impact of such desert solar arrays can actually be detrimental -- that is, installing the solar arrays in the desert causes an imbalance in desert soil ecology causing a release of soil carbon that exceeds the carbon benefit of the solar array. Here's one article on it, but I'm sure you can find others:

http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/California-solar-proje...

Re: US solar plant costs fall another 30 per cent in one year

#48

Post by maxerickson »

dogruck wrote: post #41
s0rce wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, there appears to be many environmentalists and conservation people against large desert solar arrays claiming it threatens habitat of whatever lives there. It probably does have an impact but at this point unless population declines or energy use dramatically decreases I think we need to focus on minimizing human impact on the environment and not stopping everything that isn't completely harmless.

Why is that sad? Are you more knowledgeable than said environmentalists, or do you simply assume that they are wrong?

Environmentalism is often just a stated preference. Like humans shouldn't disturb some thing.

So it isn't necessarily the case that you need to be more knowledgeable to challenge them. Availability of inexpensive energy without burning coal is another preference.

I certainly have reached the point where I think popular environmentalism is waaaaay too focused on static conservation.

Re: US solar plant costs fall another 30 per cent in one year

#49

Post by dogruck »

maxerickson wrote: post #48
dogruck wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that sad? Are you more knowledgeable than said environmentalists, or do you simply assume that they are wrong?

Environmentalism is often just a stated preference. Like humans shouldn't disturb some thing. So it isn't necessarily the case that you need to be more knowledgeable to challenge them. Availability of inexpensive energy without burning coal is another preference. I certainly have reached the point where I think popular environmentalism is waaaaay too focused on static conservation.

That's a generic view which I might actually be inclined to agree with you on. I'm personally skeptical of the current climate change politics, for example.

But OP made a more specific claim about solar arrays in the desert. Seems like we should be able to debate that on its merits.

Re: US solar plant costs fall another 30 per cent in one year

#50

Post by sbov »

icefox wrote: post #39
epistasis wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US at least, a huge fraction of costs for residential solar are in customer acquisition. Something like 20%-30% of the cost of a residential install goes to paying for lists of potential customers and marketing to them! This makes US residential solar much more expensive than in many other countries. After that cost is reduced, there may be room for innovation in reducing install costs by bundling solar with r…

When I got solar several years ago I watched as the various installers wasted a ton of time selling to me. It was clear that all the steps between when I was interested and when I gave the go ahead to start the install were extremely expensive in the big picture and in the long term the winners of residential installation would be those that will be able to drive that cost down and or spread that cost out to as many…

Here in SoCal, I have to fight off door to door solar salesman at least once per month. It's really annoying.
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