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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

#121

Post by redwood »

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?

Generally, it isn't really environmentalists exactly fighting these projects. Instead it's folks who don't want them near where they live or other powerful interests in the vicinity, who utilize existing environmental regulations to put these projects into analysis limbo for years on end. So there is a relationship in that the environmental laws are able to be abused to stop NIMBY projects. The same laws are now being used to stop High-Speed Rail.

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

#122

Post by eru »

wallace_f wrote: post #92
D_Alex wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Based on that, shouldn't it be possible to get close to a 35% price decline, as long as the government allows you to buy wholesale and self install? It would be great to see a DIY community around this, making widespread adoption even cheaper.

You can definitely get a monetary price decline from DIY. But most people's time has value, too.

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

#123

Post by eru »

ehsankia wrote: post #74
extrapickles wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the northern states don't have much sunlight and have cheap enough power to make it not worth it.

What about some place like California? It has sunlight almost all year round, it has a pretty progressive government, and a leading tech sector. With house prices being so high, so the cost of solar panels would be relatively lower too.

They also have a crazy amount of NIMBYs. Though they might not have figured out how to object to solar panels, yet?

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

#124

Post by josefresco »

mikekchar wrote: post #105
pfarnsworth wrote: post #70

When will prices drop below $20k for a full install? I get so frustrated when I hear that the price keeps dropping, but the price for a consumer install hasn't dropped below $20k in years. If I do the installation myself, will that make it cheaper?

I suspect a lot of it has to do with housing prices where you live. It's a pretty easy upgrade to a house, and adding $20K to the mortgage for most houses these days is trivial. If you are selling, then you can probably even make a pretty decent return on investment because people are willing to tack on such "small" amounts when they buy the home. So until solar panels become a standard that everyone expects in a hom…

20K turns into roughly 33k in 30 years. I think trivial is a relative term.

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

#125

Post by philh »

bjelkeman-again wrote: post #75
shandor wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is fascinating if true. Do you gave any sources, I'd be really interested in reading more on the matter.

This gives a good overview. What people miss is that during the summer the sun is up all the time. (In the winter, not so much.) And average cloud cover is also accounted for. http://re.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pvgis/countries/europe/EU-Glob_op...

> What people miss is that during the summer the sun is up all the time. (In the winter, not so much.)

It sounds like these two effects should cancel each other out. Are you saying that people take winter into account but not summer?

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

#126

Post by Robotbeat »

cup wrote: post #42
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?

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.

I think some reference is useful, here.

Agriculture is and will be much more land-intensive than solar.

I once calculated that the US could switch entirely to solar just on a fraction of the land that is currently used for ethanol production alone.

And what is a better place to put solar panels? In the desert or fertile arable land? Deserts contain life, of course, but the density of life and biodiversity per unit area is much smaller. Additionally, solar panels provide shade and, unlike agriculture, don't require intensive tilling, harvesting, irrigation, spreading of pesticides (natural or otherwise) or fertilizer and the runoff that causes. They mostly just sit there, maybe getting a cleaning every once in a while (but unlike concentrating/thermal solar, don't need to be cleaned super often).

Once the panels are placed, your desert tortoise can nestle in the convenient shade they provide.

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

#127

Post by Filligree »

philh wrote: post #125
bjelkeman-again wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This gives a good overview. What people miss is that during the summer the sun is up all the time. (In the winter, not so much.) And average cloud cover is also accounted for. http://re.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pvgis/countries/europe/EU-Glob_op...

> What people miss is that during the summer the sun is up all the time. (In the winter, not so much.) It sounds like these two effects should cancel each other out. Are you saying that people take winter into account but not summer?

Depends on what you're using it for. A common use-case is cottages that run off the grid, which are only used in the summer half of the year anyway.

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

#128

Post by wallace_f »

eru wrote: post #122
wallace_f wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on that, shouldn't it be possible to get close to a 35% price decline, as long as the government allows you to buy wholesale and self install? It would be great to see a DIY community around this, making widespread adoption even cheaper.

You can definitely get a monetary price decline from DIY. But most people's time has value, too.

Not sure what your lifestyle is like, but I think you would be surprised by how many people are willing to do weekend DIY projects on their homes, especially if they will save them money.

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

#129

Post by jessaustin »

codecamper wrote: post #78

If you have an interest in investing in solar, this Friday the ITC will decide if US solar manufacturers were harmed by too cheap imports. If they rule yes, most likely the manufacturers will drop.

If the ITC finds that manufacturers were harmed and allows some sort of benefit for them to compensate, surely their share price would increase?

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

#130

Post by nwah1 »

Iv wrote: post #31
nwah1 wrote: post #18

Solar panels are a semiconductor technology, and as such follow Moore's Law, and have been for decades. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/smaller-chea...

No. Moore's law talks about miniaturization that leads to better performance and about the fact that when it was first pronounced, no significant roadblocks seemed to exist for 20 years. The improvements in solar panel tech do not depend on such a straightforward route. There is no process that you can simply iterate through to reproduce the last performance gain.

Moore's law is about improvements in cost-benefits that occur at a steady rate, and CPUs have not simply been shrinking transistors, but adding instructions, reorganizing the architectures, moving motherboard components on-die, etc.

PV panels have had certain types of regular process improvements. My understanding is that they try to add layers that use more of the energy of the light spectrum.

Conversion efficiency improvements are responsible for more of the cost-benefit improvements than taylorist improvements via economies of scale. And those improvements have been occurring at a remarkably steady rate for five decades.

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