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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

#151

Post by hackeraccount »

intopieces wrote: post #62
Tsagadai wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>We have always been modifying the environment to suit our needs, every species does this. Humans have only been farming for the past 11,500ish years, while Homo sapiens have been around for more than 200,000 years. Humans modifying the environment to a significant extent is rather new in our timeline.

I don't know about that. There's at least speculation that some percentage of animals that went extinct in North America were due to humans. Also in North America there was a lot of impact to ground cover by people before agriculure - i.e. burning down forests to make it easier to hunt game. It's hard to imagine those things only occurred in the Americas.

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

#152

Post by rasz »

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.

They tried that that for Japanese TV imports in the 80s under Reagan, guess how many US Manufacturers survived.

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

#153

Post by fps »

fallingfrog wrote: post #139
fastbeef wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A common misconception. Even in northern Sweden, which is above the arctic circle, you can still generate ~80% of the energy that Southern Europe generates.

Here in Maine your solar panels are going to be covered with snow 5 months of the year, so the power production in the winter can't be very significant.. It's one thing to store energy between night and day and it's another thing to store energy between summer and winter. Don't get me wrong, I think solar is the future, but not sure how to make it work up north.

I live in Massachusetts, and have 37 250 watt panels. Snow isn't an issue. The panels generate a little bit of resistive heat, which means snow typically doesn't stick. If it's snowing so heavy, and is so cold that the panels do get covered with snow, the snow melts and slides off within an hour or so.

In July my panels make 1300 kwh and in December and January they make 300 kwh, mostly because of the angle of the sun and the length of the time above the horizon. I also have significant southern tree cover, so my production is not optimal for my area.

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

#154

Post by curtis »

If panels keep getting cheaper and cheaper I wonder if installing them vertically on south-facing walls will start to make sense. This won't ever be optimally efficient, but installs will be much cheaper since it won't involve roof work.

If you want to take the idea to an absurd level, garage doors could be designed with integral panels and then installed anywhere somebody has a south-facing garage door. In most cases the garage door will also be unshaded since there will be a driveway in front of it rather than a tree.

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

#155

Post by thinkcontext »

ggm wrote: post #12

The non-decline in the associated costs for individual installs has to be thought about. If this is a true reflection of unavoidable costs, home installs are unlikely to break a cost barrier, and won't make substantive differences in centralized generation. If on the other hand they are mutable costs, and can be brought down, then microgrids and local power has more chance of becoming something of substance. The bigg…

Germany has much lower soft costs than the US so there is still room for the price to fall. Particularly, customer acquisition costs are comparitively higher in the US because there is much less environmental awareness.

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

#156

Post by ZeroGravitas »

curtis wrote: post #154

If panels keep getting cheaper and cheaper I wonder if installing them vertically on south-facing walls will start to make sense. This won't ever be optimally efficient, but installs will be much cheaper since it won't involve roof work. If you want to take the idea to an absurd level, garage doors could be designed with integral panels and then installed anywhere somebody has a south-facing garage door. In most case…

One serious concept that sounds a bit silly at first is to put solar panels on the back of solar panels used for grid scale arrays.

Obviously not optimal since these are literally turning to continually face away from the sun yet apparently get you a 1% improvement and you're spending the rest of the money for installation, wiring anyway so at a certain price point it makes sense.

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

#157

Post by dispo001 »

adrianN wrote: post #100
dispo001 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beyond some height wind makes total sense.

You need pretty big rotors to generate enough electricity to pay for the embedded energy: http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/09/urban-windmills.html

Output scales with design, size, location and height. With "beyond some height" I mean really tall buildings would need just a tiny propeller. Micro turbines are nice for a very different reason. -- "Unfortunately, micro wind turbines deliver hardly enough energy to power a light bulb." The benefit from not siting in complete darkness starts at about 1 Watt, the example produces considerably more. -- "Payback time: 50 to 750 years" The interesting bit here is the static world assumption. No one can tell how manufacturing, wages/income, the economy, geopolitics, climate, migration, food, etc will change. There is lots of room for the grid to go down and it kinda already regularly does in the best of locations one time every 10 years. (atm the entire grid in Puerto Rico is down) -- While it would be nice to have a heater or a cooker small devices like led bulbs and radios are valuable when the power is out.

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

#158

Post by mikekchar »

josefresco wrote: post #124
mikekchar wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Trust me, I'm with you on that on :-) But I think most people who are plonking down $1 million on a house will not notice an extra $20K on the price tag, but will notice solar panels.

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

#159

Post by wallace_f »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #136
wallace_f wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Your typical DIYer is unable to penetrate an asphalt shingle or metal roof and properly waterproof those penetrations for the panel frame supports, voiding your roof warranty and possibly negating any ability to make a claim for water damage from your homeowner's insurance. Also, any electrical work in most sane jurisdictions is going to require signoff from both the local code department and the utility (if grid tie…

Ok, I can appreciate those concerns, but if someone wants to do this, I think that's their right. What if they have a cabin that they want to wire with solar? What if they just want to setup some panels on top of an awning, or in their backyard, and hook them up to a beer cooler?

To be fair I installed a solar+2nd battery+inverter that can also charge or be charged from the primary battery in an RV. I waterproof'd the roof, did the wiring, there's lots of guides on how to do it and it is not rocket science. Should you or my local gov have stopped me from this?

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

#160

Post by ericd »

hodgesrm wrote: post #57
rpedela wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

reference?

The incinerated birds are called streamers. Here's a reference. [0] [0] https://www.sciencealert.com/this-solar-plant-accidentally-i...

Very interesting, but it'd be nice if they'd mention that many thousands of times more are killed each year by building windows, and pet cats, to put things in perspective for people.
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