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Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

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Re: Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

#231

Post by coryfklein »

ghouse wrote: post #138
niftich wrote: post #132

The frustrating part about solar is that because the peak generation output doesn't line up with typical peak consumption ("the duck curve"), utilities need natgas peakers, which sit mostly idle, to fill in the gap. As solar installation grows, coal baseload falls behind due to cheap natgas, and nuclear languishes due to huge capex, established baseload capacity will decrease. From now on, new capacity will largely b…

> The frustrating part about solar is that because the peak generation output doesn't line up with typical peak consumption ("the duck curve"), utilities need natgas peakers, which sit mostly idle, to fill in the gap. Solar does line up with peak consumption. The duck curve is not a consumption curve, but a "Net Demand" curve -- the demand remaining after solar and generation is removed. Peakers existed before solar.…

> Solar does line up with peak consumption.

Not true according to [1], which shows peak consumption around 19:00, just as solar production drops to 0.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_curve

Re: Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

#232

Post by radicalbyte »

jbrownpa wrote: post #131
rsynnott wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't bet on batteries, or at least conventional batteries, being the long term solution. There's interesting work being done with air pressure storage, flow batteries (the largest batteries currently under construction are mostly flow batteries in the 500MWh-1GWh range, though the technology is still in its infancy), and big scary vacuum flywheels. All of these are far less developed than lithium ion cells, but…

Planet Money covered this recently: https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?stor... Here's an entry on the storage facility: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_County_Pumped_Storage_Sta... "The biggest battery in the world is a giant lake tucked away in the Appalachian Mountains on the border between Virginia and West Virginia" One of the more promising things is actually water-based storage using bac…

As a child (25-30 years ago) I visited an hydroelectric plant in Wales. It always impressed me that such a simple technique could work so effectively. They also had a pumping system for use whenever say the nuclear plant had excess production..

Re: Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

#233

Post by mac01021 »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #208
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wonder if there is a bit of an Osbourne Effect limiting demand as potential buyers keep waiting to see if the next generation of panels are even better.

It doesn't seem to have slowed down TV sales.

TVs don't cost 10k. And they don't cost half as much every 5 years.

Re: Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

#234

Post by gibybo »

aoeusnth1 wrote: post #171
duxup wrote: post #157

My house faces south westish. I have a lot of roof on the back side that I think would be good for solar but all the automated online stuff seem to indicate it was be expensive and not pay off for a LONG while. At least around here in MN there's not a lot of residential push for it. Hopefully as prices drop it becomes more viable.

Online calculators over-estimate costs for large systems. You can find newer installers who are more willing to negotiate prices, and play them off each other. I negotiated one company down from ~$3.5/W to $2.30/W (before 30% credit) on my large residential system - and these weren't budget panels either (Sunpower E20). If you do the discounted cash flow calculation of solar, at $2.3/W, electricity costs you around 5…

I think your numbers are pretty optimistic. You're neglecting depreciation for one. Panels have a lifetime in the range of 20-30 years, inverters have a lifetime in the range of 10 years. 4% is also an optimistic interest rate for a loan that lasts the lifetime of the system. You may be able to get that for a ~5 year loan, but then you need to include the higher opportunity cost of the money that was used to pay that loan off which will be tied up for 20+ years.

Re: Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

#235

Post by gibybo »

driverdan wrote: post #202
aoeusnth1 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Online calculators over-estimate costs for large systems. You can find newer installers who are more willing to negotiate prices, and play them off each other. I negotiated one company down from ~$3.5/W to $2.30/W (before 30% credit) on my large residential system - and these weren't budget panels either (Sunpower E20). If you do the discounted cash flow calculation of solar, at $2.3/W, electricity costs you around 5…

You have 30kW of panels? That's a large system. Most people cna't fit that many. The more panels you get the lower the price gets per kWh.

I have found it to be surprisingly proportional. I'm sure it gets slightly cheaper per kwh with large systems, but not by a lot. I had quotes around $2.5/watt for 9 kW systems and $2.5/watt for 15 kW systems.

Re: Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

#236

Post by prawn »

derefr wrote: post #168
Max_aaa wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Typically peak residential energy use is actually early morning and evening. And those tend to be the worst times for solar. Solar is great for businesses and schools, well basically anything that operates mainly or totally during the day.

Most energy consumption in the world is industrial, right? We wouldn't need to have nearly as many power plants (of any kind) if all those power plants needed to do was to sustain residential usage. If you think of it as two power grids, then "the big power grid"—the industrial grid—can be fully powered by solar, and the residential grid, i.e. "the small power grid", is kind of trivial to solve in comparison.

Not sure if it falls under "industrial" but commercial use (shopping centres, offices, etc) fits with solar brilliantly, and at least where I live, offices are rushing to get panels on their buildings. We had it quoted for our co-working space, and the pay-off time was 3-5 years, which is amazing.

Re: Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

#237

Post by prawn »

heisenbergs wrote: post #155
jartelt wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment gets made in every single solar article put on HN. The true price of solar is what the market is willing to pay for it. If the solar was ruining the grid or was way more expensive than what it seems, we would not keep seeing solar installed at this pace and at these costs. We need to get out of the mindset that all power generators need to produce a steady amount of power 24/7. A flexible grid made of ma…

Not only that. Solar energy production follows the sun, which incidentally is what humans also follow and when they are typically active and using most energy. Hence, solar producing energy when it is actually needed and in most demand (peak energy). This is even more so the case in hotter places that need AC.

Where it's hot, people come home from work as the sun is setting, and turn on the A/C. It can be 85F overnight in many parts of the world, which makes sleep very difficult.

Re: Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

#238

Post by toomuchtodo »

gibybo wrote: post #234
aoeusnth1 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Online calculators over-estimate costs for large systems. You can find newer installers who are more willing to negotiate prices, and play them off each other. I negotiated one company down from ~$3.5/W to $2.30/W (before 30% credit) on my large residential system - and these weren't budget panels either (Sunpower E20). If you do the discounted cash flow calculation of solar, at $2.3/W, electricity costs you around 5…

I think your numbers are pretty optimistic. You're neglecting depreciation for one. Panels have a lifetime in the range of 20-30 years, inverters have a lifetime in the range of 10 years. 4% is also an optimistic interest rate for a loan that lasts the lifetime of the system. You may be able to get that for a ~5 year loan, but then you need to include the higher opportunity cost of the money that was used to pay that…

ROI for cash invested in your solar install is greater than 4% in almost every state.

Re: Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

#239

Post by digikata »

dragontamer wrote: post #214
digikata wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the key is that we can start to develop infrastructure just fine on lithium cells, and it might even accelerate the development of more efficient alternatives develop because it proves the market to investors.

The market of grid-level energy storage is already proven to investors and anyone in the utilities industry. See CAES storage (Texas) and Pumped Hydro energy storage ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_County_Pumped_Storage_Sta... )

Some sort of battery based tech that is fairly unconstrained by site requirements, as well as complex construction engineering requirements seems to have much more potential.
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