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‘Insanely cheap energy’: solar power continues to shock the world

theguardian.com

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Re: ‘Insanely cheap energy’: solar power continues to shock the world

#201

Post by Foomf »

anonuser123456 wrote: post #77

Is there a way to invest directly in solar to offset your personal use, without installing it directly on your house/land? My existing house isn’t particularly suitable from a cost perspective to install solar on (clay tile roof, a good 20 years left at least). I also don’t really want to manage an installation project, nor own the maintenance and risk. But I would pay to directly offset my consumption. Something lik…

My power provider provides an option to pay a little extra to guarantee that all the energy provided is renewable. Maybe yours has something similar?

Re: ‘Insanely cheap energy’: solar power continues to shock the world

#202

Post by potatoman22 »

ShakataGaNai wrote: post #166
richwater wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much was your system?

Not OP but in NorCal (BayArea) is about $3/what. My 9.4kw system is generating about 55kwh a day right now. Because of the mild weather we've had, the last day we used more net power from the grid (than we produced) was March 18.

$3 per what?

Re: ‘Insanely cheap energy’: solar power continues to shock the world

#203

Post by kragen »

kragen wrote: post #174
BurningFrog wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's probably how the Chinese refer to it? You can also interpret it as meaning "insignificant". A poor city with the same population as London has a much lower profile.

I don't think Wuxi is insignificant. Wuxi has been a city for 2200 years, since London was a scattered group of Celtic-speaking villages. Even earlier, in the Spring and Autumn Period, the capital of the State of Wu, Meili, was probably in what is now Wuxi, though it may have been a few kilometers to the southeast in Suzhou. This is where the famous war of Wu against Chu began, a century after Romulus was said to hav…

Oh, and I missed the editing window on this, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_prefecture-lev... claims that in 02017 Wuxi had a per-capita GDP of US$23802 per year, making it the sixth richest city in China; I guess that would be US$70k per year per family of three. This seems to have been computed on a population of 6.5 million, thus including the whole prefecture (basically the suburbs). So I don't think it's that Wuxi is poor, either, though maybe it was when the guy moved there—certainly poorer than London, though.

A correction: Kazakhstan has 18.9 million people, which is a lot more than Wuxi, though less than Shanghai. Not sure how I made that error. However, Mongolia, the country, really does have only 3.4 million people.

A quasi-correction: though Dallas is only about 1.1 million people, the Dallas–Fort Worth–Arlington metropolitan area is 7.5 million people, which is bigger than the Wuxi prefecture (though not the Wuxi–Suzhou metropolis, which adds 10.5 million to the 6.5 million in the Wuxi prefecture, even without adding in Shanghai too). Similarly, the Chicago–Naperville–Elgin area is 9.5 million people, and the Houston metro is 7 million. These, plus LA and NYC, are the only metros in the US more populous than Wuxi prefecture.

Re: ‘Insanely cheap energy’: solar power continues to shock the world

#204

Post by enraged_camel »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #162
enraged_camel wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Of that $15k, $4.3k was for the panels themselves, $2k for the inverter, $1k for mounting hardware, and $8k for installation. What about on-site battery? In any case, $15k is still a bit too steep for me, not because I can't afford it but because I want something that'll pay for itself in less than 5 years. My electricity bill is about $150/mo. so a solar roof doesn't make sense financially, even if I'm able to se…

> What about on-site battery? Typical systems don’t have a battery, nor do they need one. The grid is used as the battery. An off-grid solar installation is significantly more expensive.

Well, I live in Texas, and as we recently saw, our grid isn't very reliable. So it would be great to have the ability to not rely on the grid.

Re: ‘Insanely cheap energy’: solar power continues to shock the world

#205

Post by adrianN »

greenearth1 wrote: post #10

This is why pushing for free markets is the most effective solution for combating fossil fuel dependencies.

If you mean by "free market", a market that prices in all externalities, then yes. If you mean by "free market" a market where environmental destruction is free, then no.

Re: ‘Insanely cheap energy’: solar power continues to shock the world

#206

Post by Fomorian »

kragen wrote: post #198
Fomorian wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

London was never Gaelic. The populations living in Southern England would have spoken Brythonic languages, not Goidelic. And at any rate... it's pretty obvious he was referring to Wuxi today. I don't think anybody's about to have an issue referring to the Sparta of today as insignificant, its historical significance being whatever it might be.

Thank you for the correction! It was totally unfair of me to conflate all the insular Celtic tongues like that. I do think I made reasonable arguments that Wuxi today is far from insignificant, didn't I?

Sure. I probably wouldn't call Wuxi insignificant myself.

My main issue was just citing Wuxi's historical importance and background to defend its significance, in comparison to pre-Anglo Saxon Britain. I see Chinese people do this a lot in regards to China, often to shut down criticism of the country from "lesser" countries, ie ones that were tribalistic or uncentralized during Imperial China's heyday. "We were the center of civilization while you were backwards tribals", that sort of rhetoric.

Not saying that's what you meant, mind you.

Re: ‘Insanely cheap energy’: solar power continues to shock the world

#208

Post by neltnerb »

dane-pgp wrote: post #118
puranjay wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think researchers underestimated how much solar simply “makes sense” to the average person. Once the price is reasonable enough, people are very easily able to latch onto the idea of using what they already know and feel - the sun’s heat. Whenever I mention the solar panels in my parents house, the first question is always about the price. When I tell them they will break even in a few years, their next question is…

> I tell them they will break even in a few years Then why don't more companies offer to become your electricity provider and install the solar panels for free? They could say "We promise that your energy bills will be cheaper this year than last year (as long as you don't use more energy), and within a few years you'll own the panels and can switch to a different electricity provider."

At first, I don't think the business model was there yet. I haven't read a recent report so I know it is out of date, but on the order of half the costs were installation. If the company maintaining a contract on your roof goes out of business? Who owns the panels? Who funds a company where if it goes bankrupt they have contacts that give away their remaining assets?

Now that property owners understand it better I think there's less hesitation and I have seen it more. We're even getting some on our building before long.

But there's also the issue of trust, which is coupled with ownership. If your friend convinces you to borrow $5k as a homeowner line of credit, install panels (and own them) and that you will make it back in lower bills in a few years that's a lot easier to swallow than someone that makes money from you saying yes.

I wouldn't want strangers owning stuff that might get passed along to different strangers as a major structural component in my house, cost to maintain, and especially if I don't even own the power produced. I can't fix my roof, I can't replace the panels, it seems like a very tough sell without a track record. I don't think anyplace had that track record five years ago.

Re: ‘Insanely cheap energy’: solar power continues to shock the world

#209

Post by pjerem »

StavrosK wrote: post #113
anonuser123456 wrote: post #77

Is there a way to invest directly in solar to offset your personal use, without installing it directly on your house/land? My existing house isn’t particularly suitable from a cost perspective to install solar on (clay tile roof, a good 20 years left at least). I also don’t really want to manage an installation project, nor own the maintenance and risk. But I would pay to directly offset my consumption. Something lik…

My power provider has a scheme (I forget the name) where basically your entire electricity bill goes to "green" electricity producers. The logic is that you can't control where your electricity comes from , but you can easily control where your money goes . That way, no matter where you get your power from, all your money goes to green sources.

I don’t know where you are living but this method had issues when different networks are involved.

One example of this is Norway vs Europe : Norway is interconnected with the rest of the Europe for « green electricity » market but doesn’t share the electric grid of the rest of Europe.

The consequences is that any European can buy « green contracts » that pays Norway renewable industry. Sounds ok as an European.

But now, by this market rules, a Norwegian citizen that doesn’t pay the « green premium » is considered consuming non renewable electricity even if he have no physical way to consume non renewable. And as a Norwegian citizen, it can be difficult to understand the incentive to pay more while knowing your electricity is physically constrained to be only from renewable sources.

As a French I have a similar problem : why should I pay a premium to get CO2-free energy while knowing my country spent billions of public money (which I’m really glad) to be self sufficient with nuclear power plants ? And since nuclear is not a renewable energy, I have no way if I wanted to pay a « premium » that would help fund nuclear energy even if I politically support it as en important ally against global warming.

Re: ‘Insanely cheap energy’: solar power continues to shock the world

#210

Post by _Microft »

edhelas wrote: post #25
hh3k0 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Please do the math, check how much you'll need to cover the consumption of a small city for a night. It sure would be nice if we had a transnational energy infrastructure, as the sun is always shining somewhere. Think DESERTEC and Gobitec but for the whole planet.

Oh yes, thousands of km of high power copper cables. Crossing west-to-east Europe with electricity is already loosing 30% of it. Let's transport electricity from Australia to India ! And for wind, it's the same issue, when there is wind in Finland, there is wind in Spain. So you can't "balance thing" between countries.

Over large distances, high-voltage direct current transmissions would be used which has losses in the low single-digit percentage per 1000km. See following link for details:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current#Ad...

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