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Can solar costs keep shrinking?

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Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#11

Post by pjc50 »

7e wrote: post #3

These charts stop right at the point where the U.S. imposed tariffs on Chinese solar panels, and the tarrif schedule is only going up, to 50%. This matters because the future of solar is utility scale, where the panel costs dominate. So for the US, at least, solar costs will not keep shrinking in the short term.

Countries that impose tariffs on solar panels and EVs are really demonstrating that they don't actually believe in climate change being important, compared to good old bribes for corporate donors.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#13

Post by macspoofing »

rtkwe wrote: post #2

I'm having a hard time getting past the assumption in the article that energy use is tied directly to GDP per capita and that by not following the 7% growth of the Henry Adams Curve we're somehow below where we should/could be as a country. That embeds so many assumptions about the economy and where GDP comes from, the decoupling seems more likely to be from the transition from manufacturing and other energy heavy se…

>I'm having a hard time getting past the assumption in the article that energy use is tied directly to GDP per capita

Why? They are correlated and so are reasonable metric to gauge progress when starting from a subsistence economy (as all economies in the world began). At some point, this may be less true when you hit a energy generation ceiling and you start 'optimizing' and trying to do more with the same amount .. but again, we're not there yet so it's a good metric today, and especially for developing economies.

Put another way, you show me GDP per capita or per capita Energy use and I can get a reasonable ballpark for the other as well as a measure for the wealth of that nation.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#14

Post by blululu »

pjc50 wrote: post #11
7e wrote: post #3

These charts stop right at the point where the U.S. imposed tariffs on Chinese solar panels, and the tarrif schedule is only going up, to 50%. This matters because the future of solar is utility scale, where the panel costs dominate. So for the US, at least, solar costs will not keep shrinking in the short term.

Countries that impose tariffs on solar panels and EVs are really demonstrating that they don't actually believe in climate change being important, compared to good old bribes for corporate donors.

Countries that dump solar panels on the international market to kill off foreign competition are really demonstrating that... During the Obama years the US invested heavily in Solar, and developed many of the technical innovations that make cheap solar possible today. Unfortunately the people who did this work were not able to keep up with the CCP subsidizing solar panels well below cost. They folded and the US has very little domestic solar panel manufacturing by comparison. This is unfortunate if you believe in a sustainable economy, especially since a domestic industry might have funded further R&D efforts. The tariffs are maybe too little too late for saving the nascent US solar manufacturing industry, but the issues of trade policy and climate policy are not always straightforward.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#15

Post by jvanderbot »

toss1 wrote: post #6
rtkwe wrote: post #2

I'm having a hard time getting past the assumption in the article that energy use is tied directly to GDP per capita and that by not following the 7% growth of the Henry Adams Curve we're somehow below where we should/could be as a country. That embeds so many assumptions about the economy and where GDP comes from, the decoupling seems more likely to be from the transition from manufacturing and other energy heavy se…

>> That embeds so many assumptions about the economy and where GDP comes from YUP. Of course there is a strong correlation between energy use and GDP growth; it takes more energy to produce more stuff. But ultimately, what produces more stuff is harder to measure. To light the factories, more energy used to correlate with more light, until we swap out the incandescent/halogen lighting sources for LEDs. Then, we get m…

> It takes more energy to produce more stuff

Energy consumption is also about using that stuff. And in rich countries like the USA, a lot of energy goes to using things or just moving people. So it's possible to build more and use less energy, even if you don't reduce the energy cost of building things. They can simply become more efficient to use and move.

In USA, 30% is just homes and commercial sector. 40% is transportation. 30% is "industry". By a sort-of inverse-amdahl's law, it's possible to get lower energy use with more throughput even if we don't make "industry" more efficient.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#16

Post by glenstein »

rtkwe wrote: post #9
hijinks wrote: post #5

solar costs keep shrinking and then you have power companies like SDGE that want to punish solar owners based on their salary and set a $125 min cost to be connected to the grid

I don't think utility companies are entirely wrong to charge some flat rate for being connected to the grid, there are fixed costs with each customer and solar homes are not actually independent from the grid even if they're net neutral their night time power has to come from somewhere. Even if we get to enough residential solar to completely power the grid from solar and charge enough storage to last overnight there…

The trouble with this logic is that public utility commissions across the country have measured the impact that solar has on the grid, and found that not only does it not impose a cost, but it confers a benefit, in some studies up to 33 cents per kilowatt hour.

I completely agree with your core point, which is that there need to be costs associated with impact on the grid, to make sure that there's no incentivization of freeloading in either direction. Whether utilities owe solar owners a one time payment, an ongoing payment, or should be contributing to the financing of new construction of solar panels is an open question imo.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#17

Post by macspoofing »

candiddevmike wrote: post #7
hijinks wrote: post #5

solar costs keep shrinking and then you have power companies like SDGE that want to punish solar owners based on their salary and set a $125 min cost to be connected to the grid

Utility companies around me will gaslight you into not getting solar--bury you in paperwork, FUD, and last ditch efforts to buy into some kind of solar timeshare program. I'm hoping to see more decentralized/hyper-local power generation and storage.

>I'm hoping to see more decentralized/hyper-local power generation and storage

With the scale we're dealing with decentralization does not work. You need to centralize for efficiency (i.e. optimize power generation and maintenance per unit of land-area). Though in this case the point is moot, since we don't have any grid-scale storage solutions for wind/solar - making them non-viable as the primary power generation regardless of price.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#18

Post by jvanderbot »

rtkwe wrote: post #2

I'm having a hard time getting past the assumption in the article that energy use is tied directly to GDP per capita and that by not following the 7% growth of the Henry Adams Curve we're somehow below where we should/could be as a country. That embeds so many assumptions about the economy and where GDP comes from, the decoupling seems more likely to be from the transition from manufacturing and other energy heavy se…

Yes this confuses me too. In developed countries a huge amount of energy goes to using things, not just making them. Let alone efficiency gains from production.

This is possibly why energy use has flattened while GDP clips along at its normal exponential curve - we're also more efficient.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#19

Post by macspoofing »

jvanderbot wrote: post #15
toss1 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> That embeds so many assumptions about the economy and where GDP comes from YUP. Of course there is a strong correlation between energy use and GDP growth; it takes more energy to produce more stuff. But ultimately, what produces more stuff is harder to measure. To light the factories, more energy used to correlate with more light, until we swap out the incandescent/halogen lighting sources for LEDs. Then, we get m…

> It takes more energy to produce more stuff Energy consumption is also about using that stuff. And in rich countries like the USA, a lot of energy goes to using things or just moving people. So it's possible to build more and use less energy, even if you don't reduce the energy cost of building things. They can simply become more efficient to use and move . In USA, 30% is just homes and commercial sector. 40% is tra…

>So it's possible to build more and use less energy, even if you don't reduce the energy cost of building things.

In principle I can imagine that being true - but that's not represented in our world, so it is an open question if you can 'build more and use less energy' in the real world.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#20

Post by xnx »

xhkkffbf wrote: post #12

If labor costs keep going up, it seems like the right path for the industry is to simplify installation more so it becomes more DIY. More plug-and-play. Less skilled carpenters and electricians.

There are plug-and-play kits for installation on balconies that are popular in Germany: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/29/business/germany-solar-pa...
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