Can solar costs keep shrinking? • Hacker News Board

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#101

Post by red_trumpet » Thu, Aug 29, 2024, 5:56 PM UTC

BobaFloutist wrote: post #78

anonfordays wrote: post #72

Soon (if not already) the largest costs associated with solar installations will be the labor. It's expensive to get people on roofs and electricians to reconfigure panels, install transfer switches, etc. The equipment could be free and it would still cost thousands for the skilled trades to install.

I wonder to what extent we can make it unskilled, at least for a building with modern wiring. Plug-and-play solar panels and batteries sound scary, but not necessarily impossible to do safely.

> Plug-and-play solar panels [...] sound scary

But they already exist and are pretty popular in Germany to put on your balcony.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#102

Post by pulvinar » Thu, Aug 29, 2024, 5:56 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #88

OP suggests that land costs will soon dominate the equation. So no mention of orbital solar plants? Yes, somebody years ago published a study that said, Uneconomical! because lift costs, panel cost, transmission inefficiencies. All of those are now drastically changed, by orders of magnitude. It is not a matter of IF orbital solar is economical, but WHEN.

The middle of a large desert is effectively free land, and perfect for solar. I don't see how space could ever be more economical in any respect. If beaming energy gets cheaper than transmission lines, we can beam it point-to-point on the earth too.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#103

Post by rmason » Thu, Aug 29, 2024, 5:56 PM UTC

I remember as a child being on a school tour of the Enrico Fermi nuclear plant South of Detroit being told that nuclear power would soon become too cheap to monitor. This was over sixty years ago!

So I am a bit skeptical. I also remember around 1975 getting all excited about solar and getting told that costs were dropping so fast that in five years solar would be cheaper than power produced from coal or natural gas. Close to fifty years later I am still waiting.

I bet if you're in San Diego, Dallas or Tampa its already there. We have tons of solar getting built in the state of Michigan area but if you inquire its all either government subsidized or wealthy folks who can afford to not care about the economics.

I am not against solar in the least. But it needs to be pointed out that those of us in the Northern climates need a Plan B whether it be nuclear, geo-thermal or something else.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#104

Post by matharmin » Thu, Aug 29, 2024, 5:58 PM UTC

mapt wrote: post #90

anonfordays wrote: post #72

Soon (if not already) the largest costs associated with solar installations will be the labor. It's expensive to get people on roofs and electricians to reconfigure panels, install transfer switches, etc. The equipment could be free and it would still cost thousands for the skilled trades to install.

This has been the case for years now for pitched residential roofs - they stopped being competitive a long time ago. Thankfully, the impetus for residential roof solar was always more ideological than practical. There's plenty, PLENTY, of empty unused land within a 95% transmission efficiency (hundreds or even thousands of kilometers depending on tech) of the end user, for all non-island cases.

That depends on where you live. In my area, labor is cheap and the costs of panels, batteries and inverters came down significantly over the last 5 years. You can now break even on electricity costs for a residential pitched-roof installation in under 5 years. This is without any subsidies, without selling anything back to the grid.

Utility-scale solar installations also make a lot of sense, but around here transmission capacity for that is still a massive issue. You can install more transmission capacity, but it's not cheap.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#105

Post by GaggiX » Thu, Aug 29, 2024, 5:58 PM UTC

>What will the world be like when panels cost $0.05/watt? $0.01/watt?

"Good morning, I would like a 400W solar panel"

"Sir, that will be $4"

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#106

Post by hiAndrewQuinn » Thu, Aug 29, 2024, 5:59 PM UTC

anonfordays wrote: post #72

Soon (if not already) the largest costs associated with solar installations will be the labor. It's expensive to get people on roofs and electricians to reconfigure panels, install transfer switches, etc. The equipment could be free and it would still cost thousands for the skilled trades to install.

What if I just bought a field and laid them on the ground, over some plastic or something? Sure, I might be giving up some efficiency gains by not swiveling towards the sunlight or something, but I have to imagine there's a "plug and play" option possible here.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#107

Post by marssaxman » Thu, Aug 29, 2024, 5:59 PM UTC

datacruncher01 wrote: post #79

anonfordays wrote: post #72

Soon (if not already) the largest costs associated with solar installations will be the labor. It's expensive to get people on roofs and electricians to reconfigure panels, install transfer switches, etc. The equipment could be free and it would still cost thousands for the skilled trades to install.

I think eventually the hardware will be so cheap it'll make more sense to use them as solar fences. Reduce the cost to install and maintain by 3-4x easily. Or DIY for practically nothing.

There's an apartment building here in Seattle which has solar panels mounted flat on its west-facing wall (602 12th Ave). The panels were apparently cheap enough that they did not care about maximizing daylight exposure and simply installed them in the easiest place. Quite a change this is from what I remember when I had solar panels installed on my roof eleven years ago!

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#108

Post by happyopossum » Thu, Aug 29, 2024, 6:00 PM UTC

I have seen a ton of articles about the plummeting 'costs' of solar over the past decade, so I was shocked when I recently got a bunch of quotes for a 10-12KW residential install: they were almost the same as the cost of the 10KW system I had installed back in 2014.

So at least here in California, inflation and rising labor costs have eaten up all of those savings.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#109

Post by happyopossum » Thu, Aug 29, 2024, 6:02 PM UTC

jeffbee wrote: post #99

wongarsu wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything involving roofs is difficult to do unskilled (at scale). You are working at height, potentially on a sloped surface, and have to worry about keeping the roof water tight. But if you put the panels basically anywhere else it becomes a lot more viable. Some houses come with a plug to connect your generator, you can do something similar to plug in your inverter. Then you can later decide to put up a solar fence…

Why not just prefab a frame with the panels mounted and hang it on the point of the roof with a crane? Working on the roof can be eliminated or minimized.

Wind. Panels and their support need to be anchored to the roof, lest they become flying solar panels.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#110

Post by noSyncCloud » Thu, Aug 29, 2024, 6:02 PM UTC

sharemywin wrote: post #93

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #88

OP suggests that land costs will soon dominate the equation. So no mention of orbital solar plants? Yes, somebody years ago published a study that said, Uneconomical! because lift costs, panel cost, transmission inefficiencies. All of those are now drastically changed, by orders of magnitude. It is not a matter of IF orbital solar is economical, but WHEN.

doesn't orbital solar also deflect sun so wouldn't it cool the earth at scale?

The sunlight that hits the reflectors would never have hit the Earth anyway.