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Can solar costs keep shrinking?

unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com

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Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#121

Post by tuna74 »

beembeem wrote: post #70
tuna74 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Batteries are the solution. The sun is pretty stable (not very firm unfortunately, but I don't see how that relates to electricity).

Firm refers to the generation profile of the power source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispatchable_generation Batteries are not cost or resource efficient for winter where I live. Less than 8 hours of sunlight is not enough to heat a house during the day let alone night. There simply isn't enough solar generation even when overprovisioned to last.

Yes, solar power won't work in Svalbard winters. This is known.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#122

Post by happyopossum »

Scoundreller wrote: post #39
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Labor costs for installing solar are already so ridiculous that you're better off doing the parting, delivery, and some installation if not all of it yourself and then having a licensed electrician just finish the connection to your main circuit breaker.

I regularly bring this up: modern fridges are generally continuous drive (which means they run off DC at some level anyway). And they run all the time(ish). Waiting for a (mass-)manufacturer to build one with a 48VDC input that anyone can self-install a solar panel and plug-in but switches to a mains-fed 48VDC source as required. Doesn’t need a battery (the fridge/freezer is one!), gets you some operation during outa…

> modern fridges run all the time(ish).

Genuinely curious - when did this become a thing? I have a couple of relatively recent fridges (less than 10 yrs old, and same model still sold today) that constantly cycle on/off, and spend more time off than they do on.

I'd imagine a variable speed system (like are available in inverter-based heat pumps today) could be designed to run nearly constantly, but the variability of things like room temp, fridge loading (empty fridges are less efficient than full ones), open/closing doors, and the addition of warm/hot things in the fridge would make it so there's always a need for cycling at some level...

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#123

Post by xnx »

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.

"already, across Europe, homeowners are building garden fences with solar panels simply because it’s not much more expensive than doing so using traditional materials — namely, wood." https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/28/opinion/solar-power-free-...

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#124

Post by bryanlarsen »

sharpshadow wrote: post #77
bryanlarsen wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The price of a commodity is equal to the highest of the lowest cost producers that can satisfy demand. Germany cannot satisfy demand with cheap renewables, so the marginal producer is expensive gas & nuclear. German electricity is expensive because gas is expensive in Germany. Electricity will be expensive in Germany until Germany completely stops using gas shipped in via container ship.

You got it right there Germany can’t satisfy demand with renewables and decided to cut itself of from coal and nuclear, brilliant right!? Cherry on top some powerful player blew up Nordstream forcing Germany to buy exorbitantly expensive LNG. Your argument to stop using LNG doesn’t work if you have many parts of industry build with gas infrastructure which can’t be replaced just like that.

Only if Germany could replace all of their expensive natural gas usage with coal & nuclear would coal & nuclear be relevant.

They can't, so it isn't.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#125

Post by hadlock »

jvanderbot wrote: post #18
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.

Lighting going from 1% efficient (99% of the energy used by a traditional tungsten lightbulb is waste heat) to over 95% efficient (in many cases 99% efficient). Computers went from 200-400w continuous down to about 15w continuous. Lighting alone is responsible for a huge amount of energy drop-off.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#126

Post by songeater »

hiddencost wrote: post #80

I've decided not to do home solar because it seems obvious to me that industrial scale plants will be able to do it cheaper.

Yes, the cost of GENERATING electricity will undoubtedly be cheaper at the industrial scale level than on your rooftop.

But that generated electricity is likely to be a region very far from your (or someone else's) consumption - needing a lot of money to lay transmission and distribution lines to the end consumer.

Co-locating with consumption makes the difference in total costs far closer.

Very location dependent, but please don't dismiss offhand without considering the very real transmission costs.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#127

Post by happyopossum »

glenstein wrote: post #31
macspoofing wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 r…

>decentralization does not work. This is not quite true, because the vast majority of solar generation is consumed on site, avoiding the transmission and distribution costs of delivering electrons that would normally be necessary. Which is just one of a whole motley of dynamics working in favor of solar at larger scales: the arc of solar generation over a 24hr period almost perfectly coincides with actual market dema…

> the vast majority of solar generation is consumed on site

I don't believe this is true for a vast swath of residential solar. In spite of HN's love of remote work, a lot of homes are mostly or completely empty during the day, with energy use ramping up in the evenings as people return home.

This results in homes 'selling' electricity to the grid during the day, and buying it back in the evening and overnight.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#128

Post by pests »

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 is research coming out that vertical solar panels are more efficient. I think part of it comes from lower temps allowing for more efficient operating. No tracking or pointing required. Less cleaning as its not a flat surface for dust or fall impacts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AVO1IyfA9M

edit: I see others have linked similar videos, all good sources on this topic.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#129

Post by jtbayly »

throwup238 wrote: post #119
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.

That's already the case, even with commercial solar. There's a startup called Erthos [1] that has figured out that it's cheaper to just throw the panels on the ground, saving the labor and material cost for the supports. There was an HN thread on it a few years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33926683 [1] https://erthos.com/

This and the parent comment are all addressed in the article.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#130

Post by geodel »

hiddencost wrote: post #80

I've decided not to do home solar because it seems obvious to me that industrial scale plants will be able to do it cheaper.

Right. Pricing is out of whack. I got estimate of ~50K without batteries for 8KW solar setup. I don't know who is hosing whom but this is not workable for me.
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