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Can solar costs keep shrinking?

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Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#141

Post by songeater »

geodel wrote: post #130
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.

That does sound very high. Not sure where you are, but guessing you are in the US at least.

As a comp, SunRun puts out detailed cost estimates for their residential systems each quarter[1]. Their average system cost was $5/watt, but with 50% of their installs having batteries. So for an 8Kw system (if you were buying outright) you should have gotten a quote of $40k with a "half-sized" battery. After US tax incentives, your cost should be But yeah, if you're not in a region where they do a lot of installs, you won't get that price...

[1] "CreationCostMemo" tab in https://d1io3yog0oux5.cloudfront.net/_eb9fb58f3a5f81478f0536...

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#142

Post by mkaic »

happyopossum wrote: post #108

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.

The article addresses this and notes that most of the cost reductions we've seen in the past decade are only really applicable to utility-scale installations, as it's only then that the one-time costs can be amortized sufficiently. Small consumer installations are dominated by costs other than the panels themselves to a much greater degree than utility-scale installations.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#143

Post by tfourb »

tuna74 wrote: post #67
tiffanyh wrote: post #46

Has the insurance & roof warranty issue been solved with panels on your roof? A few years ago I looked at putting solar panels on my roof. Both the company who roofed my house, and my insurance company - said it voided any warranty / claims against future roof damage if a solar panel was installed

TFA claims that it is idiotic to put solar panels on residential roofs, but them somewhere where installation cost are low instead, like on the ground or maybe factory roofs.

As someone with plenty of solar on my roof, it is anything but idiotic. With government incentives it pays for itself in ten years and has a realistic life span of 25.

It might comparatively more efficient/cheaper per watt to build solar on the ground or on large commercial structures, but that doesn't change the economics for individual home owners, which in many parts of the world are already positive.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#144

Post by tfourb »

beembeem wrote: post #65
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.

First off, I know this article is more targeted at utility-scale installations, but much of the comment section is discussing or interested in residential so it's worth bringing this piece up. One of the problems for residential roof-mounted systems is the wind load that large flat panels introduce. This load needs to be offset with very strong roof penetrations. You need to drive large bolts directly into the trusse…

This is news to my solar installation, which is not fixed to my roof structure at all. My roof is not that steep, so the panels are simply put of frames which are weighed down with concrete pavers. And this is not DIY job, but professionally installed with warranty and everything.

Similarly, most solar installations on steeper roofs here in Germany are either made without penetrations at all (by hooking special frames into the roof structure under the roof tiles), or they use very basic screws that tie into the existing roof structure. Our neighbor did his solar installation himself on a pretty steep roof, something you would absolutely not do if there were any risk of structural damage.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#145

Post by ianburrell »

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.

Cheap solar panels mean that orbital solar will never be economical. Orbital solar made sense back when solar panels were super expensive so made sense to use them continuously. Solar panels are so cheap now that people are setting them on the ground.

400W solar panel costs $200 and weighs 40 lbs. If Starship gets down to $100/lb, that is $4000 to put a panel in space. There are thin film panel that weight way less but cost more that would improve the launch cost but still be expensive. That means that will be cheaperp to have many panels on Earth and have enough left for storage.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#146

Post by laweijfmvo »

rmason wrote: post #103

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.…

If we had gone all-in on nuclear, starting in the 70s, how cheap and plentiful would electricity really be today, 50 years later?

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#147

Post by Veedrac »

epoxia wrote: post #140
takinola wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 My understanding is commercial solar (as opposed to household solar) is cheaper than natural gas so that prediction is at least partly true

Not really, the over-cited LCOE of solar/wind does not account for the cost of (its increased need of) battery storage. As time of use does not align with the time of generation. Also, battery storage has its own ongoing costs with battery degradation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxlnBNVCfBQ

2019 was half a decade ago.

You can tell solar+storage is cheaper than anything else except conditionally wind at least in the US because people have stopped building new generation capacity for anything else.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#148

Post by philipkglass »

efields wrote: post #132

How do we get around labor being the primary cost eater when that has (is) the most expensive factor, depending on where you live? I want labor to be paid, and I also want cheap clean energy. Help me square the circle.

Build small numbers of large ground mounted solar arrays instead of large numbers of small rooftop mounted solar arrays. Then soft costs (permitting, certification) are much lower, the overall cost per unit of electricity is much lower, and labor gets paid much better.

This National Renewable Energy Laboratory page has a cost comparison of utility scale solar farms with rooftop systems:

https://www.nrel.gov/solar/market-research-analysis/solar-in...

If you look at the orange portion of the bar for each year (installation labor), you'll see that labor gets paid about 50% more for utility scale farms than for rooftop systems. As of 2023 it's about $0.24 per watt on utility scale systems, $0.18 per watt on rooftops. But the complete rooftop system is much more expensive ($2.70 per watt vs. $1.20 for a large solar farm). The solar farm with one axis tracking will also produce more energy per installed watt over the course of a year. As a result, the cost per kilowatt hour generated from a rooftop solar array is multiples higher than from a utility scale solar farm in the same climate.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#150

Post by toss1 »

ForHackernews wrote: post #26
macspoofing wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

It's represented everywhere that efficiency counts. I haven't fact-checked it, but one source[0] claims that refinements in the design of soda cans (thinner walls, different shapes) since 1960 saves "at least 90 million kilograms of aluminum annually." [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUhisi2FBuw

Exactly!! There a uncountable millions of examples, and you're right, anywhere efficiency counts, which is pretty much everywhere.
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