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Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

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Re: Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

#201

Post by seangrogg »

xahrepap wrote: post #45

Slightly off topic... Interesting thing about solar in Utah (maybe everywhere? Not sure about the specifics): Utah gives every land owner pollution credits. They're allowed to pollute X units worth per year or something like that. Depending on certain criteria you're allotted a certain amount of credits. The problem is, these credits are transferable. So if I, for example, don't pollute, I can sell my credits off to…

Chances are the solar companies themselves are selling for cheap and taking credits as an "alternative currency", which makes sense for Average Joe as they no longer need them (in theory) as (I assume) excess credits have no value.

From there, the solar company probably covers their own pollution level and then sells the remainder of the credits at auction and capitalizes on the spread.

Company pollution rates will likely not be affected until it eats into their profits; rather, they will likely just buy credits up to the point where there's a breakeven between the cost of a credit and the savings for a credit. Whatever money is saved won't be used to increase pollution but rather just be reinvested into other parts of the company or released to shareholders.

In this case, the pollutant is paying money to pay less in taxation, the solar company is providing access to renewable energy, and Average Joe is going to be polluting less at home. I could get behind that.

EDIT: Also, this means that Utah could theoretically wean the state's pollution credits lower and lower each year until the cost of polluting is so high that pollutants either convert or leave.

Re: Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

#202

Post by driverdan »

aoeusnth1 wrote: post #171
duxup wrote: post #157

My house faces south westish. I have a lot of roof on the back side that I think would be good for solar but all the automated online stuff seem to indicate it was be expensive and not pay off for a LONG while. At least around here in MN there's not a lot of residential push for it. Hopefully as prices drop it becomes more viable.

Online calculators over-estimate costs for large systems. You can find newer installers who are more willing to negotiate prices, and play them off each other. I negotiated one company down from ~$3.5/W to $2.30/W (before 30% credit) on my large residential system - and these weren't budget panels either (Sunpower E20). If you do the discounted cash flow calculation of solar, at $2.3/W, electricity costs you around 5…

You have 30kW of panels? That's a large system. Most people cna't fit that many. The more panels you get the lower the price gets per kWh.

Re: Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

#203

Post by mulmen »

It is my understanding that we are already past or very near a point of no return w.r.t greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. Talk of peak power and renewable excess leads to discussion about the need to store that excess. Could we also expend that energy to do something like scrub CO2? Is this even feasible at a scale that could make a difference?

Re: Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

#204

Post by dd36 »

phil248 wrote: post #62
blobbers wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking the same thing. The gigafactory isn't mention in this, but could there be synergies with Tesla's (somewhat shady... pun intended) acquisition of SolarCity? These sorts of installs aren't exactly the same thing, but maybe SolarCity needs to pivot to from distributed consumer to large scale utility.

Tesla has already deployed utility-scale storage in Australia and has contracts to build more for California utilities. Those are just the ones I know of.

Puerto Rico too.

Re: Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

#205

Post by CyberDildonics »

rwcarlsen wrote: post #184
Animats wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not entirely. About 10GW of solar capacity would cover the entire air conditioning load peak for California[1] That's when power prices are the highest, and it doesn't need energy storage. Pretty soon, most air conditioning load will be on solar power. [1] http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx

But you do need storage and/or backup providers because not having air-conditioning run on cloudy days is not an option.

You realize the electrical grid means that excess power can go to other states right?

Re: Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

#206

Post by refulgentis »

criddell wrote: post #177
inputcoffee wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You misunderstand the sense of "true" here. The point is not that the "true" price in the sense of what it ought to be. It is the "true" price in the sense of what the market is actually paying for the service. When people put out the number $23, they compare it with the cost of power and wonder why, if it is so much lower, it doesn't already swamp the current solution. So the purpose of the comment is to explain tha…

I've thought about adding solar to my home and can't see any reason why I should even consider a battery for storage. I'm in Texas and so I get plenty of sun and my peak energy demand happens to coincide with that sunlight (due to HVAC). Why should I worry about a complete solution?

The sun goes down at night

Re: Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

#207

Post by driverdan »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #53
rb808 wrote: post #11

There is an interesting part about solar generating electricity when its sunny - it will help population move to warmer climes. If you live in Ohio heating in winter is a problem, solar isn't going to keep you warm on a cold night (ok batteries can help but they're expensive). If you live in the South West though its perfect as Winter nights dont require much heat and the biggest loads are AC at the times when there…

In my experience, the perception that "solar isn't for everybody", especially when using housing examples, is fooled by hidden assumptions that were made during the time. Consider the situation in 1950 when you are building a house, you can double or triple the cost of home construction by insulating it so that the net energy needed to heat or cool it is minimal, or you throw a oil burner in the basement which is bur…

> That gets you houses in the New Mexico desert that need no air conditioning (air cooling) and churches and office buildings in the northeast that need no additional heating.

Do you have a source for your NM desert example? I'm doubtful you can keep a desert home cool with just airflow.

Re: Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

#208

Post by CyberDildonics »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #197
Symmetry wrote: post #27

I'm mostly gratified by what a "Dog bites man" story this is. Solar prices have been decreasing steadily for a long time so we should expect to see a story like this every few months until the adoption curve flattens out - which hopefully won't be for a while.

Wonder if there is a bit of an Osbourne Effect limiting demand as potential buyers keep waiting to see if the next generation of panels are even better.

It doesn't seem to have slowed down TV sales.

Re: Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

#209

Post by sunstone »

inputcoffee wrote: post #153
jartelt wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment gets made in every single solar article put on HN. The true price of solar is what the market is willing to pay for it. If the solar was ruining the grid or was way more expensive than what it seems, we would not keep seeing solar installed at this pace and at these costs. We need to get out of the mindset that all power generators need to produce a steady amount of power 24/7. A flexible grid made of ma…

You misunderstand the sense of "true" here. The point is not that the "true" price in the sense of what it ought to be. It is the "true" price in the sense of what the market is actually paying for the service. When people put out the number $23, they compare it with the cost of power and wonder why, if it is so much lower, it doesn't already swamp the current solution. So the purpose of the comment is to explain tha…

However the amount of storage (battery or otherwise) for a network of renewable electricity producers depends on the full diversity of the complete network.

Which is to say, for example, that a grid supplied by solar and wind will need proportionally less storage per megawatt as the geographical size of the grid increases. A larger grid "averages out" the intermittent sources better as it gets bigger.

Re: Solar Just Hit a Record Low Price in the U.S

#210

Post by agumonkey »

epistasis wrote: post #102
tombert wrote: post #69

I'm of course a supporter of solar, and I don't want to be "that guy", but is there a strategy for handling solar power at night? In these areas that are mostly solar, how do they store the energy, or do they resort to natural gas or coal or something?

There are oh-so-many ways to address this and it's not clear what the market will pick. First off, 100% solar is not likely to win out unless it's a small grid on an island. Any realistic grid will have wind and solar and hydro. New nuclear is already far more expensive than lithium ion batteries + solar, so that's out of contention for new builds unless a government is trying to subsidize the industries that are com…

any curated list of place to follow to stay up to date ?
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