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Can solar costs keep shrinking?

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Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#201

Post by beembeem »

cycomanic wrote: post #170
beembeem wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But nuclear is not dispatchable either so what's your point? It's funny how everyone brings up the intermittance of solar and wind as a point how they can never work because they don't provide baseload and nuclear is the solution. If you read opinions from operators and incident reports you'll find that large power plants like nuclear are actually a much bigger problem for network management, because if you have to t…

It's a fair point that nuclear (and all power plants) need maintenance windows where they come offline (and occasionally unplanned outages). But this is not the same as saying nuclear is not dispatchable, that's just incorrect.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#202

Post by opo »

tfourb wrote: post #143
tuna74 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>... With government incentives…

Money is fungible and not unlimited. A dollar given to you by your neighbors in their taxes to subsidize you would have gone much, much further if the money would have been spent to build solar by your power utility.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#203

Post by spywaregorilla »

verisimi wrote: post #167
Veserv wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the point of citing theoretical values like LCOE when we have direct practical information on predicted profitability? Energy producers in Texas are are adding 8x as much solar capacity (24 GW) as natural gas capacity (3 GW) [1] over 2024-2025. Do you believe that the entire Texas power plant industry is deliberately choosing less profitable and capital inefficient generation? That could be the case, they may…

Is it a free market though? Or are solar, wind, etc being funded by the government? Or is gas being taxed in a way that solar is not (yet)?

Gas is being subsidized

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#204

Post by caymanjim »

I spend four months of the year traveling in an RV. Two years ago, I budgeted over $6000 for my desired solar setup (at least 1200Ah of battery, at least 2400W of solar, plus various controllers and other components). It was expensive enough for me to hold off, and more importantly, I didn't have the space on my current RV for the solar panels.

In just the two years since then, prices on batteries and panels have dropped 25% or more, and solar power per square foot at a good price point has gone up significantly (400W monocrystalline panels can be gotten for $200, in the same form factor as the 200W panels I had been budgeting for). I've now lowered my budget to $4000 for the same setup I was planning to spend $6000 on two years ago, and with 400W panels, I no longer need to upgrade to a larger RV to begin the project.

This summer is almost over, so I'm going to wait until spring to start assembling my system in earnest. Anecdotally, this is a game-changer for me. I'm looking toward year-round full-timing starting next summer, because I can now afford the power I need and don't need a larger RV as soon as I thought I would.

I intend to buy undeveloped land far from civilization in the next few years, and I'm now confident that I can DIY a whole-house solar and battery setup so cheaply that access to mains power won't be a factor in deciding where I settle. Even with seasonal variation in power production, I'll manage just fine, and the system will pay for itself in well under five years. In fact it'll pay for itself instantly if you discount the five-figure cost I would otherwise have had to pay for running a new mains power line far into the woods. And by the time I pick some land to settle on, I'll already have enough solar on my RV that I won't even need to augment the system initially; I'll be able to power a small house in a temperate climate directly off the RV itself, while I build a larger solar array (likely ground-mounted to avoid regulations and insurance complications related to roof-mounted setups).

I know my situation is unusual, but the fact that any of this is possible for well under $10k is a huge change from even a decade ago.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#205

Post by sitkack »

tfourb wrote: post #143
tuna74 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The thing I like about rooftop residential solar is that the substations and the feeder lines don't need to get upgraded. During the hot sunny part of the day, the locally produced energy can go right into AC.

When grid scale batteries drop in price, the substations can also store energy. Then the feeder lines only ever need to support the base load power draw.

Solar is so cheap, that even in off grid installations, the battery bank can be a fraction of what it previously would have been sized for. Modern batteries can be charged much faster and workloads can be shifted to the sunny part of the day.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#206

Post by tails4e »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #200
tails4e wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The price to get solar installed in the US is insanely high compared to the cost of the materials. I've seen my extended family get quotes north of 40k for modest installs. I got a modest system with batter for around 9k in the EU, and id say I'd install the same for under 5k at today's prices.

11k for my house in MA net of a few thousand in subsidies last year. I don't think I really believe your quote of 40k. Does that even break even on energy bill savings?

Exactly, it makes no financial sense, you'd never get payback on it at that price. The company offering it had payment plans and all, with 0% interest, to make it more attractive, but that's just part of the grift.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#207

Post by kevinob11 »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #200
tails4e wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The price to get solar installed in the US is insanely high compared to the cost of the materials. I've seen my extended family get quotes north of 40k for modest installs. I got a modest system with batter for around 9k in the EU, and id say I'd install the same for under 5k at today's prices.

11k for my house in MA net of a few thousand in subsidies last year. I don't think I really believe your quote of 40k. Does that even break even on energy bill savings?

I'm in the Seattle metro area and 25K to 40K is very common. They tell you all kinds of subsidies and payback periods but the out of pocket or loan is always in that range. And payback periods are terrible here given the weather.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#208

Post by spywaregorilla »

Veedrac wrote: post #147
epoxia wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, that claim isn't true.

Solar + Storage is cheaper than a gas peaker plant, but it is not cost competitive with a base load gas plant.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#209

Post by kingkongjaffa »

caymanjim wrote: post #204

I spend four months of the year traveling in an RV. Two years ago, I budgeted over $6000 for my desired solar setup (at least 1200Ah of battery, at least 2400W of solar, plus various controllers and other components). It was expensive enough for me to hold off, and more importantly, I didn't have the space on my current RV for the solar panels. In just the two years since then, prices on batteries and panels have dro…

> I intend to buy undeveloped land far from civilization

I'm always intrigued by this notion, I know plenty of Americans have this kind of plan, but it's never quite as remote as they think, because, y'know you're still in America somewhere.

Unless you're thinking of somewhere in northern Canada.

I'd love to know where is considered 'far from civilization' on the continental US.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#210

Post by rtkwe »

the8472 wrote: post #182
rtkwe wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the graph that I think is supposed to support the assertion by gesturing towards a link between GDP/c and energy consumption/c shows there's a huge range of per capita energy consumption for countries in the same GDP per capita band hidden because the graph uses dual logarithmic axes. It's always a little hard to read logarithmic values other than those explicitly labelled but it looks like up to a 5-7x differen…

I don't think the range matters so much as the floor. The huge blank in the lower-right corner. No such thing as a rich, energy-poor country.

The articles argument is about the US moving inside the range band we see though not about the US having a 100 fold reduction in the power generated that would be required to drop us into the lower right.

I did the math on the data elsewhere in this thread [0] and in an outcome that should surprise no one there's a transition around 1970 where the ratio between power used and gdp created per capita changes drastically, in 1970 we produced .69 units of GDP per unit of energy and in 2014 we were producing 7.94 using inflation adjusted dollars and oil kg equivalent per capita. We just moved into a different type of economy and there's no data in the graph or article to back up the assertion that falling off the HA curve and consuming ~5x less power per capita our GDP is somehow 5x smaller.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41392222

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