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Can solar costs keep shrinking?

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Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#211

Post by derriz »

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.

Germany has been the biggest exporter of electricity in the world for 8 of the last 10 years[0]. It consistently generates more than it consumes. It's been this way since around 2004.

German wholesale electricity prices are relatively low by European standards - so far this year about 8th cheapest - about 13% cheaper than of France, for example[1]. This reflects the blended cost of production. Household prices are higher than average - because domestic consumption of electricity is taxed more heavily in Germany than the average in Europe.

[0] https://oec.world/en/profile/hs/electrical-energy [1] https://ember-climate.org/data-catalogue/european-wholesale-...

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#212

Post by otherme123 »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #179
cycomanic wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not much cheaper as can be clearly seen in France who did go all in and is only able to keep costs reasonable (not low) by skimping on maintance. Nuclear has received significantly more subsidies than solar or wind (in both the US and EU) and is still not viable (mind you fossils have received by far the most subsidies) .

France went all in, but they saturated the energy market by when? They've built a couple since, but after an intense build out during the 70's they haven't had to keep building. Part of the idea to me is that, if you want to be a nuclear civilization, you need government scale investment in not just building plants but in improving the designs. You need to stay in for decades, stay evolving, where-as France simply is…

> They've built a couple since, but after an intense build out during the 70's they haven't had to keep building.

I don't get this. France had 71% of their grid nuclear in 2018. From 1980 until 2000, the only new power installed in France was nuclear. What do you mean "keep building"? Reach 100% nuclear, banning/removing all other forms of energy? Even more than that and export energy?

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#213

Post by kitten_mittens_ »

kevinob11 wrote: post #207
spywaregorilla wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My parents spent $18K on rooftop solar in the Boise metro area. One Tesla powerwall battery and install on top of that will be another $15K.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#215

Post by rtkwe »

macspoofing wrote: post #19
jvanderbot wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It takes more energy to produce more stuff Energy consumption is also about using that stuff. And in rich countries like the USA, a lot of energy goes to using things or just moving people. So it's possible to build more and use less energy, even if you don't reduce the energy cost of building things. They can simply become more efficient to use and move . In USA, 30% is just homes and commercial sector. 40% is tra…

>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 really really not, you can see it in the data. I took GDP per capita and kg oil equivalent energy consumption per capita and in 1970 the very year the article highlights as us falling off the HA curve and representing 'lost' GDP the exact opposite happens. We begin producing way more GDP per capita using the same unit of energy.

It's basically a piece wise function if you graph it. 1960 to 1970 the GPD/energy unit ratio is largely stable then after that it begins increasing monotonically going from .69 to 7.94.

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

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#216

Post by pjc50 »

blululu wrote: post #14
pjc50 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Countries that impose tariffs on solar panels and EVs are really demonstrating that they don't actually believe in climate change being important, compared to good old bribes for corporate donors.

Countries that dump solar panels on the international market to kill off foreign competition are really demonstrating that... During the Obama years the US invested heavily in Solar, and developed many of the technical innovations that make cheap solar possible today. Unfortunately the people who did this work were not able to keep up with the CCP subsidizing solar panels well below cost. They folded and the US has v…

> CCP subsidizing solar panels well below cost

So we should allow them to subsidize the Western energy transition? And cost the CCP money at the same time? Literally have the Chinese taxpayer pay for cheap Western energy?

I see the same dynamic playing out with EVs:

"EVs are too expensive we have to subsidize them!"

"EVs are too cheap, we have to tariff them!"

This is just handing taxpayer cash to Tesla shareholders with extra steps.

> many of the technical innovations that make cheap solar possible today

Name some? Because it looks to me like a straightforward learning and scaling curve in Chinese factories. If they were actually infringing US patents they'd be blocked on that basis, which tells me they aren't.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#217

Post by euroderf »

xnx wrote: post #20
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.

There are plug-and-play kits for installation on balconies that are popular in Germany: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/29/business/germany-solar-pa...

Not allowed in Finland, at least not in the KSOY service area. Lamous.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#218

Post by nicoburns »

Havoc wrote: post #120
countvonbalzac wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same - take lightbulbs for example. Thanks to LEDs, the amount of energy you need to generate X amount of light has reduced considerably, but we still have as much if not more lighting than ever. And it's not like our GDP is suffering due to a lack of sufficient lighting, at a certain point there's no gain to productivity gained from having another lightbulb. Same thing can be said about cars, CPUs etc.

Think it’s meant more as a broad generalization than something that is always true. Many physical things take pretty fixed amounts of energy. Eg heating a liter of water.

> Think it’s meant more as a broad generalization than something that is always true.

I think you're right, but also that the majority of the problems with the worlds economies (in the richer nations) are because of similar generalizations, and as such I think it important to rebuke them.

Having more cheap energy available is good (all else being equal), but optimising for higher energy usage is absurd.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#219

Post by [deleted] »

kingkongjaffa wrote: post #209
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.

[deleted]

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#220

Post by goodpoint »

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)?

renewables have never been subsidized nearly as much as oil and nuclear.
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