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Can solar costs keep shrinking?

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Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#321

Post by switchbak »

thijson wrote: post #286
caymanjim wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd love to know where is considered 'far from civilization' on the continental US. There are many interpretations and levels of remoteness. In my case, I want to be away from the sights and sounds and crowds of anything that would be considered urban or suburban. My prime criteria is that I don't want to see another person unless I choose to. I don't want to see a road with cars on it, I don't want to see another…

The further north you go, the larger the seasonal variation in sunlight. I've watched some video's of people living off grid in BC, they need a diesel generator for the winter months to get by.

This is also quite dependent on the microclimate: there's a number of places in the south of BC that get radically different levels of solar radiation. Kelowna for instance would be far better than North Vancouver for a solar setup.

By and large most of BC wasn't economic enough to justify solar as a replacement for grid power, but I haven't checked those numbers in a while. We do have relatively cheap hydro power, so there's not a hugely strong incentive either. There's other reasons that might justify an install however, especially for off-grid folks.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#322

Post by lacksconfidence »

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?

It's very real. I was recently quoted 30k-43k for 7kw of panels, 13.5kwh of battery, along with reworking some electrical panels. The one coming in at the top of the range were baking in a ton of profit and willing to negotiate down once shown the other quotes. In the end i completely passed, it just doesn't make sense to pay 30k to avoid 3k a year in electric bills.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#323

Post by spywaregorilla »

lacksconfidence wrote: post #322
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?

It's very real. I was recently quoted 30k-43k for 7kw of panels, 13.5kwh of battery, along with reworking some electrical panels. The one coming in at the top of the range were baking in a ton of profit and willing to negotiate down once shown the other quotes. In the end i completely passed, it just doesn't make sense to pay 30k to avoid 3k a year in electric bills.

Well, a battery is going to boost it substantially

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#324

Post by pfdietz »

javiramos wrote: post #45
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…

A fantastic deep dive into this topic is Vaclav Smil's book Energy and Civilization: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262536165/energy-and-civilizati...

Smil was wildly wrong about the trajectory of PV improvement. In his defense, so was almost everyone else.

I found the following comment about Smil:

"There is a way how to evaluate the quality of prophets, seers and visionaries. Find their 5,10,15 years old predictions. I own the Smil’s book: Energy Myths and Realities: Bringing Science to the Energy Policy Debate (2010). So have a look how good prophet he was 10 years in advance and focus on photovoltaics (I own Czech translation of the book, so I need to re-translate his text back to English, I hope I will not skew his ideas too much):

* To get 1 PWh/year of electricity you need to install about 450 GW worth of solar panels. You need dozens of years to acomplish such task. Reality check: 3 years in current speed, in the future probably faster.

* The cost of PV panels fell from 5 USD/W in 2000 to 4.5 USD/W in 2009. He don’t see much perspective of price plummeting as predicted f.e. by Al Gore (who cited the learning curve, Smil counted with 0.05 USD/W in 2020) or by PV industry (1.5 USD/W in 2020). Smil predicted that PV panels would be 25% cheaper in 2020 and 50% in 2030. Reality check: Current price of PV panels is ~0.2 W/USD. While Smil wrote the book manufacturers finally scaled their production of polysilicone and PV cells to cover the demand. Competition among them set the cost of PV panel on the freefall trajectory. PV panels cost less than he predicted for 2030 in 2011.

How credible are such visionaries?"

I will add that in 2023, 447 GW of PV was installed globally. So, we're at the point where Smil's "dozens of years" is being done each and every year.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#325

Post by MichaelNolan »

bee_rider wrote: post #196
pfdietz wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The attack on net metering isn't unfortunate; what's unfortunate is that people thought net metering ever made any sense. It's free riding on services provided by the grid, forcing others (who don't have PV) to pay for cost of providing those services. As PV rolled out, the craziness of net metering became impossible to ignore. Of course, those feeding at this trough objected loudly, and some naively fell for those o…

It would be nice if this cost was actually all broken out; the grid operator should charge for connectivity, the various energy providers should charge for the energy itself. Net metering could still make sense; your residential solar installation might make enough to cover the gap.

That’s how it is in Texas. The company that owns the power lines to your house is unrelated from the company you buy the electricity from. (The latter of which you have dozens of options to pick from)

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#326

Post by ericd »

caymanjim wrote: post #273
m463 wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think RVs that you can live/remote work in while traveling are interesting. (I'm speaking about large class A RVs like an apartment with washer/dryer etc...) But as solar becomes more prevalent, I don't see why they don't design RVs more around solar. It has only been recently that I've seen "all electric" type RVs. Before that, most RVs were hybrid propane/electric or diesel/electric, for example gas stoves, dual…

I do well in my tiny (20') RV for four months a year. It was a little cramped when I had a girlfriend with me, but still cozy. This is my third summer doing this. The first two summers, I wasn't working. This summer I'm working full-time remote (dev). It has its challenges. I plan to upgrade to a much larger 5th wheel trailer, likely in two years, with all the creature comforts you mention. Part of the reason solar i…

I'm curious, why do people use Ah for batteries, given that there's 3 different common server rack battery voltages (12, 24, 48)? Is 12 just assumed for RVing?

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#327

Post by lacksconfidence »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #323
lacksconfidence wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very real. I was recently quoted 30k-43k for 7kw of panels, 13.5kwh of battery, along with reworking some electrical panels. The one coming in at the top of the range were baking in a ton of profit and willing to negotiate down once shown the other quotes. In the end i completely passed, it just doesn't make sense to pay 30k to avoid 3k a year in electric bills.

Well, a battery is going to boost it substantially

with how pricing works here battery is basicaly a necessity. They will pay 3-8c /kwh during the day for extra production, and charge 50-65c/kwh when you don't have enough production. Well, maybe necessity is a bit strong. That's only a $5-$8/day swing on a 13kwh battery. But it adds up.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#328

Post by kragen »

aaron42net wrote: post #318
caymanjim wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

400W solar panels cost $200-250. So 2400W will cost me roughly $1800. There are discounts if you can buy in bulk, but I don't have room for more than 6-8 panels at most. Like all things, the raw material cost is trivial. There are the tariffs you mention (I just skimmed your link, and don't speak German), but there's also economy of scale, packaging, logistics, etc. I'm sure I could get 400W panels for as little as $…

Will Prowse's favorite large panels are cheaper than that, including a 370w bifacial for $111 each in small quantities: https://signaturesolar.com/all-products/solar-panels/ Related video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v33nbi7gKcY

that's great, only 2½× the wholesale prices on solarserver!

is that available in the usa? because the swindle that caymanjim is being subjected to is kind of a usa-only thing

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#329

Post by irrational »

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.

I once drove from Oregon to Death Valley on the east side of the Cascades/Sierras. We were driving at highway speeds for most of a day and saw almost nobody. Just nothing and nobody as far as the eye could see for hundreds and hundreds of miles. This isn’t even very unique. Vast swaths of the American west are just empty.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#330

Post by stephen_g »

ericd wrote: post #326
caymanjim wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do well in my tiny (20') RV for four months a year. It was a little cramped when I had a girlfriend with me, but still cozy. This is my third summer doing this. The first two summers, I wasn't working. This summer I'm working full-time remote (dev). It has its challenges. I plan to upgrade to a much larger 5th wheel trailer, likely in two years, with all the creature comforts you mention. Part of the reason solar i…

I'm curious, why do people use Ah for batteries, given that there's 3 different common server rack battery voltages (12, 24, 48)? Is 12 just assumed for RVing?

Amp hours are what the batteries are specified in, right down to cells that are 1.5V, 2V, 3.9V etc.. Yes, once they're in system you want to know kWh capacity of the system as a whole, but it makes sense that people think of what's written on the batteries first.
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