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Can solar costs keep shrinking?

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Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#371

Post by codersfocus »

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.

https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/

Anywhere not colored

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#373

Post by rr808 »

EcommerceFlow wrote: post #37

I used to be radically pro-nuclear, but after seeing some of the data of solar growth and realizing we could just scale things up (like building iphones), I'm fully on board with the Elon strategy of solar + powerbanks for storage.

> solar + powerbanks for storage

Works great for California, not so much for the Northern long dark cold winters.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#374

Post by [deleted] »

sitkack wrote: post #241
eigenspace wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it does miss the point. Panels are no longer the expensive part of solar. The expensive part is now things like labour, installation, and land acquisition, and bringing those costs down is going to be hard.

My links showed that panels are demonstrably not the primary cost.

[deleted]

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#375

Post by nothercastle »

caymanjim wrote: post #333
m463 wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you need more like 3200W > The market isn't going to bear the cost of massive solar installations as standard equipment. so doing some math... Larger class A RVs seem to cost $300k and up, and retirees seem to happily pay for all conveniences. For "normal" people, who haven't cashed in their retirement, the good thing is that they depreciate like a car instead of appreciating like a house. if you used all of a 40ft…

Alas, houses appreciate, cars depreciate, and RVs are just worthless. I exaggerate, but RV depreciation is absolutely nothing like auto depreciation. They lose 25% driving off the lot and another 25% per year (numbers out my ass, but correct order of magnitude). The cost certainly would the most make sense on gigantic $300k class As, which also conveniently have space for lots of panels and lots of batteries. And ind…

They are built so terribly most are worthless after 20 years and start to have major issues at 10. Also add that the first 2 years they are constantly in the shop for repairs while the warranty is still available

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#376

Post by djtango »

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.

As someone who has only lived in major cities - what is the plan for food? Grow it yourself / hunt?

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#377

Post by WillAdams »

refurb wrote: post #342
WillAdams wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's kind of sad how pervasive roads/trails are: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42104894 With more than 14,000 of them, it's not possible to be more than 115 or so miles from one: https://www.rd.com/article/farthest-away-from-mcdonalds/

Why is that sad? These can be logging trails you’d need to squint to actually see in the brush. And 115 miles? That’s a huge distance.

Invasive species for one thing --- folks aren't nearly as careful about checking their vehicles as they ought to be.

Not huge enough when you're considering how the McDonald's have driven out little hole-in-the-wall places and that the presence of such a fast food restaurant requires a busy highway, or a reasonably dense population center.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#378

Post by hibikir »

caymanjim wrote: post #306
lanstin wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this fascinating. It really does take a variety of people to make up a culture. My ideal living situation includes being able to see someone I know every time I walk out side my home, being able to walk to a bagel shop, a grocery store, a post office, a train station, and ideally a library and bike shop and parks. It would be boring if we were all like me and clumped together.

I've lived like that. I lived in the Mission in San Francisco with four of my closest friends (all from NJ) within walking distance. It was great being able to meet up for lunch or drinks or go out clubbing, it was always a pleasant surprise to run into them randomly on the street or in a park. I lived in midtown Manhattan and I loved being able to go out at 3am in the middle of the winter and find a fresh produce st…

There is only a small window when old is just old enough that you shouldn't be afraid of what happens when you need fast, acute medical help. I have seen many a relatively far flung retirement plan get into trouble when the first health scare makes the retiree want a hospital within half an hour.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#379

Post by NikolaNovak »

nl wrote: post #343
conradev wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America can get extremely remote and so you can choose how remote you want to go. Here is a journalist from Manhattan meeting folks living off-grid in Colorado: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/11/28/what-going-off... Not to mention Slab City: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slab_City,_California Infrastructure-wise, roads come before water or electricity, and so plenty of the United States has a road but no pow…

Slab City is 100 miles from San Diego and only 160 miles from Los Angeles! That's not remote - remote should be classified using a decreasing population density over distance function. Remote is somewhere like Nullarbor, which is 183 miles from Ceduna (population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nullarbor,_South_Australia

When I was a teenager, we would wake up on a summer Saturday in country A, drive through the entirety of country B, and stop by in a lovely city in country C, all in 76km. With full double border crossings, changes in climate and culture and population, several different terrain types including some proper big mountains, and everything :)

Point is, yes USA is huge (let alone Australia) and skews our sense of distance, but 100 miles is not as trivial distance as we sometimes instinctively feel :-)

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#380

Post by epistasis »

beembeem wrote: post #199
BobaFloutist wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How often/much do you realistically need to heat a house with high, quality, modern insulation? Does your house have triple-paned windows, a vestibule for each entryway, well insulated walls, attic, and roof, etc? Also if we're talking about heating, there's also the possibility of geothermal heat pumps, which seem to work everywhere, and while they have a high one-time capital cost but I'm pretty sure can more or le…

> a house with high, quality, modern insulation? How much is society willing to spend collectively to upgrade our housing stock for this? Not to mention triple-paned windows are not standard by any sufficiently large builder on new construction. Double-paned? Certainly. Geothermal is great. But in an already built city, it's not feasible to install quickly. There is also a lack of legal framework or precedent in plac…

It's less "spend" as it is "invest". The problem with investment is the cost of capital. But if we're thinking of spending massive amounts of money for nuclear, capital must be very cheap indeed, and we absolutely must consider instead investing that in reducing our need for as much energy.

Geothermal is also a great shift for natural gas utilities. Delivery of weak heat sources to heat pumps is being explored in many areas.

Nuclear is the equivalent of throwing down 100k on a house for a massive custom-drilled ground-source heat pump solution. So in these difficult areas, we need to consider the alternatives.

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