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Can solar costs keep shrinking?

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Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#41

Post by mjamesaustin »

kkfx wrote: post #22

The issues for p.v. are mainly two: - one is speculation, because yes panels get cheaper, so inverters and batteries, but prices to the customers AUGMENT more and more, and current prices for private, domestic p.v., at least in the EU, it's so high that's a nonsense installing them. Personally, since in my country it legal, a thing NOT so common, I've build a small domestic system for 11.500€ while the cheapest offer…

I question your assumptions about grid storage. The cost of storage has been plummeting alongside the cost of solar, and battery lifespans are a non-issue when capacity is not a factor.

A battery storage facility that has lost 30% of its capacity after 10 years of operation is still functional with that lower capacity. Compare this to something like a car that has much more limited function with a lowered capacity.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#43

Post by EcommerceFlow »

api wrote: post #40
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.

The problem with nuclear is that it likes to be big, which means big capital-intensive projects and therefore a slow iteration time. Even if there are some things that are superior about nuclear, like land and raw resource use, it's going to get run over by a fast-iterating solution with small minimum capital investment. At this point solar+batteries is a cheaper option in almost all locations except perhaps places w…

Yup exactly. Why go through all that headache, which has existed with Nuclear since day 1, when we could just mass produce solar and plop it down on the infinite empty desert land out west.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#44

Post by oezi »

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.

Elon has dropped out of this game pretty much. Its Chinese manufacturing for pretty much all components. But as the article says: the hardware is now less than half of the cost and shrinking further.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#45

Post by javiramos »

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...

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#46

Post by tiffanyh »

Has the insurance & roof warranty issue been solved with panels on your roof?

A few years ago I looked at putting solar panels on my roof.

Both the company who roofed my house, and my insurance company - said it voided any warranty / claims against future roof damage if a solar panel was installed

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#47

Post by bryanlarsen »

sharpshadow wrote: post #29
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…

Look at Germany the next years. We gave up coal, nuclear and now gas. Have the highest prices for energy in the world and our industry is leaving. If we would have more energy we would get much richer and not more poor like right now.

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.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#48

Post by rtkwe »

glenstein wrote: post #16
rtkwe wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think utility companies are entirely wrong to charge some flat rate for being connected to the grid, there are fixed costs with each customer and solar homes are not actually independent from the grid even if they're net neutral their night time power has to come from somewhere. Even if we get to enough residential solar to completely power the grid from solar and charge enough storage to last overnight there…

The trouble with this logic is that public utility commissions across the country have measured the impact that solar has on the grid, and found that not only does it not impose a cost, but it confers a benefit, in some studies up to 33 cents per kilowatt hour. I completely agree with your core point, which is that there need to be costs associated with impact on the grid, to make sure that there's no incentivization…

I think the utilities are moving very early with their flat rate charges but I don't think they're wrong in the long term that a flat rate will be required to fund the grid in the future. I'm thinking about the point where a large majority of customers have sufficient solar generation to cover their entire energy usage for the day on average, those people still need generation or storage of power during the night when solar doesn't work so somewhere they'll need to continue paying for power generation or storage during the night. This is probably doable with time based rates instead but we'll have to see and even then we'll probably need some flat rate to account for people with local storage because they also exist as a cost to service.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#49

Post by sephamorr »

glenstein wrote: post #16
rtkwe wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think utility companies are entirely wrong to charge some flat rate for being connected to the grid, there are fixed costs with each customer and solar homes are not actually independent from the grid even if they're net neutral their night time power has to come from somewhere. Even if we get to enough residential solar to completely power the grid from solar and charge enough storage to last overnight there…

The trouble with this logic is that public utility commissions across the country have measured the impact that solar has on the grid, and found that not only does it not impose a cost, but it confers a benefit, in some studies up to 33 cents per kilowatt hour. I completely agree with your core point, which is that there need to be costs associated with impact on the grid, to make sure that there's no incentivization…

Source please? I'm aware of the large costs in the opposite direction due to the freeloading you mention:

https://energyathaas.wordpress.com/2024/04/22/californias-ex...

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#50

Post by Mistletoe »

sobellian wrote: post #32
macspoofing wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm having a hard time getting past the assumption in the article that energy use is tied directly to GDP per capita Why? They are correlated and so are reasonable metric to gauge progress when starting from a subsistence economy (as all economies in the world began). At some point, this may be less true when you hit a energy generation ceiling and you start 'optimizing' and trying to do more with the same amount ..…

We are there today: https://ourworldindata.org/energy-gdp-decoupling

This always makes me uncomfortable though. How would we tell the difference between rampant scamming and fudging numbers and an economy where we all pass around Monopoly money to do services for one another? I pay you to mow my lawn and you pay me to mow your lawn. Are we creating GDP?
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