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Can solar costs keep shrinking?

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Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#411

Post by forgetfreeman »

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.

There are places in wyoming where the only proof available that you aren't on another planet is the road you're driving on, where if you run out of gas it is a distinct possibility that you die of dehydration before anyone comes along to render aid.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#412

Post by murkt »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #402
nl wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Many times, it really doesn't matter if you're 30 miles from anything, or 300. If your vehicle breaks down, how screwed are you? Do you have cell coverage to call for help? Will anyone be passing by to flag down, any time soon? How far away is the nearest LEO agency, fire department, ambulance? How far away is the nearest place for water, food, etc?

> LEO agency

I know you didn’t mean Low Earth Orbit agency, but the thought is funny.

If you’re not more than 1000+ km from the nearest satellite, you’re not in a remote area!

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#413

Post by nl »

jacobolus wrote: post #348
nl wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That's not remote: there's a paved road that goes there! Remote should be somewhere that requires weeks of travel by sailboat or camel to get to.

I might be wrong but there are few places that already have population and yet require a week of travel via camel to get to.

My sister lived in Wingellina[1][2], Western Australia which was a 6 hour drive on unpaved, 4WD required track from Alice Springs. That's close to one of the most difficult, isolated places to get to in Australia, but even there isn't a week on Camels. Maybe going further west into the Great Sandy Desert might get close (although you get close to small townships in WA if you go too far).

The Empty Quarter has low population density but is smaller than isolated areas in Australia.

There are probably places in Siberia and Canada that are fairly isolated too.

I agree that there are more isolated islands. The Pitcairn Islands is the most obvious case.

[1] https://maps.app.goo.gl/Q2wL9KCa9aXht3YS9

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wingellina,_Western_Australia

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#414

Post by SubjectToChange »

PaulKeeble wrote: post #159
rmason wrote: post #103

I remember as a child being on a school tour of the Enrico Fermi nuclear plant South of Detroit being told that nuclear power would soon become too cheap to monitor. This was over sixty years ago! So I am a bit skeptical. I also remember around 1975 getting all excited about solar and getting told that costs were dropping so fast that in five years solar would be cheaper than power produced from coal or natural gas.…

We are very much there already, Solar and Wind are both cheaper than Natural gas which is itself is cheaper than Coal. Solar is around 5 cents a KWH whereas Nuclear is more like 15 cents a KWH. The prices of Wind and Solar are being set by Gas at the moment as well and at some point that pricing will detach once more batteries are in place. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source

The intermittency is a huge problem. Grid scale batteries and/or pumped hydro are laughably inadequate for bridging the gap. Wind and solar energy is only cheap when they aren’t responsible for maintaining baseload capacity on the grid.

Simply consider the case of China. They install and export more solar PV than anyone else in the world, and they are aggressively building out wind as well. It is literally impossible to get a better price than China when it comes to renewable energy, yet for some reason the Chinese have decided to dump tens of billions of dollars into nuclear energy.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#416

Post by neltnerb »

nl wrote: post #413
jacobolus wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not remote: there's a paved road that goes there! Remote should be somewhere that requires weeks of travel by sailboat or camel to get to.

I might be wrong but there are few places that already have population and yet require a week of travel via camel to get to. My sister lived in Wingellina[1][2], Western Australia which was a 6 hour drive on unpaved, 4WD required track from Alice Springs. That's close to one of the most difficult, isolated places to get to in Australia, but even there isn't a week on Camels. Maybe going further west into the Great Sa…

I mean, I guess camels are not especially fast swimmers.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#417

Post by energy123 »

geodel wrote: post #130
hiddencost wrote: post #80

I've decided not to do home solar because it seems obvious to me that industrial scale plants will be able to do it cheaper.

Right. Pricing is out of whack. I got estimate of ~50K without batteries for 8KW solar setup. I don't know who is hosing whom but this is not workable for me.

8KW panels + battery installation costs $10k total in many countries.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#418

Post by [deleted] »

blululu wrote: post #62
henry2023 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think that cheap solar panels aren’t the product of economy of scale in a country that just likes to build stuff?

That’s part of it, but America is also a country that routinely achieves economies of scale and loves to build stuff so there is clearly more going on here. Look back at what was commercially and technically available 15 years ago and it is not a viable mainstream energy supply at the scale needed to have the deployment we see today. The US developed a number of key innovations that made this feasible. A lot of this…

[deleted]

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#419

Post by energy123 »

SirHumphrey wrote: post #190
mjamesaustin wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ok, but why then, if storage is not a big problem of solar power, the US has 179 gigawatts of installed solar capacity with rated power of all grid storage on the US grid being 31.6 GW, of that only 4.8 GW being battery storage. [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_the_United_Stat... [2] https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/energy/us-grid...

The answer to this is obvious. Until very recently, solar was less than 100% of midday electricity. What would have been the point of installing batteries? To charge them with natural gas?

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#420

Post by raffraffraff »

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 think that "an hour to the nearest convenience" is far from civilization, but I'm Irish and this is a tiny country. Also, you could argue that, by definition, having a road and an RV kitted out with food, water and batteries is civilization. Even if I lived full time like that I'd feel like I owe some civilization somewhere, a tax. Who built this nice road? What hidden or socialised costs or subsidies went into kitting me out for remote life? When all is said and done, we can't survive without having some sort of connection to other groups. Going a few hundred miles away for a while and saying "I AM SELF SUFFICIENT!" is a bit silly.

And like I say, if you want peace and quiet you don't have to put your life at risk by going out of range of water, power, roads, phone coverage etc.

Ignore me, I'm sure I just don't get it.

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