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Can solar costs keep shrinking?

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Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#431

Post by chickenbig »

derriz wrote: post #211
sharpshadow wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hi…

The ember-climate link has the qualifier

    Note that these are the prices generators receive for selling electricity on the spot market. They are not the same as the prices paid by electricity consumers, which can also include taxes, levies, network charges, subsidies, and supplier profits. They also do not account for hedging.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php... shows that Germany has higher absolute prices for the consumers, which is what matters. The use of wholesale prices as a proxy for consumer prices is at best inaccurate.

> Household prices are higher than average - because domestic consumption of electricity is taxed more heavily in Germany than the average in Europe.

https://www.bmwk.de/Redaktion/EN/Artikel/Energy/electircity-... shows 19% VAT, which is definitely a choice by the government. However even before taxes and levies Eurostat showed the price in Germany is about 0.28 EUR/MWh versus 0.22 EUR/MWh in France.

One reason Germany has been able to shift so much electricity to France is the EU Renewable Energy Directive (which excludes nuclear power but includes biomass and biofuels). Intermittent power from Germany counts against any power generated by France's nuclear power stations, helping to meet percentage consumption targets.

https://energy.ec.europa.eu/topics/renewable-energy/renewabl...

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#432

Post by _ph_ »

otherme123 wrote: post #212
jauntywundrkind wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The main body of Franc nuclear are old reactors which require increasing maintenance and extension of operations license to keep producing. If France planned to keep their nuclear power, a lot more reactors would have to be build quickly. Reality is, there is one reactor in construction and it is long delayed and way over budget. It is supposed to get online this year or next. But with the costs of that one reactor, it is not thinkable to replace the aging reactors. As a consequence, France needs urgently to develop and implement a plan B.

On the other side, even France sees the increased competition of renewables. This summer they even had to take three nuclear reactors temporarily off grid, because demand for nuclear was just too low.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#433

Post by cbmuser »

Customers are paying prices, not costs. A cheap kWh of solar electricity isn't useful when it's not available when needed. Prices are mandated by supply and demand.

Also, while the costs of the solar modules may fall further, the costs for the whole setup does not. A solar power plant requires a lot of mechanical and electrical parts to get the solar modules installed and connected to the electricity grid plus labor costs.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#434

Post by chickenbig »

tuna74 wrote: post #66
beembeem wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) There isn't infinite desert land that can be used. 2) You still need firm, dispatchable power. Batteries are a bridge, not the only solution.

Batteries are the solution. The sun is pretty stable (not very firm unfortunately, but I don't see how that relates to electricity).

> Batteries are the solution.

Batteries aren't the solution to seasonal variation, are they? Discharging once a year means the batteries either need to be ultra-cheap or the electricity they provide would be very expensive. Batteries provide easy access and relatively efficient round trips, but at a high capital cost.

For me it is somewhat mysterious that wind/solar proponents view hydrogen (and methane/ammonia) as an unnecessary competing technology.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#435

Post by mdemare »

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.

Very funny to read this from the Netherlands, where remote is defined as "I can't hear any cars".

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#436

Post by oezi »

opo wrote: post #202
tfourb wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone with plenty of solar on my roof, it is anything but idiotic. With government incentives it pays for itself in ten years and has a realistic life span of 25. It might comparatively more efficient/cheaper per watt to build solar on the ground or on large commercial structures, but that doesn't change the economics for individual home owners, which in many parts of the world are already positive.

>... With government incentives… Money is fungible and not unlimited. A dollar given to you by your neighbors in their taxes to subsidize you would have gone much, much further if the money would have been spent to build solar by your power utility.

Money spent is money earned. Many countries realized solar is creating a lot of local wealth generation rather than losing money for the local economy by buying fossils from abroad. Subsidies for such make sense because they just come back in additional taxes.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#437

Post by tails4e »

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

5kwh battery module for 1.2k in the EU. 13.5kw should be under 5k. Any system north of 15k is price gouging, unless the system is huge.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#438

Post by tails4e »

kitten_mittens_ wrote: post #213
kevinob11 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And the Powerwall is also a ripoff vs many other options. 5kw battery module can be for for 1.2k, so 3 modules give 15kwh for under 5k

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#439

Post by oezi »

happyopossum wrote: post #108

I have seen a ton of articles about the plummeting 'costs' of solar over the past decade, so I was shocked when I recently got a bunch of quotes for a 10-12KW residential install: they were almost the same as the cost of the 10KW system I had installed back in 2014. So at least here in California, inflation and rising labor costs have eaten up all of those savings.

This seems extremely sus. Maybe the 10kw include battery today?

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#440

Post by Galaxeblaffer »

csomar wrote: post #395
credit_guy wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I continue to be radically pro-nuclear (but I'm also pro-solar and pro-wind). Especially given Elon's example with SpaceX, how you can drop the cost of some technology by a factor of 10 or 100. Elon's idea was that the floor on the price of something is the cost of the raw materials. Everything else can be optimized. The cost of a nuclear power plant is most likely one thousand times the cost of the raw materials. Ca…

You make the ultimate point. In a "sane?" world, once nuclear has been discovered, every country should have gone the way of France or the Soviet Union. Build nuclear everywhere with over-capacity built-in. The problem is, once Chernobyl happened (which might have bankrupted a struggling USSR), every country became wary of nuclear as some hidden costs are now more apparent. The Fukushima disaster didn't help either:…

Please tell me how an earthquake can turn a relatively modern nuclear pp into a nuclear bomb ?
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