US solar plant costs fall another 30 per cent in one year

> Sadly, there appears to be many environmentalists and conservation people against large desert solar arrays claiming it threatens habitat of whatever lives there.

Can you cite a significant environmental group that completely opposes all large desert solar projects for this reason? Otherwise this reads like a rather unfair characterization.

In a recent case [1], the Sierra Club successfully argued that a planned solar array outside Hollister should be made smaller (by about either one half or two thirds, it's not clear why each successive cut was made), due to the potential threat to a handful of endangered species in the area. They also indicated unequivocal support for a similarly sized solar array in Imperial County.

Given how much undeveloped desert land exists in the US Southwest, it seems reasonable to build solar arrays first in areas that won't threaten the habitat of endangered species.

[1]: http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/07/21/giant-solar-project-re...

Emphatically, this. 21 is the page with the breakdown: only 10.7% of the cost is in installation labor!

Percentage-wise, not counting the module itself, the biggest culprits are profit(14% vs 7%), supply chain adding 17%, and sales adding 14%. Installation is actually lower as a percent of overall cost. Profit and sales are usually higher for direct to consumer, but supply chain is the biggest single cost at 42 cents out of 280 per watt. Scale will bring that down drastically but it will always be cheaper to centralize.

That article has all the standard petroleum industry claims: bird deaths (cats kill more birds by a factor of 100x), Native American tribal opposition, and whole lot of data meant to fit a narrative.

The US can't quit coal/oil - because the alternatives along with advanced batteries would sideline petroleum. And we certainly can't have that.

The incinerated birds are called streamers. Here's a reference. [0]

[0] https://www.sciencealert.com/this-solar-plant-accidentally-i...

Many of the comments seem to be focusing on the initial install costs and missing a big point here. Solar can save a lot of money and even make a nontrivial amount of money for the owner.

As you would expect, there a lot of factors that go into how much an array would save/produce (generation, storage, etc.), but a regulatory factor that changes everything is rate structures. Rate structures are far from a standard thing, pretty much wherever you go, there's something different, it varies by state and even at a smaller, city level for municipally-owned utilities (about 15% of the US is served by these, including parts of Bay Area, LA area, Phoenix, Seattle, etc.).

For consuming energy, there is usually a flat-rate or a time-of-use rate (many varieties) but there are more and more capacity fees and fixed charges taking over. For producing energy, it gets much stranger. Many cities and states use versions net metering [0], some will pay you the wholesale power rate and others will pay you the retail rate (retail is ~3x wholesale), some will use a Feed-In Tariff [1], some will factor in a more time-based rate (like time-of-use above), and some others too. If you want to know more about rate structures in general, check this out [2]. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_metering [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed-in_tariff [2] https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...

Rate structures are heavily regulated, for good reason. Their design is a very difficult task and is pretty murky. On one hand are the consumers and their desire to connect solar and other DERs [3] like storage to lower costs. On the other hand are utilities, usually not acting malevolent, wanting to maintain reliability, and, at all costs, avoiding the death spiral [4], which basically means that more people connecting solar and even leaving the grid will skyrocket costs and tank reliability. Though sometimes, the generators will desperately lobby against them. Depending on where you are, the utilities can be the generators too, another matter. [3] http://www2.epri.com/Our-Work/Pages/Distributed-Electricity-... [4] https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/this-is-what-th...

Rate structures are arguably the largest factor in installing solar. Initial costs are important, but the rate structures will affect them over their 30+ year life. In some places, like North Carolina, it can lead to solar flourishing. In other places, hostile rate structures and other regulations can severely harm solar's adoption, like Florida which should be the best place in the US for photovoltaics.

Even more complicating is the ability of the grid to handle a lot of solar, let alone other DERs. The energy grid in the near future can be highly distributed, 100% renewable, and even more reliable than it is today, but there are some big system levels problems to solve before than (these rarely get any attention, most attention goes to node-level problems like sheer generation). I am fully engulfed in this field and am working on these things now. I thought I would present an important point and give y'all some information on this field that I find absolutely riveting. :)