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Can solar costs keep shrinking?

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Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#511

Post by rtkwe »

pfdietz wrote: post #478
glenstein wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is from the Maine PUC, other PUCs across the country do their own studies. Maine is on the high side, but all but one PUC that I'm aware of have calculated positive values. https://www.utilitydive.com/news/maine-puc-study-values-sola...

That link is from 2015, so I suspect it's talking about benefits at very low penetration. Clearly things become very different at very high penetration. I mean, if everyone is net metering, who is consuming the excess power? Who is paying for the power plants that these people use when not providing their own power? The economics would go all to hell.

I think we'll have to go to floating rates for bought power to solve that. If there really is no where for the power to go the price of power from solar should fall to zero or below. The economics of your night load plants/storage gets tricky then though because you're losing time when you would currently be making money to solar but they still need to exist to provide power during the night or when there's bad weather all day and you don't get much solar power.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#512

Post by Retric »

chgs wrote: post #468
kragen wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but 1.1 gigawatts of mainstream solar panels is 0.14 billion usd. $130 per kilowatt of capacity. even at the dismal 10% solar capacity factor achieved in very northerly countries like germany, the reactor is twice the price per average watt, and it needs to be installed far from the point of use—you can't buy a 440-watt nuclear reactor, so you need transmission, distribution, and transformers, all of which incur ener…

One larger cost you might think of with solar is land - but even in the U.K. where land isn’t exactly cheap leasing prices are about £1k an acre per year, and an acre will generate about 350MWh a year, so that’s well under 1 cent per kWh, so it’s lost in the noise. https://www.fwi.co.uk/business/alternative-land-uses-leasing...

Yea and that 0.3c/kWh land cost is in the UK which is a terrible fit for nuclear.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#513

Post by smolder »

willvarfar wrote: post #455
aegis4244 wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're looking for some inexpensive land that can be fairly remote you might do worse than Cochise county AZ. The county has an opt out permit program as long as you have at least 4 rural acres. You can build whatever you want, no permits, no inspections. There are some restrictions. No bank will give you a mortgage, can't sell or rent it out within 2 years. You can live in your RV while you build, for 2 years I t…

Do you know realistic property prices and acreages in Cochise county? A quick google image search shows a very hot Arizona. As someone who enjoys following a lot of youtube self-builders around the world I get the impression that most channels I follow have to thread their way through some pretty convoluted and not-self-build nor budget-friendly rules :( Do you know of any other places in the US that have similar eas…

When I think remote wooded area my mind goes to western NY around Allegheny. I know (and helped) someone who self-built a house in that area but am not sure about what approvals they needed/sought for it.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#514

Post by MarkusQ »

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.

The heck with camels. All these places are still within a few meters of the Earth's surface. If you want remote, you've got to think outside the biosphere!

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#515

Post by Damogran6 »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #379
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

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…

Heck, there's a difference between western (interstate super-slab) US and Eastern, Virginia like (Birth of a Nation two lane highway) roads.

I can leave Denver and be DEEP into Wyoming in 2 hours, or it can take 90 minutes to go 60 miles in Rural Virginia (80mph speed limit vs 60 mph speed limit)

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#516

Post by otherme123 »

_ph_ wrote: post #432
otherme123 wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

I like to read the pro-nuclear articles, and the more I read the more I'm convinced they are trying to scam the governments/citizens. In the last 5 years or so they are asking for:

- We want a minimal payment around 80€/MWh because we provide base load. (Average price in Europe this year is 65€).

- We want our obsolete centrals to have their lifespan extended to (depending on the source) 50, 75 or even 100 years. At 80€/MWh guaranteed.

- We want the government to deal with the residues. Maybe we pay half the cost.

- We want the regulators to ease safety requirements, so our building and manteinance costs are competitive.

And now:

- Do you remember we wanted our centrals lifespans extended? Now we want them demolished and replaced, because after 40 years they are old. Government should pay/finance it, even when budgets blow up 5x.

- Do you remember that we wanted to be paid extra for being the baseload? Now we want to be the whole grid, 70% is not enough. At 80€ guaranteed, no competition guaranteed, financed by the state, and if anything goes wrong we won't pay shit.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#517

Post by [deleted] »

eigenspace wrote: post #505
93po wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's super annoying to me to be paying $250 a month for a 1 bedroom apartment in Texas for electricity when $2200 of panels, which would be 8000 watts, would be more than enough for my needs during the day (as long as I didn't run the dryer at the same time as the AC, and also accounting for a 400W panel not usually making full power). Obviously other expensive hardware is needed too, but still.

Do you have a balcony facing south? You might be able to just buy some solar panels, a battery, and a microinverter and set it up on your balcony. You won't be able to sell your electricity back to the grid, but you can perhaps greatly reduce the amount of grid electricity you use.

[deleted]

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#518

Post by fny »

The core realization of the article is that energy costs have increased 30-100%. This is inline broadly with inflation experienced post-COVID presumably due to all the helicopter money dumped on the economy.

I suspect if these figures were revised for inflation, the same trends we've seen over the past ten years would persist.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#519

Post by jessekv »

ben_w wrote: post #508
dzhiurgis wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did that net you a dishwasher?

In the German one, yes. The UK kitchen didn't have one, and while I'm not 100% sure why — was handled by my rental agency, with me deferring to them entirely for whoever they suggested for the work and whatever design they suggested for the layout — I suspect it may have been too small. But the cost of a dishwasher is a small fraction of the rounding error, and I was rounding up quite a bit in both cases — even the (…

Germany has commoditised kitchen installation. Perhaps because kitchens are often not included with the apartment?

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#520

Post by mattmaroon »

Spivak wrote: post #360
caymanjim wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your $40k price is the high end and only in some markets, and has a whole lot more to do with regional labor costs than anything else. The same system would probably be $15k installed in another market. And that's before the enormous subsidies that are on offer in many states. Or if you're at all handy and willing to educate yourself, you can DIY it for a fraction of the cost. That's obviously not for everyone, but y…

Yeah, holy balls. My neighbor got theirs installed for $11k all-inclusive $9k after the Biden subsidy. And that included a complete replacement and expansion of their electrical panel to to accommodate it. $40k sounds unreal they better be gold plated.

Probably just in California. Everything there is gold-plated pricing.
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