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Can solar costs keep shrinking?

unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com

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Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#541

Post by r00fus »

kragen wrote: post #168
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.…

'too cheap to meter' was always nonsense and is nonsense now. the only time you're getting unmetered energy is if you have so much distributed generation and storage that transmission is unprofitable to build except for unusual cases. for example, most people with a household solar system with storage have unmetered energy during the day the numbers you saw for solar in 01975 were wrong, based on at most five years o…

Totally - my energy costs in CA with solar = generation is super-cheap during daytime but transmission costs from PG&E are insanely high.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#542

Post by davidw »

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…

Places with water (and therefore trees) tend to be already spoken for in most of the US. Alaska, maybe? But that's not temperate at all, and is not great for the solar aspect.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#543

Post by ponector »

oezi wrote: post #422
sitkack wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A kitchen remodel in a high income city in the US is 75k-100k for something basic. The lopsidedness of US prices for light construction projects is a huge problem.

Ikea will sell you kitchens for 4k including appliances and set everything up for 2k. In Europe. (without electricity and plumbing)

You forgot that in US kitchens are huge. Could be bigger than typical studio apartment in a crowded EU city.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#544

Post by MarkusQ »

Iulioh wrote: post #282
obscurette wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but these numbers are not accurate. Luminous efficiency of tungsten lightbulbs is typically around 1-3% (depends on voltage and power), and luminous efficiency of LED bulbs is around 10-30%. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminous_efficacy )

You forgot the part when we used 100W bulbs and now we use 10W led lights. Efficency in the use of energy ti generate the same amount of lumens, because it would be REALLY fun to have a 100W led lamp in my bathroom mirror (my parents still have 2 of these traditional lights ). I mean...energy conversion to lumen is fine but i think it's a little pedantic

GP didn't "forget" it; that 10x improvement in efficiency is the reason we can use 10W bulbs to do the job that used to require a 100W bulb. Looking at energy conversion to lumens isn't "pedantic," it's "correct".

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#545

Post by albrewer »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #200
tails4e wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The price to get solar installed in the US is insanely high compared to the cost of the materials. I've seen my extended family get quotes north of 40k for modest installs. I got a modest system with batter for around 9k in the EU, and id say I'd install the same for under 5k at today's prices.

11k for my house in MA net of a few thousand in subsidies last year. I don't think I really believe your quote of 40k. Does that even break even on energy bill savings?

I paid $50k for 24kWh nameplate capacity with no battery, fully installed and integrated, a year ago at 2% interest (the only reason it made sense to even do the deal). My electric bill went from an average of $350/mo to $16/mo (the minimum to stay connected), while the loan payment is ~$300. My cost for the materials alone would have been ~$30-35k (I needed higher power individual panels to get the capacity I needed, and went with a micro inverter setup for higher reliability). Equipment rental would have been another $3k because I had to dig a trench out to my detached garage to fit the entire system, and I don't own a 30 ft ladder to reach my roof. Electrical work has to be signed off on by a licensed electrician. Engineering schematics of the electrical system have to be created. Permits with the city have to be filed. Another $1-2k. For another $10k: I got to keep the week of vacation I would have needed to burn, someone else is responsible for fixing defects in the system, and I didn't have to spend the mental bandwidth on all the ins and outs of the whole shebang. The installers finished the system in a day, and had it turned on generating power after all the bureaucracy hurdles were cleared a few weeks in.

When I can afford it, the next project is add enough battery capacity to effectively go off grid.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#546

Post by caymanjim »

djtango wrote: post #376
kingkongjaffa wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

As someone who has only lived in major cities - what is the plan for food? Grow it yourself / hunt?

Aside from Alaska, there's nowhere in the entire US where you're more than an hour or so away from a grocery store.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#547

Post by Auracle »

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 feel like people overshoot. I live on 15 acres, mostly woods. I can only just barely see my neighbor’s houses through the woods in the winter.

I’d like more land still - I grew up on 60 acres - but I still basically have complete privacy.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#549

Post by opo »

tfourb wrote: post #405
opo wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to use tentative phrases like "That might be the case", or "even if it is not theoretically most efficient use of that money". As the page on statista.com states: >Rooftop solar photovoltaic installations on residential buildings and nuclear power have the highest unsubsidized levelized costs of energy generation in the United States. If not for federal and state subsidies, rooftop solar PV would come…

Places outside the U.S. exist, you know? PV would be cost effective here in Germany for residential buildings even without incentives, though most owners would probably build smaller installations. And there are plenty of countries without government incentives where people still build PV. As for the renters: many of them currently have decided to buy small plug in PV sets, since their installation has been allowed u…

>...PV would be cost effective here in Germany for residential buildings even without incentives, though most owners would probably build smaller installations.

I suspect the cost differences between ground based solar installed by a utility and consumer rooftop solar aren't really that different in Germany. Most of the cost of rooftop solar are the soft costs, with the bulk often being the labor costs for the work on the roof. The costs for the actual panels is very low these days.

>...In Germany, these incentives have contributed massively to improving popular sentiment towards PV and acceptance of government subsidies for renewables generally.

To repeat myself, I do understand that people like getting free money. In terms of public opinion, I see this survey that was done on the energy transition: https://andel.dk/wp-content/uploads/Andel-Holding-European-s...

>...The share of positive citizens varies across countries from 45% to 80%. Croatia and Denmark are the most positive, while the Czech Republic, Germany and Estonia are the most negative.

Re: Can solar costs keep shrinking?

#550

Post by spockz »

tails4e wrote: post #437
spywaregorilla wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Where do you get batteries that cheap? I’ve been following the market here in the Netherlands and it is about €1000/kWh, going down a bit for batteries approaching 10kWh. Although, I haven’t checked for the last 6 months.
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