Is this not just a symptom of oil prices dropping? Solar has to remain competitively priced or the industry is screwed
Natural gas maybe. Oil probably not since it is rarely used for electricity.
The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months
81–90 of 448 posts
Re: The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months
#82And here in the USA some states are punishing solar customers who sell their energy, by taxing them on infrastructure costs, to protect the big energy companies. Their reasoning for taxing them is to "maintain the lines and equipment". The counter-argument to that is, "customers who consume pay taxes and fee's to maintain the lines, and on top of that, the government is giving them tax breaks to help "maintain the li…
My gf is an electromechanical engineer at a solar power startup (and obviously supportive of solar power initiatives). Just asked her about this, and she said that: 1) the electrical grid wasn't designed for transferring power this way, and it can damage the grid 2) because solar power isn't a constant power source (say, a cloud blocks the sun for a minute), power companies need to keep power available for someone wh…
Legislation around blocking non-profit internet and cable is just evil though :\
Re: The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://www.mccallum-layton.co.uk/tools/statistic-calculator... Sample Size: 1000 Observed Proportion: 15.64% Confidence Level: 95% Confidence Interval: ±2.25 Range for the true population proportion: 13.39% to 17.89% It's noise.
Hmm, I tried playing around with this tool. When I enter 250000 in sample size I get ranges that don't overlap. Does that mean I would need that many samples to answer this?
Yes. The bigger your sample size, the bigger your ability to see small effects. A test with 1000 elements can only tell apart big effects; a test with 250000 can tell apart much smaller ones. This is the idea of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_power
Re: The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months
#84Pretty impressive. They need to work on cheaper batteries now.
As ebbv points out, they are dropping really fast in price.
There's a fairly decent analysis from Lazard consulting on storage:
https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-storage...
It used to be part of their cost of energy analysis, but has recently been broken out:
https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-...
But since these report aggregate information from previous years, they always feel out of date compared to watching the latest news.
Ramez Naam's forecasts are the most informed forecasts that I have found:
http://rameznaam.com/2015/10/14/how-cheap-can-energy-storage...
Re: The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its SEO/Click-bait 101 unfortunately. It is sensationalisation of something to make it sound more interesting. Next it will be "See what crazy change to solar made energy purchasers sit up pay attention!"
But can it be improved with a "just?" "See what crazy change to solar just made energy purchasers sit up and pay attention!"
"3 crazy changes made local [your town here] mom save 50% on solar panels in just 16 short months. What happens next is incredible"
Re: The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months
#86And here in the USA some states are punishing solar customers who sell their energy, by taxing them on infrastructure costs, to protect the big energy companies. Their reasoning for taxing them is to "maintain the lines and equipment". The counter-argument to that is, "customers who consume pay taxes and fee's to maintain the lines, and on top of that, the government is giving them tax breaks to help "maintain the li…
Their reasoning for taxing them is to "maintain the lines and equipment".
That is a very valid reason. Solar power - like wind - is erratic in nature and has much higher requirements for the power transmission network than e.g. hydroelectric, nuclear of fossil power.
The erratic nature is even worsened by subsidies which encourage people to peak production, regardless of consumption. The way these subsidies have been implemented varies across countries, but wherever you have them, you are also inviting trouble to the power grid.
Re: The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months
#87This might seem like a weird thing to complain about, but am I the only person who is sick to death of headlines of the form "X just did Y"? It's the "just" I object to. It seems to be some sort of trend over the last couple of years. I think it's to make it seem more dramatic or something. It just happened! My god! In this case it is especially ridiculous, since the article describes something that happened over the…
Oh good, we can whine about this instead of talking about the issue at hand. This is HN constantly now, the top comment is some nitpick more or less totally unrelated to the topic.
Sorry. :)
I didn't intend it to become the top comment. I just finally snapped and had to express my annoyance.
I guess I tapped into a lot of pent-up demand for the same thing.
Re: The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its SEO/Click-bait 101 unfortunately. It is sensationalisation of something to make it sound more interesting. Next it will be "See what crazy change to solar made energy purchasers sit up pay attention!"
But can it be improved with a "just?" "See what crazy change to solar just made energy purchasers sit up and pay attention!"
The big secret to solar costs utility companies don't want you to know
Re: The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months
#89Pretty impressive. They need to work on cheaper batteries now.
Batteries would be great but they are not necessary unless you want to replace all generation with solar which would be a gargantuan undertaking. As part of the current generation stack, even at expanded scale, solar works very well without storage.
100% solar isn't the only scenario where a battery in the home would be useful. Even today, one could install a battery with an intelligent monitor that charges during non-peak hours and discharges during peak hours, effectively arbitraging the price of power. I have no clue if this actually makes sense economically, however.
Re: The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months
#90It's interesting how no one is discussing how the governments massive subsidy of the solar and wind power industries are completely distorting the market for these "prices", so studies like these are pretty much nonsense. Of course price/KW will drop massively if the entire thing is being propped up by taxpayer dollars and not the actual need to be profitable. I guess I just need to resign myself to the idea that so…
THe article says that in Dubai there are no subsidies