81–90 of 262 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So the power plants lend dollars to the state so that they can pay to build the power plant? Or else I don't see how the power plants are collecting the interest?
Usually there are three parties in these agreements. 1. State of Pakistan 2. Someone with dollars (the investors) 3. Local businessman who are willing run the power plant. The three parties come to an agreement on what the minimum returns should be on the investment. Say 10% annual. Then the investors give money to the businessman, who then import the power plant equipment and start operating it. The state-run electr…
The payback periods get me confused. A relative set up solar a year ago in one of the sunniest places in Europe, the Canaries, cost €7,000 for 6KW. He just ran the math on it and found out that the payback period is 15 years. The only way to make it profitable is government subsidies. How can it be profitable to install solar in continental Europe where taxes and labor costs are much higher while having much less sun…
If we assume that you meant €7000 for 6 kilowatts peak (not 6 kelvin wurtzite henries or 6 kilowatt hours, neither of which is sensible) the probable answer is that your relative paid 25× the current market price for their solar panels and therefore got 25× the payback time. However, if we assume €0.12/kWh and a 20% capacity factor, 6 kilowatts peak would average 1.2 kilowatts, which is 10520 kWh per year, which works out to €1260 per year, which would be a payback time of 6 years, not 15 years.
Moreover, another way of saying that the payback time on a durable investment is 15 years is that the investment returns 6.7% per year. That would be a highly profitable investment, even without government subsidies.
The payback periods get me confused. A relative set up solar a year ago in one of the sunniest places in Europe, the Canaries, cost €7,000 for 6KW. He just ran the math on it and found out that the payback period is 15 years. The only way to make it profitable is government subsidies. How can it be profitable to install solar in continental Europe where taxes and labor costs are much higher while having much less sun…
I have 7.8kw in Canada, and if I paid out of pocket payback would be 6-7 years.
We pat $0.13 per kWh from the grid, get a one for one credit on anything we feed in. System makes 7.8Mwh in a year.
What are your friends numbers?
Grid price is also pre-approved to increase not less that 5% a year forever, so it will only go in my favour.
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Grids in Germany if you're not a "typical household/office" with therefore atypical grid usage bill for peak power and energy separately; the billing related peak power is measured by averaging power over 15 minute chunks, and taking the worst one of a year. Alternatively it's also practical for such solar situations to bill for market rate price of the energy in each 15 minute chunk separately; this doesn't correctl…
> averaging power over 15 minute chunks, and taking the worst one of a year. What an interesting metric. Wouldn't even a very cheap and small battery (definitely small enough to keep inside an appartment) provide enough smoothing to, like, halve this peak number? You could rig it to not even output energy until you are beyond the current year's peak usage... How much money would you save this way? I just feel this nu…
It's still much closer to the real costs for the grid operator than $/kWh. The fundamental problem that rooftop solar has revealed is that people think they are paying for the electricity, but they are not. Electricity is dirt cheap. Most of what they are paying for is the maintenance of the grid, and simple usage based billing crushes the system because of freeloader problem once rooftop solar is added.
Long term, the likely thing you pay for will be the size of the main fuse that connects you to the grid. Because that's the thing that scales with the costs you impose on the operator.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Usually there are three parties in these agreements. 1. State of Pakistan 2. Someone with dollars (the investors) 3. Local businessman who are willing run the power plant. The three parties come to an agreement on what the minimum returns should be on the investment. Say 10% annual. Then the investors give money to the businessman, who then import the power plant equipment and start operating it. The state-run electr…
State capitalism like you described totally undermines the price system by replacing profit-and-loss–guided entrepreneurial calculation with political allocation of resources, thereby rendering economic calculation increasingly impossible and eroding the coordinating function of the market process.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
overprovision for their needs during the day and utilize battery power at night.
Solar panels are cheap but batteries are very expensive.
The payback periods get me confused. A relative set up solar a year ago in one of the sunniest places in Europe, the Canaries, cost €7,000 for 6KW. He just ran the math on it and found out that the payback period is 15 years. The only way to make it profitable is government subsidies. How can it be profitable to install solar in continental Europe where taxes and labor costs are much higher while having much less sun…
Your comment appears to be unrelated to Pakistan and, due to the confusion of units, has been reduced to nonsense. Moreover, your implied calculations don't work out. If we assume that you meant €7000 for 6 kilowatts peak (not 6 kelvin wurtzite henries or 6 kilowatt hours, neither of which is sensible) the probable answer is that your relative paid 25× the current market price for their solar panels and therefore got…
I find it fascinating that someone is willing to pay for accounts to swing opinions or seed FUD on a topics like solar panels.
It’s happening here, it’s clearly happening everywhere on every topic.
What this shows is solar is increasingly threatening the electric utility business model. Even without net metering, demand destruction will cause the traditional model to stop working.
In most places in the developed world utility-scale solar is much cheaper to build than rooftop solar. And there's value in having a stable grid to fall back on. I think the demand destruction story is overrated.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think most places the service is priced under the assumption that usage is enough to pay for the grid… I’ve only ever rented though. Are connection fees something that homeworkers think about? Possibly we will have to see changes to account for this sort of stuff at a more granular level, as the grid becomes more dynamic. But, that’s a future we should be actively looking to design for, as the energy supply mix is…
In a random German apartment usage tends to be on the order of 30-ish EUR per person, and the connection fee is typically around 10 EUR per month.
My monthly electricity bill in Sweden, averaged over a year to 1600KWh/month, is approximately €90 production, €50 transmission fee, €25 fixed connection-size fee (25A, 400V), €70 national electricity tax and €50 VAT for a total of €285/month.
We'll be moved to yearly-peak-based transmission tariff in 2027 (European law), but for now I don't need to worry about plugging in the car to chargeon cold days or taking shower when someone is cooking.