37 ms·

The Price of Solar Is Declining to Unprecedented Lows

276 points by tedsanders 10y ago

danmaz74 10y ago
Interesting: > The continued decline in total installed cost is noteworthy considering the fact that the price of the solar panels (or modules) themselves has remained relatively flat since 2012. This means that the decline in installed cost observed since 2012 was largely caused by a decline in the cost of the inverters that convert the DC power produced by solar panels to AC power for the grid and other “soft” costs such as customer acquisition, system design, installation, and permitting.
- nnain 10y ago
  That's right. A friend, here in India is making a decent income by selling accessories - connectors, wire(sun/heat resistant), batteries etc. Importing Solar panels in India or manufacturing is still with the bigger players. But accessories is easy to get in. Also companies providing installation services aren't all that profitable, because cost of labour is cheap here and the margins are low. In installation you're basically only playing in the 15-20%% of a crowded market. But if you consider the over manufacturing capacity of China, accessories import/export/manufacturing remains a lucrative segment of the business.
- nnain 10y ago
  That's right. A friend, here in India is making a decent income by selling accessories - connectors, wire(sun/heat resistant), batteries etc. Importing Solar panels in India or manufacturing is still with the bigger players. But accessories is easy to get in. Also companies providing installation services aren't all that profitable, because cost of labour is cheap here and the margins are low. In installation you're basically only playing in the 15-20%% of a crowded market. But if you consider the over manufacturing capacity of China, accessories import/export/manufacturing remains a lucrative segment of the business.
- allendoerfer 10y ago
  Consolidation.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- jandrese 10y ago
  I'd believe it. I priced out a solar install a few years ago and they were straight up ripping you off on the inverter and the install costs. There was a lot of room for movement in that area.
deepsun 10y ago
Not a word about subsidies on solar power. Has anyone got any data on raw cost of solar power, without taxpayer's subsidization?
- pmuk 10y ago
  The subsidies tend to come back as payments for the electricity generated so the installed costs will be the same as in the article. I installed a 16 panel, 4 kW system on my roof in 2012 for around £10,000 - and receive a subsidy of around £0.45 per kWh generated.
- _ph_ 10y ago
  The article was talking about the raw, unsubsidized costs of solar. It is now on a level, where it can compete on a price basis with conventional energy production. And that does not count in the hidden costs of coal/gas/nuclear as their environmental impact rarely gets accounted for. Here in Germany, rooftop solar electricity costs about half of what the utility companies charge off the grid.
  - ptaipale 10y ago
    ... because utility companies have to collect a price that covers the subsidies going to solar and wind producers, required by law.
    - _ph_ 10y ago
      Even if you deduct that amount from the utility prices, the grid electricity stays higher. Of course that has also good reasons - the grid has to paid for, and the grid is guaranteed to be available 24/7. Still this shows that solar is price competitive.
      - ptaipale 10y ago
        Depends on market, and depends on time of year, of course. At least over here (Finland) the problem with wind and solar energy is that when you actually need electricity (say, a cold winter morning), both solar and wind power output are locally zero. To alleviate this, you need a grid, and energy storage, and spare capacity.
_ph_ 10y ago
This is great news, there should be a large push now to base large parts of the grid on solar (and of course wind). Not accounted in the costs of conventional power generation is all the environmental impact - factoring that it, solar probably is already cheaper. Another seldom mentioned fact is, that solar plants don't have a minimum size. So for large regions in Africa, where there is no grid yet, it is much easier to set up isolated small solar plants in villages than to construct a whole grid.
- gaius 10y ago
  There is environmental impact in solar too - the manufacturing processes for photovoltaic cells aren't exactly clean, the raw materials still need to be sourced, installations spread out over mile after mile need vehicles to maintain etc etc. But the real elephant in the corner of the room is that there is no really good method yet for buffering power generated by solar by day, for consumption overnight, when it is needed for lighting, heating, cooking, etc. A conventional station doesn't care what time of day it is. THAT is the barrier to widespread adoption, and it's one that solar proponents always seem to overlook...
  - nl 10y ago
    I'll keep posting this until I see someone else on HN posting itbtoo: Flow batteries are here now, cheap, and work well. They don't have the power density of the Tesla batteries, but for residential and light industrial use they work well.
    - jessaustin 10y ago
      Can you recommend an online supplier or a particular model?
    - marcosdumay 10y ago
      Flow batteries have two basic problems. One is that they deal badly with usage intermittency - one must be always charging or discharging them, you can't just store them. The second is just, where do I buy one? Nobody seems to make them, no idea why. Maybe this one solves itself when solar gets widespread, or maybe there's some government hand in that and it won't be available when we need it.
makomk 10y ago
So basically rooftop residential solar isn't going to be economically viable any time soon - it's more or less bottomed out and is still much more expensive than conventional generation and utility-scale solar, and the latter has further potential for cost reductions.
- nnain 10y ago
  It'll take a few years, even the suppliers are not focused on residential rooftops (atleast in India). Although several state govt's regulations that industries of a certain size need to use solar energy is encouraging growth in that segment. Residential rooftop installations will take at least 2-3 years and govt incentives, to pick up. But the market is moving for sure!
- nnain 10y ago
  It'll take a few years, even the suppliers are not focused on residential rooftops (atleast in India). Although several state govt's regulations that industries of a certain size need to use solar energy is encouraging growth in that segment. Residential rooftop installations will take at least 2-3 years and govt incentives, to pick up. But the market is moving for sure!
- pmyjavec 10y ago
  How did you come to that conclusion? Actually just curious. It seems like there could be a really big difference between the cost of conventional power between Australia and the US if what you're saying is true.
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    US residential rates average $0.13. https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_5_6_a https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cf... Looks like they are ~$0.23 (that's US dollars) in Australia. I guess the sun is better in Australia too.
- fpoling 10y ago
  Rooftop is viable if one accounts for a possibility of future price hikes or disasters that leaves the house without grid for substantial amount of time. Essentially one treats the extra cost as an insurance premium.
known 10y ago
"If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." --Reagan
amelius 10y ago
So why aren't utility companies installing solar panels on my roof just yet? Why is the upfront financing of solar panels still a problem?
- daurnimator 10y ago
  because you mainly need power when the sun isn't shining. Once you add in costs of electricity storage it's not economical.
  - pjc50 10y ago
    Not really, you mainly need it during the day for commercial demand. At the moment we're still in the phase of "negative demand" in almost all countries, where there's no question of storage and it just manifests as the ability to turn fossil power stations off. The UK has at the moment turned off most of its coal generation capacity for the summer. (Is there a US equivalent of http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ ?)
  - imtringued 10y ago
    Here is a live graph of power production/consumption in germany. You should take the prediction for the rest of the day with a grain of salt though. https://www.agora-energiewende.de/en/topics/-agothem-/Produkt/produkt/76/Agorameter/ https://www.agora-energiewende.de/en/topics/-agothem-/Produk...
    - daurnimator 10y ago
      What you'll notice is that Lignite (=Brown Coal)+Nuclear+Biomass+Water (i.e. the base generation) are sitting at the lowest point of consumption for the day. Solar will only be able to increase (without storage) until there is no black coal used.
      - kuschku 10y ago
        Correct, but Wind is already taking over large parts of the lignite part. And the pumped water is storage for solar, btw. For us as a society, it doesn’t matter if we end up with 100% solar, but only that we end up with 100% combined of Biomass, Pumped Hydro, Wind, Solar, Water.
jasode 10y ago
The article emphasizes that the declining price is due mostly to peripherals & installation rather than any scientific breakthroughs of the solar panels themselves. The following quote is key: >"This means that the decline in installed cost observed since 2012 was largely caused by a decline in the cost of the inverters that convert the DC power produced by solar panels to AC power for the grid and other “soft” costs such as customer acquisition, system design, installation, and permitting." On another note, calculating the payback of residential solar panels is tricky because many online calculators don't consider: - inverters failing and needing to be replaced (~10 years?) - bank of backup batteries need to be replaced (~10 years?) - significant increased labor costs of replacing the roof or repair roof leaks (roofers must spend extra time unmounting all panels before replacing shingles or tiles.) - paying a service to clean the panels if the house is in a dusty climate and the homeowner doesn't want to climb on the roof and do it himself One can lump all those negative costs into one bucket called "ongoing maintenance" to simplify things but nevertheless, it doesn't seem like many ROI calculators properly account for them. (That said, some people pay the premium for solar panels to gain power autonomy which overrides any over-optimistic estimates of installation payback.)
- crdoconnor 10y ago
  >The article emphasizes that the declining price is due mostly to peripherals & installation rather than any efficiency breakthroughs of the solar panels themselves. Over the last few years racks, mounts, wiring, inverters and labor have made up ~60% of the cost. Plus, Obama started slapping ~30% tariffs on the cheapest imported solar panels.
  - Godel_unicode 10y ago
    Not sure why you're being downvoted, I assume the ~20℅ anti-subsidy rates plus the individual anti-dumping rate referenced in the below article are what you're referring to? http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-09/u-s-imposes-dumping-duties-on-imports-of-chinese-solar-goods http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-09/u-s-impose...
codecamper 10y ago
If you liked the sound of this article, there is even better news: * solar panel prices have dropped a whole lot in 2016 already. Chinese PV panels now cost about 43 cents a watt. Production costs are around 37 cents a watt. (that's for Jinko Solar) * utility solar is seeing improvements in construction (more robots), cable management, medium voltage something or other at the power plant, etc. * China PV makers are moving to PERC and maybe more to Mono. This means a little more efficiency. First solar supposedly has their CdTe response. * be careful before you go and invest in solar. (FSLR, SPWR, JKS, CSIQ, JASO) As I learned, there is a coming shakeout in 2017. The long term extension of the ITC in the US ironically caused a slowdown in deployment b/c utilities are no longer under the gun to receive the ITC. China also lowered their subsidies for the second half of 2016. Meanwhile PV makers increased production.
- Filligree 10y ago
  > * solar panel prices have dropped a whole lot in 2016 already. Chinese PV panels now cost about 43 cents a watt. Production costs are around 37 cents a watt. (that's for Jinko Solar) However, a 140-watt panel would cost me 362 dollars back home, which is 250 cents per watt: http://www.sunwind.no/product/show/?id=1297 http://www.sunwind.no/product/show/?id=1297 Where exactly are these oh-so-cheap panels supposedly sold?
  - beefield 10y ago
    The usual place: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/solar-panel-12v-50w-poly-2-pcs-lot-panneau-solaire-100w-18v-mini-off-grid-solar/32663864355.html http://www.aliexpress.com/item/solar-panel-12v-50w-poly-2-pc...
    - STRML 10y ago
      That seems great at 50 cents per watt, but the shipping is another 91 cents per watt. Good place to start looking though.
      - beefield 10y ago
ams6110 10y ago
Interestingly if the price is falling that's motivation to not buy. Why install solar today when it will be cheaper tomorrow?
- marcosdumay 10y ago
  While I do agree that it is a bad time to invest in electricity generation business in general, an electricity consumer would invest in solar today because he has some saved money today, and it's the best ROI around. (Or wouldn't, if it isn't.) The price it may have tomorrow does not change the overall picture.
  - lobe 10y ago
    Couldn't the consumer deduce that the better ROI is to keep the money as cash (or some other liquid investment) for 2-3 years and then spend it on solar in 2 years time? My expectation of future prices definitely affects how I spend my money today.
    - marcosdumay 10y ago
      Yes, there are possibilities for speculating, but you are betting prices will fall faster than inflation + the ROI of your investment. Plenty of people don't want that kind of risk.
- jp555 10y ago
  Maybe it's that a dollar today is still worth more than a dollar tomorrow.
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  Incentives phase out over the next few years.
- spectrum1234 10y ago
  With that logic no solar power plants that exist now would ever have been built.
jdeibele 10y ago
I live in Portland. Lots of small, one-story houses being torn down and replaced with something that has 2 more floors. What surprises me is that roofing on these new homes isn't required to have a south-facing exposure. Seems like that would make it a lot easier for homes to add solar.
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  Lobby your local representatives to update their code to require it. The increase in monthly mortgage payments to roll the system in at construction time is less than a utility bill would be (typically).
- driverdan 10y ago
  Maybe they don't want solar or don't want their roof facing that direction. Let people do what they want with their belongings. If south facing roofs have higher demand it will be reflected in the value of the home.
  - grecy 10y ago
    > Maybe they don't want solar They will when the cost of traditional electricity is priced to better reflect it's environmental impact. In fact, I personally think nobody should be permitted to not have solar in a new building in 2016. You can't remove the seatbelts from your car in 2016. You can't build a new building with asbestos in 2016 and you can't turn your semi-auto rifle into a fully-auto (in most states). Just because you own it, doesn't mean you can do anything you want, that argument makes no sense.
- Tharkun 10y ago
  If all roofs had south facing PV panels, there would be huge peaks at noon. This is already a problem in some German towns, where the installation of new south facing panels is no longer allowed.
- mrfusion 10y ago
  Isn't it too cloudy for solar there?
exabrial 10y ago
Article only shows "total installed cost". For an individual, that's great. But i would have liked to see the actual numbers that go into that itemized. If the "costs went down" because tax rebates went up, then we're no closer to solving any real problems.
i-blis 10y ago
Unfortunately, PV market price drops do not reach the EU market, due to the anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duties on crystalline silicon modules and cells originating from China in place since 2013. These protective measures have caused the solar module prices to even rise during the last two years (and certainly hampered solar deployment in Europe).
hacksonx 10y ago
An interesting finding this. The national power provider in South Africa (Eskom) has decided to go against the tide and focus on coal powered power stations. They have concluded that they won't be buying power from independent power providers which for the most part generate renewable energy. Maybe such researches and a more firm stance from institutions such as the IMF will help us in this regard.
erikb 10y ago
Huge fan of solar here. But I don't think the argumentation in this article is very convincing. 5-15% in a year? That's maybe a huge price drop for the industry, but for the average user it's barely worth mentioning. Maybe I'm just impatient. I want to see that stuff everywhere. Solar roads, solar train walls, solar sun umbrellas, maybe solar sun cream to charge your phone with your fingers, who knows. And honestly I can't even say why. Water, biogas, wind. We already have quite a range of responsible energy sources. But none of them are as exciting as solar power to me. Nearly like a Mars colony. Not much logical reasoning behind it, but still quite exciting.
- beachstartup 10y ago
  > but for the average user it's barely worth mentioning. a reduction of 5-15% in a year is huge. are you familiar with how compounding works? that means the price will fall by almost half in about 5 years, and will be a tiny fraction of what it costs today, in a decade. what's expensive today will be economically viable or even cheap in just 2 or 3 years. look at the graph! it's right there with easy to read colors and shapes.
- sandworm101 10y ago
  >> Water, ... Look into the new science on that one. It can make carbon sense when you flood a desert to feed a hydro dam, but if you flood a forest then the carbon math isn't so great. Microhydro seems an answer, but there too you have to calculate how much forest is being deprived of water, and what that means for carbon uptake. It's probably still better than coal, but it isn't perfect.
  - schiffern 10y ago
    Generally with small-scale microhydro (low single digit acres) you get good biomass production because you've created more edge. Edges between biomes (estuaries, forest-field transitions, etc) are the most productive and diverse places in nature because you get overlapping species and the associated beneficial interactions. Many small dams produce a lot of forest-water edge cumulatively, unlike a few huge dams.
JumpCrisscross 10y ago
Levelised cost of energy (LCOE) is a good metric for comparing energy sources on cost [1]. According to the table on page 6 of this EIA report for weighted average LCOEs in America before tax credits for 2022 [2], photovoltaics are projected to be around $74 per MWh. That compares favourably with $100 for nuclear, but unfavourably with $56 for natural gas, $59 for wind or $64 for hydroelectric. (Solar gets a weighted average federal subsidy of $16/MWh subsidy; wind $8.) [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_sourc... [2] https://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf https://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation...
Animats 10y ago
Note that the article is about big solar, not home solar. Big sites with lots of sun and no clouds are very cost-effective. Mojave is filling up with solar panels. Random house roofs, not so much. The head of Applied Materials solar operations had a useful way of looking at costs. He'd draw a latitude line on a map, saying that below this line (Northern hemisphere) solar could beat out other sources of power without subsidies. About ten years ago, that line ran through Spain and Southern California. As the costs decline, it moves north. This is more useful than looking at costs over all locations. Solar is a location-specific thing. SF's BART system once looked into solar panels at stations, and decided that only one station in the whole system (Contra Costa) got enough sun to justify it. Tesla is making noises about "solar shingles" for residential installations. The idea is to replace the roof, rather than sit on top of it. Others make those now; CertainTeed Products, for one. Dow Chemical just exited that business. Solar shingles work, but high installation cost and lower efficiency make it unproductive.
- erikpukinskis 10y ago
  I don't really see what the relevance of a foggy coastal city is to the general solar market.
  - ee8aq3g5c6 10y ago
    Most of BART's above-ground stations are not located in a foggy city.
- jasode 10y ago
  >Note that the article is about big solar, not home solar. The article mentions "residential systems" twice as points of comparison. It also references the 5% reduced costs in home installs in the subtitle of the article.
nathan_long 10y ago
Makes me wonder about the deflationary effects. Eg, would it be rational to think "I could buy a solar system now, but if I wait a year it will be cheaper by a large enough margin it's better to pay more in electricity until then"?

276 points by tedsanders 10y ago

Interesting: > The continued decline in total installed cost is noteworthy considering the fact that the price of the solar panels (or modules) themselves has remained relatively flat since 2012. This means that the decline in installed cost observed since 2012 was largely caused by a decline in the cost of the inverters that convert the DC power produced by solar panels to AC power for the grid and other “soft” costs such as customer acquisition, system design, installation, and permitting.

nnain 10y ago
That's right. A friend, here in India is making a decent income by selling accessories - connectors, wire(sun/heat resistant), batteries etc. Importing Solar panels in India or manufacturing is still with the bigger players. But accessories is easy to get in. Also companies providing installation services aren't all that profitable, because cost of labour is cheap here and the margins are low. In installation you're basically only playing in the 15-20%% of a crowded market. But if you consider the over manufacturing capacity of China, accessories import/export/manufacturing remains a lucrative segment of the business.
nnain 10y ago
That's right. A friend, here in India is making a decent income by selling accessories - connectors, wire(sun/heat resistant), batteries etc. Importing Solar panels in India or manufacturing is still with the bigger players. But accessories is easy to get in. Also companies providing installation services aren't all that profitable, because cost of labour is cheap here and the margins are low. In installation you're basically only playing in the 15-20%% of a crowded market. But if you consider the over manufacturing capacity of China, accessories import/export/manufacturing remains a lucrative segment of the business.
allendoerfer 10y ago
Consolidation.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
jandrese 10y ago
I'd believe it. I priced out a solar install a few years ago and they were straight up ripping you off on the inverter and the install costs. There was a lot of room for movement in that area.

deepsun 10y ago

Not a word about subsidies on solar power. Has anyone got any data on raw cost of solar power, without taxpayer's subsidization?

pmuk 10y ago
The subsidies tend to come back as payments for the electricity generated so the installed costs will be the same as in the article. I installed a 16 panel, 4 kW system on my roof in 2012 for around £10,000 - and receive a subsidy of around £0.45 per kWh generated.
_ph_ 10y ago
The article was talking about the raw, unsubsidized costs of solar. It is now on a level, where it can compete on a price basis with conventional energy production. And that does not count in the hidden costs of coal/gas/nuclear as their environmental impact rarely gets accounted for. Here in Germany, rooftop solar electricity costs about half of what the utility companies charge off the grid.
- ptaipale 10y ago
  ... because utility companies have to collect a price that covers the subsidies going to solar and wind producers, required by law.
  - _ph_ 10y ago
    Even if you deduct that amount from the utility prices, the grid electricity stays higher. Of course that has also good reasons - the grid has to paid for, and the grid is guaranteed to be available 24/7. Still this shows that solar is price competitive.
    - ptaipale 10y ago
      Depends on market, and depends on time of year, of course. At least over here (Finland) the problem with wind and solar energy is that when you actually need electricity (say, a cold winter morning), both solar and wind power output are locally zero. To alleviate this, you need a grid, and energy storage, and spare capacity.

_ph_ 10y ago

This is great news, there should be a large push now to base large parts of the grid on solar (and of course wind). Not accounted in the costs of conventional power generation is all the environmental impact - factoring that it, solar probably is already cheaper. Another seldom mentioned fact is, that solar plants don't have a minimum size. So for large regions in Africa, where there is no grid yet, it is much easier to set up isolated small solar plants in villages than to construct a whole grid.

gaius 10y ago
There is environmental impact in solar too - the manufacturing processes for photovoltaic cells aren't exactly clean, the raw materials still need to be sourced, installations spread out over mile after mile need vehicles to maintain etc etc. But the real elephant in the corner of the room is that there is no really good method yet for buffering power generated by solar by day, for consumption overnight, when it is needed for lighting, heating, cooking, etc. A conventional station doesn't care what time of day it is. THAT is the barrier to widespread adoption, and it's one that solar proponents always seem to overlook...
- nl 10y ago
  I'll keep posting this until I see someone else on HN posting itbtoo: Flow batteries are here now, cheap, and work well. They don't have the power density of the Tesla batteries, but for residential and light industrial use they work well.
  - jessaustin 10y ago
    Can you recommend an online supplier or a particular model?
  - marcosdumay 10y ago
    Flow batteries have two basic problems. One is that they deal badly with usage intermittency - one must be always charging or discharging them, you can't just store them. The second is just, where do I buy one? Nobody seems to make them, no idea why. Maybe this one solves itself when solar gets widespread, or maybe there's some government hand in that and it won't be available when we need it.

makomk 10y ago

So basically rooftop residential solar isn't going to be economically viable any time soon - it's more or less bottomed out and is still much more expensive than conventional generation and utility-scale solar, and the latter has further potential for cost reductions.

nnain 10y ago
It'll take a few years, even the suppliers are not focused on residential rooftops (atleast in India). Although several state govt's regulations that industries of a certain size need to use solar energy is encouraging growth in that segment. Residential rooftop installations will take at least 2-3 years and govt incentives, to pick up. But the market is moving for sure!
nnain 10y ago
It'll take a few years, even the suppliers are not focused on residential rooftops (atleast in India). Although several state govt's regulations that industries of a certain size need to use solar energy is encouraging growth in that segment. Residential rooftop installations will take at least 2-3 years and govt incentives, to pick up. But the market is moving for sure!
pmyjavec 10y ago
How did you come to that conclusion? Actually just curious. It seems like there could be a really big difference between the cost of conventional power between Australia and the US if what you're saying is true.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  US residential rates average $0.13. https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_5_6_a https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cf... Looks like they are ~$0.23 (that's US dollars) in Australia. I guess the sun is better in Australia too.
fpoling 10y ago
Rooftop is viable if one accounts for a possibility of future price hikes or disasters that leaves the house without grid for substantial amount of time. Essentially one treats the extra cost as an insurance premium.

known 10y ago

"If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." --Reagan

amelius 10y ago

So why aren't utility companies installing solar panels on my roof just yet? Why is the upfront financing of solar panels still a problem?

daurnimator 10y ago
because you mainly need power when the sun isn't shining. Once you add in costs of electricity storage it's not economical.
- pjc50 10y ago
  Not really, you mainly need it during the day for commercial demand. At the moment we're still in the phase of "negative demand" in almost all countries, where there's no question of storage and it just manifests as the ability to turn fossil power stations off. The UK has at the moment turned off most of its coal generation capacity for the summer. (Is there a US equivalent of http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ ?)
- imtringued 10y ago
  Here is a live graph of power production/consumption in germany. You should take the prediction for the rest of the day with a grain of salt though. https://www.agora-energiewende.de/en/topics/-agothem-/Produkt/produkt/76/Agorameter/ https://www.agora-energiewende.de/en/topics/-agothem-/Produk...
  - daurnimator 10y ago
    What you'll notice is that Lignite (=Brown Coal)+Nuclear+Biomass+Water (i.e. the base generation) are sitting at the lowest point of consumption for the day. Solar will only be able to increase (without storage) until there is no black coal used.
    - kuschku 10y ago
      Correct, but Wind is already taking over large parts of the lignite part. And the pumped water is storage for solar, btw. For us as a society, it doesn’t matter if we end up with 100% solar, but only that we end up with 100% combined of Biomass, Pumped Hydro, Wind, Solar, Water.

jasode 10y ago

The article emphasizes that the declining price is due mostly to peripherals & installation rather than any scientific breakthroughs of the solar panels themselves. The following quote is key: >"This means that the decline in installed cost observed since 2012 was largely caused by a decline in the cost of the inverters that convert the DC power produced by solar panels to AC power for the grid and other “soft” costs such as customer acquisition, system design, installation, and permitting." On another note, calculating the payback of residential solar panels is tricky because many online calculators don't consider: - inverters failing and needing to be replaced (~10 years?) - bank of backup batteries need to be replaced (~10 years?) - significant increased labor costs of replacing the roof or repair roof leaks (roofers must spend extra time unmounting all panels before replacing shingles or tiles.) - paying a service to clean the panels if the house is in a dusty climate and the homeowner doesn't want to climb on the roof and do it himself One can lump all those negative costs into one bucket called "ongoing maintenance" to simplify things but nevertheless, it doesn't seem like many ROI calculators properly account for them. (That said, some people pay the premium for solar panels to gain power autonomy which overrides any over-optimistic estimates of installation payback.)

crdoconnor 10y ago
>The article emphasizes that the declining price is due mostly to peripherals & installation rather than any efficiency breakthroughs of the solar panels themselves. Over the last few years racks, mounts, wiring, inverters and labor have made up ~60% of the cost. Plus, Obama started slapping ~30% tariffs on the cheapest imported solar panels.
- Godel_unicode 10y ago
  Not sure why you're being downvoted, I assume the ~20℅ anti-subsidy rates plus the individual anti-dumping rate referenced in the below article are what you're referring to? http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-09/u-s-imposes-dumping-duties-on-imports-of-chinese-solar-goods http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-09/u-s-impose...

codecamper 10y ago

If you liked the sound of this article, there is even better news: * solar panel prices have dropped a whole lot in 2016 already. Chinese PV panels now cost about 43 cents a watt. Production costs are around 37 cents a watt. (that's for Jinko Solar) * utility solar is seeing improvements in construction (more robots), cable management, medium voltage something or other at the power plant, etc. * China PV makers are moving to PERC and maybe more to Mono. This means a little more efficiency. First solar supposedly has their CdTe response. * be careful before you go and invest in solar. (FSLR, SPWR, JKS, CSIQ, JASO) As I learned, there is a coming shakeout in 2017. The long term extension of the ITC in the US ironically caused a slowdown in deployment b/c utilities are no longer under the gun to receive the ITC. China also lowered their subsidies for the second half of 2016. Meanwhile PV makers increased production.

Filligree 10y ago
> * solar panel prices have dropped a whole lot in 2016 already. Chinese PV panels now cost about 43 cents a watt. Production costs are around 37 cents a watt. (that's for Jinko Solar) However, a 140-watt panel would cost me 362 dollars back home, which is 250 cents per watt: http://www.sunwind.no/product/show/?id=1297 http://www.sunwind.no/product/show/?id=1297 Where exactly are these oh-so-cheap panels supposedly sold?
- beefield 10y ago
  The usual place: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/solar-panel-12v-50w-poly-2-pcs-lot-panneau-solaire-100w-18v-mini-off-grid-solar/32663864355.html http://www.aliexpress.com/item/solar-panel-12v-50w-poly-2-pc...
  - STRML 10y ago
    That seems great at 50 cents per watt, but the shipping is another 91 cents per watt. Good place to start looking though.
    - beefield 10y ago

ams6110 10y ago

Interestingly if the price is falling that's motivation to not buy. Why install solar today when it will be cheaper tomorrow?

marcosdumay 10y ago
While I do agree that it is a bad time to invest in electricity generation business in general, an electricity consumer would invest in solar today because he has some saved money today, and it's the best ROI around. (Or wouldn't, if it isn't.) The price it may have tomorrow does not change the overall picture.
- lobe 10y ago
  Couldn't the consumer deduce that the better ROI is to keep the money as cash (or some other liquid investment) for 2-3 years and then spend it on solar in 2 years time? My expectation of future prices definitely affects how I spend my money today.
  - marcosdumay 10y ago
    Yes, there are possibilities for speculating, but you are betting prices will fall faster than inflation + the ROI of your investment. Plenty of people don't want that kind of risk.
jp555 10y ago
Maybe it's that a dollar today is still worth more than a dollar tomorrow.
toomuchtodo 10y ago
Incentives phase out over the next few years.
spectrum1234 10y ago
With that logic no solar power plants that exist now would ever have been built.

jdeibele 10y ago

I live in Portland. Lots of small, one-story houses being torn down and replaced with something that has 2 more floors. What surprises me is that roofing on these new homes isn't required to have a south-facing exposure. Seems like that would make it a lot easier for homes to add solar.

toomuchtodo 10y ago
Lobby your local representatives to update their code to require it. The increase in monthly mortgage payments to roll the system in at construction time is less than a utility bill would be (typically).
driverdan 10y ago
Maybe they don't want solar or don't want their roof facing that direction. Let people do what they want with their belongings. If south facing roofs have higher demand it will be reflected in the value of the home.
- grecy 10y ago
  > Maybe they don't want solar They will when the cost of traditional electricity is priced to better reflect it's environmental impact. In fact, I personally think nobody should be permitted to not have solar in a new building in 2016. You can't remove the seatbelts from your car in 2016. You can't build a new building with asbestos in 2016 and you can't turn your semi-auto rifle into a fully-auto (in most states). Just because you own it, doesn't mean you can do anything you want, that argument makes no sense.
Tharkun 10y ago
If all roofs had south facing PV panels, there would be huge peaks at noon. This is already a problem in some German towns, where the installation of new south facing panels is no longer allowed.
mrfusion 10y ago
Isn't it too cloudy for solar there?

exabrial 10y ago

Article only shows "total installed cost". For an individual, that's great. But i would have liked to see the actual numbers that go into that itemized. If the "costs went down" because tax rebates went up, then we're no closer to solving any real problems.

i-blis 10y ago

Unfortunately, PV market price drops do not reach the EU market, due to the anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duties on crystalline silicon modules and cells originating from China in place since 2013. These protective measures have caused the solar module prices to even rise during the last two years (and certainly hampered solar deployment in Europe).

hacksonx 10y ago

An interesting finding this. The national power provider in South Africa (Eskom) has decided to go against the tide and focus on coal powered power stations. They have concluded that they won't be buying power from independent power providers which for the most part generate renewable energy. Maybe such researches and a more firm stance from institutions such as the IMF will help us in this regard.

erikb 10y ago

Huge fan of solar here. But I don't think the argumentation in this article is very convincing. 5-15% in a year? That's maybe a huge price drop for the industry, but for the average user it's barely worth mentioning. Maybe I'm just impatient. I want to see that stuff everywhere. Solar roads, solar train walls, solar sun umbrellas, maybe solar sun cream to charge your phone with your fingers, who knows. And honestly I can't even say why. Water, biogas, wind. We already have quite a range of responsible energy sources. But none of them are as exciting as solar power to me. Nearly like a Mars colony. Not much logical reasoning behind it, but still quite exciting.

beachstartup 10y ago
> but for the average user it's barely worth mentioning. a reduction of 5-15% in a year is huge. are you familiar with how compounding works? that means the price will fall by almost half in about 5 years, and will be a tiny fraction of what it costs today, in a decade. what's expensive today will be economically viable or even cheap in just 2 or 3 years. look at the graph! it's right there with easy to read colors and shapes.
sandworm101 10y ago
>> Water, ... Look into the new science on that one. It can make carbon sense when you flood a desert to feed a hydro dam, but if you flood a forest then the carbon math isn't so great. Microhydro seems an answer, but there too you have to calculate how much forest is being deprived of water, and what that means for carbon uptake. It's probably still better than coal, but it isn't perfect.
- schiffern 10y ago
  Generally with small-scale microhydro (low single digit acres) you get good biomass production because you've created more edge. Edges between biomes (estuaries, forest-field transitions, etc) are the most productive and diverse places in nature because you get overlapping species and the associated beneficial interactions. Many small dams produce a lot of forest-water edge cumulatively, unlike a few huge dams.

JumpCrisscross 10y ago

Levelised cost of energy (LCOE) is a good metric for comparing energy sources on cost [1]. According to the table on page 6 of this EIA report for weighted average LCOEs in America before tax credits for 2022 [2], photovoltaics are projected to be around $74 per MWh. That compares favourably with $100 for nuclear, but unfavourably with $56 for natural gas, $59 for wind or $64 for hydroelectric. (Solar gets a weighted average federal subsidy of $16/MWh subsidy; wind $8.) [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_sourc... [2] https://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf https://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation...

Animats 10y ago

Note that the article is about big solar, not home solar. Big sites with lots of sun and no clouds are very cost-effective. Mojave is filling up with solar panels. Random house roofs, not so much. The head of Applied Materials solar operations had a useful way of looking at costs. He'd draw a latitude line on a map, saying that below this line (Northern hemisphere) solar could beat out other sources of power without subsidies. About ten years ago, that line ran through Spain and Southern California. As the costs decline, it moves north. This is more useful than looking at costs over all locations. Solar is a location-specific thing. SF's BART system once looked into solar panels at stations, and decided that only one station in the whole system (Contra Costa) got enough sun to justify it. Tesla is making noises about "solar shingles" for residential installations. The idea is to replace the roof, rather than sit on top of it. Others make those now; CertainTeed Products, for one. Dow Chemical just exited that business. Solar shingles work, but high installation cost and lower efficiency make it unproductive.

erikpukinskis 10y ago
I don't really see what the relevance of a foggy coastal city is to the general solar market.
- ee8aq3g5c6 10y ago
  Most of BART's above-ground stations are not located in a foggy city.
jasode 10y ago
>Note that the article is about big solar, not home solar. The article mentions "residential systems" twice as points of comparison. It also references the 5% reduced costs in home installs in the subtitle of the article.

nathan_long 10y ago

Makes me wonder about the deflationary effects. Eg, would it be rational to think "I could buy a solar system now, but if I wait a year it will be cheaper by a large enough margin it's better to pay more in electricity until then"?