3 ms·

No, storage is near irrelevant already. Math for one square meter of solar paneling: that's 186 W of solar cells[1], about $192 installed[2], including land co

No, storage is near irrelevant already. Math for one square meter of solar paneling: that's 186 W of solar cells[1], about $192 installed[2], including land cost, taxes, etc etc etc. A residential system will cost about 3x as much. Over most of the US, that panel will generate an average of 1 kWh per day (5.5 kWh insolation times 18.6% efficiency). To a rough approximation you'll need to store about 30% of that power overnight- 300 Wh. Lets call that $120/kWh for the batteries- that's a reasonable large-scale current cost. Say it lasts 5000 cycles, same as the Tesla powerwall- 13.7 years. In reality that could last way, way longer at a slightly higher capacity, but say you just replace it until the panels run out. That's $192 for the panels and $108 for the batteries, warrantied for at least 41 years. That gives you a cost of 2.0 cents per kWh. Even if you quadruple the cost of batteries, solar is still stupid cheap. It just needs financing. [1]: http://sinovoltaics.com/learning-center/quality/standard-test-conditions-stc-definition-and-problems/ http://sinovoltaics.com/learning-center/quality/standard-tes... [2]: https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy17osti/68925.pdf https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy17osti/68925.pdf

candiodari 9y ago
> solar is still stupid cheap. Addendum: and getting cheaper. > It just needs financing. I would just like to make the point that this is actually the greatest pain point now. Solar is not getting financed exactly because it is stupid cheap and getting cheaper. Think about it: will you be investing in something that's already stupid cheap (with bad margins, and heavy international government competition making it cheaper), and getting cheaper ? That would be a VERY bad investment decision. So what's happening is "the datacenter investment". Solar power plants are mainly being built and financed by the customers of their electricity, who use it to disconnect from the grid (to some extent). Nobody's investing in it, because it's not necessary.
- michaelbuckbee 9y ago
  See, this is where I get tripped up. Because I'd think that it would definitely be the time to invest. That you'd want to cut a deal to deliver X amount of solar capacity / year for the next 20 years at what strikes today's buyer as a cheap price. Then you've locked in the payback for the next two decades as the cost to product plummets and your margins expand every year. There was some talk about how this was the thinking behind the recent "below cost" bids happening in the middle east.
  - candiodari 9y ago
    This is exactly "the datacenter investment". But the only people who can make it are established companies with predictable long-term power needs. You cannot really invest in it. Investing in solar companies however (e.g. SUNE, SCTY, ...) went badly (of course SCTY "turned out well" thanks to Elon Musk putting up 2 billion of not-quite-his-own money to saving it, presumably mostly to protect his reputation. This is ironically another reason not to invest, as the difference between a large loss and a large gain was created only by a large external force (sort-of government even, if you consider just how much government money TSLA gets)) So an investment in SCTY was pretty much a simple bet: "do you believe the government will bail out SCTY ?". The answer was yes, in a roundabout way. In the case of SUNE, the answer was no.

candiodari 9y ago

> solar is still stupid cheap. Addendum: and getting cheaper. > It just needs financing. I would just like to make the point that this is actually the greatest pain point now. Solar is not getting financed exactly because it is stupid cheap and getting cheaper. Think about it: will you be investing in something that's already stupid cheap (with bad margins, and heavy international government competition making it cheaper), and getting cheaper ? That would be a VERY bad investment decision. So what's happening is "the datacenter investment". Solar power plants are mainly being built and financed by the customers of their electricity, who use it to disconnect from the grid (to some extent). Nobody's investing in it, because it's not necessary.

michaelbuckbee 9y ago
See, this is where I get tripped up. Because I'd think that it would definitely be the time to invest. That you'd want to cut a deal to deliver X amount of solar capacity / year for the next 20 years at what strikes today's buyer as a cheap price. Then you've locked in the payback for the next two decades as the cost to product plummets and your margins expand every year. There was some talk about how this was the thinking behind the recent "below cost" bids happening in the middle east.
- candiodari 9y ago
  This is exactly "the datacenter investment". But the only people who can make it are established companies with predictable long-term power needs. You cannot really invest in it. Investing in solar companies however (e.g. SUNE, SCTY, ...) went badly (of course SCTY "turned out well" thanks to Elon Musk putting up 2 billion of not-quite-his-own money to saving it, presumably mostly to protect his reputation. This is ironically another reason not to invest, as the difference between a large loss and a large gain was created only by a large external force (sort-of government even, if you consider just how much government money TSLA gets)) So an investment in SCTY was pretty much a simple bet: "do you believe the government will bail out SCTY ?". The answer was yes, in a roundabout way. In the case of SUNE, the answer was no.