13 ms·

Just to footstomp this, there are other costs that are already beginning to dominate the analysis for solar, like customer acquisition costs. Convincing someone

Just to footstomp this, there are other costs that are already beginning to dominate the analysis for solar, like customer acquisition costs. Convincing someone to attach something to their house has significant costs. Like, "over $2000 per install" significant.[0] Other soft costs, like land acquisition and taxes, still play dominant roles in many projects.[1] The naive assumption is that solar succeeds when there's lots of sun and it's all just physics. But these other factors, like, say opportunity costs (the cost of available substitutes), are why you're often better off installing solar in Alaska than Florida.[2] Theoretical physics are great, but at this point I'd be far more excited about big ideas to deal with the messy economics side of solar generation. An announcement that some sort of "solar council" was going to pursue a national marketing campaign to drive solar adoption would be huge news. Or Elon deciding that strip malls were his new target, to drive installation of solar on every commercially leased roof, which would reap huge efficiencies of scale in local installation costs over residential. Or, the cheesy TED talk clincher would be: the next big solution isn't always about electrons, sometimes it's about people. [0] https://www.solarreviews.com/solar-leads/customer-acquisition-costs-in-the-solar-industry-2017/ https://www.solarreviews.com/solar-leads/customer-acquisitio... [1] https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy17osti/68925.pdf https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy17osti/68925.pdf [2] https://solarpowerrocks.com/solar-basics/how-much-electricity-does-a-solar-panel-produce/ https://solarpowerrocks.com/solar-basics/how-much-electricit...

onetimemanytime 8y ago
OK, can you just buy a solar heating panel? You and your best friend can install it...depending on location you can easily get hot water for 6-10 months a year. That's quite a savings. You don't have to solve everything today ;)
- lstodd 8y ago
  Solar heating panel? A bunch of wooden/plywood boxes, some glazing for them (can actually reuse thrown-away window panels), a bit of plumbing with PP pipe (ridiculously lego-like easy), some kind of top tank (a common steel drum?). And some making sure the roof/attic floor doesn't collapse, which usually is not a problem. This can be _build_from_scratch_ in a couple of weekends with a best friend. But for the construction codes. And unions. It's so low-tech, so I wonder why I haven't heard of 19th century installations. Me, I actuially built two in places where construction codes are not an issue. And have seen functioning installs dating from 1950s. I don't think it even makes any sense to mass-produce heat boxes the way the solar-electric panels have to be. It all can be either made on site or included into the house design from start. That's maybe why you can't buy solar heating off the shelf.
  - sgc 8y ago
    I don't agree simply because it is very common for diy solar water panel systems to leak all over the place. There at least needs to be prescriptive code to help reduce instances of crap work. But since it is a lot of pipe in a small footprint, it just makes sense to have it made in a factory with better quality control.
- briandear 8y ago
  You and your best friend most likely can’t install it. You not only need building permits, you also typically need a licensed electrician to do the work. Doing it without a permit or properly credentialed installers risks sanction from the municipality as well as potential insurance consequences.
  - thoughtfunction 8y ago
    A 'solar heating panel' in most cases is a water tank exposed to the sun as much as possible painted in black. Or maybe put inside a black box. Not a lot of electricity work there.
    - Animats 8y ago
      It's not quite that simple. Flat plate collectors are roof components, and they have all the problems of roofing. Making them leakproof despite big thermal stresses takes some work. Brazed copper plumbing works. Plastics, not as well.[1] You usually want a water tank to buffer the thing, so you can get hot water at night. Temperature will be all over the place without that. Giant hot water tanks in attics need extra structural support, which was a problem in Florida at one time. There are some fancier setups that will work in cold weather. Some systems use antifreeze in the panels, and a heat exchanger. [1] http://www.alternative-energy-tutorials.com/solar-hot-water/flat-plate-collector.html http://www.alternative-energy-tutorials.com/solar-hot-water/...
amluto 8y ago
Sort of true. It is indeed the case that, at least in the US, the cost of the cells is a minor part of the cost of a rooftop solar array. You’re missing one detail, though: a lot of the costs you’re describing scale with the area of the array — the costs of mounting, wiring, sealing roof penetrations, shipping, physically hauling the panels to the roof, etc. are all related to the number and size of the panels. If you can shrink the array by a factor of 3, it makes a big difference. I’ve read that the economics may already be close to favoring multi-junction cells for this reason, and they’re nowhere near 90% efficient, nor are they cheap.
manmal 8y ago
At some point, there has to be a standard to which roofs are built (including wiring and power ports) such that you can just buy shingles and put them in or replace from the inside. Just cut the middle men and installation costs.
- DubiousPusher 8y ago
  I hate to be a bummer but based on the way the construction industry works, that's almost certainly not going to happen. For example, in the U.S. most plumbing jobs fall under a bevy of regulations and yet tasks as simple as changing a faucet can frequently lead to issues like unmatched pipe diameters or thead types. We've had 100 years to standardize that and it's still a mess. You literally can't even just go buy a garden hose and know for sure it's going to fit your exterior faucet. Electrical is arguably the most regulated, standards based and straight forward aspect of construction and even that varies a great deal based on the electrician and equipment. A rigorous standards based construction industry would be amazing. We could design electrical systems that could be installed by a novice with almost no risk of danger or failure. Homeowners could change luminares just plugging them in and attaching them to an electric box toolesly. We could have plug and play water appliances. Damn it would be magical but again I'm fairly certain that's just not going to happen. Edit: Above I indicated that the construction industry doesn't operate on "rigorous standards". That's not really true. There are actually very good science based standards for most construction tasks. It's more of a problem that the industry doesn't really focus on making future work on a structure low cost. And it makes very little effort to increase accessibility by creating more consumer facing equipment and tools.
  - azernik 8y ago
    This is, I assume, because standards and regulation are aimed more at safety than at ease of maintenance/modification?
    - akiselev 8y ago
      The majority of construction regulations I've run into are relatively flexible. It's expensive but if you want to try out a new material or technique, the path to validating it and getting it approved is well defined. The problem is that few construction companies operate at that kind of scale and outside of churches, flagship venues (i.e. Disney hall), and palaces there just isn't enough money to develop new technologies.
newnewpdro 8y ago
Another issue is theft. I own a remote desert property in many ways ideal for solar, but the utility electric bill averages < $20/mo. Nobody is going to try steal the hot copper wires connecting my house to the grid. But where there's a substantial PV array on display, there's batteries and an expensive inverter nearby, and not much to prevent taking them.
- danans 8y ago
  Yours is a very unusual case. Most domestic solar installations are on roofs, so not likely to be stolen, and most homes' electricity bill is much higher than $20/mo.
  - newnewpdro 8y ago
    I don't expect the panels to be the first things taken. The battery bank and inverter however, which are easily put invisibly to use by anyone even your neighbor, are quite the prize. I'm not sure it's all that unusual a case. Solar is especially relevant to remote off-grid homes. Unfortunately, these are also prime targets for theft as they're often left unattended for long periods with distant neighbors. Denser populations have a grid, and can just have a large solar installation powering that grid on a large scale. It's a problem. Solar puts expensive infrastructure on-site, it's a mini power station.
    - danans 8y ago
      > I'm not sure it's all that unusual a case. > Solar is especially relevant to remote off-grid homes. Unfortunately, these are also prime targets for theft as they're often left unattended for long periods with distant neighbors. Remote off grid homes are a very unusual case. Not saying there is no demand from that segment, but even there is a higher rate of demand from it, it's a small segment of the market vs urban/suburban rooftop solar, and I wouldn't expect major manufacturers and installers to optimize for it. > Denser populations have a grid, and can just have a large solar installation powering that grid on a large scale. That's already happening today. However people choose to have rooftop domestic solar for many reasons ... to fix the long term cost of their electricity consumption, to offset peak power rates, etc. > It's a problem. Solar puts expensive infrastructure on-site, it's a mini power station. In situations where site security is a problem, presumably custom solutions can be put in place by installers to ensure security of the inverters and batteries. It may cost more, but that's sort of the price paid for owning property in a sparse, remote location.
therein 8y ago
> Or, the cheesy TED talk clincher would be: the next big solution isn't always about electrons, sometimes it's about people. An even cheesier TED talk clincher would be: > the next big solution isn't always about electrons, sometimes it's about elections.
grizzles 8y ago
Plug and Play Solar is one way to dramatically lower soft costs of residential pv installs. Fraunhofer is working on this [1] and there are already other 3rd party products on the market. [1] https://www.cse.fraunhofer.org/pnp https://www.cse.fraunhofer.org/pnp
lightedman 8y ago
"Convincing someone to attach something to their house has significant costs. Like, "over $2000 per install" significant." Not any more. We've got 50-state legal solar stuff where you just lay the panels out in the yard, literally plug them into your wall outlet, and every outlet on that circuit is energized. You can even leave it hooked to your power at night time, as the junction boxes have barrier rectifier diodes that prevent the panels from consuming power at night. Install costs are becoming almost negligible due to advancing technology. Cell efficiency is up there. Typical monocrystalline panels run 20+% now days (and look utterly gorgeous - https://imgur.com/a/sZGtYmB https://imgur.com/a/sZGtYmB - picture from my job.) Opportunity costs? Each cell runs on average $1.00 for most manufacturers, so you just need to shop around. A typical 60-cell panel at 300W runs about $150-200. Most of your concerns have not been concerns for about 5 years.
tomcam 8y ago
Plus the environmental costs of creating and, at end of life, disposing of the arrays. You’re a good thinker and writer. I’m definitely ready for your TED talk!
millstone 8y ago
Honest question: do you think residential / small scale commercial solar is the future? As an outsider it seems like utility companies are best placed to deploy solar at large scale in the right locations, bypassing customer acquisition costs. Here in California, PG&E offers the "solar choice" program where I pay extra to have 100% of my electricity generated from solar. This cost $6.50 of my $82 electric bill last month. (Yes I know electricity is fungible.)
- brownbat 8y ago
  That's a tough question. Distributed production offers some huge advantages, but in the nrel study above you'll find that utility scale is strictly more efficient. I think Hawaii is a good case study. Customers are generally frustrated with the power company's poor reliability and high rates. Rooftop solar offers a substitute for what has traditionally been a protected monopoly, and there's abundant sun, so solar adoption there is crazy strong. HECO has generally fought to slow it down. If utilities realize this threat, they'll become competitive on price and customer service. Reliability in some places. If they do not understand this threat, then they will just try to lobby for more and more extensive penalties for those with rooftop solar who are still connecting to the grid. Like cable companies raising rates in response to the rise of Netflix. The most extreme version of that would be the emergence of microgrids - cord cutting from utilities by entire subdivisions. Microgrids are potentially really cool technology, but would require some pretty intense dysfunction to take off. So while I hope utilities figure this out, regions will vary, and rooftops put a new sort of check on how bad utilities can get, even if they don't become ubiquitous. Rooftops will inevitably be the answer in some places, not all. Oh and if you look country by country, to places where it has been harder to get a well financed responsible utility... Parts of Latin America or Africa could really be jump-started economically by rooftop solar.
hef19898 8y ago
I did an analysis of coats for residential roof top installations in Europe for my Master Thesis. Overe here around 30 to 35% of costs are the panels. Still the most expensive part but nowhere near the 60 to 70% it used to be. Panels really turned into a commodity. What struck me is that nobody, not even Solar City and others, looked at the logistics side of things. It seemed to me that eveeybody came up with elaborate and capoztal intensive ways to sell to the people with the smallest customer Life-Time value in the whole value chain. Putting sophisticated logistics in place to cut costs (my assumption was that by doing that the solar panel cost could be reduced by around 15-20%) and selling to installers would have been the better way to go. So I second you and the OP, it is no ponger about physics (with the exception of large power plants) and more about people and how you get solar on said people's roofs.
- danieltillett 8y ago
  Is your thesis in English and avalaible online?
  - hef19898 8y ago
    German, unfortunately I couldn't convince my Prof to accept it in English. In case you're interested and not under time pressure I can translate it or part of it. Always happy to share stuff like that. Just shoot me a mail. hef19898 (at) gmail.com
    - danieltillett 8y ago
      Sorry for the long delay, but would encourage you to at least translate the key parts into English.
      - hef19898 8y ago
        Started already and managed to get to page 12 of 78 when the people realized at work that Christmas is, surprise, again on Dec. 24th. I totally forget that I wrote that many words... ;-)
tim333 8y ago
>other costs that are already beginning to dominate Which is an argument for trying to make cells more efficient like the ones in the article apparently looking at 43-90% as against something like 18% for typical cell. If most of your costs are installing etc then those can remain the same while you get twice the output.
zamfi 8y ago
Yes, and also making that house, or land, or taxes produce 4x as much energy is categorically different form reducing the cost of existing 22%-efficiency panels by 75%. That's because higher-energy-per-unit-area panels increases the efficiency of land use, which drives all the other costs you list: land acquisition, taxes, customer acquisition, etc.

onetimemanytime 8y ago

OK, can you just buy a solar heating panel? You and your best friend can install it...depending on location you can easily get hot water for 6-10 months a year. That's quite a savings. You don't have to solve everything today ;)

lstodd 8y ago
Solar heating panel? A bunch of wooden/plywood boxes, some glazing for them (can actually reuse thrown-away window panels), a bit of plumbing with PP pipe (ridiculously lego-like easy), some kind of top tank (a common steel drum?). And some making sure the roof/attic floor doesn't collapse, which usually is not a problem. This can be _build_from_scratch_ in a couple of weekends with a best friend. But for the construction codes. And unions. It's so low-tech, so I wonder why I haven't heard of 19th century installations. Me, I actuially built two in places where construction codes are not an issue. And have seen functioning installs dating from 1950s. I don't think it even makes any sense to mass-produce heat boxes the way the solar-electric panels have to be. It all can be either made on site or included into the house design from start. That's maybe why you can't buy solar heating off the shelf.
- sgc 8y ago
  I don't agree simply because it is very common for diy solar water panel systems to leak all over the place. There at least needs to be prescriptive code to help reduce instances of crap work. But since it is a lot of pipe in a small footprint, it just makes sense to have it made in a factory with better quality control.
briandear 8y ago
You and your best friend most likely can’t install it. You not only need building permits, you also typically need a licensed electrician to do the work. Doing it without a permit or properly credentialed installers risks sanction from the municipality as well as potential insurance consequences.
- thoughtfunction 8y ago
  A 'solar heating panel' in most cases is a water tank exposed to the sun as much as possible painted in black. Or maybe put inside a black box. Not a lot of electricity work there.
  - Animats 8y ago
    It's not quite that simple. Flat plate collectors are roof components, and they have all the problems of roofing. Making them leakproof despite big thermal stresses takes some work. Brazed copper plumbing works. Plastics, not as well.[1] You usually want a water tank to buffer the thing, so you can get hot water at night. Temperature will be all over the place without that. Giant hot water tanks in attics need extra structural support, which was a problem in Florida at one time. There are some fancier setups that will work in cold weather. Some systems use antifreeze in the panels, and a heat exchanger. [1] http://www.alternative-energy-tutorials.com/solar-hot-water/flat-plate-collector.html http://www.alternative-energy-tutorials.com/solar-hot-water/...

amluto 8y ago

Sort of true. It is indeed the case that, at least in the US, the cost of the cells is a minor part of the cost of a rooftop solar array. You’re missing one detail, though: a lot of the costs you’re describing scale with the area of the array — the costs of mounting, wiring, sealing roof penetrations, shipping, physically hauling the panels to the roof, etc. are all related to the number and size of the panels. If you can shrink the array by a factor of 3, it makes a big difference. I’ve read that the economics may already be close to favoring multi-junction cells for this reason, and they’re nowhere near 90% efficient, nor are they cheap.

manmal 8y ago

At some point, there has to be a standard to which roofs are built (including wiring and power ports) such that you can just buy shingles and put them in or replace from the inside. Just cut the middle men and installation costs.

DubiousPusher 8y ago
I hate to be a bummer but based on the way the construction industry works, that's almost certainly not going to happen. For example, in the U.S. most plumbing jobs fall under a bevy of regulations and yet tasks as simple as changing a faucet can frequently lead to issues like unmatched pipe diameters or thead types. We've had 100 years to standardize that and it's still a mess. You literally can't even just go buy a garden hose and know for sure it's going to fit your exterior faucet. Electrical is arguably the most regulated, standards based and straight forward aspect of construction and even that varies a great deal based on the electrician and equipment. A rigorous standards based construction industry would be amazing. We could design electrical systems that could be installed by a novice with almost no risk of danger or failure. Homeowners could change luminares just plugging them in and attaching them to an electric box toolesly. We could have plug and play water appliances. Damn it would be magical but again I'm fairly certain that's just not going to happen. Edit: Above I indicated that the construction industry doesn't operate on "rigorous standards". That's not really true. There are actually very good science based standards for most construction tasks. It's more of a problem that the industry doesn't really focus on making future work on a structure low cost. And it makes very little effort to increase accessibility by creating more consumer facing equipment and tools.
- azernik 8y ago
  This is, I assume, because standards and regulation are aimed more at safety than at ease of maintenance/modification?
  - akiselev 8y ago
    The majority of construction regulations I've run into are relatively flexible. It's expensive but if you want to try out a new material or technique, the path to validating it and getting it approved is well defined. The problem is that few construction companies operate at that kind of scale and outside of churches, flagship venues (i.e. Disney hall), and palaces there just isn't enough money to develop new technologies.

newnewpdro 8y ago

Another issue is theft. I own a remote desert property in many ways ideal for solar, but the utility electric bill averages < $20/mo. Nobody is going to try steal the hot copper wires connecting my house to the grid. But where there's a substantial PV array on display, there's batteries and an expensive inverter nearby, and not much to prevent taking them.

danans 8y ago
Yours is a very unusual case. Most domestic solar installations are on roofs, so not likely to be stolen, and most homes' electricity bill is much higher than $20/mo.
- newnewpdro 8y ago
  I don't expect the panels to be the first things taken. The battery bank and inverter however, which are easily put invisibly to use by anyone even your neighbor, are quite the prize. I'm not sure it's all that unusual a case. Solar is especially relevant to remote off-grid homes. Unfortunately, these are also prime targets for theft as they're often left unattended for long periods with distant neighbors. Denser populations have a grid, and can just have a large solar installation powering that grid on a large scale. It's a problem. Solar puts expensive infrastructure on-site, it's a mini power station.
  - danans 8y ago
    > I'm not sure it's all that unusual a case. > Solar is especially relevant to remote off-grid homes. Unfortunately, these are also prime targets for theft as they're often left unattended for long periods with distant neighbors. Remote off grid homes are a very unusual case. Not saying there is no demand from that segment, but even there is a higher rate of demand from it, it's a small segment of the market vs urban/suburban rooftop solar, and I wouldn't expect major manufacturers and installers to optimize for it. > Denser populations have a grid, and can just have a large solar installation powering that grid on a large scale. That's already happening today. However people choose to have rooftop domestic solar for many reasons ... to fix the long term cost of their electricity consumption, to offset peak power rates, etc. > It's a problem. Solar puts expensive infrastructure on-site, it's a mini power station. In situations where site security is a problem, presumably custom solutions can be put in place by installers to ensure security of the inverters and batteries. It may cost more, but that's sort of the price paid for owning property in a sparse, remote location.

therein 8y ago

> Or, the cheesy TED talk clincher would be: the next big solution isn't always about electrons, sometimes it's about people. An even cheesier TED talk clincher would be: > the next big solution isn't always about electrons, sometimes it's about elections.

grizzles 8y ago

Plug and Play Solar is one way to dramatically lower soft costs of residential pv installs. Fraunhofer is working on this [1] and there are already other 3rd party products on the market. [1] https://www.cse.fraunhofer.org/pnp https://www.cse.fraunhofer.org/pnp

lightedman 8y ago

"Convincing someone to attach something to their house has significant costs. Like, "over $2000 per install" significant." Not any more. We've got 50-state legal solar stuff where you just lay the panels out in the yard, literally plug them into your wall outlet, and every outlet on that circuit is energized. You can even leave it hooked to your power at night time, as the junction boxes have barrier rectifier diodes that prevent the panels from consuming power at night. Install costs are becoming almost negligible due to advancing technology. Cell efficiency is up there. Typical monocrystalline panels run 20+% now days (and look utterly gorgeous - https://imgur.com/a/sZGtYmB https://imgur.com/a/sZGtYmB - picture from my job.) Opportunity costs? Each cell runs on average $1.00 for most manufacturers, so you just need to shop around. A typical 60-cell panel at 300W runs about $150-200. Most of your concerns have not been concerns for about 5 years.

tomcam 8y ago

Plus the environmental costs of creating and, at end of life, disposing of the arrays. You’re a good thinker and writer. I’m definitely ready for your TED talk!

millstone 8y ago

Honest question: do you think residential / small scale commercial solar is the future? As an outsider it seems like utility companies are best placed to deploy solar at large scale in the right locations, bypassing customer acquisition costs. Here in California, PG&E offers the "solar choice" program where I pay extra to have 100% of my electricity generated from solar. This cost $6.50 of my $82 electric bill last month. (Yes I know electricity is fungible.)

brownbat 8y ago
That's a tough question. Distributed production offers some huge advantages, but in the nrel study above you'll find that utility scale is strictly more efficient. I think Hawaii is a good case study. Customers are generally frustrated with the power company's poor reliability and high rates. Rooftop solar offers a substitute for what has traditionally been a protected monopoly, and there's abundant sun, so solar adoption there is crazy strong. HECO has generally fought to slow it down. If utilities realize this threat, they'll become competitive on price and customer service. Reliability in some places. If they do not understand this threat, then they will just try to lobby for more and more extensive penalties for those with rooftop solar who are still connecting to the grid. Like cable companies raising rates in response to the rise of Netflix. The most extreme version of that would be the emergence of microgrids - cord cutting from utilities by entire subdivisions. Microgrids are potentially really cool technology, but would require some pretty intense dysfunction to take off. So while I hope utilities figure this out, regions will vary, and rooftops put a new sort of check on how bad utilities can get, even if they don't become ubiquitous. Rooftops will inevitably be the answer in some places, not all. Oh and if you look country by country, to places where it has been harder to get a well financed responsible utility... Parts of Latin America or Africa could really be jump-started economically by rooftop solar.

hef19898 8y ago

I did an analysis of coats for residential roof top installations in Europe for my Master Thesis. Overe here around 30 to 35% of costs are the panels. Still the most expensive part but nowhere near the 60 to 70% it used to be. Panels really turned into a commodity. What struck me is that nobody, not even Solar City and others, looked at the logistics side of things. It seemed to me that eveeybody came up with elaborate and capoztal intensive ways to sell to the people with the smallest customer Life-Time value in the whole value chain. Putting sophisticated logistics in place to cut costs (my assumption was that by doing that the solar panel cost could be reduced by around 15-20%) and selling to installers would have been the better way to go. So I second you and the OP, it is no ponger about physics (with the exception of large power plants) and more about people and how you get solar on said people's roofs.

danieltillett 8y ago
Is your thesis in English and avalaible online?
- hef19898 8y ago
  German, unfortunately I couldn't convince my Prof to accept it in English. In case you're interested and not under time pressure I can translate it or part of it. Always happy to share stuff like that. Just shoot me a mail. hef19898 (at) gmail.com
  - danieltillett 8y ago
    Sorry for the long delay, but would encourage you to at least translate the key parts into English.
    - hef19898 8y ago
      Started already and managed to get to page 12 of 78 when the people realized at work that Christmas is, surprise, again on Dec. 24th. I totally forget that I wrote that many words... ;-)

tim333 8y ago

>other costs that are already beginning to dominate Which is an argument for trying to make cells more efficient like the ones in the article apparently looking at 43-90% as against something like 18% for typical cell. If most of your costs are installing etc then those can remain the same while you get twice the output.

zamfi 8y ago

Yes, and also making that house, or land, or taxes produce 4x as much energy is categorically different form reducing the cost of existing 22%-efficiency panels by 75%. That's because higher-energy-per-unit-area panels increases the efficiency of land use, which drives all the other costs you list: land acquisition, taxes, customer acquisition, etc.