6 ms·

Utility scale cost has been dropping exponentially, but small panels (e.g. 7W phone chargers) haven't. I wonder if the efficiencies will eventually trickle dow

Utility scale cost has been dropping exponentially, but small panels (e.g. 7W phone chargers) haven't. I wonder if the efficiencies will eventually trickle down, or whether the form-factor, other components, retail sales channel and small market for solar phone chargers will prevent this.

gtirloni 7y ago
Way riskier market (consumer goods). It will eventually trickle down though, once it's really mature and countless factories in China have access to it.
kragen 7y ago
I don't build 7W phone chargers, so I could be wrong, but I think there are a couple of factors: · 7Wp of solar panels at this point would cost about US$1.50 if we were talking about the low-cost power modules used in utility-scale deployments. This is, I think, less than the (retail) cost of the case, sales transaction, or power electronics. · Low-cost power modules are less efficient than higher-cost modules, which means you'd need a larger surface area to get 7 watts. Which chargers are you looking at? Searching on Amazon I find a lot of USB battery packs with built-in solar panels, which I can't help but think are basically fake, since a 16%-efficient panel that size would provide less than a watt. (I've probably been influenced by watching a lot of bigclivedotcom videos where he dismantles phony consumer electronics, including USB battery packs that have a tiny fraction of their claimed capacity.)
- taneq 7y ago
  · Anything is more expensive when you buy one of it than when you buy 10,000,000 of it.
  - sigmaprimus 7y ago
    Not always, especially when working with electronics. Many manufacturers offer development parts at one price, then when you try to scale up production you find the price can be double or triple the original cost. Sometimes the smaller fabricating shops are willing to take slimmer margins as they dont have the bloat of managment, regulatory issues and worker costs such as medical and collective barganing agreements.
    - segfaultbuserr 7y ago
      > Not always, especially when working with electronics. Many manufacturers offer development parts at one price, then when you try to scale up production you find the price can be double or triple the original cost. Can you give an example? If one goes to Digikey or Mouser, the price of most standard electronic components decrease when the quantity increases. I guess the phenomenon you described only occurs if special or proprietary components is involved, so that the company is willing to sell samples at a loss in exchange for more consumers.
    - sitkack 7y ago
      I have never found this to be the case, in that 1) normally I only design BOMs around parts that are "normally stocked" at Mouser or Digikey, anything else and I don't want to waste time on the supply chain and/or 2) If you aren't designing around your batch manufacturing size then how are you designing the circuit (economically) in the first place?
      - segfaultbuserr 7y ago
        I posted the same comment as yours. My guess is that the OP was referring to some non-replaceable proprietary stuff with higher-level of integration, like some kind of modules, devboards or FPGA or something. I don't know. I just updated the comment to ask for an example.
        tialaramex 7y ago
        Yeah, you will see cases where this happens for specialist components like CPUs that are EOL. The five hundred I have left in the warehouse can be let go for hardly anything, mostly I want that warehouse space back. If you're a hobbyist making one of something for a personal project you don't care. But if you were actually prototyping for a large SKU project and later you want to make a real order - I will have very bad news to break to you. This is why serious players get volume quotes up front and execute on hardware quickly. The Amigans ran into this when they had the idea that their next generation desktop computer should have the PPC chip people thought Apple was going to put in laptops right before it went x86-only - the PWRficient PA6T-1682M. Getting a few of them for prototyping was easy but there was never going to be a long term supply at a reasonable price. Nobody had a plant manufacturing this CPU since 2008, but the Amigans started needing them in 2010 - so they were soon resorting to playing scavenger hunt "Hey, did you have a box of these anywhere? Can you check? Yes we'll pay the original per-unit price". Internally they were reassuring each other that hey, these devices are inside US military hardware, Apple assured the US DoD that it would be able to supply replacements. But the ability to send the DoD a few spare CPUs out of a crate you've kept in one corner of a warehouse is not the same thing as continued commercial availability.
- hyperpallium 7y ago
  I think those solar+battery ones are a top-up solution, or enough to make an emergency call. I'm thinking of no-battery panels, like this camping-gear-priced one: 7W for $150 (AUD) https://goalzero.com.au/shop/solar-panels/nomad-7-plus/ https://goalzero.com.au/shop/solar-panels/nomad-7-plus/ eBay prices are $15-25, much cheaper than last time - maybe it's trickling down already? https://www.ebay.com.au/p/10W%2D5V%2DPortable%2DSolar%2DPower%2DPanel%2DCharger%2DFor%2DSamsung%2DIPhone%2DTablet%2DPad/3011208927 https://www.ebay.com.au/p/10W%2D5V%2DPortable%2DSolar%2DPowe... "solar usb charger" may be better search terms: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=solar+usb+charger https://www.amazon.com/s?k=solar+usb+charger
  - kragen 7y ago
    AUD 150 (≈US$150) does seem too high; the eBay prices sound a lot more like what I would expect. But even when solar panels cost US$1 per watt or US$5 per watt (25 times the current price), US$150 sounds too high.
    - hyperpallium 7y ago
      Thanks, it's about 105 USD https://www.google.com/search?q=AUD+150+in+usd https://www.google.com/search?q=AUD+150+in+usd Camping gear, like cycling gear, is ironically overpriced for an essentially free activity.
      - kragen 7y ago
        Thank you for the correction!

gtirloni 7y ago

Way riskier market (consumer goods). It will eventually trickle down though, once it's really mature and countless factories in China have access to it.

kragen 7y ago

I don't build 7W phone chargers, so I could be wrong, but I think there are a couple of factors: · 7Wp of solar panels at this point would cost about US$1.50 if we were talking about the low-cost power modules used in utility-scale deployments. This is, I think, less than the (retail) cost of the case, sales transaction, or power electronics. · Low-cost power modules are less efficient than higher-cost modules, which means you'd need a larger surface area to get 7 watts. Which chargers are you looking at? Searching on Amazon I find a lot of USB battery packs with built-in solar panels, which I can't help but think are basically fake, since a 16%-efficient panel that size would provide less than a watt. (I've probably been influenced by watching a lot of bigclivedotcom videos where he dismantles phony consumer electronics, including USB battery packs that have a tiny fraction of their claimed capacity.)

taneq 7y ago
· Anything is more expensive when you buy one of it than when you buy 10,000,000 of it.
- sigmaprimus 7y ago
  Not always, especially when working with electronics. Many manufacturers offer development parts at one price, then when you try to scale up production you find the price can be double or triple the original cost. Sometimes the smaller fabricating shops are willing to take slimmer margins as they dont have the bloat of managment, regulatory issues and worker costs such as medical and collective barganing agreements.
  - segfaultbuserr 7y ago
    > Not always, especially when working with electronics. Many manufacturers offer development parts at one price, then when you try to scale up production you find the price can be double or triple the original cost. Can you give an example? If one goes to Digikey or Mouser, the price of most standard electronic components decrease when the quantity increases. I guess the phenomenon you described only occurs if special or proprietary components is involved, so that the company is willing to sell samples at a loss in exchange for more consumers.
  - sitkack 7y ago
    I have never found this to be the case, in that 1) normally I only design BOMs around parts that are "normally stocked" at Mouser or Digikey, anything else and I don't want to waste time on the supply chain and/or 2) If you aren't designing around your batch manufacturing size then how are you designing the circuit (economically) in the first place?
    - segfaultbuserr 7y ago
      I posted the same comment as yours. My guess is that the OP was referring to some non-replaceable proprietary stuff with higher-level of integration, like some kind of modules, devboards or FPGA or something. I don't know. I just updated the comment to ask for an example.
      - tialaramex 7y ago
        Yeah, you will see cases where this happens for specialist components like CPUs that are EOL. The five hundred I have left in the warehouse can be let go for hardly anything, mostly I want that warehouse space back. If you're a hobbyist making one of something for a personal project you don't care. But if you were actually prototyping for a large SKU project and later you want to make a real order - I will have very bad news to break to you. This is why serious players get volume quotes up front and execute on hardware quickly. The Amigans ran into this when they had the idea that their next generation desktop computer should have the PPC chip people thought Apple was going to put in laptops right before it went x86-only - the PWRficient PA6T-1682M. Getting a few of them for prototyping was easy but there was never going to be a long term supply at a reasonable price. Nobody had a plant manufacturing this CPU since 2008, but the Amigans started needing them in 2010 - so they were soon resorting to playing scavenger hunt "Hey, did you have a box of these anywhere? Can you check? Yes we'll pay the original per-unit price". Internally they were reassuring each other that hey, these devices are inside US military hardware, Apple assured the US DoD that it would be able to supply replacements. But the ability to send the DoD a few spare CPUs out of a crate you've kept in one corner of a warehouse is not the same thing as continued commercial availability.
hyperpallium 7y ago
I think those solar+battery ones are a top-up solution, or enough to make an emergency call. I'm thinking of no-battery panels, like this camping-gear-priced one: 7W for $150 (AUD) https://goalzero.com.au/shop/solar-panels/nomad-7-plus/ https://goalzero.com.au/shop/solar-panels/nomad-7-plus/ eBay prices are $15-25, much cheaper than last time - maybe it's trickling down already? https://www.ebay.com.au/p/10W%2D5V%2DPortable%2DSolar%2DPower%2DPanel%2DCharger%2DFor%2DSamsung%2DIPhone%2DTablet%2DPad/3011208927 https://www.ebay.com.au/p/10W%2D5V%2DPortable%2DSolar%2DPowe... "solar usb charger" may be better search terms: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=solar+usb+charger https://www.amazon.com/s?k=solar+usb+charger
- kragen 7y ago
  AUD 150 (≈US$150) does seem too high; the eBay prices sound a lot more like what I would expect. But even when solar panels cost US$1 per watt or US$5 per watt (25 times the current price), US$150 sounds too high.
  - hyperpallium 7y ago
    Thanks, it's about 105 USD https://www.google.com/search?q=AUD+150+in+usd https://www.google.com/search?q=AUD+150+in+usd Camping gear, like cycling gear, is ironically overpriced for an essentially free activity.
    - kragen 7y ago
      Thank you for the correction!