5 ms·

I find it interesting that such rapidly falling cost actually slow down adoption. My parents will have to renew their houses roof next year and obviously, addin

by patall 6y ago

I find it interesting that such rapidly falling cost actually slow down adoption. My parents will have to renew their houses roof next year and obviously, adding solar with a battery would make sense. However, while doing so would technically be cheaper than buying power from the grid, it would be even cheaper to do it in two (or four, or six ...) years to come as batteries will be even cheaper then. So they probably will not buy them now.

zdragnar 6y ago
This happens to be why economists tend to fear deflation far more than inflation.
- Symmetry 6y ago
  Mostly economists fear inflation because people have obligations specified in nominal terms, like salaries and mortgage payments, that they might end up not being able to pay if currency increases in value too much.
- adventured 6y ago
  And probably why most modern economists happen to be clowns, only fit for a circus and properly to be laughed at. In the post WW2 era the world has seen next to zero sustained deflation in any major economies, including in Japan (the supposed capital example of deflation for the past quarter century). As always with the world being overwhelmingly ruled by Keynesian economics, inflation is the destroyer of worlds, not deflation. While economists hold up the false bogeyman of deflation, inflation is actively and persistently destroying economic value, from the US to Europe to Asia. If I were a conspiracy theory type, I'd have to believe they were using the deflation scarecrow on purpose to distract from the way their Keynesian model inevitably destroys everything it touches. All you have to do is ask an economist, fearing their great fake bogeyman of deflation, for several prominent examples of deflation in the Venezuela or Zimbabwe outcome model of inflationary destruction. Watch as they panic and run for cover. Given how much they all supposedly fear deflation, you'd think there are dozens of recent prominent examples of deflation damaging economies as inflation has harmed the US since ~1970, or how inflation has rocked countries like Argentina. Take Japan as the long held up example of the great modern economist fear re deflation. They all think Japan has been suffering from persistent deflation for roughly 25 years give or take. Why are consumer prices in Japan so high after decades of persistent deflation? Why is real estate still so expensive in all of their major cities? It's because they didn't actually suffer decades of persistent deflation, other than some modest stagnation-caused pricing pressure from weak consumer demand. What Japan has actually suffered from is the opposite: they spent their brains out on infrastructure to exceptionally mediocre returns, mis-allocating capital they loaded up on debt to an epic degree, the cost and allocation of which robbed their economy of free capital to invest toward growth, leading to a heat death stagnation. Modern economists, being witch doctors as they are, then proceeded to confuse all of that with ... deflation, because the alternative is to admit that their Keynesian model failed spectacularly in Japan (and it's still failing). In reality Japan massively inflated via very large rounds of deficit spending, debased the Yen aggressively and it all failed. To this day, the modern economics profession refuses to acknowledge the failure of their model in Japan, instead proclaiming that somehow Japan failed to spend enough, they needed to inflate even more aggressively (and say goodbye to the Japanese standard of living accordingly, as that approach has wiped out 1/3 of their standard of living in just the past decade). Next up, modern economists proclaim the US is suffering from deflation, as the US spends its brains out, leading to increasing stagnation of growth (already underway the past decade plus) as more and more free capital is allocated to servicing giant debt costs and is locked up in low yield trash debt, depriving the economy of the capital it needs to grow. Their cure: spend more, inflate more, debase the USD more. The end result: Japan.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > In the post WW2 era the world has seen next to zero sustained deflation in any major economies That doesn't prove that economists are fools to fear it, it just proves that policy makers, particularly at central banks, have been listening to them and acting to prevent it.
- hinkley 6y ago
  I fancied myself a future game designer when I was starting out, so I spent a lot of time while playing games trying to figure out how they ticked, what made them work or unravel over time, especially in multiplayer. Deflation in a game economy is a sure way to ruin things for everyone. Soon every new character is running around with the third-best hat on, and the fourth best sword. With such a compressed distance between typical and exceptional, everyone becomes muted. What's there to hope for? Why do I even bother to try, when good enough takes no effort at all? There were several points where my decision to play a game came down to my read of the game economy. If they had no coherent solution to the deflation problem, thanks but no thanks. I don't know how directly these motivators translate to the real world, but people are people and I can see things getting pretty bad.
ben_w 6y ago
I thought Li-Ion was roughly 1000 charge-discharge cycles? Once per day, that’s three years, so you I buy the batteries now and when you replace them in a few years the new ones will be even better value? Or am I making a bad assumption by thinking they’ll have one cycle per day?
- epistasis 6y ago
  The 1000 number is the bad assumption. Grid attached storage is usually designed to cycle once per day for more than a decade.
- reportingsjr 6y ago
  1000 cycle lifetime would mainly be if you were doing full charges and discharges (10-90% charge/discharge or worse). This is from mid 2018, but you can see that model s/x batteries were hitting about 90% capacity after 250,000km which is verrryy roughly 700-800 charge cycles. https://electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2018/04/screen-shot-2018-04-14-at-2-56-15-pm.jpg?quality=82&strip=all https://electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2018/04/scree... Grid storage batteries are going to be charged and discharged at more reasonable rates than cars. Tesla's superchargers run at 50-250kW and discharging is going to be above 1MW at times, which is not kind to batteries. I think you can expect quality grid storage setups to last 2000-3000 cycles at this time depending on their environment. Keep in mind that these cycle lifetimes are to 80% life, so if you're willing to go down to 50% capacity you can expect longer lifetimes, probably closing in on 15-20 years of use.
  - ben_w 6y ago
    I am glad to be wrong; this makes batteries an even better idea than I already thought!
toomuchtodo 6y ago
If your parents are in the US and their utility net metering arrangement is favorable [1], they should consider buying rooftop solar next year if they have an interest and their finances allow, as the federal tax credit is slowly phasing out (26% of the total cost is a credit this year, next year it declines to 22%, and there is no credit after 2021). They should confirm with their installer that their inverter is storage ready, which enables them to add a battery in the future when costs decline further, while capturing available incentives and cheaper power today. I'm making some assumptions, but I highly encourage getting three quotes from installers through https://www.energysage.com https://www.energysage.com, a quote from Tesla [2] (usually cheapest but you might have to aggressively project manage them), and compare systems to their historical electrical consumption. Feel free to bring quotes to https://reddit.com/r/solar https://reddit.com/r/solar for community review and feedback. [1] https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2020/03/which-states-offer-net-metering/ https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2020/03/which-states-o... [2] https://www.tesla.com/energy/design https://www.tesla.com/energy/design
- patall 6y ago
  They are not, though similar schemes apply here, but I appreciate your effort for writing it down. Nevertheless, four percent of tax credit are not much if technology prices decrease by 30% or more. That does not mean that we totally reject the idea but its not like a decision of type 'the best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second best time is now'.
- stainforth 6y ago
  Why would a credit be going away?
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    That's how the legislation was written. One might put forth that those writing it and voting for it thought that constraint to be reasonable (to bootstrap renewables until their cost was low enough to stand on their own without subsidies). Alternatively, one might also consider that the phase out was too soon considering the challenges we face from climate change (and that Congress might consider not only re-upping the credit, but also expanding it back to 30% of total system cost).

by patall 6y ago

zdragnar 6y ago

This happens to be why economists tend to fear deflation far more than inflation.

Symmetry 6y ago
Mostly economists fear inflation because people have obligations specified in nominal terms, like salaries and mortgage payments, that they might end up not being able to pay if currency increases in value too much.
adventured 6y ago
And probably why most modern economists happen to be clowns, only fit for a circus and properly to be laughed at. In the post WW2 era the world has seen next to zero sustained deflation in any major economies, including in Japan (the supposed capital example of deflation for the past quarter century). As always with the world being overwhelmingly ruled by Keynesian economics, inflation is the destroyer of worlds, not deflation. While economists hold up the false bogeyman of deflation, inflation is actively and persistently destroying economic value, from the US to Europe to Asia. If I were a conspiracy theory type, I'd have to believe they were using the deflation scarecrow on purpose to distract from the way their Keynesian model inevitably destroys everything it touches. All you have to do is ask an economist, fearing their great fake bogeyman of deflation, for several prominent examples of deflation in the Venezuela or Zimbabwe outcome model of inflationary destruction. Watch as they panic and run for cover. Given how much they all supposedly fear deflation, you'd think there are dozens of recent prominent examples of deflation damaging economies as inflation has harmed the US since ~1970, or how inflation has rocked countries like Argentina. Take Japan as the long held up example of the great modern economist fear re deflation. They all think Japan has been suffering from persistent deflation for roughly 25 years give or take. Why are consumer prices in Japan so high after decades of persistent deflation? Why is real estate still so expensive in all of their major cities? It's because they didn't actually suffer decades of persistent deflation, other than some modest stagnation-caused pricing pressure from weak consumer demand. What Japan has actually suffered from is the opposite: they spent their brains out on infrastructure to exceptionally mediocre returns, mis-allocating capital they loaded up on debt to an epic degree, the cost and allocation of which robbed their economy of free capital to invest toward growth, leading to a heat death stagnation. Modern economists, being witch doctors as they are, then proceeded to confuse all of that with ... deflation, because the alternative is to admit that their Keynesian model failed spectacularly in Japan (and it's still failing). In reality Japan massively inflated via very large rounds of deficit spending, debased the Yen aggressively and it all failed. To this day, the modern economics profession refuses to acknowledge the failure of their model in Japan, instead proclaiming that somehow Japan failed to spend enough, they needed to inflate even more aggressively (and say goodbye to the Japanese standard of living accordingly, as that approach has wiped out 1/3 of their standard of living in just the past decade). Next up, modern economists proclaim the US is suffering from deflation, as the US spends its brains out, leading to increasing stagnation of growth (already underway the past decade plus) as more and more free capital is allocated to servicing giant debt costs and is locked up in low yield trash debt, depriving the economy of the capital it needs to grow. Their cure: spend more, inflate more, debase the USD more. The end result: Japan.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > In the post WW2 era the world has seen next to zero sustained deflation in any major economies That doesn't prove that economists are fools to fear it, it just proves that policy makers, particularly at central banks, have been listening to them and acting to prevent it.
hinkley 6y ago
I fancied myself a future game designer when I was starting out, so I spent a lot of time while playing games trying to figure out how they ticked, what made them work or unravel over time, especially in multiplayer. Deflation in a game economy is a sure way to ruin things for everyone. Soon every new character is running around with the third-best hat on, and the fourth best sword. With such a compressed distance between typical and exceptional, everyone becomes muted. What's there to hope for? Why do I even bother to try, when good enough takes no effort at all? There were several points where my decision to play a game came down to my read of the game economy. If they had no coherent solution to the deflation problem, thanks but no thanks. I don't know how directly these motivators translate to the real world, but people are people and I can see things getting pretty bad.

ben_w 6y ago

I thought Li-Ion was roughly 1000 charge-discharge cycles? Once per day, that’s three years, so you I buy the batteries now and when you replace them in a few years the new ones will be even better value? Or am I making a bad assumption by thinking they’ll have one cycle per day?

epistasis 6y ago
The 1000 number is the bad assumption. Grid attached storage is usually designed to cycle once per day for more than a decade.
reportingsjr 6y ago
1000 cycle lifetime would mainly be if you were doing full charges and discharges (10-90% charge/discharge or worse). This is from mid 2018, but you can see that model s/x batteries were hitting about 90% capacity after 250,000km which is verrryy roughly 700-800 charge cycles. https://electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2018/04/screen-shot-2018-04-14-at-2-56-15-pm.jpg?quality=82&strip=all https://electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2018/04/scree... Grid storage batteries are going to be charged and discharged at more reasonable rates than cars. Tesla's superchargers run at 50-250kW and discharging is going to be above 1MW at times, which is not kind to batteries. I think you can expect quality grid storage setups to last 2000-3000 cycles at this time depending on their environment. Keep in mind that these cycle lifetimes are to 80% life, so if you're willing to go down to 50% capacity you can expect longer lifetimes, probably closing in on 15-20 years of use.
- ben_w 6y ago
  I am glad to be wrong; this makes batteries an even better idea than I already thought!

toomuchtodo 6y ago

If your parents are in the US and their utility net metering arrangement is favorable [1], they should consider buying rooftop solar next year if they have an interest and their finances allow, as the federal tax credit is slowly phasing out (26% of the total cost is a credit this year, next year it declines to 22%, and there is no credit after 2021). They should confirm with their installer that their inverter is storage ready, which enables them to add a battery in the future when costs decline further, while capturing available incentives and cheaper power today. I'm making some assumptions, but I highly encourage getting three quotes from installers through https://www.energysage.com https://www.energysage.com, a quote from Tesla [2] (usually cheapest but you might have to aggressively project manage them), and compare systems to their historical electrical consumption. Feel free to bring quotes to https://reddit.com/r/solar https://reddit.com/r/solar for community review and feedback. [1] https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2020/03/which-states-offer-net-metering/ https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2020/03/which-states-o... [2] https://www.tesla.com/energy/design https://www.tesla.com/energy/design

patall 6y ago
They are not, though similar schemes apply here, but I appreciate your effort for writing it down. Nevertheless, four percent of tax credit are not much if technology prices decrease by 30% or more. That does not mean that we totally reject the idea but its not like a decision of type 'the best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second best time is now'.
stainforth 6y ago
Why would a credit be going away?
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  That's how the legislation was written. One might put forth that those writing it and voting for it thought that constraint to be reasonable (to bootstrap renewables until their cost was low enough to stand on their own without subsidies). Alternatively, one might also consider that the phase out was too soon considering the challenges we face from climate change (and that Congress might consider not only re-upping the credit, but also expanding it back to 30% of total system cost).