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Your charts are misleading because they conflate price per watt in one and a log scale in the other. The consensus is that China is what really accelerated the

Your charts are misleading because they conflate price per watt in one and a log scale in the other. The consensus is that China is what really accelerated the price drops. Not sure why basic facts are being disputed lol https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-china-is-dominating-the-solar-industry/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-china-is-domi...

ionicgiraffe 5y ago
Facts are disputed when they cannot possibly fit in the narrative we want/need to believe.
- Retric 5y ago
  I don’t dispute Chinese manufactures on net dropped the price by about 20% vs the rest of the market and additional competition further reduced prices, the issue is solar prices dropped by ~80% from 2009 to now so that 20% isn’t the root cause. Put another way if they had been 80% cheaper than the rest of the market a 30% US tariff would have been meaningless.
  - kurthr 5y ago
    When you don't have to make a profit and your capital investments are staked by state (both local and national), it's easier to invest large amounts in capacity. That has been true in China.
Retric 5y ago
That’s missing the forest for the trees. Why did the prices drop by 99% over 4 decades, is a more central question. https://news.mit.edu/2018/explaining-dropping-solar-cost-1120 https://news.mit.edu/2018/explaining-dropping-solar-cost-112.... An 80% drop alone from 1980 would mean panels where 20x as expensive right now. As to the second chart not being log scale that choice was made by Wikipedia, you can easily plot it on log scale, but it looks even more like a strait line.
- endisneigh 5y ago
  Read the article - yes other countries also contributed but it was mainly China that propelled the majority of the price drop through aggressive production.
  - Retric 5y ago
    I did, suggesting China was the only country responsible would mean the price would have been unchanged across 12 years which really doesn’t fit the available data. Further that article is from 2016, it’s hyper focused on a specific shift in manufacturing while things continued to evolve over time.
    - endisneigh 5y ago
      The price is not really relevant without looking at volume. Go look at a price and volume chart. Nobody was buying solar panels in significant quantities for $1000/watt. I don’t know what you’re so hung up on that. You can sell some custom panels for $50,000 a watt and scale production the next day to $5,000 a watt - if volume didn’t change and price per watt was purely due to technological advance it isn’t relevant. Find a chart that controls for panel tech, go look at who is buying said panels of said type and it’s obvious why and who is causing the price drop.
      - Retric 5y ago
        Look at the first curve, adoption was increasing even just between 1990 and 1991, 1991 and 1992 etc etc. So I am saying the opposite, the price drop after solar became cheaper than coal is largely irrelevant. Once it was cheaper than coal anywhere without subsides it demand would skyrocket and prices would continue to fall as adoption increased. Before that point PV was still useful for an ever wider range of niche applications, satellites for example can’t connect to the electric grid. Various applications where connecting to the grid was expensive or inconvenient swapped to solar at various points on that cost curve ex:sailboats. That was sped up by subsides, without which panels might still be 50$/watt and mostly used for calculators etc. After bridging the vast technical gap to become cost competitive with coal adoption was going to increase dramatically, no subsides needed. So sure without China panels might be 20-50% more expensive, but that simply isn’t a big deal because PV would still be the cheapest option.

ionicgiraffe 5y ago

Facts are disputed when they cannot possibly fit in the narrative we want/need to believe.

Retric 5y ago
I don’t dispute Chinese manufactures on net dropped the price by about 20% vs the rest of the market and additional competition further reduced prices, the issue is solar prices dropped by ~80% from 2009 to now so that 20% isn’t the root cause. Put another way if they had been 80% cheaper than the rest of the market a 30% US tariff would have been meaningless.
- kurthr 5y ago
  When you don't have to make a profit and your capital investments are staked by state (both local and national), it's easier to invest large amounts in capacity. That has been true in China.

Retric 5y ago

That’s missing the forest for the trees. Why did the prices drop by 99% over 4 decades, is a more central question. https://news.mit.edu/2018/explaining-dropping-solar-cost-1120 https://news.mit.edu/2018/explaining-dropping-solar-cost-112.... An 80% drop alone from 1980 would mean panels where 20x as expensive right now. As to the second chart not being log scale that choice was made by Wikipedia, you can easily plot it on log scale, but it looks even more like a strait line.

endisneigh 5y ago
Read the article - yes other countries also contributed but it was mainly China that propelled the majority of the price drop through aggressive production.
- Retric 5y ago
  I did, suggesting China was the only country responsible would mean the price would have been unchanged across 12 years which really doesn’t fit the available data. Further that article is from 2016, it’s hyper focused on a specific shift in manufacturing while things continued to evolve over time.
  - endisneigh 5y ago
    The price is not really relevant without looking at volume. Go look at a price and volume chart. Nobody was buying solar panels in significant quantities for $1000/watt. I don’t know what you’re so hung up on that. You can sell some custom panels for $50,000 a watt and scale production the next day to $5,000 a watt - if volume didn’t change and price per watt was purely due to technological advance it isn’t relevant. Find a chart that controls for panel tech, go look at who is buying said panels of said type and it’s obvious why and who is causing the price drop.
    - Retric 5y ago
      Look at the first curve, adoption was increasing even just between 1990 and 1991, 1991 and 1992 etc etc. So I am saying the opposite, the price drop after solar became cheaper than coal is largely irrelevant. Once it was cheaper than coal anywhere without subsides it demand would skyrocket and prices would continue to fall as adoption increased. Before that point PV was still useful for an ever wider range of niche applications, satellites for example can’t connect to the electric grid. Various applications where connecting to the grid was expensive or inconvenient swapped to solar at various points on that cost curve ex:sailboats. That was sped up by subsides, without which panels might still be 50$/watt and mostly used for calculators etc. After bridging the vast technical gap to become cost competitive with coal adoption was going to increase dramatically, no subsides needed. So sure without China panels might be 20-50% more expensive, but that simply isn’t a big deal because PV would still be the cheapest option.