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With bulk PV panels by the pallet already at something like $0.42 per STC watt the majority of a residential or small commercial install is already dominated by

With bulk PV panels by the pallet already at something like $0.42 per STC watt the majority of a residential or small commercial install is already dominated by the cost of labor and other components. I could theoretically go out and buy a pallet load of twenty, 360W rated, 72 cell panels at something like $160 per piece, costing something like $3,200 + $400 LTL freight. But it's going to cost way more than that to put those 20 on my roof or ground mounts and make them useful.

kragen 4y ago
I think the situation is even more extreme than you say. https://www.solarserver.de/photovoltaik-preis-pv-modul-preisindex/ https://www.solarserver.de/photovoltaik-preis-pv-modul-preis... has €0.43 per watt peak (STC watt) only for high-efficiency panels, the kind you buy when you're tight on space (or the cost of your installation is dominated by the cost of labor, as you say). "Mainstream" is €0.33/Wp and "low cost" is €0.22/Wp. Also, these costs seem to be much higher as a result of the current supply-chain crisis. The low point so far was August 02020, with high-efficiency panels at €0.30/Wp and low-cost panels at €0.16/Wp. Probably at some point shipping will get back to normal and prices will go even lower than that.
- walrus01 4y ago
  I was basing that off a fairly pessimistic cost of $0.42 USD/STC watt for a single pallet quantity. Going well beyond single pallet quantities the cost drops quite a lot.
m463 4y ago
I always liked perusing https://sunelec.com https://sunelec.com because they have interesting per-pallet or per-container pricing plentiful wattage would be an interesting DIY project.
- walrus01 4y ago
  I also use sunelec as a general small quantity pricing benchmark, but for the west coast, their prices can be matched from several distributors that ship from California warehouses.
  - coryrc 4y ago
    Do you have some recommendations?
    - walrus01 4y ago
      krannich solar, minimum quantity will be a pallet
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
pfdietz 4y ago
A world powered by PV will be mostly powered by larger scale ground mounted PV, not by PV on the roofs of homes and businesses.
- AtlasBarfed 4y ago
  But roof PV makes the grid more resilient, requires less grid, and the owners more independent. A huge portion of consumer electricity could be served with rooftop. It should scale with hot sunny days for A/C surges. It may be key to not overloading the grid with true mass market BEV adoption. And the article seems to miss that wind is still beating solar from the LCOE charts I've seen. They keep making the towers taller and taller for better economies of scale.
  - rocqua 4y ago
    In Europe, roof PV is actually making the grid worse off when residential areas become over-producers. The capacity is not available to move the peak solar power away from residential areas or between residential areas. The grid is apparently designed for top down generation.
    - AtlasBarfed 4y ago
      I don't think overproduction will be as big an issue once BEVs and cheaper home storage (sodium ion or other means) hit the mainstream. Reverse metering is basically a shadow subsidy. And I'm not arguing that the grid doesn't need to be adapted or needs work, but if we have a lot of home generation, then we don't need to worry as much about increasing overall grid capacity to handle BEV home charging.
      - prawn 4y ago
        Do residential peaks coincide with A/C use (daytime, hot weather)? At these times, do you know what portion of energy use by ducted A/C might be covered by a 5-10kW home system? Our council is currently promoting group buying discounts for solar and/or battery systems, and the state government had been running solar installation rebates/credits for several years.
Syonyk 4y ago
It should run you about $0.75/W to install them and hook them in for a grid tie system, maybe a hair more. Interestingly, that's the same for roof mount (with rapid shutdown) or ground mount (without rapid shutdown). Costs vary slightly depending on what you're doing in terms of panel orientation and inverter DC:AC ratio (if it's not 1.2 or greater, add more panels). This project (CO2 to CH4) would benefit from maximum raw production per panel, if you can ramp the plants up and down, so aim them south. I've been deploying, both for my solar and for some other residential projects I'm helping with, east-west facing panels, to get production up as early in the morning as possible and run it late. You get less kWh per panel than south facing, but you get a system that, on a good day, is producing from sunup to sundown, even when those set far north of east/west. Out here, peak days are almost 45 degrees north of E/W for sunrise/sunset. Iron Ridge XR1000 and some locally welded frames work pretty darn well for this sort of thing, if you have the ground area for it.
- zaptrem 4y ago
  Why can't you put the panels on an electric swivel? I assume it's significantly more expensive? Why?
  - walrus01 4y ago
    A sun tracking ground mount that goes on a steel pole and can take the wind loading of just six 1.65 x 1.0 meter size 60 cell panels costs considerably more to buy, ship and install than the panels themselves. These days if you need more kWh per month your money is much better spent buying more fixed mount panels.
  - Syonyk 4y ago
    You can - trackers are absolutely a thing, and historically tended to be used a lot. Back when solar was $10/W. Adding even $5/W for tracker structure and equipment was far cheaper than additional solar panels. Now, with panels sub-$0.50/W, you can accomplish the same thing (more power) for far less money by just putting more panels on. You get less production per nameplate panel watt, but the total system costs are usually lower. And you can push your DC:AC ratios pretty high if you want - cap your inverter out on sunny days, but still get more power on cloudy days. It just depends on what you're trying to optimize for. I still see trackers on occasion - they're cool. But the only place they're useful is if you have some stiff limit on nameplate capacity. Out here, you're limited to a 25kW system for residential, and you can't exceed your local transformer capacity in panel area - not inverter output (why, I have no idea, I've gotten a range of BS reasons that mostly center around somehow changing the system, blowing up the transformer, and then the power company being on the hook for a new transformer). So if you want to run a large "residential" site (think a ranch or something like that with a bunch of outbuildings), you can hit the 25kW limit quickly, and then need to go to a tracker to increase kWh generated on your 25kW system. But outside edge cases like that, just put more panels on. The systems I'm helping people with are mostly A-frames, with east-west facing panels for long solar days, and a fairly high DC/AC ratio. I've got 7kW of panel on 6kW of inverter, though I rarely see the inverter past 4500W, which is by design - I don't like pegging out power electronics for long periods of time, and prefer to run things at 80% of design load or lower for longevity reasons.
pydry 4y ago
This is why covering big box stores with solar panels is generally more economic. Flat roofs with lots of space.
- rocqua 4y ago
  Also, helps reduce solar heat inside without having to paint the roof white.

kragen 4y ago

I think the situation is even more extreme than you say. https://www.solarserver.de/photovoltaik-preis-pv-modul-preisindex/ https://www.solarserver.de/photovoltaik-preis-pv-modul-preis... has €0.43 per watt peak (STC watt) only for high-efficiency panels, the kind you buy when you're tight on space (or the cost of your installation is dominated by the cost of labor, as you say). "Mainstream" is €0.33/Wp and "low cost" is €0.22/Wp. Also, these costs seem to be much higher as a result of the current supply-chain crisis. The low point so far was August 02020, with high-efficiency panels at €0.30/Wp and low-cost panels at €0.16/Wp. Probably at some point shipping will get back to normal and prices will go even lower than that.

walrus01 4y ago
I was basing that off a fairly pessimistic cost of $0.42 USD/STC watt for a single pallet quantity. Going well beyond single pallet quantities the cost drops quite a lot.

m463 4y ago

I always liked perusing https://sunelec.com https://sunelec.com because they have interesting per-pallet or per-container pricing plentiful wattage would be an interesting DIY project.

walrus01 4y ago
I also use sunelec as a general small quantity pricing benchmark, but for the west coast, their prices can be matched from several distributors that ship from California warehouses.
- coryrc 4y ago
  Do you have some recommendations?
  - walrus01 4y ago
    krannich solar, minimum quantity will be a pallet

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

pfdietz 4y ago

A world powered by PV will be mostly powered by larger scale ground mounted PV, not by PV on the roofs of homes and businesses.

AtlasBarfed 4y ago
But roof PV makes the grid more resilient, requires less grid, and the owners more independent. A huge portion of consumer electricity could be served with rooftop. It should scale with hot sunny days for A/C surges. It may be key to not overloading the grid with true mass market BEV adoption. And the article seems to miss that wind is still beating solar from the LCOE charts I've seen. They keep making the towers taller and taller for better economies of scale.
- rocqua 4y ago
  In Europe, roof PV is actually making the grid worse off when residential areas become over-producers. The capacity is not available to move the peak solar power away from residential areas or between residential areas. The grid is apparently designed for top down generation.
  - AtlasBarfed 4y ago
    I don't think overproduction will be as big an issue once BEVs and cheaper home storage (sodium ion or other means) hit the mainstream. Reverse metering is basically a shadow subsidy. And I'm not arguing that the grid doesn't need to be adapted or needs work, but if we have a lot of home generation, then we don't need to worry as much about increasing overall grid capacity to handle BEV home charging.
    - prawn 4y ago
      Do residential peaks coincide with A/C use (daytime, hot weather)? At these times, do you know what portion of energy use by ducted A/C might be covered by a 5-10kW home system? Our council is currently promoting group buying discounts for solar and/or battery systems, and the state government had been running solar installation rebates/credits for several years.

Syonyk 4y ago

It should run you about $0.75/W to install them and hook them in for a grid tie system, maybe a hair more. Interestingly, that's the same for roof mount (with rapid shutdown) or ground mount (without rapid shutdown). Costs vary slightly depending on what you're doing in terms of panel orientation and inverter DC:AC ratio (if it's not 1.2 or greater, add more panels). This project (CO2 to CH4) would benefit from maximum raw production per panel, if you can ramp the plants up and down, so aim them south. I've been deploying, both for my solar and for some other residential projects I'm helping with, east-west facing panels, to get production up as early in the morning as possible and run it late. You get less kWh per panel than south facing, but you get a system that, on a good day, is producing from sunup to sundown, even when those set far north of east/west. Out here, peak days are almost 45 degrees north of E/W for sunrise/sunset. Iron Ridge XR1000 and some locally welded frames work pretty darn well for this sort of thing, if you have the ground area for it.

zaptrem 4y ago
Why can't you put the panels on an electric swivel? I assume it's significantly more expensive? Why?
- walrus01 4y ago
  A sun tracking ground mount that goes on a steel pole and can take the wind loading of just six 1.65 x 1.0 meter size 60 cell panels costs considerably more to buy, ship and install than the panels themselves. These days if you need more kWh per month your money is much better spent buying more fixed mount panels.
- Syonyk 4y ago
  You can - trackers are absolutely a thing, and historically tended to be used a lot. Back when solar was $10/W. Adding even $5/W for tracker structure and equipment was far cheaper than additional solar panels. Now, with panels sub-$0.50/W, you can accomplish the same thing (more power) for far less money by just putting more panels on. You get less production per nameplate panel watt, but the total system costs are usually lower. And you can push your DC:AC ratios pretty high if you want - cap your inverter out on sunny days, but still get more power on cloudy days. It just depends on what you're trying to optimize for. I still see trackers on occasion - they're cool. But the only place they're useful is if you have some stiff limit on nameplate capacity. Out here, you're limited to a 25kW system for residential, and you can't exceed your local transformer capacity in panel area - not inverter output (why, I have no idea, I've gotten a range of BS reasons that mostly center around somehow changing the system, blowing up the transformer, and then the power company being on the hook for a new transformer). So if you want to run a large "residential" site (think a ranch or something like that with a bunch of outbuildings), you can hit the 25kW limit quickly, and then need to go to a tracker to increase kWh generated on your 25kW system. But outside edge cases like that, just put more panels on. The systems I'm helping people with are mostly A-frames, with east-west facing panels for long solar days, and a fairly high DC/AC ratio. I've got 7kW of panel on 6kW of inverter, though I rarely see the inverter past 4500W, which is by design - I don't like pegging out power electronics for long periods of time, and prefer to run things at 80% of design load or lower for longevity reasons.

pydry 4y ago

This is why covering big box stores with solar panels is generally more economic. Flat roofs with lots of space.

rocqua 4y ago
Also, helps reduce solar heat inside without having to paint the roof white.