5 ms·

from the article: > By comparison, France’s much-vaunted nuclear power construction spree accounted for roughly 60 gigawatts of capacity between 1975 and 1990,

from the article: > By comparison, France’s much-vaunted nuclear power construction spree accounted for roughly 60 gigawatts of capacity between 1975 and 1990, and China built about 400 gigawatts of solar PV capacity between 2007 and 2022, though today China is building about 100 gigawatts of solar a year. This does not capture the sheer size+speed of the PV revolution. We're at 800GW production of PV panels EACH YEAR. This will increase to 1TW by the end of 2024. For comparison, the whole world fossil fuel electricity capacity is around 5TW. Accounting for a lower capacity factor, solar could provide almost all of the electricity in just 15 years. This is shorter than the life expectancy of solar panels, so prepare yourself for some major disruption. Panels will be cheap as dirt, we'll install them as fences, roofs, sidings, you name it. Electricity during daytime will be free. We'll see some changes to the structure of electrical companies: they will charge a higher subscription to connect to the grid, and much less per KWh. Net metering is obviously going away.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
anoxor 3y ago
> Electricity during the daytime will be free > Panels will be cheap as dirt If you don’t consider the capital of a panel then sure free / cheap as dirt. Then the sun goes down and the wind doesn’t happen to blow, so you fire up your gas turbine.
- flavius29663 3y ago
  > If you don’t consider the capital of a panel then sure free / cheap as dirt. That's what I meant, the capital cost is already so low that you could use them as fence panels. They will only get lower with the looming supply glut. Look at this monocrystaline (higher eff) panel in china: 15 cents per watt. There are cheaper ones too: https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Haitai-Solar-Panel-Price-420w-High_1600957746223.html?spm=a2700.7724857.0.0.620675fa5c3HhG&s=p https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Haitai-Solar-Panel-Pr... A 400W panel will cost 60 dollars and has a size of 1.8mx1.8m. Per square meter that is $18.52 A generic plastic fence panel from lowe's 6ft by 8ft costs $120 https://www.lowes.com/pd/Freedom-Actual-6-ft-x-7-82-ft-Ready-to-Assemble-Emblem-White-Vinyl-Flat-Top-Vinyl-Fence-Panel/4008201 https://www.lowes.com/pd/Freedom-Actual-6-ft-x-7-82-ft-Ready... price per square meter: $26.87
  - jandrese 3y ago
    Plus inverter costs, plus interconnection costs, plus mounting hardware, plus permitting costs, plus installation labor costs, plus disconnect hardware, etc... You're glossing over the inherent danger of solar panels in that they are relatively high voltage devices that can't be turned off easily. This means they get saddled with expensive safety regulations. The glorious utopia where you buy a pallet of the things from Wal*Mart with your pocket change and stick them everywhere the sun shines runs into some logistical hurdles.
    - flavius29663 3y ago
      This is blown out of proportion in the US. EU has stronger laws for environment, worker protection, historical buildings protections, you name it. Yet they can easily install solar under 1 dollar per KWh. This is a self inflicted problem created in the US, and the solar roofs became a scam. For a 9KW system, installers can pay 2500 to the sellers/marketers. That is MORE than the cost of panels, this should tell you everything you need to know https://www.quora.com/What-are-commissions-like-for-a-solar-salesman https://www.quora.com/What-are-commissions-like-for-a-solar-... > they are relatively high voltage devices On the contrary, they are low voltage (12V), which makes them more dangerous (because you need higher amps to carry the same amount of energy). To make them safe, you can install inverters closer to the panel, to raise the voltage to 110 or 220, making them much much safer. > The glorious utopia where you buy a pallet of the things from Wal*Mart with your pocket change and stick them everywhere the sun shines runs into some logistical hurdles. That can work if you install them as fences, or just on the ground in general. If you install them on rooftops then yeah, you need some serious consideration. The installations are still grossly overpriced, if both EU and Australia can do it under 1USD per Watt, so can the US.
      - jandrese 3y ago
        > On the contrary, they are low voltage (12V), which makes them more dangerous (because you need higher amps to carry the same amount of energy). To make them safe, you can install inverters closer to the panel, to raise the voltage to 110 or 220, making them much much safer. Lets check a random common panel. https://www.solar-electric.com/rec-solar-rec400aa-pure-alpha-series-400-watt-module.html https://www.solar-electric.com/rec-solar-rec400aa-pure-alpha... Voc: 48.8 Volts And the original post was talking about cheap installs, so you would string several together to put it on an inverter. You hit high voltages very quickly. Even just 4 panels and you're up to almost 200V at full sun. It's more typical to put 8-12 panels on a string. The voltages hit dangerous levels very quickly.
- epistasis 3y ago
  With battery prices like this, and days to a week of a household's electricity needs parked in the garage? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38304405 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38304405 Add in the large number of storage options that are coming to market besides lithium ion, from sodium to iron to straight up thermal storage, and we may still have gas turbines on the grid in 20 years but it's unlikely they will generate more than a few percent of a year's electricity. We are seeing the first disruption of the electricity industry in a loooong time and it's going to upset all other energy processes too, as electrical sources of process heat become cheaper than burning gas or anything else. Looking at where prices are today misses the picture, look at where they will be in five years or ten years in order to understand our future.
jandrese 3y ago
Even today the cost of installing solar is dominated by the labor costs, not the panel costs. The panel costs have been collapsing for years now, but full system costs have been steady or even rising. Some of this is people (usually required to by the installers) choosing expensive solutions like microinverters or optimizers that add a high fixed cost to each panel, even though both technologies offer very little utility to the customer. The old talks about how one shaded panel would take an entire array out are out of date and just plain wrong these days. The other is that some of the costs like permitting and interconnection are just as hard or even harder as they always were, especially as power companies get nervous about the number of people installing solar panels.
- balderdash 3y ago
  I’m not sure I’d say dominated (PV is still 40-60% of the installed cost of a utility scale plant), but your def on that labor, power electronics etc. have eaten much of the gains of cheaper/efficient PV
  - jandrese 3y ago
    To be clear I was talking about rooftop solar.
    - thinkcontext 3y ago
      Why when it's such a small part of the market?
      - ggm 3y ago
        Depends which economy you're in. Australia domestic PV is a significant component of electricity supply with disruptive qualities.
        lazide 3y ago
        Which is kind of bizarre actually - Australia has tons of land with good insolation, utility scale PV should be an easy sell?
tastyfreeze 3y ago
Why would net metering go away? With distributed production and net metering a power company becomes an electricity broker instead of sole producer.
- skybrian 3y ago
  Because the price is wrong. Power companies already buy much of their electricity from independent power generators. However, for the economics to work, producer prices need to be lower than retail prices. These prices change throughout the day, based on demand. Net metering results in people getting paid the retail price instead of the producer price.
  - tastyfreeze 3y ago
    Why wouldn't the power company just reduce the price they will purchase power at? Make profit on the spread like every other market. There will still be people that have property where they can produce an excess of power they can sell.
    - hnaccount_rng 3y ago
      This is what they’ll do. But that’s simply not what net-metering means. Net-metering means (essentially) buying at the same price that the utility sells.
    - skybrian 3y ago
      That does make sense, but then it’s not net metering anymore and would require a smarter meter. It’s also less attractive to homeowners because they get paid a lot less. (Prices are low when the sun is shining due to competition from utility-scale solar.) Charging batteries starts looking like a better alternative. A decentralized power system is going to have a lot of battery backup and that might even be more important than the solar panels?
    - swamp_donkey 3y ago
      Because they have signed 40 year contracts so that the people that built the power plant could get financing
euroderf 3y ago
I've been wondering about the medium-to-long-term outlook in this respect, and your summation of the numbers is very helpful.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

anoxor 3y ago

> Electricity during the daytime will be free > Panels will be cheap as dirt If you don’t consider the capital of a panel then sure free / cheap as dirt. Then the sun goes down and the wind doesn’t happen to blow, so you fire up your gas turbine.

flavius29663 3y ago
> If you don’t consider the capital of a panel then sure free / cheap as dirt. That's what I meant, the capital cost is already so low that you could use them as fence panels. They will only get lower with the looming supply glut. Look at this monocrystaline (higher eff) panel in china: 15 cents per watt. There are cheaper ones too: https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Haitai-Solar-Panel-Price-420w-High_1600957746223.html?spm=a2700.7724857.0.0.620675fa5c3HhG&s=p https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Haitai-Solar-Panel-Pr... A 400W panel will cost 60 dollars and has a size of 1.8mx1.8m. Per square meter that is $18.52 A generic plastic fence panel from lowe's 6ft by 8ft costs $120 https://www.lowes.com/pd/Freedom-Actual-6-ft-x-7-82-ft-Ready-to-Assemble-Emblem-White-Vinyl-Flat-Top-Vinyl-Fence-Panel/4008201 https://www.lowes.com/pd/Freedom-Actual-6-ft-x-7-82-ft-Ready... price per square meter: $26.87
- jandrese 3y ago
  Plus inverter costs, plus interconnection costs, plus mounting hardware, plus permitting costs, plus installation labor costs, plus disconnect hardware, etc... You're glossing over the inherent danger of solar panels in that they are relatively high voltage devices that can't be turned off easily. This means they get saddled with expensive safety regulations. The glorious utopia where you buy a pallet of the things from Wal*Mart with your pocket change and stick them everywhere the sun shines runs into some logistical hurdles.
  - flavius29663 3y ago
    This is blown out of proportion in the US. EU has stronger laws for environment, worker protection, historical buildings protections, you name it. Yet they can easily install solar under 1 dollar per KWh. This is a self inflicted problem created in the US, and the solar roofs became a scam. For a 9KW system, installers can pay 2500 to the sellers/marketers. That is MORE than the cost of panels, this should tell you everything you need to know https://www.quora.com/What-are-commissions-like-for-a-solar-salesman https://www.quora.com/What-are-commissions-like-for-a-solar-... > they are relatively high voltage devices On the contrary, they are low voltage (12V), which makes them more dangerous (because you need higher amps to carry the same amount of energy). To make them safe, you can install inverters closer to the panel, to raise the voltage to 110 or 220, making them much much safer. > The glorious utopia where you buy a pallet of the things from Wal*Mart with your pocket change and stick them everywhere the sun shines runs into some logistical hurdles. That can work if you install them as fences, or just on the ground in general. If you install them on rooftops then yeah, you need some serious consideration. The installations are still grossly overpriced, if both EU and Australia can do it under 1USD per Watt, so can the US.
    - jandrese 3y ago
      > On the contrary, they are low voltage (12V), which makes them more dangerous (because you need higher amps to carry the same amount of energy). To make them safe, you can install inverters closer to the panel, to raise the voltage to 110 or 220, making them much much safer. Lets check a random common panel. https://www.solar-electric.com/rec-solar-rec400aa-pure-alpha-series-400-watt-module.html https://www.solar-electric.com/rec-solar-rec400aa-pure-alpha... Voc: 48.8 Volts And the original post was talking about cheap installs, so you would string several together to put it on an inverter. You hit high voltages very quickly. Even just 4 panels and you're up to almost 200V at full sun. It's more typical to put 8-12 panels on a string. The voltages hit dangerous levels very quickly.
epistasis 3y ago
With battery prices like this, and days to a week of a household's electricity needs parked in the garage? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38304405 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38304405 Add in the large number of storage options that are coming to market besides lithium ion, from sodium to iron to straight up thermal storage, and we may still have gas turbines on the grid in 20 years but it's unlikely they will generate more than a few percent of a year's electricity. We are seeing the first disruption of the electricity industry in a loooong time and it's going to upset all other energy processes too, as electrical sources of process heat become cheaper than burning gas or anything else. Looking at where prices are today misses the picture, look at where they will be in five years or ten years in order to understand our future.

jandrese 3y ago

Even today the cost of installing solar is dominated by the labor costs, not the panel costs. The panel costs have been collapsing for years now, but full system costs have been steady or even rising. Some of this is people (usually required to by the installers) choosing expensive solutions like microinverters or optimizers that add a high fixed cost to each panel, even though both technologies offer very little utility to the customer. The old talks about how one shaded panel would take an entire array out are out of date and just plain wrong these days. The other is that some of the costs like permitting and interconnection are just as hard or even harder as they always were, especially as power companies get nervous about the number of people installing solar panels.

balderdash 3y ago
I’m not sure I’d say dominated (PV is still 40-60% of the installed cost of a utility scale plant), but your def on that labor, power electronics etc. have eaten much of the gains of cheaper/efficient PV
- jandrese 3y ago
  To be clear I was talking about rooftop solar.
  - thinkcontext 3y ago
    Why when it's such a small part of the market?
    - ggm 3y ago
      Depends which economy you're in. Australia domestic PV is a significant component of electricity supply with disruptive qualities.
      - lazide 3y ago
        Which is kind of bizarre actually - Australia has tons of land with good insolation, utility scale PV should be an easy sell?

tastyfreeze 3y ago

Why would net metering go away? With distributed production and net metering a power company becomes an electricity broker instead of sole producer.

skybrian 3y ago
Because the price is wrong. Power companies already buy much of their electricity from independent power generators. However, for the economics to work, producer prices need to be lower than retail prices. These prices change throughout the day, based on demand. Net metering results in people getting paid the retail price instead of the producer price.
- tastyfreeze 3y ago
  Why wouldn't the power company just reduce the price they will purchase power at? Make profit on the spread like every other market. There will still be people that have property where they can produce an excess of power they can sell.
  - hnaccount_rng 3y ago
    This is what they’ll do. But that’s simply not what net-metering means. Net-metering means (essentially) buying at the same price that the utility sells.
  - skybrian 3y ago
    That does make sense, but then it’s not net metering anymore and would require a smarter meter. It’s also less attractive to homeowners because they get paid a lot less. (Prices are low when the sun is shining due to competition from utility-scale solar.) Charging batteries starts looking like a better alternative. A decentralized power system is going to have a lot of battery backup and that might even be more important than the solar panels?
  - swamp_donkey 3y ago
    Because they have signed 40 year contracts so that the people that built the power plant could get financing

euroderf 3y ago

I've been wondering about the medium-to-long-term outlook in this respect, and your summation of the numbers is very helpful.