3 ms·

The article says they cost ~ $0.05/kwh. Does that include installation + foundation work? Presumably, they need to anchor these pretty well to withstand 110-1

by hedora 1y ago

The article says they cost ~ $0.05/kwh. Does that include installation + foundation work? Presumably, they need to anchor these pretty well to withstand 110-170mph wind. I’d guess a lot less per-site engineering (and geological surveys/digging) is needed for 2d panels that sit a few feet off the ground. Also, what’s state of the art $/kwh for rooftop and “on the ground” solar? Is $0.05 good these days?

hnuser123456 1y ago
They look a lot nicer than just an array elevated off the ground, and the split angle makes more consistent power through the day. Doesn't look like this is targeting the bare-minimum-budget market. Looks like something I'd expect to see around an airport as functional decoration.
- thrill 1y ago
  Yeah, I’m not following on the split angle, unless cells are somehow more efficient if not perpendicular to the sun.
toomuchtodo 1y ago
Solar PV panels are as cheap as plywood at this point (sometimes cheaper, depends on your market as always). The cost is mostly soft costs (permitting, etc), labor, and the frame. Rooftop residential solar is still 3x-5x more expensive than ground mount, commercial is somewhere in between due to scale. Ground mount total cost is ~$1/watt, residential solar ~$3-5/watt. Easiest wins are code to require large commercial and industrial buildings to meet load requirements for future solar installs, parking lot canopies that are solar ready (or solar installed at time of canopy install), and in the case of residential, ground mount with low regulatory overhead and minimal to no shading. Related: NREL: Solar Installed System Cost Analysis - https://www.nrel.gov/solar/market-research-analysis/solar-installed-system-cost https://www.nrel.gov/solar/market-research-analysis/solar-in... Cheap DIY solar fence design - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45597198 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45597198 - October 2025 Great comment from that thread on cost breakdown (Alaska): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45692595 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45692595
- Workaccount2 1y ago
  Land cost and grid connection are often huge costs that aren't factored in too. The kW per acre metric is pretty poor for solar, especially when you get out of sunny desert areas.
  - toomuchtodo 1y ago
    Land cost is immaterial when talking utility scale ground mount and rooftop. Grid connection improvement costs are highly variable and dependent on local distribution infra. Solar is so cheap, you can usually roll the generator development cost component into the financing, with the utility paying the other component of it. > The kW per acre metric is pretty poor for solar, especially when you get out of sunny desert areas. The data says different. Broadly speaking, anywhere in the continental US is favorable for solar. The US gets more sunlight than Germany, and Germany has 101GW of solar capacity installed as of this comment (deploying ~2GW/month). You might need more panels near Canada, but panels and land are cheap, and demand for power is low due to limited population (caveats being PNW, served by hydro, and NE-ISO in New England, which is going to turn up a transmission line in December to bring 1.2GW of hydro from Québec). For comparison, the US ag industry farms almost 60 million acres for soybean and corn biofuel, and that is far less cost and resource efficient than covering that land in solar PV. Citations: EIA: Where solar is found and used - https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/solar/where-solar-is-found.php https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/solar/where-solar-is-fou... EIA: Solar and wind crush coal with 20% more power in 2025 - https://electrek.co/2025/09/24/eia-solar-and-wind-crush-coal-with-20-percent-more-power-in-2025/ https://electrek.co/2025/09/24/eia-solar-and-wind-crush-coal... - September 24th, 2025 EIA: Utility-Scale Generation Units Planned to Come Online Septmeber 2025 - August 2026 - https://web.archive.org/web/20251029151054/https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/images/figure_6_01_c.png https://web.archive.org/web/20251029151054/https://www.eia.g... interconnection.fyi: Active solar projects in queue - https://www.interconnection.fyi/?status=Active&type=Solar https://www.interconnection.fyi/?status=Active&type=Solar Electricity Maps - https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/live/fifteen_minutes https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/live/fifteen_minutes Solar energy is now the cheapest source of power, study - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45506365 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45506365 - October 2025 A harmonized dataset of ground-mounted solar energy in the US with enhanced metadata - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-025-05862-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-025-05862-4 - September 29th, 2025 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45587816 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45587816 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45507531 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45507531 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43333236 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43333236

by hedora 1y ago

hnuser123456 1y ago

They look a lot nicer than just an array elevated off the ground, and the split angle makes more consistent power through the day. Doesn't look like this is targeting the bare-minimum-budget market. Looks like something I'd expect to see around an airport as functional decoration.

thrill 1y ago
Yeah, I’m not following on the split angle, unless cells are somehow more efficient if not perpendicular to the sun.

toomuchtodo 1y ago

Solar PV panels are as cheap as plywood at this point (sometimes cheaper, depends on your market as always). The cost is mostly soft costs (permitting, etc), labor, and the frame. Rooftop residential solar is still 3x-5x more expensive than ground mount, commercial is somewhere in between due to scale. Ground mount total cost is ~$1/watt, residential solar ~$3-5/watt. Easiest wins are code to require large commercial and industrial buildings to meet load requirements for future solar installs, parking lot canopies that are solar ready (or solar installed at time of canopy install), and in the case of residential, ground mount with low regulatory overhead and minimal to no shading. Related: NREL: Solar Installed System Cost Analysis - https://www.nrel.gov/solar/market-research-analysis/solar-installed-system-cost https://www.nrel.gov/solar/market-research-analysis/solar-in... Cheap DIY solar fence design - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45597198 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45597198 - October 2025 Great comment from that thread on cost breakdown (Alaska): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45692595 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45692595

Workaccount2 1y ago
Land cost and grid connection are often huge costs that aren't factored in too. The kW per acre metric is pretty poor for solar, especially when you get out of sunny desert areas.
- toomuchtodo 1y ago
  Land cost is immaterial when talking utility scale ground mount and rooftop. Grid connection improvement costs are highly variable and dependent on local distribution infra. Solar is so cheap, you can usually roll the generator development cost component into the financing, with the utility paying the other component of it. > The kW per acre metric is pretty poor for solar, especially when you get out of sunny desert areas. The data says different. Broadly speaking, anywhere in the continental US is favorable for solar. The US gets more sunlight than Germany, and Germany has 101GW of solar capacity installed as of this comment (deploying ~2GW/month). You might need more panels near Canada, but panels and land are cheap, and demand for power is low due to limited population (caveats being PNW, served by hydro, and NE-ISO in New England, which is going to turn up a transmission line in December to bring 1.2GW of hydro from Québec). For comparison, the US ag industry farms almost 60 million acres for soybean and corn biofuel, and that is far less cost and resource efficient than covering that land in solar PV. Citations: EIA: Where solar is found and used - https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/solar/where-solar-is-found.php https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/solar/where-solar-is-fou... EIA: Solar and wind crush coal with 20% more power in 2025 - https://electrek.co/2025/09/24/eia-solar-and-wind-crush-coal-with-20-percent-more-power-in-2025/ https://electrek.co/2025/09/24/eia-solar-and-wind-crush-coal... - September 24th, 2025 EIA: Utility-Scale Generation Units Planned to Come Online Septmeber 2025 - August 2026 - https://web.archive.org/web/20251029151054/https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/images/figure_6_01_c.png https://web.archive.org/web/20251029151054/https://www.eia.g... interconnection.fyi: Active solar projects in queue - https://www.interconnection.fyi/?status=Active&type=Solar https://www.interconnection.fyi/?status=Active&type=Solar Electricity Maps - https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/live/fifteen_minutes https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/live/fifteen_minutes Solar energy is now the cheapest source of power, study - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45506365 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45506365 - October 2025 A harmonized dataset of ground-mounted solar energy in the US with enhanced metadata - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-025-05862-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-025-05862-4 - September 29th, 2025 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45587816 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45587816 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45507531 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45507531 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43333236 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43333236