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The installed price of solar energy has declined significantly in recent years as policy and market forces have driven more and more solar installations.
Now, the latest data show that the continued decrease in solar prices is unlikely to slow down anytime soon, with total installed prices dropping by 5 percent for rooftop residential systems, and 12 percent for larger utility-scale solar farms. With solar already achieving record-low prices, the cost decline observed in 2015 indicates that the coming years will likely see utility-scale solar become cost competitive with conventional forms of electricity generation.
A full analysis of the ongoing decline in solar prices can be found in two separate Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Reports: Tracking the Sun IX focuses on installed pricing trends in the distributed rooftop solar market while Utility-Scale Solar 2015 focuses on large-scale solar farms that sell bulk power to the grid.
[...] The installed cost includes everything needed to get a solar power system up and running: the panels, the power electronics, the mounting hardware, and the installation itself. The continued decline in total installed cost is noteworthy considering the fact that the price of the solar panels (or modules) themselves has remained relatively flat since 2012. This means that the decline in installed cost observed since 2012 was largely caused by a decline in the cost of the inverters that convert the DC power produced by solar panels to AC power for the grid and other "soft" costs such as customer acquisition, system design, installation, and permitting.
[...] Going forward, the declining price of solar across all categories demonstrated by the latest Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory reports coupled with the extension of the federal renewable energy investment tax credit through 2019 should drive a continued expansion of the U.S. solar market and even more favorable economics in the next few years. It will certainly be interesting to see what kind of market dynamic develops as solar approaches the tipping point where it becomes more economical than conventional forms of electricity generation.
(Score: 3, Informative) by ledow on Tuesday August 30 2016, @05:00AM
So it's subsidised into profit by a tax credit.
Ignoring that, it costs more than ten years of electricity would cost me (probably a lot more, I took the lower numbers I can't do the maths and convert currencies at the same time) to put the system in.
And then I'd be limited to a system that can't get near half the current that my grid connection can handle as a matter of course (220v, 60A to the fuseboard, no conversion losses obviously).
Now more interesting is that others mention the life of the panels but not the life of the storage. So we're not talking replacing batteries every year or so? So you're talking about maintaining a connection to the grid, therefore you're not really changing anything, are you? Except feeding back some power in need of serious voltage/current/phase conversion to be anywhere near useful.
Or if we are talking about "off-grid" systems, then I have, say, 12 hours a day of sunlight on average over the year. So half the time I'm not actually getting 4-5KW. And with perfect storage, only half of that. Which brings me back to a point where if I boil a kettle, I could exhaust the system's current-supplying capacity and have to go to battery storage. Which needs replacement, maintenance and monitoring.
We're not just talking "slap a panel on your roof", even at great expense and with tax breaks. We're talking a major drop in productivity of electrical supply to your house. That's part of the reasoning, of course, to make people green, but it's a hard sell.
"Hey, your tax dollars are paying for everyone to do this, why don't you spend a lot of money in one hit to get an unreliable power supply that needs the national grid to be useful anyway and/or throw out half your electric kit because you won't be able to use it at the same time as anything else? It'll pay for itself in only 20 years (providing nothing goes wrong at all in that time and the subsidies still exist)!"
Sounds like it's still a hard-sell to me, despite the objections.
And, to be honest, this assumes you have the roofspace, the ownership (Mortgaged house? Hope the panel lease is on the mortgage if you didn't pay for it outright, as there's legal hassles in my country over people doing that and then trying to sell a leased-out-to-the-solar-company-for-20-years roof), the latitude, the sunlight, the right direction of house, the right angle of roof, electrical installers and companies willing to help (specialised installers, government-approved installations, electricity companies willing to modify your installation, etc.). If you don't, you still can't even achieve the above.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Whoever on Tuesday August 30 2016, @05:28AM
You seem to be rather confused.
Firstly, unless you plan to go off-grid, you should not try to size a system to produce anywhere near your house's theoretical maximum grid load, or even your actual maximum grid load (my typical maximum load is typically about 4:00am, when my EV is charging at 7kW).
1. Panels can pay off in as little as 5 years. This does depend on two factors: net energy metering and tax credits.
2. It's stupid to ignore tax credits when considering your own situation. However, without the credits, payoff could still be in 8 years (easily during the warranty period of the system).
3. Net energy metering is the key factor that determines viability. With net energy metering, batteries are not required. In California, current installations are guaranteed net energy metering for 20 years.
4. Depending on the alignment of your roof, the time of peak output can match the time of peak demand quite well. A west-facing roof is better than a south facing roof, because, although total output is less, the time during which the panels produce electricity matches peak demand much better.
I agree that a leased system can give problems down the road: re-financing or selling become more difficult.
It's a hard sell because it is a big outlay and the alternatives (lease or power purchase agreement) have big disadvantages.