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On Tuesday, the Department of Energy (DOE) announced that utility-grade solar panels have hit cost targets set for 2020, three years ahead of schedule. Those targets reflect around $1 per watt and 6¢ per kilowatt-hour in Kansas City, the department's mid-range yardstick for solar panel cost per unit of energy produced (New York is considered the high-cost end, and Phoenix, Arizona, which has much more sunlight than most other major cities in the country, reflects the low-cost end).
Those prices don't include an Investment Tax Credit (ITC), which makes solar panels even cheaper. The Energy Department said that the cost per watt was assessed in terms of total installed system costs for developers. That means the number is based on "the sales price paid to the installer; therefore, it includes profit in the cost of the hardware," according to a department presentation (PDF).
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), a DOE-funded lab that assesses solar panel cost, wrote that, compared to the first quarter in 2016, the first quarter in 2017 saw a 29-percent decline in installed cost for utility-scale solar, which was attributed to lower photovoltaic module and inverter prices, better panel efficiency, and reduced labor costs. Despite the plummeting costs for utility-scale solar, costs for commercial and residential solar panels have not fallen quite as quickly—just 15 percent and 6 percent, respectively.
It seems there are still big gains to be made in the installed costs of residential panels.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Entropy on Friday September 15 2017, @05:21AM (4 children)
With the little caveat that it's "utility cost". No actual people can buy these supposed cheap solar panels, though. Every time I've run a cost benefit analysis the results are pretty sad.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bradley13 on Friday September 15 2017, @07:06AM (3 children)
If renewable energy is *really* this cheap, then it's time and past time to end all of the subsidy programs.
Ha, sorry, bad joke. There's nothing more permanent than a temporary government program.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bziman on Friday September 15 2017, @06:33PM
I agree... I'll happily give up renewable subsidies just as soon as we stop the much larger and more harmful fossil fuel subsidies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 15 2017, @06:51PM (1 child)
You omitted from your statement the largest subsidy in existence:
USA's military, ostensibly kept in its ridiculously bloated form to keep the sea lanes open for "cheap" petroleum.
...as well as access to that stuff, which might be interrupted by "unstable" governments abroad.
This and other, more direct, subsidies continue to be offered to Big Carbon, long after that industry was up and running.
You omitted that as well.
You also failed to mention the positive effects of burning less hydrocarbon-based stuff in vehicles on cleaner air, better health, and less global warming.
Subsidies that exist in order to get The Good Stuff seem like a pretty great idea to me.
...when the alternative is yet more externalized costs by dirty-energy Capitalists.
Folks like you, however, stuck on the obsolete ideologies of the mid 20th Century, miss the point.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Entropy on Friday September 15 2017, @09:33PM
No, not really. I'm just focused on the fact that the real price of solar panels is quite a bit over $1/watt just for the panel. If you install it with an approved vendor and all that crapola that goes with that(required for the subsidies), that figure skyrockets to $4-$5/watt which makes the breakeven for the investment(inflation, etc.) at over 20 years which is beyond the warranty period of the solar panel and well beyond the point where you get diminishing power returns for it.
In other words: Solar power right now is complete garbage, yet we keep getting nonsense stories about how cheap it is at 0.06$/watt where surprise! No one can actually buy it at that price unless you're a utility. Not a utility? Multiply that by at least 20000%.