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Solar power grew faster than any other source of fuel for the first time in 2016, the International Energy Agency said in a report suggesting the technology will dominate renewables in the years ahead.
The institution established after the first major oil crisis in 1973 said 165 gigawatts of renewables were completed last year, which was two-thirds of the net expansion in electricity supply. Solar powered by photovoltaics, or PVs, grew by 50 percent, with almost half of new plants built in China.
"What we are witnessing is the birth of a new era in solar PV," Fatih Birol, executive director of the IEA, said in a statement accompanying the report published on Wednesday in Paris. "We expect that solar PV capacity growth will be higher than any other renewable technology through 2022."
Solar Grew Faster Than All Other Forms of Power for the First Time
International Energy Agency
Solar power will only work until the sun burns out, but dinosaurs are forever.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday October 05 2017, @11:15AM (21 children)
Can't give you figures, but if some small numbers are ok with you, here you are:
manufacturing price decreased from $US1.30 per Watt to $0.50 per Watt between the years of 2011 of 2014 [solarmarket.com.au]. Currently estimated as $0.30 per Watt FOB.
Residential consumers pay (in US) between $2.87 and $3.85 per Watt installed [energysage.com]. Which does hint a single thing: the "installed residential solar" market does not show enough competition. That is even more evident when looking to the price of utility-scale PV installation which fell under $1/Watt in June [pv-magazine.com]
Australia had subventions for PV residential installation (they were phased out completely in 2017), subventions which drove the demand high enough to create a strong "PV residential installer industry" - Sep 2017 price per Watt installed is AUD1.2 [solarchoice.net.au] and the trend is downward.
(currently 1AUD = 0.78USD)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Insightful) by TheRaven on Thursday October 05 2017, @11:48AM (8 children)
No, it tells you that the panel price has not been a dominant part of the cost for a long time. When I first looked at getting rooftop solar panels a decade ago, the panels were about a third of the total cost of installation and were shrinking. Other costs such as scaffolding and having competent people go up on the roof and connect them to the electricity supply were independent of the cost of the panels. That hasn't changed. Larger-scale deployments are typically easier (e.g. put panels on simple stands in a field, rather than attaching them to a roof) and benefit hugely from economies of scale both from installation (installing 500 identical panels in a field is a lot easier per panel than installing 5 on a roof, then having to go to a different house and doing the same) and other fixed costs (you'll run all of those panels from the same inverter, so the amount of inverter-installation per panel is a lot lower).
sudo mod me up
(Score: 4, Informative) by c0lo on Thursday October 05 2017, @12:22PM (7 children)
And the reason for that is....?
Ummmm... let's run a comparison, shall we?
Average salary Australia - $81,000 p.a. [livingin-australia.com] - price per Watt installed=$1.2
Average salary US - $44,148 p.a [thebalance.com] - price per Watt installed $3.
So, Australia has a salarial cost twice as much as in US and price per PV Watt installed half of that.
Me thinks... :
- the USians use solid gold scaffolds and "oxygen free Monster cables" for the connection to mains or
- the residential PV is a luxury in US, and it is taxed as a luxuryor
- the USian "PV installers" can afford to command higher prices for their services because there's not enough around to compete with them
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 05 2017, @12:52PM (1 child)
> Ummmm... let's run a comparison, shall we?
> Average salary Australia - $81,000 p.a. [livingin-australia.com]
It would be helpful if you used the same currency for comparisons...or did you think that the Aussies used US Dollars??
Just now Google tells me that 81947 Australian Dollar equals 64035.02 US Dollar.
(Score: 4, Informative) by deimtee on Thursday October 05 2017, @01:21PM
Since he's comparing labour costs to install costs, it doesn't matter. If you convert to US $ then the average salary goes to $64,000 as you said, but the install cost goes to 94 cents. The ratio is still the same.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday October 05 2017, @12:59PM (1 child)
I'll just drop this URL here. The TLDR is for a mix of environmental regulation type stuff, coal is very expensive. All "realistic" sources of energy have a capex of $1000 to $10000 per KW capacity so in the figures here on SN thats $1 to $10 per watt up front cost.
EIA publication "Cost and Performance Characteristics of New Generating Technologies, Annual Energy Outlook 2017."
http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/assumptions/pdf/table_8.2.pdf [eia.gov]
There are technical issues with the EIA paper. Fuel cells are not a source of energy any more than car engines are a source of energy, they're a tool that turns "something" that is a fuel into energy. Perhaps thats why their economic numbers are so dismal.
1) You're funding your social signalling purchase using home equity loans so the cost will be the money ya got and after all the more you spend the holier your facebook statuses will be. Its a luxury bragging purchase not an energy purchase. Elderly 60s hippies bragging on facebook about how much of their kids inheritance they spent on being green, the more $$$ the more holy they are...
2) My city building code requires permits (stealth tax $2500) and stamped drawings from a structural engineer that the roof is built to current code for snowload (note, not grandfathered in) and can handle the extra load of panels possibly with reinforcement specified (and that reinforcement requires a building permit and carpenters etc). Ironically given where we live the snowload is much larger than any possible panel load so installing panels here is something of a rounding error. In the more mcMansion southern parts of the country where snowload is 0 lbs and the house building industry is more corrupt, the roof is probably not built to handle panel loads, especially asymmetric loads (asymmetric loads on a truss can be a PITA, its not as simple as "da truss can hold 200 pounds perfectly evenly distributed so put 100 pounds on a couple points, all on one side, and it should be OK" No it won't. Someday all new home trusses will handle panel loads by building code regardless of installation and that day isn't today and its not gonna be for a long time. Prepping the house roof to hold the panels can cost more than the panels, depending on the house.
3) speaking of stealth tax I need to pay off the building inspector and the structural engineer so ground mount looks cheaper than roof so far but the zoning commission needs to be paid off for that... it never really ends. The zoning variance process is not cheap and is just another stealth tax.
4) Forgot to mention the inspectors and paperwork BS of grid connection at the electrical and billing level.
In the USA if the .gov or .com don't want you doing something, sometimes they ban it, sometimes they tax and permit fee the hell out of it. Look you can install panels, we can just make it so expensive you won't want to. Can't you just install a nice in ground pool with that home equity loan money instead? The .gov and .com like those and don't have punishing taxes and fees for whatever reason. There's also not much support to "fix" it because the main purpose is seen as boomer hippies bragging on FB about how green they are because they're wealthy enough to handle the costs, so saving money holds little appeal to joe6pack.
TLDR is the .com and .gov are working together to discourage solar panels while signalling in public how great they are, to get the best of both worlds. Kinda like the opposite of how the .gov verbally claims not to like the opiate epidemic but actually kinda likes it and does all they can to encourage it in all ways except verbally.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Thursday October 05 2017, @01:59PM
FTFY
(Score: 3, Interesting) by khallow on Thursday October 05 2017, @05:43PM (2 children)
So let's attempt to fix this. If we were to use the OECD's estimated 2016 PPP adjusted annual wages [wikipedia.org] for the US and Australia, we get $60,154 and $52,063 respectively in current 2016 US dollars. Meanwhile according to IEA [wikipedia.org], in 2014 Australia's price was $1.8 USD/W compared to $4.9 USD/W for the US (though strangely multiple other studies show vastly lower costs for US installations). Seems to show something is going on.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 05 2017, @06:43PM
$3 per W doesn't sound out of line. Note also the high US portion that was "soft costs", that means costs not related to the cost of the physical systems themselves. Glancing at figure 29, it appears to be a nebulous category called "profit and overhead" (almost $2/W in the US). Perhaps that is due to the overall cheaper electricity costs in the US?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday October 05 2017, @09:14PM
Thanks for the corrections.
Yeap. As of first quarter 2017, the soft costs in taxes and other compliance fees make about 50% of residential installation cost [nrel.gov] - see page 7.
Looks like the "govt consider residential PV a luxury" is what's going on
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Thursday October 05 2017, @12:53PM (11 children)
Thanks, interesting to see its progress. But still expensive for utility scale (when viewed globally when considering capacity factors and backup, but at nameplate it is cheap)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday October 05 2017, @01:35PM (10 children)
I also wonder what maintenance costs are (cleaning dust and bio-fouling from the panels) in various regions.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Informative) by fyngyrz on Thursday October 05 2017, @02:06PM (8 children)
Located on the Montana plains here. Lots of dust. I have multiple ground-mounted systems.
Once a week during non-freezing weather, I wash my panels with a hose. Once a year I wash them with a mild vinegar solution to get rid of mineral deposits from the somewhat hard weekly water washings and what little rain we get. They look brand new, even the ones that have been out there for ten years.
The only "bio-fouling" we see is the occasional dollop of bird poo, which washes right off. It's really not been an issue. I have not gotten the impression that birds like the panels.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday October 05 2017, @02:35PM (1 child)
Well, while I tend to agree that it's a small price to pay for electricity, rinsing the panels once a week is a whole lot more work than your average homeowner does to keep the A/C running.
Here in Florida (and anywhere along the Gulf coast) black mold seems to grow on just about anything that doesn't have a fresh coat of anti-mold agent on it.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by quacking duck on Thursday October 05 2017, @04:01PM
Since sunlight and circulating air tends to kill black mold, I would've thought mold wouldn't do well on open-air surfaces designed to be hit with direct sunlight. Some might grow underneath the unit or other shaded area, sure, but that wouldn't impact the efficiency of the PV panels themselves.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday October 05 2017, @04:34PM (5 children)
How many panels do you run, and what's their rating? Do they supply 100% of your monthly kwhs or do you have a grid tie? Did you buy them piecemeal out-of-pocket and hook them up yourself, or did you get a home equity loan and hire it done?
Just curious about your real-world experience. I've been thinking about doing the same thing for a long time, but it's all theoretical calculations.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fyngyrz on Friday October 06 2017, @07:09AM (4 children)
20, nominally 100 watt panels. They're allocated as 2, 2, 4, and 12 across four systems.
No, it's nowhere near a whole-home system (our home is huge and we're profligate power users; that's not really in the cards for us unless they really boost panel efficiencies.) Instead, I have four independent small systems. Two are relatively conventional, that is, batteries and PV and inverters plus AC chargers, one is 12.6vdc with pV and batteries, and one is 12.6vdc with ultracaps. Each system powers a separate set of things - and no, none of them are grid-tied in the conventional sense, though the two larger systems have grid-sourced chargers that generally run things. The two systems that produce AC do so on isolated lines; their outputs are not tied to the general house AC. The 12v systems are obviously independent.
I bought everything piecemeal, out of pocket, and put them together myself. I designed and built the ultracap-to-12.6v system from scratch; they don't have discharge curves like batteries and require conversion electronics to keep the output at 12.6v. This system was an experiment; it works very well, but the amount of space and the cost for an UC based system far exceeds that of batteries, and it's not something I'd recommend as yet. Costs are coming down and capacities are coming up, but we're really not where we need to be, unless you're just screwing around as I was. Although I have to say, now that it's set up, it beats the heck out of a battery based system in every other way. When they do get into a reasonable price/performance range, I will happily say goodbye forever to batteries. I do use UC's as current boost sources on all four systems, but only the one is all-UC.
These systems support our refrigerators, freezers and furnace (12 panels); our aquariums (4 panels); my indoor ham radio setup (2 panels); and the UC system runs my portable trailer ham radio setup (2 panels.)
The two systems that are running the food storage and furnace and aquaria are charged from the AC line - sort of the opposite of a grid tie. When the AC goes away, the batteries can keep things going for a few days, or quite a bit longer if it's nice and sunny. The AC for the clients on those systems comes from inverters, which gets around the whole grid-tie issue rather handily. No switches to throw, no power interruptions at all, no risk to anyone fooling with the AC either in the house or out on a pole. It's fair to describe them as huge uninterruptible power supplies with dual AC/solar charging capability.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday October 06 2017, @08:06AM (3 children)
Interesting, thanks. Did you get your components retail, or were you able to hook into a wholesaler (that you'd be able to mention)?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Friday October 06 2017, @12:24PM (2 children)
I got the panels and cabling for them off of EBay on an as-needed basis, and I had the most of the components for the power conversion and so forth here already. I picked up the ultracaps surplus. Lots of that on EBay as well. I built all the mounts and other physical infrastructure (in fact, I built the entire interior structure of our home... it's an old church, and when we bought it it was basically a very large, empty cube. As a result it's more than a little bit... eclectic. :) I do all the structural stuff, and my sweetheart does the finish work.)
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday October 06 2017, @02:43PM (1 child)
That's awesome. Have you thought about adding wind turbines to the mix? Where my family is, not too far from you, the wind always blows; so I've wondered if it would be worthwhile for a person to throw a turbine up on a mast and win that way. I've read a lot about residential wind turbines with their different designs, but they never seen to net out to a positive ROI except in places like yours.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Saturday October 07 2017, @09:00PM
I've thought about it, but I'm not all that fond of propellers on poles. :)
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 05 2017, @04:55PM
That has been automated, at least for large solar panel farms.
https://phys.org/news/2013-12-robot-wiper-tackles-solar-panel.html [phys.org]