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posted by martyb on Wednesday February 21 2018, @04:23PM   Printer-friendly
from the power-to-the-people['s-homes] dept.

Residential solar is cheap, but can it get cheaper? Paths to $0.05 per kWh

The price of solar panels has fallen far and fast. But the Energy Department (DOE) wants to bring those costs down even further, especially for residential homes. After all, studies have shown that if every inch of useable rooftop in the US had solar panels on it, the panels could provide about 40 percent of the nation's power demand. Right now, the DOE's goal is residential solar that costs 5ยข per kilowatt-hour by 2030.

In a new report from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), researchers mapped out some possible pathways to that goal. Notably, the biggest barriers to cost reduction appear to be the stubborn "soft costs" of solar installation. Those soft costs include supply chain costs, labor costs, and sales and marketing costs that aren't related to the physical production of solar cells at a factory.

NREL wrote: "Because the 2030 target likely will not be achieved under business-as-usual trends, we examine two key market segments that demonstrate significant opportunities for cost savings and market growth: installing PV at the time of roof replacement and installing PV as part of the new home construction process."

The report mapped out two "visionary" pathways (as well as two "less-aggressive' pathways) to achieving those cost reductions within the roof replacement and new home construction markets. The result? The only way NREL found it could achieve the "visionary" cost reductions was by assuming that solar installers would start selling low-cost solar-integrated roof tiles before 2030, "which could significantly reduce supply chain, installation labor, and permitting costs."

[...] [It's] not just Tesla working on this: the Colorado-based lab cites CertainTeed's solar shingle product and GAF's solar panels as examples of products breaking the divide between roof and solar panel installation.


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  • (Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday February 21 2018, @07:28PM (1 child)

    by frojack (1554) on Wednesday February 21 2018, @07:28PM (#641343) Journal

    sales and marketing people get a huge cut while not contributing any real value,

    Really?
    How much solar was being installed on rooftops before sales and marketing CREATED THE MARKET for it?

    Zero. None. Zip. (Ok, there was Roger blowing up old car batteries in his Yurt , with scavenged pieces and parts he found in The Whole Earth Catalog. Hippy marketing at its best.)

    Exactly WHAT in this world gets produced in consumer quantities without some form of Sales and Marketing?

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  • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday February 21 2018, @08:12PM

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Wednesday February 21 2018, @08:12PM (#641375)

    I won't deny there's a certain amount of sales and marketing needed to get certain products into the market and make them popular. However, at this point, how much is needed to make solar roof installations a reality? If people want this stuff, they'll find those businesses on their own. For a more extreme example, how much sales and marketing does, for instance, a bag of rice need? Not much (just enough to devise a nice-looking package perhaps): if people want rice, they go to the grocery store and buy some. It's a cheap commodity product, and there isn't much point to advertising it.

    The bigger issue IMO is just how much money is spent on it. Salespeople are generally paid way too much for the job they do. If the sales and marketing budget is a large fraction of rooftop solar, or anything else really, it's too much.

    The main reason to have salespeople is to coerce people to buy shit that they otherwise wouldn't. If people already want something, you don't need salespeople, you just need to make it easily available to them, and supply them with the information they need to make informed decisions if your produce/service is more complex than "grab one and pay".