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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.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday February 21 2018, @07:46PM (4 children)
Had you read the discussion to which you linked, you would have seen that the proposal was indeed helpful.
Buying everything from China (where your warranty is worth exactly nothing) in NOT a good idea in a country
with a growing segment of its work force living under bridges while manufacturing jobs are shipped to china.
What exactly is your incentive to make some Chinese manufacturer paying slave wages wealthy?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Wednesday February 21 2018, @08:07PM
I am supposing here, and asking you for the flaw(s) in this logic: If Bob the Businessowner buys Chinese solar cells, he saves up-front cost and also is buying more frequent maintenance (unworkable warranty). Since he saved all that money, can't he hire a larger group of people to manage the solar installation?
I mean, the solar systems at Lowe's Home Depot Local Building Supply were tons more expensive than the ones on Alibaba....
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Wednesday February 21 2018, @08:25PM (2 children)
Buying everything from China (where your warranty is worth exactly nothing) in NOT a good idea
I fail to see how buying (crappy) appliances made in Mexico is any better than buying (nice, high-quality) appliances made in South Korea. Appliances are made in China, Korea, Germany, and Mexico these days. The "American" junk like Whirlpool is all made in Mexico, while "American" GE stuff is made in China. If you want good but expensive stuff, it's made in Germany (Bosch, Miele), and if you want good but not-as-expensive stuff, it's made in Korea (LG, Samsung).
So how again is taxing non-US products helping here? There's no such thing as an American made appliance. Are they exempting the Mexican-made junk? Why is it better to make some American manufacturer paying slave wages to Mexicans wealthy, than to make a Korean company paying good wages to Koreans wealthy, or a German company paying good wages to Germans wealthy?
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday February 22 2018, @07:04AM (1 child)
But there are American made solar panels. Most of the progress in solar has been developed in the US.
The import tax simply recoups the tax break.
I don't see how washing machines enter into this discussion.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Thursday February 22 2018, @03:28PM
I don't see how washing machines enter into this discussion.
Why not? That was the other giant thing that was part of this new tariff. It's just like the stupid tariff on VCRs back in the 80s: all the VCRs were made in Japan by the time the tariff was enacted, so all it did was double the price of VCRs for consumers.
The import tax simply recoups the tax break.
Now that most of the stuff is made in China, it's closing the barn door after the horses have escaped, and ends up just encouraging people to NOT install solar systems. Remember, the whole point of a tax is to punish something, and make people do less of it: a cigarette tax encourages people to not smoke, a gas tax encourages people to drive less, etc. If you want less of something, you slap a tax on it. Not that this is a bad thing in all situations (smoking is very bad, causing huge public health costs, for instance), but that's what taxes do. We should be taxing coal, not solar, even if we have to buy our solar panels from China because we were too stupid to do things well here.