SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Thursday February 22 2018, @02:32AM
The infrastructure for lead acid battery recycling is very well developed. In theory once enough solar panels are wearing out, they'll probably be some kind of chipper-shredder and flotation tank thingy that instantly and cheaply separates aluminum structure, copper wires, silicon panel chunks. Just not yet. Possibly something thats never been implemented might be impossible, some find this likely, I don't, but its possible.
Obviously (?) solar panels should last immensely longer than lead acid batteries such that hyperautomated solutions might never become necessary anyway.
One interesting option WRT recycling is not to. You have to recycle lead acid batteries to keep the lead out of the environment, however the environment doesn't have an issue with coarse ground silica. Pulverize it down to sand grain size and cast into concrete for roads or whatever. It is, after all, purified sand, more or less, so making a road out of purer than usual sand is not a big deal.