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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: 2) by VLM on Thursday February 22 2018, @02:38AM (3 children)
Currently you gotta process or burn about five barrel equivalents of crude or veg oil to deliver a barrel of vegetable oil...
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Thursday February 22 2018, @02:56AM (2 children)
Hey, I don't disagree. The biofuel system needs work to become net positive... ie worthwhile.
OTOH How much energy goes into the mining, materials refining, manufacturing, and delivery of a solar panel? I'm reading that it's also net negative right now, where more total energy goes into making them then they actually produce, and the fancy high efficiency new ones aren't necessarily better due to the refining costs of the more exotic metals and materials in them. I think it'll go positive, and it sounds like its further ahead than biofuel, but that could change with more research.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 22 2018, @04:06PM (1 child)
Where are you reading that? I'm reading the opposite. [phys.org]
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Thursday February 22 2018, @07:25PM
The first sentence in your own link: "The climate-friendly electricity generated by solar panels in the past 40 years has all but cancelled out the polluting energy used to produce them"
"all but" means "has not". ;)
As for these studies, its not really clear though what all they've considered. Do they go right back to resource gathering (mining and refining) or does the calculation start with 'manufacturing the actual panel' from raw materials. (ie from pouring silica into the furnace...) Are they only considering manufacturing; or are they looking at distribution, deployment, and maintenance too, for example. A lot of this stuff meaningless though, they're looking at panels made in the 70s and 80s mostly; is that representative Do they consider the construction and upgrades of the panel factories as well... etc. Also how much plastic are they using? And where is that plastic coming from?
But yeah, I read the whole article, and yes it claims maybe we actually have made them net positive... but it concedes in the first sentence that maybe not quite yet either.
I agreed all along that either way ahead of bio-fuels currently.