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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, @01:51PM (1 child)
Sounds like a bad parody of Snowcrash but theres only three successful business models in the future
1) Convenience quickie mart
2) Gift giving
3) Insane massive financialization schemes based on the above
So the electric company of 2030, 2040, 2050 is going to be demand based billing where electric clothes dryer at 2pm is free on a sunny day because you have panels but 2am electric clothes drying will cost $10 per KWh inflation adjusted. So much like you can get junk food 24x7 from quikie-mart but it'll be super expensive, most people will get most of their KWh from their panels but 24x7 wattage will be available ... at a crazy price. Likewise Auntie never knows what to buy for Christmas so she'll go to the electric company store (no crazier than cellphone company stores... right?) and she'll buy me a electricity gift card of ten anytime rollover KWh for those cold winter nights, which is gonna be $100, pre-inflation adjusted. Meanwhile my investment portfolio will be nothing but derivatives of securities of startup bubble electricity marketing scams, just like everyone else.
Although the above was tongue in cheek the root is serious, the future is crazy high rates for night time demand based smart meter billing. Given the prices of all that infrastructure and financing to fund it, kerosene lanterns are likely to make a comeback...
This affects "us CS/IT guys" in that I predict by 2040 server farms will have daylight sensors and speeds will throttle down by a factor of a thousand or more when the sun sets... Data centers with megawatts consumed in the day, kilowatts consumed at night. In 2040 you get a 100 meg cable modem with a 5 gig use cap just like now, but it throttles down to 56K data rate at night.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday February 22 2018, @03:37PM
Except that electric company rates will be limited by the cost for it's customers to put in their own batteries or run their own generator. Data centers already have batteries and generators, so for them, the instant the power co wants more than the cost of diesel, the generators will get cranked up.
Since many homes are actually heated with gas or oil, they need just enough power to run the fan.