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posted by
martyb
on Sunday May 24 2015, @08:12PM
from the price-of-sunlight-and-wind-is-pretty-constant dept.
from the price-of-sunlight-and-wind-is-pretty-constant dept.
Over the last 5 years, the price of new wind power in the US has dropped 58% and the price of new solar power has dropped 78%. Utility-scale solar in the West and Southwest is now at times cheaper than new natural gas plants. Even after removing the federal solar Investment Tax Credit of 30%, a recent New Mexico solar deal is priced at 6 cents / kwh. By contrast, new natural gas electricity plants have costs between 6.4 to 9 cents per kwh, according to the EIA.
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Renewables are Disruptive to Coal and Gas
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(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2015, @04:05AM
Dunno, but maintenance on a solid-state device like a solar panel has got to be near zero. Probably just wiping the dust off.
I'd bet maintenance costs on anything using fossil fuels is at least an order of magnitude higher.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday May 25 2015, @07:15PM
FWIW, solar cells *do* wear out. I'm not sure how long it takes, and I'm rather sure it's different for different technologies. (I suspect that any that use dyes will wear out more quickly...but does that mean 10 years or 30?)
OTOH, you don't need to replace the whole installation just because a few cells wear out. You replace one panel, take it to the shop to fix it (replace the failing cells), and then use it to replace another.
Storage is more critical. At this point there doesn't seem to *be* a really good solution, and many acceptable solutions are site-specific. The article claims that there are good choices, but....well, I'm not sure I believe it. I think it may be overselling.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2015, @09:21PM
> FWIW, solar cells *do* wear out. I'm not sure how long it takes,
All modern solar panels are guaranteed to produce at least 80% of their rated capacity at 25 years of age. [energyinformative.org]
Actual in the field results [nrel.gov] seem to be better than that.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday May 26 2015, @07:59AM
According to a quick look in the above document the solar cells degrade with approximately 0.5% per year. The time in years it takes to degrade to 80% compared to when new is:
years = log(0.80) / log(1-.005) = 44 years
The amount of degradation at a specific year is:
Lost capacity in part of full (1) is: 1-(1-.005)^year
Ie after 44 years 1-pow(1-.005,44) = 0.20 of full capacity has been lost.
And these calculations is a rule of thumb, statistics.