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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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Accent on helpful side of your nature. Drain the moat.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Frosty Piss on Monday May 25 2015, @02:10AM
How does the cost work out over the long run in terms of maintenance and technology upgrades to these solar plants?
(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.
(Score: 4, Informative) by VLM on Monday May 25 2015, @11:42AM
http://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_08_04.html [eia.gov]
A mill is a tenth of a cent. So figure half a cent per KWh to maintain a coal plant. That high pressure steam boiler ain't gonna inspect itself, ya know. The wear and tear on those things is incredible.
yeah yeah geologically speaking, natgas is a fossil fuel but when energy dorks write "fossil steam" they mean coal. Natgas used to (on a decades scale) be a rounding error and nobody runs primary base load on natgas (if they can avoid it) so it gets categorized into the ghetto of "small scale" which is usually where renewables get categorized too.
The best number I have for solar maint is take the capital cost and divide by 100 and thats a realistic maint figure and take the capital cost and divide by 30 and thats a realistic depreciation figure. Its an open argument if the panels will outlast the expensive mountings and expensive wiring and expensive inverter. I've been verbally told the biggest problem varies by region/climate and often is vegetation growth related. Vines block the sun, kudzu, whatever. Obviously mounted on house roofs results in different problems such as idiot roofers and the like.
The nuke operation figure is high because they quite reasonably insist on including armed plant guards and training and emergency testing in the figure. Its interesting that all that BS is still only about a fifth to a tenth of the cost of fuel for a coal plant. Security guards are expensive, but so is trainloads of coal!
I've been investing in energy companies for a long time. Its interesting that "in the old days" the cheapest way to pay your electric bill was about $20K worth of electric company stock, for some values of electric bill and company stock LOL, but its rapidly getting to the point where the overall cheapest way to pay your electric bill is $10K of solar panels. Looking at long term graphs of technological trends etc I'm probably going to sell my electric company stock in the next decade and buy panels. This financial issue has certain implications for legacy plant operators aka todays electric companies. You don't just need breakeven, you need enough free profit to buy another system every 25 years or so, because my electric company stock doesn't depreciate over time but a solar plant will.
Its also interesting to watch other trends. Coal used to be the cheapest source of energy, but the lines on the graph are crossing and its rapidly becoming the most expensive form of energy out there. Natgas fluctuates in price too quickly to be trusted, its a PITA. A plant could almost justify a huge battery bank to only burn natgas when the price is low, or a combined solar/natgas plant so you only have to burn expensive natgas at night and never pay daytime spot prices for natgas.