'Offensively cheap': solar power is looking up

asmodeuslucifer

forever link https://ghostarchive.org/archive/Nkrxp

0utcast

Offensively cheap to the billionaires because they'll start losing consistent money.

bryanlarsen

Hopefully at some point the price of tokens will collapse, forcing data centers onto cheaper renewable energy in order to stay profitable.

comrade1234

It used to be Chinese panels were the worse quality with short lifespans. Now they're everywhere.

infecto

At least in America the greatest hurdle imo is both the cost of labor and the local/state red tape that has been pushed from local grid operators. Balcony solar should be available in all states across the country. I know on my state they require all this additional steps to get solar (including a bs solar study for your home) which just amounts to a significant permit fee which makes the investment less economical.

chrishill89

I like the idea of getting rooftop solar. The solar cells themselves are cheap. But the hitch is (1) living far north, (2) cloudy climate, (2) hiring professionals, (3) paying for an inverter and other interconnections, (4) paying for a "safe for a house" battery if I want any solar after 14:00 in the winter (N) ... This is Norway and it's been raining all summer. So you'd think hydro would make all of this moot. Doesn't seem it. Because the rates were high even after all the rain. I have high hopes for solar and batteries, but for the grid. I don't like the idea of a grid upgrade coming indirectly via thousands of bespoke homeowner increase my property value projects.

gniv

“If you have a massive cloud formation, the rooftop PV production can drop by so much that it looks like you have lost basically almost a nuclear power station.” A good problem to have but still a problem. Who would have thought weather forecasting would be critical to grid maintenance.

mainecoder

The problem with Solar is once someone buys it they can continuously use it for a long time with out participating in the economy. That is unacceptable especially from local grid providers and many in the energy sector and since China makes the best solar panels in quality and quantity that will take us maybe more than 3 years to catch up just in quality, it makes them even more bold in not allowing or making it hard for solar to proliferate. The risk is that the cost of energy will be high enough not to make manufacturing and other sector competitive enough but that does not matter as long as energy sector makes money the US can decline the number one goal is each individuals own goal there is no collective goal unless it just happens to be sadly a goal that is shared and individually beneficial.

myrmidon

An underappreciated fact is that the Japanese/German renewable push starting in the early 2000s contributed a lot toward the global state of solar power now. Solar programs/subsidies there is how a lot of local (and later Chinese) industry was bootstrapped despite being far from competitive with fossil energy back then. Those initiatives might have accelerated the whole solar power industry by half a decade or more. We are now reaping even (indirect) benefit from industrializing countries (Pakistan, India, etc) that go straight to solar instead of conventional plants. People often insist that western climate initiatives are "meaningless", "wasteful" and "ineffective", but examples like this prove that global effects are absolutely realistic. If those two countries had fully invested into nuclear power back then, we might be significantly worse off right now as far as global CO2 emissions are concerned.

bryanlarsen

The solution is to charge for power, not for energy. Utilities are reacting to this problem by separating connection fees from energy fees. The big problem is this is highly regressive. Rich and poor people pay the same connection fee. The solution is to also charge by peak power use. Rich people use more power on cloudy days than poor people do. This has the great advantage of aligning with utility costs. Utilities pay a great amount of money to be able to handle peak loads, not so much for normal loads.

ZeroGravitas

Coincidentally quoting some of the most despised grid operators in the world. Which obviously correlates with a desire to flee them when offered a solar/battery escape hatch. > energy groups in some [Australian] states are having to literally give away excess power generated during the middle of the day. And yet they needed to be forced to offer this by government and most responded by upping grid connection fees and rates at other times, actively undermining a move that would be to the benefit of the entire nation. Curious that they weren't more keen to get rid of that horrible solar energy that's threatening their grid balance if it meant they had to reduce the price to raise demand.

OroPla

Paywalled article, so who knows what it says. My main gripe with solar is that it doesn't last long enough. The panels have to be replaced about every two decades, but they take a bit more than two decades to amortize. This is why everyone I know that wanted to get into solar did not get into solar.

stmw

One of the important questions to always ask about solar is the energy inputs required to make a solar panel, and the time required to "earn it back" with solar electricity. This is different than "cheap price" because the energy consumed in manufacturing usually happens on a different continent, in a different currency, different regulatory regime and is thus easily obscured.

exabrial

I think one of the most important videos for the solar salesman here in the comments to read is about inverter instability and what it does to a grid at large scales. That and the subsidy, rare earth, power output decrease, and China manufacturing problems (them undermining the market with intentionally low prices to kill US solar). All of these problems have solutions, but the main problem right now is partisanship.