Solar Is Going To Change The World Much Faster Than Anyone Expects

[jpak]

http://au.businessinsider.com/solar-is-about-to-get-cheaper-than-coal-2013-5

I’ve been getting into Solar lately – the fall in prices has been absolutely shocking over the last 2-4 years.

We are seeing price drops closer to 20% per year after several decades at 6% price drops per year.

6% year is a fantastic rate of decreases, but 20% is simply astonishing. 20% is an impressive number, but putting it into context will make your jaw drop with astonishment.

My calculations show that if solar maintains 5 more years at current 23% rates per year price drops, solar power will be cheaper than using existing coal plants. That’s right – it will be cheaper to build new solar plants than to use existing coal plants. It sounds absolutely crazy.

<more>

FTE

[silverweb]

1. Makes my day!

[BlueStreak]

2. It is one of the most unreported stories

Everybody wants to talk about batteries, but the simple truth is that batteries have really not improved very much in either energy density or cost, and are still easily at least a decade away from having a big impact on transportation (beyond their very limited use in hybrids). GM announced their new Spark platform will have an EV version by fall. The gas-powered Spark is about $15,000. The EV version will cost about $32K (minus tax subsidies) and will have a practical range of 50-60 miles. That for a microscopically small car. I'm glad to see it, but it just illustrates how painfully slow the battery progress is.

The solar world is a whole different deal with this technology already nearly cost effective without major subsidies. Depending on how long you amortize the installation, in many cases, it is already better than break-even.

And that article was really a worst-case example, comparing the cost of a new solar installation with the cost of using an EXISTING coal plant.

Indianapolis International Airport just launched a huge solar project, which makes perfect sense because airports have to hold a lot of empty acreage as a sound buffer for nearby neighborhoods. Most large airports should be able to do similar projects profitably.

[quadrature]

31. untrue and misleading

batteries for EVs have made tremendous
improvements in the last 10 years.

solar PV is cheaper recently, because
manufacturing has moved to countries
that pay slave wages

[BlueStreak]

32. The state of the art in EVs in 1970 was

a small car with deep discharge lead acid batteries. 20 mile range at speeds up to about 35 MPH, and that wasn't terribly expensive because it was the same batteries used in golf carts. I know this because my family had one.

The state of the art today is a car that is twice that size, twice the range and twice the speed, but about 5 times the cost.

In my book this is not very rapid progress.

I have various investments in different battery technologies and watch this closely. It just is not coming along very quickly. Every one of those investments is underwater because the progress has been so much slower than people expected.

Energy density needs about a 100% improvement to make EVs attractive, and that is plausible in the next 3-4 years. Economics need a 500% improvement, and no company I know of is on a path to do that in the next 5-7 years.

You don't have to agree with me, but labeling this as "untrue and misleading" without offering any evidence is not a very honorable way to approach a conversation.

[quadrature]

36. c'mon on ..the improvement in EVs is battery life .

deep-cycle lead-acids last 700 cycles, max.

Li-ions, nowadays, outlast the car.
maybe two cars.


otoh, progress in PV is painfully slow
and I have been hearing the same BS since 1973

[BlueStreak]

37. The facts speak for themselves

Of electrical power to be added in 2013 in the US, natural gas will be first, solar second, and wind third -- all of them being more than new installations of coal, nuclear, goethermal or hydropower. It is not speculation. It is happening right now.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-21/solar-will-be-second-biggest-source-of-u-s-power-added-in-2013.html

Over 4 gigawatts of solar power coming online in 2013.

Meanwhile EVs account for (generously) 50,000 vehicles out of a market of 15,000,000 vehicles. That is 3/10 of a percent. That is interesting, but not a significant number. And there are no breakthroughs happening in 2013 that will change that ratio. Only slow progress.

There has been significant progress in recharge times, and build-out of a recharging infrastructure. But at present, this is only for people who are so committed to electric cars that they are willing to let the vehicle dictate their lifestyle. So far, that is a minuscule number of people. With continued build-out of the infrastructure, maybe we could see 100,000 EVs a year or a little more. But the economics just don't work. If an EV didn't cost $15,000 more than a far more capable gas powered car, there might be a market for 500,000 of these things a year, even with their limited range. But the cost delta isn't going away anytime soon, so EVs will remain a niche market of hardy early adopters throughout this decade at least.

Don't get me wrong. I expect to buy one someday. When I can get a reasonably sized EV with a legitimate, reliable 150 mile range and pay something less than $25K, I'll be a serious buyer. I hope I live that long.

[JDPriestly]

3. I would love to put panels on my S. California house, but I would have to switch my heat

and everything to electricity. That would involve redoing a lot of the house and would be far, far, far too expensive. It's sad really. We have so much sun.

[jeff47]

10. You already use plenty of electricity

The fact that you wouldn't be heating with isn't that large of a down-side. Especially in such a mild climate.

[BlueStreak]

17. And you might be able to sell the excess back to the utility

That would generate revenue for awhile until you had a good opportunity to convert the systems to electric.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

19. Built one of these in Anaheim,...

...it works.

Mine was much larger up on the roof and had 6" insulated flex ducts that went down the outside of the house to one of those dual window fans. One blowing in warm air that had passed through the cans and the other blowing room air up to the unit on the roof. Mine used cans from 4 - 12 packs for a total of 48 cans.

[JDPriestly]

38. Thanks. Looks interesting.

[MADem]

4. I love solar....I just bought a solar light for the backyard.

It's a "security light" thing with a bunch of LEDs in it. I have a chunk of the backyard that is completely dark and when the dogs go out I can't see 'em. This thing comes on when the dogs go by, lights up the whole area, stays on for a bit, and then goes out. It works great.

[truebluegreen]

5. I think I read that without the subsidies fossil fuels get

it would already be on an equal footing.

I just installed solar panels where I live--a very sunny place--and I'm looking at an annual return of 15% on my investment (power is very expensive here).

[Bernardo de La Paz]

8. Solar is heavily subsidized too. How about cut out all the subsidies & simplify the tax code too?

[truebluegreen]

13. Um, yes and no

I'm fine with simplifying the tax code but I am also fine with subsidizing an industry we want to grow. For the common good. Until it can stand on its own. (BTW, if solar were subsidized at the same level as fossil fuel--which it isn't--they would already be at par).

I can't think of anything the fossil fuel industry does that is--on balance--for the common good. And like the banks, if they didn't receive subsidies they wouldn't be profitable at all. The sooner we can phase them out the better.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

18. Subsidies should be in the form of grants so they are open and transparent. Using tax code just

Subsidies should be in the form of grants so they are open and transparent.

Using the tax code for subsidies just buries them.

It's one reason why airports and airlines have an unfair advantage against high speed rail.

[truebluegreen]

20. Agree. Good idea.

Subsidies should never be hidden.

[BlueStreak]

33. There is nothing wring with tax credits for early adopters of technologies that are important

to the nation's future.

Subsidies to oil companies, big Ag for ethanol, and others like that make no sense at all to me.

[truedelphi]

6. The back two rooms in our house no longer provide us with electricity -

We are thinking of re-doing the configuration so that they now run on solar. This means our computer would be up and running even when the power goes out when it is too brutally hot, and when the winter storms force an outage.

Like you say, the prices are getting totally affordable.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

7. Duplicate thread. Although there is a good point to be made, it is hidden by bogus graphs, bogus

Although there is a good point to be made, it is hidden by bogus graphs, bogus assumptions and bogus writing.

See some discussion here in the previous bigger thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/112742770

[kimbutgar]

9. I always wondered why they didn't have solar powered cars by now in places like Arizona

and New Mexico. Also just think how people's houses could be air conditioned with solar power. Too bad the oil companies have such a stranglehold on our energy policies. If we had kept on Jimmy's Carter's energy plan the US and the world would be in a better place now.

It's amazing how the American people were tricked into voting for Nixon who promised to end the Vietnam war but actually stopped the peace treaty and extended that illegal and immoral war. The now Reagan' s people embarrassed Jimmy Carter and over the Iran Hostage crisis which his people stopped which lead to his election and finally how Bush's cronies on the Supreme Court basically appointed him President taking away the will of the people. Just think how far along as a country we would have been without these criminals. The Vietnam War would have been ended, no drug wars, alternative energy, possible stoppage of 9-11 and no wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and no Wall Street crash in 2008. All the good stuff stopped by republicans.

[jeff47]

12. Limited surface area

Cars aren't that big. You can't get enough power to propel a 2000-3000 lb vehicle on just the upper surface of that vehicle.

That being said, a battery-powered car could be recharged by a solar array.

[kimbutgar]

14. If we had kept on the course in the 1980's I bet we would have developed by now a small solar

panel that put off enough energy to power a car. If you had told me that I would have a computer the size of a pad of paper in 1980 I would have said that's impossible. Or even a telephone that took pictures, surfed the internet and had a capacity to have a two way visual conversation I would have said impossible. Or a flat screen TV even. With Reagan this country stopped being dreamers and instead became schemers.

[jeff47]

16. No, we wouldn't. There's some laws of physics involved.

Sunlight hits the Earth's surface with about 1kW of energy per square meter at noon. 1kW is about 1.34 horsepower The upper surface of a car is around 2 square meters.

So if we broke the laws of physics and had 100% efficient solar panels on that car and a 100% efficient engine, you'd have a 2-3 hp car. Geo Metros had a 70hp motor, and they were considered small and underpowered. And this solar car would only have that much power at noon. It's power would be dramatically reduced as you approached sunrise or sunset.

And it's not possible to create 100% efficient solar panels nor 100% efficient motors.

[kimbutgar]

24. How about the body of the car being made of solar panels on all sides?

And mirrors that increase the 1kw per square foot output?

I am not a scientist but a dreamer. I've actually thought about this .

[jeff47]

25. 1.34 hp per square meter still applies.

You need around 100hp for a car - all the safety equipment and other features makes cars heavier today.

That's about 75 square meters. Or 800 square feet. That's the size of a good sized one-bedroom apartment. Which is way, way, way larger than the entire surface area of a car. And driving around enough mirrors to cover an apartment is absurd.

And that's still with 100% efficient panels and 100% efficient motors. The best large motors are around 80% efficient. The best solar panels are around 30% efficient. Which now means you need more than 250 square meters. Which is around 2700 square feet.

You're proposing we drive around something the size of a house. At noon.

Morning and evening would require something several times larger.

"Solar powered" cars will require batteries charged by solar panels, or something like the "third rail" in a subway.

[kimbutgar]

26. Whatever happened to the guy on 60 minutes who has the small energy cells?

Thanks for the info though it gave me something to think about. I am not a scientist nor studied it in college outside of getting my science credits for my undergraduate requirements but i am fascinated by science and love watching tv shows about science. I love the science channel.

[jeff47]

28. Sounds like you're talking about fuel cells

which are a way to generate electricity through chemistry - think battery that you recharge by filling it with methanol instead of plugging it into the wall.

[appal_jack]

30. Jeff (& Kim): This is the crucial point.

"That being said, a battery-powered car could be recharged by a solar array."

Jeff (& Kim): This is the crucial point.

Kim's questions are good ones about why we don't have self-contained solar cars, and Jeff, your answers about the laws of physics and energy density are excellent. But this point about cars & solar arrays; that is key.

What's larger than a car, and sits in partial or total (depending upon site) sunlight all day long? A building. And where do most cars sit for most of many days? Near buildings.

So it only makes sense for the site of solar power generation to take place on building, while cars can help play a role in solar power storage. A 100 hp (or 200 or 300 hp) electric car or truck will need lots of energy-dense batteries in order to make the fastest & or longest hauls possible when it needs to. But I only use my big pickup to haul and tow at full capacity a few times per year, and my little commuter vehicle only travels more than 100 miles in a day maybe one month out of the year. All the rest of the time, my vehicles (were they similar-capacity but electric) would have 'power to spare' for from and to which the grid might upload and download spare power while these cars were parked near buildings with solar arrays. If I were to pay for charging my battery while parked near a solar-powered, grid-intertied building, but receive payments and/or electricity bill credits every time the grid needed some spare power and tapped my car's batteries for it, I might be willing to allocate 50% of my car batteries and 50% of my truck batteries to the grid on most days of the year. Multiply this by the millions of cars and trucks out there across the country, and the problem of distributed-generation grid-power storage could be solved with many fewer batteries in buildings.

-app

[BlueStreak]

34. Absolutely agree with this. I have never understood the absence of photo cells

on the flat surfaces of EVs. There have been a few concept cars that actually can propel themselves just using solar power. That isn't really practical, but it illustrates that it is a significant amount of energy in many cases. And if you are in an EV sitting in traffic on a hot day with the AC running, isn't it better to see the battery charging rather than draining before your eyes?

Let's say you have a 20-mile drive to work. If you park in a sunny place, it seems very practical that you could add another 10-20 miles to the "tank" wile the car is parked. Same deal if you take short trips to a shopping center or grocery. It definitely could be a significant range extender that takes absolutely no effort on the part of the owner.

[wtmusic]

45. If you are in an EV sitting in traffic on a hot day with a car covered in panels

at noon - the panels wouldn't even be enough to power your air conditioner, much less charge your batteries.

About 14 watts/sq foot * 60 sq ft (I'm being generous) = 840W. Typical car air conditioner consumption = 3.7 kW.

Not even close.

Solar energy is a religion, not a science.

[BlueStreak]

47. Any amount that you input offsets the drain

Can you at least agree that it is better to be putting a charge into the battery rather than just sitting there draining it?

And there are most certainly technologies that can coll a space with the amount of elegy that can be collected by PV cells on the top of a car on a hot day. See http://www.gizmag.com/solar-power-vehicle-ac-system/16979/

So much for your "not even close" claim.

Did you have a bad experience with solar energy as a child? Maybe bad sunburns?

[wtmusic]

49. Did you have a bad experience with Scientology as a child?

The solar energy craze is one small step better than Energy from Moonbeams. I find it offensive just because people are so ignorant about the physics of it.

[wtmusic]

50. You're not putting a charge into the battery

You really need some basic education in physics.

If your air conditioner is drawing 3700W and your solar panels are contributing 840W, you're not contributing anything to the battery - you're still drawing 2.8 kW plus whatever your car is using.

That article was written in 2010, also by someone ignorant in physics. Now find me an article about an actual solar powered air conditioner - that works.

[BlueStreak]

51. What part of offsetting the drain is so hard to understand?

If you supplement energy through a solar panel, this will prolong the usefulness of the battery charge that you began with. That point should be perfectly obvious to everyone, so I am not going to debate it further.

[wtmusic]

52. That's at noon on a sunny day.

With a capacity factor of 13% their average power output is ~100 watts.

If your car has a minimum capacity, like mine of 24 kWh, it would take your cool solar panels 24,000/100, or about 10 days, to charge your car.

So the cost of the panels, and maintaining them, and replacing them when you get into an accident, is nowhere near the value of actually having them. Which is maybe why you don't see any cars covered with solar panels.

[timdog44]

11. Problem is backward state that

want to pass laws like these.

"Now the state’s “Committee on Energy and Environment” is proposing a law that would prohibit spending on anything that won’t set Kansas on a course to self-destruction. House Bill No. 2366 would ban all state and municipal funds for anything related to “sustainable development,” which it defines as: “development in which resource use aims to meet human needs while preserving the environment so that these needs can be met not only in the present, but also for generations to come."

This from a Bloomberg article.

Any state within a good sunbelt could easily produce enough solar power to supply the needs of their own state and many more. And if the state did the building and financing they could be money self sufficient for ages to come. The insanity of anti-science, anti Obama, pro health deteriorating carbon fuels is just beyond comprehension.

"We don't want sustainable healthy energy sources." The only good thing is DNA will eventually eliminate them.

[denverbill]

15. I don't understand why home solar panels don't seem to be any cheaper.

I priced them 5-6 years ago and again recently and it seems like everyone wants $20 grand to install them, both then and now. I thought they'd be more like $10 grand with all the hyped price drops.

[caraher]

21. How much of the quote is for the panels...

and how much is for the installation? Also, if you're tying into the grid you need an inverter and they're not cheap, either. A 10% drop in the price of a panel doesn't imply a 10% drop in the cost of an installed system.

[jeff47]

29. The difference is the output.

$20k 5-6 years ago got you about 1/2 of the power your house consumes.
$20k today gets 1 to 3 times the power your house consumes.

[nikto]

22. When solar gets cheaper than coal...

OMG!
We will have to build a whole bunch more coal-burning plants and cut back on the solar, bigtime.


Just tryin' to think like an Amurkin.

[wtmusic]

23. Your prices are nonsense

because they're the result of the highest energy subsidies per kilowatthour in U.S. history.

Levelized solar will be one-third more expensive than nuclear and coal through 2018. Read/weep.

http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/electricity_generation.cfm

[BlueStreak]

35. It all depends on your amortization schedule

Solar has practically no variable costs. No fuels. Very little maintenance. If you have to amortize the construction cost over 4 years, you can't compete with the cost of burning more coal in an existing coal plant. But if you look at the total life cycle cost of a newly built coal or nuke plant, it is a different story.

We are getting to the point where the issue isn't the $/KWH for solar. The big issues are balancing the load when there is no sunshine, and the politics of Adding these up-and-down sources to the grid that is dominated by people who own old plants, and don't want to run them below capacity when solar can supply the juice.

[wtmusic]

42. Amortization is included in the levelized calculation

"Levelized cost is often cited as a convenient summary measure of the overall competiveness of different generating technologies. It represents the per-kilowatthour cost (in real dollars) of building and operating a generating plant over an assumed financial life and duty cycle. Key inputs to calculating levelized costs include overnight capital costs, fuel costs, fixed and variable operations and maintenance (O&M) costs, financing costs, and an assumed utilization rate for each plant type."

http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/electricity_generation.cfm

Solar has an extremely high variable cost. On partly cloudy days when clouds move over a utility solar installation, output can drop by 50% in a minute or two, and peaking gas plants have to switch on to smooth grid voltage. It all gets billed to the customer.

[BlueStreak]

43. It has NO variable cost

Those gas and coal plants already exist. If the solar feed didn't exist, they would have to run. That's my point. People can very easily throw into the pot a set of assumptions that makes solar look great or terrible. But if you look at it simply as $/KWH for the juice that is generated over a reasonable plant life, it is already extremely competitive. But all things new threaten those who profit from the status quo, so they come up with ways to try to discredit the new. It is biased at best, totally fraudulent at worst.

But again, that is my point. It is no longer about the technology. The technology is essentially there today. Now it is about politics -- about whose ox will be gored.

[wtmusic]

44. No, those plants are being built specifically to accomodate solar.

"Peaker plants are small, efficient power units that can reach full generating capacity within 10 to 15 minutes to meet immediate demand on the grid.

The new plants – Pio Pico Energy Center, LLC (Apex Power Group); Quail Brush Generation Project (Cogentrix Energy, LLC); and Escondido Energy Center, LLC (Wellhead) – are the selected projects that met the specifications of SDG&E’s 2009 solicitation for conventional generation.

“SDG&E continues to sign contracts for as much renewable power as we can get to meet the state’s 33-percent mandate, but we also need resources that can be brought online quickly to provide power when other sources, such as wind or solar plants, are not available,” said James P. Avery, SDG&E’s senior vice president of power supply."

http://www.sdge.com/newsroom/press-releases/2011-05-23/sdge-proposes-adding-450-mw-local-%E2%80%9Cpeaking%E2%80%9D-power

As much as you want to write that expense and associated CO2 emissions off, solar is inextricably tied to both. What levelized cost should include is the price of excessive land use, the cost of peaking plants and their land use, and the cost of the fuel necessary to levelize their variable output.

In their blind enthusiasm, renewables advocates conveniently ignore all of those costs.

[BlueStreak]

46. Nonetheless, it is a tenuous argument to burden solar with those costs

That is analogous to saying that because a solar field employs hardly anyone after the initial construction, then we should burden the solar project cost with the pensions of West Virginia coal miners who no longer have a product they can sell.

On the other side of the coin, we can just as easily attribute a huge economic benefit to Solar in terms of the impact that it will have on stemming the onset of climate change. That would be just as "innovative" as the accounting you are defending.

See, it is easy to gather up tangential costs to obscure the basic fact that the lifetime cost of the juice itself is practically at parity now.

I don't deny that there are real investments needed in grid storage, and that because we ignored this challenge for decades, it is coming to the forefront as an issue as solar comes on-stream. But really, our national disgrace of technology policy and investment is not the fault of solar power and solar power should not be burdened with its costs.

[wtmusic]

48. No, the truth is that the lifetime cost of the juice is nowhere near parity now

The EIA has done a remarkably objective job at quanitifying the relative costs of these different sources, and they've found that solar is, in sum, significantly more expensive than any other energy source. That may not be what you were expecting or wanted to hear, but pretending it's not true is pointless.

[deurbano]

27. Even in my foggy city...

Very encouraging:

http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/2013/04/san-francisco-achieves-first-school-solar-panels

[NickB79]

39. The reason for the recent solar drop was China flooding the market

And now, the prices have fallen so much that some of their major solar businesses are going bankrupt as they can no longer make a profit: http://money.cnn.com/2013/03/21/news/suntech-solar-bankruptcy/index.html

China's Suntech Power has put its largest subsidiary into bankruptcy, a casualty of rampant oversupply in the solar industry and punishing sanctions levied on Chinese panel producers.

The bankruptcy filing, made in Jiangsu Province, marks the end of a long downward spiral for Suntech's Wuxi subsidiary, once a darling of the solar industry and one of the world's largest panel producers.

Declining prices for solar products and global trade spats have taken a toll on the nascent solar industry in recent years, leading to the failure of several firms heavily dependent on government support.

So, I think it is VERY unlikely that we'll see "solar maintain 5 more years at current 23% rates per year price drops", short of some technological breakthrough.

[Laelth]

40. I hope you are right, but I have my doubts.

People want power 24/7, not just when the sun is shining. Until our battery/storage technology gets a lot better, I see little chance that solar power will make much of a dent in our ongoing and deadly consumption of fossil fuels.

-Laelth

[gejohnston]

41. the sooner the better

Do you know anyone that has PV panels up in your neck of the woods?