This post is good from 2011. A bunch of people probably thougjt Flyingbanana was a nut and people talked about technological breakthroughs needed for solar to work and yet with no significant change in the tech the prediction here of 10-16 cents per kwh in 2020 was massively pessimistic. There are 20 year contracts now for under 2 cents per kwh.

The 2 cents/kwh bids are pretty much bogus. Project financing lawyers have been dissecting to death and they are basically driven by:

Government incentives
They don't have to build until like 2020.
Protective provisions that allow renegotiation in essence
Extraordinarily favorable conditions for solar generation
And most importantly, limited liability special purpose vehicles where winning bidders are putting in minimal equity investment

They are basically structured as real options where the bidders put up very little equity and is just gambling on everything falling into place to make it make sense. This was really a result of the competitive bidding process that did terribly at making sure the bidders properly accounted for the risks. As it stands, the most probable outcomes for these headline 2c projects involve a lot of delays and cost overruns.

By most estimates, in most of teh world, 10-16 cents per kwh by 2020 is still about right. We are maybe a year or two ahead of schedule compared to estimates from 2011 or 1 or 2% higher annual growth than projected but overall we're still looking at solar being competitive only in the areas most favorable to solar for the foreseeable future.

Sounds like nuclear power plants.

But no. Really what has happened is that in 2011 a solar panel cost about $3/watt and now it costs about $0.35/watt for a large utility project. Maybe in 2011 you could get them for $2/watt in a big buy, I don't recall exactly.

I don't doubt the lowest priced developers are going to go out of business though. Solar is ruthlessly price competitive. Soooo many people/companies have bitten the dust in such a short time. Not a great business to go into to get rich.

But, yeah at this moment $0.02/kwh is the bleeding edge on price. People making contracts at that price are likely to have problems in 2018. In 2016 that was $0.04/kwh or $0.05/kwh. And all of this is based on location of course. In Germany or Oregon solar costs twice as much, but in 2020 that'll be $0.02/kwh there as well - maybe, it's got to be approaching the bottom imo.

grizy,

This was your prediction in 2011. Locate 2011 on that chart.

And what’s your point? Even back then I said solar has room to grow because it’s effectively the most popular R&D project for “alternative” energy. My problem with it was precisely because it’s a dead end that is costing us billions of dollars and diverting investments away from real issues (nuclear and improved carbon capture of coal/gas both would yield more carbon emission reduction in all likelihood) It still is. There is a reason nuclear plants, when closed, are replaced almost entirely by carbon fuel plants. See Japan and US.

The French and Chinese got it right. Nuclear is our best option right now.

I don't buy that solar research is somehow
poaching money from nuclear investments.

The Chinese are building more solar than anyone else. They have almost twice as much as the US. Japan has the second most solar. The US is 4th.

We tariff solar as well as give tax credits for it and Obama started the 30% tariff.

heard on the radio that due to insane administrative costs (we pretty much make homeowners apply as if they were a legit power plant and map out all the electricities) solar panel houses in usa#1 cost 2-3x as much as aussieland and europa.

The NREL disagrees with you.

The latest report I could find issued in Fall 2017 stated that in Q1 2017 installed fixed axis commercial solar was $1.34/watt and that number didn't account for developer profit margins which of course means it's low.

Additionally, the NREL states that the unsubsidized cost per kwh of power, again from data obtained Q1 2017, is of the cheapest solar installation is 4.14 cents per kwh.

Also from another post of yours; 90% round trip efficiency for pumped hydro storage is fairy tale talk. You would do well to consistently get 90 percent efficiency at the output shaft of a modern electric motor after accounting for transmission losses and real world motor efficiency. That doesn't take into account energy lost to the actual pump, pipe friction, evaporation, etc.

Don't take my word for it; the Germans get 80% in the real world.

1st para: That doesn't contradict anything I posted. I posted prices of solar panels per watt. That is installed cost for complete systems - panels, inverters, racking and labor.

Cost per kwh is complicated and imho it's best to talk about long term contracts, and in line with what Victor just said, the cheapest contracts are not in the US. The latest large contracts under $0.02/kwh are in Saudi Arabia and Mexico. But, there's a contract in AZ under 3 cents.

https://thinkprogress.org/arizona-ut...-8e7c0bcb093a/

I said 70-90% and the wiki puts the high end at 87 point something. That paragraph of yours was a waste of electrons. Where were you when DoTheMath said it was 20%?

steelhouse is banned and i haven't seen a dvaut post in maybe years now. i'm sad

Grizy has already given you ample suggestions why you may not want to take said contracts at face value; also I cited research from the NREL which directly contradicts what you said. I am more confident that the NREL has a handle on the nuances of long term renewables pricing as opposed to whoever is running PR for SaudiAramco or whatever other firms PR release, excuse me, contracts, you are citing as evidence.

There's a pattern developing here. Here is the Wikipedia excerpt you're citing verbatim:
On the other hand I cited an academic journal. One of those is not like the other.

As for where I was when DoTheMath made a post like 6 or 7 years ago....I don't know dude, let me check my day planner.

newsman,

In the context of an argument about whether efficiency was 20% or not I'm not apologizing for putting the range at 70-90% when 90% is listed as a maybe and your 80% is right in the range. Why didn't you attack the 70% instead of the 90%?

NREL is US and doesn't include non-US info. The 3 cent AZ contract is more recent than the NREL info. Grizy basically said capitalism is wrong and the prices are too low. Then I actually agreed and said that the low bidders will probably go out of business. And when NREL calculated the unsubsidized cost did it include the negative subsidies (tariffs)?

As far as the $1.34/W number you quoted which had nothing to do with anything I posted, $1.03/W would be the more standard number to use there. W-AC is not particularly meaningful or standardized while W-DC is at least completely standardized. I know you just picked the number that was bigger. And then regarding your $0.04/kwh - it says $0.03-$0.04 in the NREL report. I never said unsubsidized and I also never said untariffed. And nice, the NREL report lists the utility module price at $0.35/watt which is exactly what I said without looking it up.

Umm, becuase 70% isn't untruthful; 90% is.

I can't speak specifically to what Grizy is saying but it seems to me like he's trying to politely explain to you why $.02/kwh isn't economically feasible. If he's not saying it, I am....it's not that $.02/kwh is too low....it's fake news. No rational person can sell utility scale solar PV for $.02/kwh. He's trying to tell you that there are escalation clauses and other manner of weasel language in the contract that will make the actual cost of the delivered power much higher that $.02/kwh.

You've swallowed a piece of marketing at face value and are trying to cite it as evidence of the truth of price of solar PV. I'll explain in a minute why $.02/kwh is fake news.

lol no.

You cited a nominal low module price to legitimize your claim that $.02 or $.03 per kwh is feasible.

Don't worry I'll lay everything out in plain English shortly and show you why .02 or .03 per kwh is absurd.

This is just rich here.

Dude, I 'picked' the number that was most representative of the truth. 1.) when you, I, or anyone else, buys or sells a kwh of grid power we are buying AC power. ergo 2.) the price per watt of DC generation doesn't factor in the significant capital cost of inverters and the loss transforming the power to AC.

Ok....the installed cost per watt of grid scale PV is essential to understanding at what price the energy from said installation can be sold for.

First we have to take into consideration the capacity factor of a solar PV project.

Solar modules have a nameplate rating in watts. Basically the nameplate rating is how many watts the module will produce at the equator when the sun is precisely perpendicular to the panel and the panel is brand new, there's no dust on the glass etc.. In other words nameplate rating is basically ideal conditions.

Capacity factor is a way of taking the aveage daily output of a module an express that output as a percentage of theoretical output if the module were sitting on the equator in direct sun all day.

In other words: a 1000 watt array (1 kilowatt, or kW) with a capacity factor of .25 will product 1000 watts of power one quarter of the time. So in aggregate the module will produce 1000 watts for 6 hours....or 6 kwh of electrity. Modules produce power but we use energy...energy accounts for time, hence 6 kilowatt hours of energy is produced by a 1kW array with a capacity factor of .25.

The EIA puts the capacity factor of grid scale solar PV at .27; that's basically a huge solar array in Arizona. Let's give microbe the benefit of the doubt and assume he's siting his unicorn system somewhere in Mexico where solar insolation is higher and he has a merry band of Mexicans constantly washing the modules to get that last bit if capacity factor....call it a capacity factor of .3.

Ok.....so Microbet Solar signs a contract to provide power from his array at $.03/kwh produced. A full 50% higher than the $.02/kwh he claims itt, but he's given us so much to work with here I won't begrudge him $.01/kwh. So for every megawatt of modules he installs, a megawatt being 1 million watts or 1000 kilowatts, at a capacity factor of .3 he will gross 240 dollars per day.

Remember the 1.34/watt installation price I mentioned before? It's going to cost Microbet Solar 1.34 million dollars to install his 1 MW system and it's going to generate gross revenue of dollars 240 per day. Already this doesn't look too good but microbet has assured all of use it's all above board so let's plow on shall we.

So at 240 dollars per day he will generate 87,600 dollars per year gross revenue. That's accounting for zero tacos for his merry band of solar panel washers; that's zero maintenance costs; that's zero interest costs; that's assuming the panels never degrade, etc, etc.

Even if microbet were such a good salesman he could get some poor slub to loan him the money at the 10 year T bill rate of 2.78% the yearly interest cost alone on 1.34 mirrion is 37k and change. So his 87k gross is 50k before expenses which a 26.8 year payback on a physical asset with a nominal life of 25 years. So the unit will quit working before you've recouped your costs. GJGE.

And that's assuming zero maintenance, borrowing at the risk free rate (lol), etc etc blah blah you get the idea.

Bottom line; ain't happenin' cap'n.


P.S. oh yea and that's on .03/kwh, at .02/kwh dinousaurs will roam the earth again before Microbet just breaks even on his solar farm.

I don't have time to respond to all that but you're lol wrong about the AC power. You buy energy, not power. Neither AC Watts nor DC watts are what you buy from a utility. But when you buy hardware like a solar array you rate it in DC watts. And the $1.03 price includes inverters. It's a good way to talk about installation cost as opposed to AC because installation cost don't change that much based on local things like insolation.

I'm not just making this up. People ask me all the time what I charge per watt and they mean DC. And that's for complete operational systems.

People who sell energy sell neither AC nor DC watts, they sell kwhs.

"1.) when you, I, or anyone else, buys or sells a kwh of grid power we are buying AC power"

You don't have to know anything about solar to know this is wrong. Kwh is not even a unit of power.

My phone won't do the download and I'm traveling now, so I'd have to check, but the $1.03 (which lol specifically says it includes the inverter right on the nrel graph) is an average or typical utility scale price, not the low price right? So, that along with nrel not even counting non-US installations or accounting for US tariffs kinda ruins your calculations.

Still, I think what you're doing amounts to some variety of trolling via niterry. All of the points I made were substantially correct even if the numbers you miscalculated were more representative of the market.

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2017/06/...watt-w-charts/

And SEIA already put the average utility installation cost at $.99/w in the US a year ago.

The problem with nuclear power is what to do with the waste. The death rate cited seems low but I'll live with, though I can't believe it includes lives shortened during disasters by cancer etc.

But having waste travelling around to a dump site sounds like a huge disaster waiting to happen.

Direct quote from my post:

So you can't attack me on the facts (wonder why that is?) so the best you have is a typo I made.

Ok then.

You are quoting a trade group which is being cited in a magazine article.

My sources are government agencies cited in scientific journals.

It's shocking you can't see the difference.

You are handwaving the entire conversation away with 'substantially correct'...lol.

Try proving your assertion with facts and evidence.

Demonstrate from first principles how a solar module can be economically viable at .02 or .03/kwh. Spoiler alert: it's not; but again, feel free to prove me wrong with facts and numbers and stuff.

Also note microbet I could grant you .99/watt installation cost and I would still be right. Way right! You still wouldn't recoup the cost of installation inside the 25 year lifespan of the panels; and that's with me granting you the generous (and completely unrealistic) assumption that you can finance your installation at the prevailing 10 year T bill rate. lol.

Try this: Do. The. Math.

SEIA is legit. You wouldn't know because your total exposure to the issue is whatever you're googling now.