Heads Up World. Solar Energy is Getting Cheap Fast.
Decatur Metro | October 21, 2011Sure, you could sit around and shake your head about Georgia’s 1973 “Territorial Electric Service Act“, and then spit out your morning cuppa when you hear Georgia Power’s defense of the law that prohibits selling power to anyone but a utility. In the words of GPB “…the current law protects consumers and costs they pay. If some customers leave for third party suppliers, those remaining with a utility have to shoulder more of infrastructure maintenance costs.”
Umm…OK.
But really, it’s just a waste of perfectly good fair-trade coffee to expectorate your surprise, because guess what? Solar power is getting cheaper by the day and silly arguments like the one above will be swept into the gutter as eco-freaks and neo-nomics alike will demand more solar options.
Why the cocky confidence?
Because price is the only real remaining hurdle for solar power to overcome and become the energy of choice for any reason. Sure, if solar got a bit cheaper than its current price, more environmentally conscious folks would be up on their roofs installing panels. But we’re not talking about a small price decline. We’re talking about the potential of costs so low that fossil fuels aren’t even a consideration anymore. According to a recent article on Grist by solar expert Kees Van Der Leen, if solar PV capacity continues to grow at just half the rate it grew from 2005 to 2010 (49%), solar will become the cheapest energy option in the sunniest areas of the world by 2018. 6 years from now. As capacity grows in the years following, the obvious result is solar eventually can become the cheapest option most anywhere in the world.
If it plays out the way it looks like it will, it’s a mind-blowing proposition. One that will change the way the world thinks about and uses energy forever. But few are talking about it yet.
They should be. Because “the amount of solar energy reaching the surface of the planet is so vast that in one year it is about twice as much as will ever be obtained from all of the Earth’s non-renewable resources of coal, oil, natural gas, and mined uranium combined.”, according to one Stanford study.
Hot damn.
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I fully expect that within 20 years it will be relatively cheap to install solar panels on almost every residential and commercial roof and that the panels will reduce electricity purchased from utilities by a very substantial amount. A company that can produce thin-film solar for residential installation at an economical price will make an absolute fortune.
But in terms of commercial power generation, aren’t there two major issues besides price, being (1) the sheer amount of land that solar fields require and (2) transmission of the power from the fields to population centers? I vagely recall hearing that solar fields face a lot of opposition because they cover vast amounts of land with panels and don;t work well anywhere but deserts.
I believe that current panel efficiency is only about 30%. It seems like improved efficiencies have the potential to minimize the need to solar fields, keeping solar power mostly local. The commercial power generation is a good point. Perhaps they would just be stuck with fossil fuel options longer than single-family residences?
Operational efficiencies are in the low to mid teens. Also the price decline has motivated anti dumping punishment be sought against China which makes 60% of PV panels.Tarriffs are in the wings.Besides 50% of Decatur is covered by trees. I wonder if there’s natural gas under us.Fracking anyone?
What about the “vast fields” on top of industrial plants and big box stores? Power is then generated close to the point of use. This becomes even better as efficinecy of generation increases.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=solar%20panels%20on%20walmart&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CEYQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fcontent.usatoday.com%2Fcommunities%2Fgreenhouse%2Fpost%2F2011%2F09%2Fwalmart-adds-solar-panels-to-60-more-calif-stores%2F1&ei=kbWhTvvkLMGTtwfznoiTBQ&usg=AFQjCNHLxpv4grcSEn48FhMU6EiooghaQA&cad=rja
Right, that’s what I meant by putting panels on commercial roofs. But as I understand it, current technology won’t permit the generation of enough power to power your average Wal-Mart (or even a home) all day, especially when it’s not sunny. So what I was referring to is generation of solar power for resale away from the point of sale at solar farms. That’s where, as I understand it, vast fields of panels are required. It would be great, of course, if we had panels that generated enough yield so that every home/business was energy self-sufficient.
We don’t
Thanks for posting this. And there are many other ways solar energy can be made more palatable. Check out this customer-service from the city of Vienna (Austria): http://agnesscottgerman.wordpress.com/2011/10/21/viennas-solar-city-map/
Thank to you for the link Dante. It describes an easy to use city sponsored website to calculated the amount of energy a solar panel on your roof could produce, as well as other data need to easily convert to the 21st century energy source. I love this statement: The site was put up by the city nearly 4 years ago, “before Obama was elected president in the USA. Here we are still talking about whether or not solar energy is a feasible and valid energy source”. I hope that is finally changing.
There’s a difference critics fail to see (or just refuse to see) between solar power and other forms.
Both a natural gas boiler and a solar panel are capital costs. But once that capital cost is recaptured, you still have to buy fuel for the boiler. Not so the panel.
Having covered the area at renewableenergyworld.com and elsewhere, I can assure you it’s just like many other tech markets I’ve followed over the years, with a boom-bust-boom cycle, based on inventories, and prices constantly declining.
Right now we’re in a bust cycle, so the skeptics are claiming solar doesn’t work. All that means is there are bargains to be had on panels, which are in oversupply. But new start-ups are already rising who will get their costs under today’s prices, and the cycle will begin again.
In addition to increased efficiency, there are many dimensions on which solar costs can decline. Connection costs. Materials costs. Manufacturing costs. Channel costs.
And it’s this last that will prove decisive. Right now we’re at 1971 with solar. Getting a panel installed is like putting a PDP-8 in your home 40 years ago — a capital expense. At some point in 5 years you’ll be able to buy kit at Home Depot, put it into your walls, windows and/or roof yourself, plug it in and not worry about which direction the sun is shining from. That’s the game changer, and the teenagers who come up with those solutions will be the Steve Jobs’ and Bill Gates’ of their time.
Study hard, DHS kids. It could be you.
Samsung is moving aggressively into the solar markets, and I think this is the game changer you speak of. They have the scale and distribution channels to really reduce costs, and will bring them into the consumer electronics arena.
Hey didn’t I link to that a couple weeks ago? I meant to reference it above. Thanks for the reminder!
http://www.economist.com/node/21530976
Yes but the efficiencies are not there. The most sold systems are only 12-16% efficient. Those are the systems whose price have fallen 30-40%. Its been like that since Jimmy Carter wore swaeters in the White House. I would love to see it,but have not seen any great improvements.You need a multi junction full spectrum cell to move this into the mainstream.Has anyone got one? ?……..Bueller?……..Bueller?
One thing that I would really like to see is some kind of mechanism for forming solar collectives whereby you can help invest in the installation of panels at a location better suited to generating the power than many of our roofs that are often shaded (thankfully) at peak solar generating hours. I always thought it would be cool if, for example, I could purchase a couple of panels for installation at, say, Winnona Park Elementary and somehow the power that was generated would be deducted from my electric bill (minus some amount that might go to the school for use of their roof space).
That fact is, i’ll probably never put panels on my roof because it is shaded too much and the part that isn’t shaded is angled all wrong (North) but I would be pretty likely to buy into something like the above, even if, in the end, it was more expensive than the current dirty electricity I buy.
As an addendum to my comment above, out of curiosity I went and used Roofray, which is a cool tool for estimating solar capacity of roofs from their image on google maps. Using just one of several south facing roofs on Winnona park, you get approximately 1000 sq ft, with a generating capacity of about 14 watts dc per square foot. So at peak summer sun, just that one roof would be generating 14,000 watts.
Good thing Reagan had the vision to remove Carter’s panels from the roof of the Whitehouse in ’81.
Oy, why the political shot from 30 years ago? I was really trying very hard to not mention Solyndra . . .
Speaking of Solyndra, the idea behind their product was right-on, right? I haven’t read up on the technology (or the failure). Seems like tube panels should be a better way to capture energy (at more angles, and direct as well as energy reflected off of a light roof cover). If it is smart idea, I hope another company makes it work.
Thin sheets sounds even better b/c they’ll be lighter (more roofs can hold them) and less noticeable (though the success of Prius may prove that theory wrong: http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/04/21/conspicuous-conservation-and-the-prius-effect/).
Do you have a link to a company working on solar film?
Solyndra had a great idea but their product is much more expensive to manufacture — arrays of glass tubes — than flat panels.
TenK Solar is not a solar thin film company but they promise a substantial increase in efficiency based on a refinement in the wiring of cells. I’m no expert but as I understand it, normal pv cells are wired such that they only generate as much electricity as the worst performing cell. In other words, if just one cell of an array is shaded, the amount of electricity generated is limited to what the shaded cell generates. This is why you don’t see reflectors set up to bounce more light onto pv cells — you have to insure that the reflected light is perfectly evenly distributed across all the cells to gain any real benefit.
These guys say they have figured out a way around this limitation so they can increase the amount of light collected through the use of reflectors made of cheap materials. Their wiring scheme allows all the individual cells to produce at their maximum capacity.
http://www.tenksolar.com/index.html
But who’s going to save the planet using industrial scale solar? I’m betting on this guy. His process produces hydrogen from concentrated solar energy with desalinated water as a byproduct:
http://www.colorado.edu/news/r/3f14672273942abdc95d82c996bf4b8f.html
No link but I was under the impression that First Solar was into thin film production. I could very well be wrong.
Cool — thanks for the insight and reading!
There is plenty of solar capacity. Storage remains the problem.