Comments on: Commercial Solar Now Cost-Competitive in US

By: Solar Energy News Roundup | Planetsave

Solar Energy News Roundup | Planetsave — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 01:28:27 +0000

[…] Commercial Solar Now Cost-Competitive in US […]

By: Zachary Shahan

Zachary Shahan — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 22:08:00 +0000

aha, that would make more sense.

and if it is $3.25, that’s not too bad, so maybe it really would be possible for this crew to chase that $7 million :D.

By: Bob_Wallace

Bob_Wallace — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 21:14:00 +0000

I think that’s an ‘after subsidy’ price.

$3.25/watt – $2 subsidy.

By: Zachary Shahan

Zachary Shahan — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 21:09:00 +0000

Stan, I’m not seeing estimates anywhere near $1.25 per watt for an installed system. You’re saying you work with a company that is getting this? Seems like I would have seen mention of this somewhere if this were true. Right now, avg installed cost of solar in the US is $4.44/watt from the guys who I find to be most reliable. Of course, that’s avg, so some are installing lower, but I’m yet to hear of anyone getting so low as $1.25/watt.

And clearly, if a company is, looks like it might want to go for an easy $7 million: http://cleantechnica.com/2012/06/18/10-million-prize-companies-can-install-5000-new-rooftop-solar-panel-installations-2watt/

By: Zachary Shahan

Zachary Shahan — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 20:41:00 +0000

i know, and most of all, we need to internalize those externalities.

By: Bob_Wallace

Bob_Wallace — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 20:01:00 +0000

Bill – how about talking with Mark Jacobson in your engineering department and see if he and his students could give us a piece on the amount of storage/natural gas generation we would need to make renewables 24/365?

I’m thinking something along the lines of the simulations that Elaine Hart presented on this page…http://www.stanford.edu/~ehart/AWEA_Poster_Hart_final.pdf

Take the “worst” solar/wind periods and show what it would take to get through those infrequent stretches.

It would be nice to have a well stated response to “The wind doesn’t always blow” criticisms.

—

What might be very useful is something like a ‘Sim City’ ap where one could adjust the cost of wind/solar/wind/NG/etc. and move amount sliders up and down in order to estimate the cost of resulting electricity.

Then as we see the price of solar/wind/storage drop we could adjust more fossil fuel out of the system without hurting the price of power.

By: Stan Stein

Stan Stein — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 12:04:00 +0000

This guy, Stephan, has indicated, by his interview comments, that he knows nothing more than most of us in the renewable energy field, and in fact, in the case of some people, less. THAT is one of the main reasons there is no reason behind all this….the economics of renewable energy.
When we (our company) sells a commercial system, it is at $3.15 per watt, or less. We specialize in small to medium commercial systems. At an after tax credit price of $2, and then utilizing the accelerated depreciation schedule that’s currently in place, a financially healthy corporation is paying about $1.25 per watt. With only maintainence costs to worry about, because there is no fuel costs, and no need to buy energy certificates, the cash flow of a commercial system certainly IS competitve…..especially since the maintainence and other operational costs are so much less…..it takes a lot of manpower to operate a fossile fuel plant, and the materials are large and expensive…..boilers, tanks, pumps, valves….all with short to medium life cycles. The everday costs of fuel is a major expense…….
So, this mentality people like Stephan have…not to pick on him as a person……but only as a so called expert in economics, are more of a problem than anything else, especially…ESPECIALLY, when you consider that while solar prices will go down, fossile fuels will go up…….we need to think about the coming years…not this moment…..without plenty of renewable energy in place soon, the escalation of fossile fuel prices will accelerate at a higher rate, due to supply and demand…..not ONE mention of even THAT was in Stephan’s article…..he’s a professor…..of economics….I’m a science professor….I think my students received the more astute education.

By: Akbweb2

Akbweb2 — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 05:37:00 +0000

Economists need to extend and develop better models that incorporate all the externalities (environment and health), assumptions about free goods (crucial natural resources) and cradle-to-cradle to give us a much better understanding of what the true costs of solar PV, fossil fuels, or any good or service…

By: Andrew Gebert

Andrew Gebert — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 01:42:00 +0000

“The difference between the two is the cost of transmission, distribution, and administration; that is, everything that gets you from generating the power to delivering it to your customers.”
In other words, to the degree we move away from a centralized model of energy generation to a distributed one, solar is competitive.

By: ToddF

ToddF — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 16:33:00 +0000

PV technology is still improving, and this will be just as important in driving down its costs. One can see just 1-3 years ahead and PV will be the uncontested winner in all sunny locations.