Comments on: Solar – It’s Barely Scratched Surface Of $2 Trillion Market

By: Bob_Wallace

Bob_Wallace — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 16:03:00 +0000

I’m not going to check your math. Let’s assume you did it correctly.

OK, 6% return. How many places can you put your money that will earn a fixed 6%? A very low risk 6%.

Well, your math is a bit off. You’ve failed to include electricity inflation costs. Your $0.10/kWh will be something more like an average $0.134 over 20 years with 3% inflation. And your panels may well be kicking out the power when they are 40 years old. That would mean an average electricity cost of $0.168/kWh.

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Now, what is your argument again? That solar at $0.10/kWh isn’t competitive at the wholesale level?

Check the wholesale prices paid during high demand/peak hours. It is quite expensive to purchase peak power from gas peakers. And with merit order pricing the utility pays every supplier the highest rate.

Having solar on the grid has cut the heck out of wholesale peak prices in Germany. They are down by about 40%. That is an enormous savings for consumers.

“The rest of you” are in line for some very sweet savings provided by the rather modest amount of assistance you’ve paid to get solar on your grid.

By: Anteaus

Anteaus — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 08:51:00 +0000

Since a metre-square panel is rated at about 150W, by your figure of $2.5/W that will cost $375 per sqm of panel.
Meanwhile, the sunnier parts of the globe tend to get about 2,000kWh of insolation per year. If we take a solar and inverter efficiency of 0.16, that gives us 320kWh of actual energy per year. At $0.10/kWh that is worth $32. At these retail rates, payback will take 12 years, not including compound interest on the capital. Not sure what wholesale rates apply in Oz, but I’m sure you can follow the arithmetic I’ve given you, and do likewise.

By: Bob_Wallace

Bob_Wallace — Sat, 08 Jun 2013 15:10:00 +0000

Wrong.

Solar has reached grid parity in several counties.

Solar farms are producing electricity cheaper than average sunny hour wholesale prices.

Subsidies have been necessary to take an idea to a mature, highly useful technology. Subsidies have almost finished doing their job and given us a way to generate lots of affordable, clean electricity.

Giles is posting from Australia. The average cost of installed roof-top solar in AU us now around $2.50/watt. That is with zero subsidies.

$2.50/watt solar in a sunny location generates electricity at about $0.10/kWh. That is considerably lower than the cost of grid power.

And, no, the high cost of grid power in AU is not due to solar supplements.

By: Anteaus

Anteaus — Sat, 08 Jun 2013 12:02:00 +0000

You wonder how much of this is based on FIT subsidies. All very well if they can make it pay without robbing the rest of us by way of utility bill surcharges, but I strongly suspect that is what is intended.

The simple fact is that even with high efficiency equipment in a sunny region, costs are several times those of Grid power. That is at retail. When the solar farms start trying to compete with wholesale power prices, thn it just becomes ludicrous. It’s basically an industry that is designed around creaming-off subsidies, and without those subsidies it would fail.

By: ASolarEngineer

ASolarEngineer — Fri, 24 May 2013 18:09:00 +0000

SunPower absolutely makes their own mounting racks. The Oasis T0 platform in particular, which has been a huge part of lowering BOS costs on a utility scale. Also part of their product portfolio are T20 and C7 in the utility space and T5, T10, and PowerGuard in the commercial rooftop space. Currently they do not have any residential rooftop mounting products of their own.

By: JustSaying

JustSaying — Thu, 23 May 2013 18:47:00 +0000

SunPower says one of the advantages of its technology is its modularity. It developed in 2010 a standard system, the Oasis 1.5MW “power block”

Note sure what that really means, but also they require less panels for the same total power. So they BOS would be lower that way. You need less hardware/labor to mount same kWs.

By: James Wimberley

James Wimberley — Thu, 23 May 2013 15:35:00 +0000

Just how does SunPower count on BOS costs a third cheaper than its commodity competitors? SFIK they don’t make inverters and mounting racks, and permitting is outside their control.

While SunPower does produce high-efficiency panels, it has competitors at that end like Canadian Solar and Panasonic, and there’s a spectrum of costs and efficiencies all the way down to the second-tier Chinese producers that are being squeezed hardest by the glut.

What’s interesting to me here is that Total is bucking the trend of disinvestment by Big Oil in renewables (see BP).