The batteries in my house are lead-acid. Lead-acid are one of the most successfully recycled products manufactured with a >90% recycling rate. Everyone I know who is off-grid uses lead-acid.

Processes are in place to recycle EV lithium-ion batteries but there aren’t enough of those yet to bother.

I would guess that some people cut down trees so their panels aren’t shaded. I’m cutting a Doug fir this fall because it has grown tall enough to shade mine. I’m going to turn the ~1/8th acre south of my house into an oak grove by removing the firs. Firs are free to grow on the other 59 7/8ths.

If you were in a residential setting one might take down a large tree and replace it with a species which doesn’t grow as tall.

I agree. Off the grid makes sense in a few places. If you’re a quarter mile or more from the grid then going off grid may make sense. But that’s not less than 5 percent, if you’re talking about the world. There are billions of people who don’t have grid access. Millions of us are going solar. (Over a million households in Bangladesh are already off-grid solar.)

In other places where grid prices are very expensive such as Germany and Australia people are starting to add some storage to their solar system. Enough to carry that day’s electricity into their late afternoon/evening use and using the grid for “deep storage”. For them personal storage is cheaper than purchasing from the grid if they are already producing surplus electricity and don’t have net metering.

I suspect we’ll see end-user storage growing. Storage at the end-user level is offset by the retail, not wholesale, price of electricity. The math works better.

In some instances off grid makes the most sense. But that would be true for only a small percent of the population – I don’t know what percent exactly but certainly less than 5 percent. Why on earth would we give the podium to those who will only help 5 percent of the population? It makes no sense.

Many of us off-gridders have been leading the push to make the grid green.

I totally agree with you. If the grid is available and the hookup cost is reasonable then one is best being on the grid. If your site isn’t good for solar then look for a community solar project you can buy into.

I don’t understand your “environmental disaster” claim. Yes, many of us off the grid do use generators for backup, is that what you mean? If so, I wouldn’t go as far as “disaster”.

And in no way would I say that off-gridders have impeded grid-attached solar. Quite the opposite.

We got to advance further then 20% if we are going to reduces C02 level.

Yes the solar panels are cheap but that still haven’t prevented loading to the level that we all like to see.

But putting panels on east- and west-facing roofs would significantly extend the solar day. Aiming panels east or west lowers their daily output by about 20%, but they start producing earlier/later.

We can give up that 20% in order to extend the solar day if the price of panels is cheap.

A longer solar day means less need for storage.

(And the grid? It’s a good thing. It just needs to be drug into the 21st Century.)

Let’s say that I know how to build a factory that can make liquid fuel from electricity. I need ten million dollars to build one.

You have ten million dollars to invest, you’re interested, so you ask me about what you might earn from your investment.

I tell you that I can make a return of 10% on your investment during the hours of operation.

Sounds good to you, but then you ask how many hours I expect to be able to operate.

Well, the Sun shines on average 5 solar hours per day on average. Out of that perhaps 15% of the time there will be surplus electricity. So on average we can operate 45 minutes a day. And make a 10% return on your investment.

You contemplate a moment and ask “What about the other 23.25 hours per day?”

I reply “We get eaten up by fixed operating costs and you lose your ten million”.
—

Backstops have to be affordable. They have to make enough money to pay for their capex and opex.

It would be great if you were right… but it’s good to know that there’s a back-stop. And as I understand it, the major cost item of an electrolyzer is the membrane electrode assembly which needs frequent replacement — but only in terms of the hours the plant actually runs.

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/GTM-Researchs-Module-Cost-Outlook-36-Cents-Isnt-As-Low-As-You-Think

The most reliable evidence must be the financial reports of the big producers, since these are regulated by financial exchanges ad false data have severe consequences. For Q1 2013, Yingli 4.3%, Trina 1.7%, First Solar 8.1%, Canadian Solar 9.7%. And those are the ones in the black.

I’d be very wary of anyone claiming that they can make an affordable fuel or store energy in some sort of a fuel form if they are basing their calculations on cheap, surplus electricity. They should be using the industrial price of electricity in order to have any credibility.

Also, they may not be completely dependent on ultra-cheap surplus. They may work with a mix of “normal” priced electricity (possibly their own windfarms) AND the ultra-cheap (possibly negative-priced) surplus electricity. This would somewhat ease the labor problem because the plant would always produce at a certain capacity but it would peak when surplus is available.

If the plant is cheap enough / prod.capacity W, it may still be worth it, especially if they don’t see competing cheap storage building up in the capital repayment period.

Moreover, H2 and methane can provide seasonal load-shifting while I don’t think that even the most promising new electric storage solutions will do that. Just the other day a CT article said that the German gas infrastructure can provide storage for 200TWh which available right now, without any investment whatsoever.

My country, Hungary, has built huge nat-gas storage facilities in response to the Russia-Ukrain bickering which disrupted supply in some of the recent years. Our nat-gas storage / average country consumption ratio is probably much higher now than that of Germany.

In an environment like this, it may be worth doing syn-gas or syn-H2.

Gross margin is calculated as a percentage from the selling price. So that would make it 31.5%.

Current average cost of manufacturing is not 50 cents. The report states that 50 cents is the ‘best in class’ module price, iow the lowest price they could find. The 73 cents that Bob quoted is the average selling price, including the perhaps the not so ‘best in class’. I think these numbers are from different sources and can not be compared.

Add the extra costs for transport, traders, etc and you’ll see that not the entire 23 c per W can be claimed by the manufacturer as margin.

The question is, are these 73 c/W factory gate prices or end user prices?

If I am to believe the reports, most manufacturers have margins close to zero or even negative.