Posted on 02/07/2015 8:13:41 PM PST by ckilmer
Just as shale extraction reconfigured oil and gas, no other technology is closer to transforming power markets than distributed and utility scale solar.
Since the late 2000s, a widespread collapse in the price of solar modules has altered the economics of solar energy, putting it in a strong position to compete with other forms of power in the United States.
With module costs at historic lows, increased efficiency has become the next frontier. Consequently, while higher efficiency solar technology may command a greater module price, capacity gains per square meter can make them more economic on a $/W basis.
With that said, savings will also be driven by changes outside of manufacturing. Non-module costs will increasingly depend on heightened downstream competition, market structuring and regulatory redesign.
As a result, large scale solar economics have already reached grid parity (exluding integration costs) – the point at which the levelised cost of solar is less than a gas combined cycle or combustion turbine - across multiple regions in the US.
This trend is set to go on as solar costs continue to come down while combined cycle costs rise. By 2020, we expect 19 states to be at grid parity, increasing to 38 by 2030.
While distributed solar economics (typically less than 1-2 MW) are more uncertain, grid parity has arguably already been reached in many states where they are driven by incentives and financial innovation.
During our analysis, we identified many evolutionary parallels to shale and believe that solar has the potential to make the same scale of impact across markets.
Our base case forecast assumes 26 GW of distributed solar and 45 GW of large scale solar by 2035, totalling above 71 GW.
However, current wholesale market structures are not designed to accommodate large amounts of solar penetration. Should solar market saturation rapidly increase, other forms of capacity will still be necessary to meet needs while today's energy and capacity market design and compensation mechanisms will need to evolve to maintain reliability.
geez ... a larger graph than the previous larger graph, supplanting the first graph STILL won’t change my mind
If we could only cover wind turbines with solar panels then we could kill two birds ... and a few desert tortoises ... with a single energy system!
Technically ALL sources of energy are solar.
Look, I’ll be stoked when we have new technologies that actually work well enough to efficiently replace existing technologies.
But...
Graphs that show “projections” out to 2035 aren’t enough to convince me. If I followed technology projections, I should have my flying car by now according to Popular Science.
Throw in the aging of panels, storage mediums, distance from storage, etc., and it just isn't worth it for non-specific, non-tuned applications.
This is all a natural result of government “renewable energy mandates”. These costly mandates are becoming very unpopular so don’t bet any money on them continuing.
What is it with liberals and their obsession with having man dates?
My sister and her husband, in Iowa, rigged up a solar panel to charge their Leaf. More power to them. :0)
Yes, just as soon as a major breakthrough come for transforming sunlight to electricity happens..not now and not in the immediate future.
Now nanotech just might come up with a solution, but don’t hold your breath!
The EA on direction of the Vizier Valerie and Sultan Mohammed are trying to shut down the oil boom to raise the price sufficiently to make solar competitive. Whether it ever succeeds or no the success of the project will also be achieved if the price of energy can be raised enough to price the middle class out of the market to be replaced by an ever growing and ever less prosperous welfare class that when the middle class no longer exists outside of the apparatchik class can be transformed into cheap third world labor with which to undercut Indonesia and Vanuatu.
I have a small solar system on my greenhouse.
Two medium cells with a battery run the cooling fan and a couple of LED lights. The 12v fan is on a thermostat for an attic fan and only runs when it is fairly hot(95+) inside the greenhouse.
Been running this set up for 4 years now and has never ran out of juice.
Solar can work great if your power needs are small enough.
The only way solar is viable is through massive government subsidies coupled with massive government punishment of conventional energy sourses such as coal.
No.
I would like to see hydrogen fuel cells for the house.
Solar causes global warming. If anything, instead of solar panels, we need huge mirror to reflect the evil sun rays at some other poor bastards so they can drown instead.
/sarcasm
That last chart is really cool. It looks like solar will cost less than $0 per megawatt in 2039. So put up a solar plant and you don’t even have to sell any electricity to make millions!
A ringing endorsement.
Basically we have enough oil/gas/fission/fusion/solar/wind and all the rest.
There’s no ‘energy crisis’. As time goes on, fusion will start to kick in and deal with most of it. The main problem now is price fixing on the energy market.
You forgot one:
Except where large scale solar projects have already been built and are underperforming pie in the sky predictions of their output.
Bull. Fourth generation nuclear reactors kick solar's butt. Utterly safe, cheap, scalable, reusable, little to no waste. They have the granola-eaters in a tizzy.
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