Posted on 03/07/2017 7:49:31 AM PST by ckilmer
The lowest cost utility scale solar projects are in texas where the lowest cost one reported was about .0321@kwh in 2016. But these are subsidized costs. That said utility scale solar costs in the USA are falling pretty rapidly too.
https://cleantechnica.com/2016/04/30/texas-solar-prices-currently-lowest-price-per-watt-country/
You seem to be laboring under the idea that said solar panels are not outputting power. A quick check online shows that the degradation of panels is from 100% to 75% over twenty-five years, not to zero watts.
From the article you linked to:
“Katherine Tweed for GTM notes that an average gross cost of a solar energy system is down to $3.21 per watt in Texas.”
You are making an apples to oranges comparison. The devil is always in the details. The article that you are referring to makes no mention of the price of produced electricity per kilowatt hour. And this is the problem with nearly everything written about alternative energy schemes... the articles are almost always misleading in some way... using smoke and mirrors to imply something that is not so.
These types of reports that solar power is achieving historic low prices is a con. It is achieving low wholesale prices but due to cost shifting retail electricity prices are soaring in those states that have shifted to solar power. Cost shifting means the costs of redundant natural gas power, grid coordination, new transmission lines and imported balancing power needed during sunset hours of the day are not counted in the wholesale cost of power. That is why prices are reported dropping on solar power farms but not on rooftop solar panels on residential structures where it remains uneconomic without subsidies.
I'd like to know that, too!
I could understand saying that a particular rooftop solar installation has a nominal (= rated) capacity of 100 kWpeak (given a solar constant of 1.3 kW per sq. meter, and a conversion efficiency of, say, 10%, that works out to roughly 800 square meters - plausible for a large office building), and will harvest an estimated 1 million kWh of electricity over its unit life, meaning that it must operate over an equivalent lifetime of 10,000 hours at full capacity (given an average of 2 hrs of full sunshine per day, that corresponds to an actual lifetime of approx. 5,000 days = 13.7 years), before it has to be scrapped and replaced.
If such a installation had a total cost of $24,000, that works out to 2.4 cents per kWh.
But I can't image an installation that size costing only $24,000 - not if you include installation costs, maintenance, etc.
Regards,
This was a "back-of-the-envelope" calculation with a couple of hidden - if plausible - assumptions, so don't get your undies in a knot if it's off by 50%.
Yet here in the USA we see prices of 18 cents and 19 cents a kw
The price is to pay for among other things the pensions for gov’t workers. More TAX.
Sounds like you own a Solar boondoggle home.
Home seekers, ask the real estate agent to remove that Solar monstrosity on the roof first. lol
It is more than 25% loss. If a car drove 25% less distance, would you buy it?
I’m betting the KWH is simply the unit sell price of the energy and the system will be owned and paid for by the builder.
Nope, but I wouldn't object to owning one. I live in an area where if someone spits on the sidewalk or farts, the power goes out. To the point where I have actually been considering putting in a whole-house genset. A preinstalled solar backup system would actually be attractive.
"Home seekers, ask the real estate agent to remove that Solar monstrosity on the roof first. lol.
Why?? Other than your rampant prejudice?
"It is more than 25% loss."
Show your data. The available data tell a different story.
"If a car drove 25% less distance, would you buy it?
Stupid comparison. An accurate comparison would be gas mileage, and it would depend on the other features and overall price of the replacement vehicle.
Sorry, your calculations are not off by 50%, without government subsidies and not including overly optimistic production assumptions not to mention maintenance expenses you are still off by well over 1300%.
Using the prices in Texas which has the cheapest systems in the county at $3.21 per installed peak wattage power production. A system that produced 100 k/W peak would cost $321,000 dollars to begin with for installation costs not $24,000 as in your assumption. That works out to 32.1 cents per kWh using your previous assumptions. Our friends who live off the grid spent $40,000 to have a 5 k/W residential system installed with storage batteries and a propane powered back up generator system. This comes up to $8.00 per installed peak wattage power production. This was a few years ago, but the actual prices people are paying for complete systems like theirs have not dropped all that much since. They also have had significant maintenance expenses not to mention their time. And during the winter their backup generator runs a good deal of the time, so their fuel expenses have been much more than they originally expected.
There are several other problems that you have not factored in... first is that to be autonomous the building would need to have an extremely expensive and very maintenance intensive storage system to provide power during times when the sun was not shining on the panels at full strength. Not to mention that the panels need to be cleaned frequently in dusty environments and the size you are speaking of would require a great deal of water and expensive man hours.
When customers decide to hook their systems into the power grid this requires additional expensive equipment also. The government has forced utilities in places like California to purchase excess power from people with solar panels. Unfortunately this mandate increases expenses for the utility because they still need to have the same amount of power production capacity available as they would without a bunch of privately owned solar panels hooked to their grid. This is why industrial users generally pay most of their power bill based not on consumption but on a demand metering system. It is the peak demand required for the infrastructure that costs utilities the most not the amount of money for required for fuel per kwh.
Where we live the power goes out frequently, so we have a backup generator that fortunately for us runs on natural gas which is far cheaper than propane gasoline or even diesel. So even though our generator is very inefficient as compared to a large power generation facility our cost per kwh produced while running the generator is barely more than what the utility charges us for electricity.
If we were to place the generator in the house in the winter with a secure exhaust system to utilize the excess heat coming from the generator, it would actually save us a significant amount of money during the winter. And this is where real gains in efficiency can be made. Utilizing waste heat from a generator to heat your house... some people already do it, but most of us just are too wimpy to risk dying from a Carbon Monoxide leak.
It sounds like we may be neighbors although we haven't got any sidewalks within miles of here. There is no one in our “neighborhood” who does not have a backup generator. We are very lucky to have natural gas lines so most of us run our generators on natural gas. When the power goes out I have to flick a couple switches and then run outside to get our twenty year old Briggs and Stratton powered generator going. Some of our neighbors have automatic transfer switches with electric start generators. And as I said in the previous post we do have friends who live off the grid, but their systems cost far more than what these articles make it sound like.
here is a watt to kwh converter.
http://www.rapidtables.com/calc/electric/watt-to-kwh-calculator.htm
I was working backwards, trying to figure out the cost of the installation based upon the price per kWh stated in the article, while plugging in plausible values for the solar constant, an optimistic no. of hrs of sunshine per day, very high conversion efficiency, etc. So, to be able to produce electricity at a price of 2.4 cents per kWh, I arrived at a cost for the installation (which would have to have an area of approx. 800 sq. meters) of about $24,000. As I pointed out, that is a ridiculously low cost for a photovoltaic installation of that size. In that much, you and I are in agreement.
I intentionally did NOT consider such economic factors as amortization rates, variable power supply, etc.
I'm well aware of the other problems you mentioned.
Regards,
Oh, we have a generator...it's just not a "whole-house" model. We bought it mainly to "keep the freezer frozen".
"We are very lucky to have natural gas lines so most of us run our generators on natural gas. When the power goes out I have to flick a couple switches and then run outside to get our twenty year old Briggs and Stratton powered generator going."
If we had been so lucky as to have piped in natgas, we would, hands down, have an autostart whole-house genset.
Unfortunately, we have only trucked-in propane. We have a propane fireplace which will keep the whole house liveably warm on natural air circulation, so with camping stoves, LED lanterns (with propane and kerosene lanterns for backup), we are good for all the outages we have had.
I have actually been a nut for human, solar, wind, steam and micro-hydro electric power generation since I was young, not to mention many other fascinating transportation related technologies. The problem is that most of these areas are more suited for tinkerers such as myself than for use by consumers.
Our friends actually did not overpay for their off their $40,000 off the grid system. The generator that we use to power our house during outages is a 5000 watt / 6250 peak unit which can be purchased new for around $400 new. I converted it to natural gas myself which saved a lot of money.
Our friend’s use an inverter based generator that can sync with their battery/solar powered inverter system. Their generator can be used to both power the house and charge the batteries while it is working in tandem with their primary inverter. The generator they purchased cost many times what our generator cost. We have several inverters ourselves but none of them can sync with a generator or another inverter and they all cost much less than the inverter that our friend’s use. They have multiple expensive storage batteries which even when they are looked after properly still only last a limited time when they are in continuous use.
So even before you buy your solar panels you already have a sizable investment in supporting equipment to use the power produced by your solar cells. It just all adds up to much more than those who haven’t tried setting up a system would suspect that it would.
It is actually very easy to convert most generators to propane. It is easier on the generator than using gasoline. Depending on the amount of road tax you pay on gasoline and the amount you pay for propane it will probably save you money as well. All you need to power your whole house if you are not using electric heat is about a 10hp generator that puts out 240 volts so that you can hook it down stream from your main. Generators like this are available for less than $500 new every day of the week. Harbor Freight has 6.5hp model that puts out 240 volts for $299. That would cover our load about 90% of the time since we have a gas water heater.
I prefer the Honda Clone engines because they are quieter and more fuel efficient, but the old Briggs keeps going and going. There are several legit ways to do it and it will make your life much easier when you lose power. After a couple minutes we are right back to normal.
The Sacramento Municipal Utility District is one of the largest producers of hydroelectricity in the state. In 2015, a dry year, it pegged its costs for hydro at 3.2 cents a kilowatt hour, compared to 6.1 cents a kilowatt hour for natural gas.
It’s not unusual to see hydro projects across the country coming in at 2 cents a kilowatt hour.
When it comes to the average retail price of electricity, California finishes sixth-highest in the country and fourth-highest for states in the continental U.S., at 15.42 cents a kilowatt hour.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hydropower-rain-20170307-story.html
The Sacramento Municipal Utility District is one of the largest producers of hydroelectricity in the state. In 2015, a dry year, it pegged its costs for hydro at 3.2 cents a kilowatt hour, compared to 6.1 cents a kilowatt hour for natural gas.
It’s not unusual to see hydro projects across the country coming in at 2 cents a kilowatt hour.
When it comes to the average retail price of electricity, California finishes sixth-highest in the country and fourth-highest for states in the continental U.S., at 15.42 cents a kilowatt hour.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hydropower-rain-20170307-story.html
The Sacramento Municipal Utility District is one of the largest producers of hydroelectricity in the state. In 2015, a dry year, it pegged its costs for hydro at 3.2 cents a kilowatt hour, compared to 6.1 cents a kilowatt hour for natural gas.
It’s not unusual to see hydro projects across the country coming in at 2 cents a kilowatt hour.
When it comes to the average retail price of electricity, California finishes sixth-highest in the country and fourth-highest for states in the continental U.S., at 15.42 cents a kilowatt hour.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hydropower-rain-20170307-story.html
The Sacramento Municipal Utility District is one of the largest producers of hydroelectricity in the state. In 2015, a dry year, it pegged its costs for hydro at 3.2 cents a kilowatt hour, compared to 6.1 cents a kilowatt hour for natural gas.
It’s not unusual to see hydro projects across the country coming in at 2 cents a kilowatt hour.
When it comes to the average retail price of electricity, California finishes sixth-highest in the country and fourth-highest for states in the continental U.S., at 15.42 cents a kilowatt hour.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hydropower-rain-20170307-story.html
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