Submitted by manual_tranny t3_ztplap in Futurology
Comments
MilkshakeBoy78 t1_j1fu3k2 wrote
most people dont want to go on their roof to self install their solar system
Surur t1_j1fuih2 wrote
Because the system is poorly optimised for this. Imagine a system using adhesives saving $30,000. That sounds like a lot of motivation.
> For years, Fraunhofer CSE has been working with the U.S. Department of Energy, through its SunShot initiative, and other stakeholders on approaches to lowering the cost of installing solar PV, including a “Plug and Play PV” approach designed to reduce the installed cost of solar to $1.50 per kilowatt by 2020, about half of today’s average price. To meet this objective, Fraunhofer CSE and its partners have worked to develop an adhesive-based mounting system that eliminates the need for drilling holes through the roof structure and for electrical grounding, which can save installers several hours of work per site.
[deleted] t1_j1id6cj wrote
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Surur t1_j1iertz wrote
You may be concerned to know that adhesives are widely used in cars these days.
[deleted] t1_j1ih4f4 wrote
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Surur t1_j1ihp2e wrote
I'm not an engineer lol, but the people who are designing these systems are. Surprisingly they glue the fasteners to the roof and bolt the panels to the fastner.
Anyway, do and think what you want - the development of the concept will continue irrespectively.
NWTLife t1_j1fup93 wrote
Or possibly be electrocuted.
dontpet t1_j1eqfhy wrote
>It could absolutely be 1 TW/year by 2030. Solar always surprises. But if you try to allocate that to certain countries you will encounter huge resistance from experts on those countries, including governments of those countries. Also, manufacturing 1 TW/year is trivial compared with finding grid capacity to build it.
I guess we can hope that ever cheaper power will drive the process along.
Surur t1_j1es11c wrote
Given the price of energy self-use must be becoming a massive driver, and that is independent of government support.
JefferyTheQuaxly t1_j1f48bk wrote
Generally I heard there’s a rule that says the cost of solar panels is cut in half every 7ish years or so.
Human_Anybody7743 t1_j1grg8t wrote
This is true historically, but costs are starting to be dominated by "picking up a big rectangle twice and screwing it down" or "finding someone with a flat surface that wants power and putting some stakes in the ground".
These will also come down. For example Fraunhofer is trialling a system where the panels come hinged and connected out of the factory and you just drag them out in a straight line onto the ground right out of the container. Also increasing panel efficiency means less handling per watt.
I'd expect the top end of the S curve to start becoming apparent at about 30c/watt for utility or $1/W for rooftop.
dontpet t1_j1fg63k wrote
I think it has been decking in cost per MWh historically faster than that but expect we would eventually plateau at some ridiculously low price.
Tree-farmer2 t1_j1h3u8k wrote
Moore's law doesn't apply to solar panels like that
JefferyTheQuaxly t1_j1hdlgw wrote
I know there’s another law similar to moores law specifically for solar panels.
Tree-farmer2 t1_j1hvd73 wrote
Thanks! That's what I was getting at.
Solar fell in cost over the last 10-15 because of technological advances and because of falling commodity prices. As the cost of manufacturing falls, the cost of material inputs make up a larger portion of the cost.
There are physical limits and commodity prices are now rising, so I'm skeptical of such "laws".
prodoosh t1_j1irwf3 wrote
Aren’t those the exact same things people said about moores law though
Human_Anybody7743 t1_j1uilyd wrote
This wildly incorrect but somehow draws an accurate conclusion. The largest commodity is polysilicon, which is basically just energy and is increasingly made with solar because it's cheapest, so that limit is precisely the closed loop feedback that leads to exponential improvement. The rest is mostly glass (energy again). Both are made with silica sand as a raw material which is not limiting in the quantities the solar industry uses (and its shape is less important so if conventional supply chains become limiting, about a third of the world's deserts can be used). Silver is a significant cost, but is more limited by potentially hitting production limits (and thus changing prices) rather than the cost of the quantity involved.
Material consumption is also falling. Wafers are getting thinner, metal traces are getting thinner. Silver fraction in pastes is falling. Steel and concrete content of mounting systems is falling.
As a result, BOS is starting to dominate costs (handling panels, earthworks, permitting, sales). So the main channel for decreasing costs in the next few years is increasing efficiency (and thus power per area/weight), and increasing plant size + colocation with wind and batteries. Single junction silicon is almost tapped out in the first, so continued cost decreases hinge on tandem cells of some kind working out (odds for perovskite look pretty good).
Tree-farmer2 t1_j1uq0rg wrote
>The largest commodity is polysilicon, which is basically just energy and is increasingly made with solar because it's cheapest
More than 80% of the world's polysilicon comes from Xinjiang, made with coal power and slave labour. They literally built coal plants next door. If solar is so cheap, why would they do that? Using LCOE to compare 24/7 coal power with intermittent solar is a fallacy.
Human_Anybody7743 t1_j1utuas wrote
Ohhh, I thought you were making a good faith mistake. My apologies, I didn't realise you were trying to concern troll.
The reason is because it wasn't cheaper when they were built. That feedback loop is only just closing now. But by a shocking coincidence that couldn't possibly be related, that's also where the good solar and wind resource in the country is.
As of a few years ago 5 of the 5 largest solar parks in the world were in the same region.
Now there are a fair few bigger ones in some other areas.
...which are all also building multi GW polysilicon facilities nearby.
Tree-farmer2 t1_j1v3a9s wrote
>Ohhh, I thought you were making a good faith mistake. My apologies, I didn't realise you were trying to concern troll.
Well that's condescending...
Human_Anybody7743 t1_j1x2tew wrote
If you don't want to be condescended to, then don't copy-paste frossil fuel propaganda from shellenberger.org and pretend you've contributed something original or positive.
Tree-farmer2 t1_j1xyycp wrote
A lot of the world's polysilicon is made with coal by slaves in Xinjiang. It's not propaganda and kind of weird you deny it.
Human_Anybody7743 t1_j1y0gua wrote
Your pathetic slimy tactics of trying to shift the narrative are completely transparent. If it's a problem then buy some of the 50% of panels available outside China that have no silicon from xinjiang. Or support the 10s of GW of plant being built everywhere on the planet rather than fighting to keep coal relevant.
Go work in Yining uranium mine until you die of lung cancer.
Tree-farmer2 t1_j1z2ni1 wrote
Your life must be pretty sad.
Human_Anybody7743 t1_j1z2xto wrote
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.” ― Jean-Paul Sartre
Tree-farmer2 t1_j1zjuh7 wrote
You lack self-awareness. You brush off concerns about enslaved Uyghers and then compare me to a racist to try to claim some moral high ground. Sure.
Human_Anybody7743 t1_j1zlj8i wrote
I called out your slimy tactics of poiting out a political issue as if it were a technical issue and that you're pretending that the majority of uranium mining doesn't have the exact same problems (except that there is a long documented history of intentionally misleading native people and putting them into uranium mines with no PPE and poisoning their land rather than just being in an area where exploitation is happening and is putting no effort into stopping it) and you followed the pattern to a tee.
Tree-farmer2 t1_j1zok7i wrote
>you're pretending that the majority of uranium mining doesn't have the exact same problems
I don't recall uranium being part of the discussion but slavery? There's none I know of but maybe it exists somewhere.
And there were problems with uranium mining but this was at the dawn of the Cold War and mostly for weapons production.
Today there are still problems with China's uranium mining in Namibia. This is <10% of global production and a symptom of a bigger problem with China and not representative of the rest of the industry.
Human_Anybody7743 t1_j1zqw23 wrote
> I don't recall uranium being part of the discussion but slavery? There's none I know of but maybe it exists somewhere.
Oh I just assumed seeing as you were running the standard fossil fuel wE nEeD NuClEaR grift that you'd said it already. If you were just concern trolling with nothing positive to contribute then you're just skipping that step and going straight for keeping the oh so slavery free fossil fuel industry around without the pretense.
There's the exact same level of evidence for Uranium miningnslavery as polysilicon. Coal and oil powered regions with high slavery index exporting the product. Applies to Uzbekistan, Niger, and Turkmenistan at least. And then there's the nice men from Rio Tinto that hold on to your passport for you if you're a migrant laborer in Australia and give you a place to stay for only 80% of your wage, and basic services for 30% of your wage and will only fly you home if you pay the debt off. If your proposed alternative is fossil fuels then there's plenty worse than that in the world.
> And there were problems with uranium mining but this was at the dawn of the Cold War and mostly for weapons production.
> Today there are still problems with China's uranium mining in Namibia. This is <10% of global production and a symptom of a bigger problem with China and not representative of the rest of the industry.
Huh. So you're saying political problems aren't an inherent part of a technology and can be addressed? Almost exactly like the EU and US are doing right now? Almost like this topic only came up as a reactionary attempt at a Gish Gallop immediately after your other lie was refuted in spite of you knowing this.
Funny how that goes the exact same way every time.
Tree-farmer2 t1_j243pay wrote
>There's the exact same level of evidence for Uranium miningnslavery as polysilicon.
Evidence?
>And then there's the nice men from Rio Tinto that hold on to your passport for you if you're a migrant laborer in Australia and give you a place to stay for only 80% of your wage, and basic services for 30% of your wage and will only fly you home if you pay the debt off.
This is a criticism of mining in general. Solar is actually the most mining-intensive way to make a kWh.
I'm not opposed to solar, though I'd prefer see it on rooftops rather than encroaching on nature. I understand some portion of the world's energy will come from solar but it bothers me when people extrapolate it to 100% with no concern about reliability or land and materials use. Nuclear needs to be included and even the IEA says:
>Nuclear power should play a significant role in helping meet net-zero goals globally, and building clean energy systems will be harder, riskier and more expensive without nuclear >https://www.power-eng.com/nuclear/iea-build-more-nuclear-to-meet-net-zero-goals/
Human_Anybody7743 t1_j246vk1 wrote
> This is a criticism of mining in general. Solar is actually the most mining-intensive way to make a kWh.
Anything to back that up that isn't an LCA of a decade old system of a completely different chemistry with 1/4 of the efficiency on a heavy 2 axis tracking rig?
> I'm not opposed to solar, though I'd prefer see it on rooftops rather than encroaching on nature. I understand some portion of the world's energy will come from solar but it bothers me when people extrapolate it to 100% with no concern about reliability or land and materials use.
Solar is the least materials heavy and least land consuming energy source other than gas. 20-50t of silver and 40-80t of lead per net GW are the only mining intensive materials, and both are dropping rapidly.
https://www.vdma.org/international-technology-roadmap-photovoltaic
> Nuclear needs to be included and even the IEA says:
Needing a few GW of nuclear in a handful of countries wouldn't support any of your arguments even if the IEA hadn't been consistently wrong about the role of renewables for the last 15 years to the point where at times they've "projected" 2050 costs and deployment rates to be lower than the rates when their projections were published.
UniversalMomentum t1_j1ho3bb wrote
Moore's law is every 18 months, so that's obviously not what they mean.
Tree-farmer2 t1_j1hsw8c wrote
It's the same idea, doubling over x time.
But something like 40% of a panel is material inputs whose price has been rising for 2 years.
UniversalMomentum t1_j1hnuci wrote
Solar cost per megawatt hour is MUCH cheaper than anything else beside wind, so really it's the lack of grid storage that slow mass adoption. If you have grid storage at $20 per mega watt hour then most places can't afford not to switch to solar because running their coal and gas plants is 30%+ more expensive than gas and probably around 100% more expensive than coal. They might not switch over immediately, but the downward price trend will continue for solar/wind and energy storage and you'll probably only get higher fossil fuel prices as volume of sales decline while the tech also isn't improving.
SpanishMarsupial t1_j1f1m2p wrote
Is this replacing the generation by fossil fuels or adding capacity to overall global electricity?
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ceraexx t1_j1ghqbi wrote
It's more a supplemental when it comes to utility. It produces during the day which more power is consumed. If anything I think it would help fossil fuels keep running at a normal load. Solar and battery can fix some stability issues in the grid, but it's not meant to replace fossil, but does reduce some fossil fuel use.
EzGame_EzLife t1_j1h7gnk wrote
This is the exact right answer, if we really want to be transforming energy production we should heralding the building of nuclear plants.
PM-ME-SOFTSMALLBOOBS t1_j1hswc3 wrote
Goddamn can there be one article on energy on reddit without a nuclear nutjob chiming in with irrelevant (and incorrect) opinions??
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UniversalMomentum t1_j1hp2k9 wrote
Energy storage is dropping in price too fast to make nuclear viable really. The LCOE costs for nuclear are too high so either the cost of nuclear needs to go way down or it's doomed like any generation method that's just too expensive.
Supposedly they are opening grid storage in the US that's 1/10 the cost of lithium ion, soo even if that's only half true you are still looking at costs lower than nuclear to use wind/solar and storage and you can make that in a factory mostly and distribute to the entire world vs custom site specific builds of nuclear power plants as slow as molasses in a polar vortex! More important is just the costs, but realistically the build time, major disasters risk, water use issues, uranium mining nastiness and total lack of engineerings to really build enough highly custom nuclear plants. There isn't much economics of scale working for nuclear unless it's like modular reactors you can build in factories and ship around the world.. but who the hell really wants mass produced nuclear reactors desperately trying to get compete with the ever falling price of solar and energy storage mass proliferated all over the world. That would be a huge mess and solar and energy storage would still zoom right by the overly complex solution that is nuclear.
If I was wrong the LCOE of nuclear would be much lower, but that price reflects most of the problems with nuclear and still leaves out long term pollution and disaster potential or that uranium could become hard to source OR that nations that can't build nuclear would become 100% reliant on ones that can.
At best it's just an ok stop gap solution while grid storage drops in price and then you just have a lot of clean-up and decommissions to do.
You'd have nuclear power plants that in 10-20 years would start to be 30 and then 50% and then 100% more expensive to run than solar and energy storage and limited time to get a payback for the build/investment cost.
It just doesn't make sense to invest in such an expensive way to make power when you don't really need to.
manual_tranny OP t1_j1em4l7 wrote
New estimates for the world's total solar power installations in 2022 range from 230-300 GW, blowing the doors off projections made late last year.
Manufacturing capacity has exploded in the past year and is expected to continue rapidly scaling-up through 2023. Factories could produce as much as 500 GW of solar modules next year. For perspective, it is estimated that the world's total solar capacity reached 1000 GW only 9 months ago, in March of 2022
The article briefly interviews Jenny Chase of BloombergNEF:
pv magazine USA: What most surprised analysts about 2022? Where did we go wrong?
Honestly, China was the biggest upset as usual, and we’re not even totally sure the final number will be our 126GW(DC) current estimate (our estimate was below 100GW for most of the year). However, the modules have got to be going somewhere in Q4. Also Europe has bought over 70 GW of modules from China, though we do not believe it has installed much more than 42GW yet.
Recently, you mentioned that projections beyond 300 GW to 400 GW a year before the end of the decade are tough to make, because even if we can manufacture such a large quantity – where are the national programs and power grids to connect it to?
Honestly, I just can’t bully the local analysts for the individual markets which haven’t already got a lot of solar into forecasting transformative growth. You need new markets to hit 1 TW/year, but progress has been slow – not nonexistent, but slow – in places like Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and parts of southeast Asia (but not Vietnam). There aren’t national programs in these places (at least not ones I trust to do anything, looking at you Saudi Arabia) and often the solar will need to support the grid rather than just connecting to it.
UniversalMomentum t1_j1hn830 wrote
Wish big, I want grid storage at 1/10 the cost of lithium ion! That will add more buying pressure to wind and solar than anything by making it capable of baseload.
Axentor t1_j1g2aou wrote
I just want to be able to install as big of a system as I want, not have the power company sign off on it outside of general safety, aggravate the meter to provide more stable energy production for my neighbors and those in my area. But bad laws and policies are in place that prevent this.. and trees. So many trees.
FishMichigan t1_j1h9f2h wrote
As long as you're willing to get paid the wholesale rate of electricity. I sort of agree with you.
The truth is the transformers that leads to your home can't handle as much as you think. That's why you see sometimes in posts that people can't turn on their newly installed solar until they get a new transformer.
When a solar farm is built, they pay for the lines & transformers to bring that power to market. So are you willing to pay for a new line & transformer? And also still get paid wholesale rates for generation.
UniversalMomentum t1_j1hpyvo wrote
Seems like you could just limit the solar output to the grid to match the local grid vs upgrade anything. Few homes would be sending out more power than their home draws at peak use.
Axentor t1_j1ic6lj wrote
Well the problem from what I understand is that the power company can refuse to hook it up if they feel it is too big. Otherwise I would do your suggestion or when money allowed buy batteries
Axentor t1_j1ibwcv wrote
I am willing for wholesale price. That's not even an issue for me. I just want to have 25-50% bigger system than I need in order to make sure I am able to produce what I need. Yeah, our power grid amount the rest of our infrastructure is very dated. Last I knew they were updated in 2015 with like 10 year old tech.
FishMichigan t1_j1izu4v wrote
I think the move if possible is to overload a string inverter with panels facing east & west instead of south.
UniversalMomentum t1_j1hp81a wrote
The trees are my biggest enemy, I feel your pain there. I just buy solar from a solar farm and it's the same price as coal power would be here all the way up in Maryland so I can't really complain there other than I have to shop for the best deal every year which is annoying.
[deleted] t1_j1em83q wrote
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[deleted] t1_j1eo6le wrote
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FuturologyBot t1_j1eoahw wrote
The following submission statement was provided by /u/manual_tranny:
New estimates for the world's total solar power installations in 2022 range from 230-300 GW, blowing the doors off projections made late last year.
Manufacturing capacity has exploded in the past year and is expected to continue rapidly scaling-up through 2023. Factories could produce as much as 500 GW of solar modules next year. For perspective, it is estimated that the world's total solar capacity reached 1000 GW only 9 months ago, in March of 2022
The article briefly interviews Jenny Chase of BloombergNEF:
pv magazine USA: What most surprised analysts about 2022? Where did we go wrong?
Honestly, China was the biggest upset as usual, and we’re not even totally sure the final number will be our 126GW(DC) current estimate (our estimate was below 100GW for most of the year). However, the modules have got to be going somewhere in Q4. Also Europe has bought over 70 GW of modules from China, though we do not believe it has installed much more than 42GW yet.
Recently, you mentioned that projections beyond 300 GW to 400 GW a year before the end of the decade are tough to make, because even if we can manufacture such a large quantity – where are the national programs and power grids to connect it to?
Honestly, I just can’t bully the local analysts for the individual markets which haven’t already got a lot of solar into forecasting transformative growth. You need new markets to hit 1 TW/year, but progress has been slow – not nonexistent, but slow – in places like Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and parts of southeast Asia (but not Vietnam). There aren’t national programs in these places (at least not ones I trust to do anything, looking at you Saudi Arabia) and often the solar will need to support the grid rather than just connecting to it.
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/ztplap/all_i_want_for_christmas_is_400_gw_of_solar/j1em4l7/
[deleted] t1_j1f63fr wrote
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jinglewooble t1_j1ho2n1 wrote
Your people are in r/Factorio they will happily welcome your solar energy supremacy. The factory must grow.
Surur t1_j1ep8ba wrote
There needs to be a bigger focus on self-install - it seems installers are stealing a huge amount of the value of consumer solar power systems.