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Rooftop Solar Could Reach Price Parity In the US By 2016
Lucas123 writes: The cost of rooftop solar-powered electricity will be on par with prices of coal-powered energy and other conventional sources in all 50 U.S. states in just two years, a leap from today where PV energy has price parity in only 10 states, according to Deutsche Bank's leading solar industry analyst. The sharp decline in solar energy costs is the result of increased economies of scale leading to cheaper photovoltaic panels, new leasing models and declining installation costs, Deutsche Bank's Vishal Shah stated in a recent report. The cost of solar-generated electricity in the top 10 states for capacity ranges from 11-15 cents per kilowatt hour (c/kWh), compared to the retail electricity price of 11-37 c/kWh. Amit Ronen, a former Congressional staffer behind legislation that created an investment tax credit for solar installations, said one of the only impediments to decreasing solar electricity prices are fees proposed by utilities on customers who install solar and take advantage of net metering, or the ability to sell excess power back to utilities.
In the craphole region in which I live they've already passed ordinances about things like wind turbines within city limits. They call it an "eye sore" and "disruptive." That's how the utility companies will outlaw solar paneling after donating generously to their politician buddies. Either that or they'll so overregulate them that the price will skyrocket beyond most people's financial reach.
Are this things hail resistant? Lower prices are interesting only if won't be smashed by some pieces of ice falling from the sky
I think it'd be fine for utilities to charge something nominal for the privilege of solar. After all, you're not off the grid AND the power company has to deal with the upkeep of the cables. Provided it's not a money grab... that it's justified.
Net metering is when it runs backwards? That's probably find in a single month. But to carry it out over the year doesn't seem fair because during winter months, the solar panel user really is taking advantage of the grid.
As for the pricing when there's a surplus during the summer (when you sell it back), as I said before, you're not dealing with the cables/power lines... they are (the power company).
If solar power reduces carbon output from coal, good. Personally, if I could afford solar panels, I'd be interested in what uses it could provide during power outages combined with a battery backup for certain breakers/circuits (fridge, lights, and maybe one for TV watching).
With or without the government subsidies?
"fees proposed by utilities on customers who install solar and take advantage of net metering, or the ability to sell excess power back to utilities"
this reminds me of the states that are passing taxes on electric vehicles because they don't pay gas tax.
There is a monumental, staggering level of myopia in those who propose and enact measures like these.
We have to transition to ~ 90% of the transport and energy in the economy to non-fossil, in a damn hurry (e.g. 2050), and we are way less than 1% of the way to where we need to get, so why the H3LLLLLL! would anyone be trying to put the brakes on the change already. Insanity, or stupidity of the highest order.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Is this price parity before or after absorbing massive subsidies from taxpayers and electricty consumers? If it is after, then the idea is not scalable.
At the very least, rooftop solar producers will wind only being credited at the rate the utilities buy power wholesale. If you take a look http://www.eia.gov/electricity... that's considerably less than the retail cost.
You know they're desperate when the only argument against new technologies they can come up with is that they're ugly.
Average mid to large size systems went in at $1.79 average in the US last year. Rooftop was over $4.50. So even if the price of the kit goes to zero, the install will be about 10 cents a watt. Now I say that as a guy with panels in the roof, but unless there are structural changes in the permitting, I find anything under $3 unlikely.
Let them take their net metering. They'll get desperate and start dumping to keep coal prices lower. We still come out ahead, if we keep the momentum going.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Should the power companies be FORCED to just eat the fees of hooking up and stabilizing a power source that's only producing cheap power during periods where demand is lowest?
I think not.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
There's a 30% tax credit expiring in 2016. Not sure what you mean about an "idea" and being "scalable"; it's just a bank projecting in what areas photovoltaics will be worthwhile when. After 2016, you'll presumably still have new installations worthwhile in the south of the country and the area creeping northwards as prices continue going down.
Prices are so distorted at this point it is almost impossible to tell what anything costs.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
It seems to me that the energy utilities need to restructure their billing. I suggest dividing it into two parts, one of which is related to the need to pay for infrastructure maintenance and expansion, while the other is related to the energy they sell. The first part could be charged to every customer equally. The second would depend on energy usage. In places where the customers can sell energy to the utilities, the most reasonable answer was devised and implemented in various places years ago: Just install a second meter and think of the energy company as a middleman. You can't sell to the middleman at the same price you buy from him --and when you are a customer selling energy to the utility, you are essentially selling it to some other customer of the middleman. It would make sense for your sales price of energy to be equivalent to what the utility pays to generate it.
The current grid was funded by past users so you either factor that long term distribution cost in or you take the cost of PV power as being $/W/hrs delivered to the home 24/7, i.e. add the cost of storage and the costs of keeping the entire set up running over the long term. And factor in the extra insurance to ensure you can replace storm damaged gear too, as the climate gets more stormy.
I hope it gets to parity or better but if fusion comes along before then I will not be surprised. My personal preference is to be independent of a grid so I do watch developments closely, but with a cynical eye as I will be the one having to pay for it.
The holy grail for solar and other renewables is "off-grid".
I'm not sure how you can look at this inexorable progress and not see that's where it's headed.
It's why there are already places where it's illegal to be off the grid.
I'll bet you that before we have ubiquitous self-driving cars we have homes that can produce their own power without the need for a "grid". My hope is that some day the grid will be the equivalent of the streetcar tracks that are still under the pavement in many cities. This is why I'm opposed to any large-scale public subsidy of the "smart grid".
Now that I think about it, my place has a "coach house" in the back. I've turned it into a garage, but there is still a hayloft in it. I've even left the block and tackle above the loft door for decoration. And that's just a few blocks from downtown Chicago. I hope I live long enough to see "the grid" become just another 20th century artifact. Of course, there are some powerful forces aligned to prevent that from ever happening.
You are welcome on my lawn.
A solar installation is an investment. The proper analysis is return on investment. Current actual price before credits and rebates for a 4kW rooftop (16 panels, abt 25 m^2), installed, is about $16,000. This includes a substantial profit for the installer -- it should be available for less in a competitive market. There's a 30% US federal tax rebate, and here in North Carolina a 35% state tax rebate and a ~$1300 utility kickback. Assuming your tax situation allows you to take advantage of the credits, the net cost is about $6000. This will completely offset an annual electric bill of about $2000 - $2500. This is about 35% return on investment. Amortizing the net cost over a lifetime of 15-20 years for various components gives about 30% per year return. This return is tax free. This is an astoundingly good return. Berkshire Hathaway's total return over 49 years is 20% annually.
In other jurisdictions without the state tax rebate and utility kickback the tax-free return is 10 to 15%. Much better than the long-term return of any mutual fund.
Without any direct incentives the return is about 6%, tax free, very safe. CDs are currently about 1%.
Comparing the actual costs is the fair comparison. Apparently TFA omitted the actual government incentives on solar, while implicitly including them in the per kWh utility figures.
Rooftop solar has other benefits as well. Inverters are available that provide power during grid failure (during sunshine), and there are external benefits in replacing dirty coal or dirtier nuke power and slightly reducing the size and power of a monopoly corporation.
Verbum caro factum est
"one of the only impediments to decreasing solar electricity prices are fees proposed [edit: and imposed] by utilities on customers who install solar and take advantage of net metering, or the ability to sell excess power back to utilities."
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Is this price parity before or after absorbing massive subsidies from taxpayers and electricty consumers? If it is after, then the idea is not scalable.
After. Yes, it includes the subsidies being renewed.
The Deutsche Bank's projection assumes that there will be three things happening, which are unlikely:
(1) It assumes that the door-to-door sales model of whatever solar technology happens to be cheapest on the Thursday they ring your doorbell will result in substantial cost savings which can then be kept back from the consumer as additional profit
(2) It assumes that the utility companies aren't installing all those "smart meters" so that they can tariff at differential metering rates - in other words, pay you less for the electricity than what they sell it to you at - as they are already doing in some markets (i.e. they pay you the wholesale spot market price, but charge you the retail peak price already in some markets
(3) It assumes the ITC (Investment Tax Credit), which is set to phase from 30% to 10% by the end of 2016, will be renewed so that you are paying a subsidized price for the hardware (actually, that money would go to Vivint, not the home owner, since Vivint continues to own the solar system themselves, and merely sells the electricity to the customer on a monthly basis; as soon as the phase out hits, look for a price hike)
So Deutsche Bank gave them a buy rating, but Citigroup gave them a neutral rating, and while the stock at IPO opened at $17.01 on initial trading on October first, it's now mid-November, and they're down to $11.25 a share, which is a drop in investment value of just under 34%; call it losing a third of its value.
I think I'm with Citigroup on this one; I think Deutsche Bank is overly optimistic in assuming that the ITC won't sunset on schedule, and I think they are optimistic about people being OK effectively just switching power companies, and not owning - or getting the tax benefits from - the solar themselves.
Charging a battery off of AC? Surely you mean RECTIFIER.
Nope, he said inverter, he was talking about a intelligent hybrid inverter like this Outback one.
The trick is that while it's called in inverter, that's only one of the things it does. Not only can it feed solar power to the grid, it can operate your home off of batteries, and if that isn't enough it can signal a generator to turn on(and off) as needs and power supply(solar AND grid) varies.
I don't read AC A human right
...at least in Scandinavia.
I often drool over the prices in China, cheap CHEAP and functional solar panels I could have gotten for pittens. But the taxes are so high that it evens out the score. Which is kind of strange since the government is subsidizing solar power anyway, but it's all lost on the import tax alone.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
this reminds me of the states that are passing taxes on electric vehicles because they don't pay gas tax.
But they are using the roads, bridges, and other services the gas tax helps pay for.
Several counties in upstate New York are currently experiencing blizzard conditions, with deep cold, strong winds and up to five feet of snow. The worst possible environment for an electric car.
In my area there's an extremely well funded (bribed) bill that the electric company is ramming through our legislature that will make the pay for back-fed electricity send into the grid like 5x lower. That's about as blatant as it gets when it comes to CO2-producing assholes being assholes.
One tactic utility companies could use is to just change their pricing structure. Most already have a fee structure where the highest price/kWh is only paid for electricity purchased at the margins. The first kWh purchased may be drastically cheaper than the last, especially if you're a heavy user. So they could simply exaggerate that structure and make electricity "artificially" cheap for the majority of users and then gouge the heavy users on usage over some threshold.
Alternately they could move to a price structure where there's a fixed "fee" to simply be a customer, and then use the revenue from that fee to offset the price-per-kWh and make it artificially cheap.
Many utilities in the US are fighting rooftop solar through various means. The south-eastern states in particular are the worst for this.
Utilities are getting laws passed banning the "solar lease scheme" so popular in other parts of the US. And getting laws passed banning off-grid solar installs. And not providing net metering (either "you get paid for your excess electricity" or the "electricity you feed into the grid offsets what you use when the sun isn't shining but you wont get any money if you produce more than you use" model). And doing everything they can to push electricity generated from dirty black coal or nuclear reactors built to outdated 50s era designs instead of clean green energy.
If we had distributed storage (better batteries) we could crush the fossil fuel industry for good with this, and bankrupt Russia and the Saudis for good measure. It's within reach, within a very few years.
Have you seen the size of a coal fired power station? To do it properly you need an ash dam, and often a water storage dam as well, the cooling towers are not small, the turbine hall is not small and then you have boilers (that dwarf the turbine hall), coal crushers, coal storage and the conveyors or whatever to bring in the coal. Some even have their own mine, and that can be huge.
So vast amounts of space, but it's hardly relevant because you can site plants where it's not a big deal that they take up so much space. The same holds for the other things that you suggest need even more space - they don't need more and it would not matter anyway!
Many places in the USA have corrupted permit schemes. You don't pay a permit for an expert to verify your changes and protect the public-- you pay a % based upon the cost of the renovation. It is a home change TAX under another name and that is why you need permits for the most basic stupid things and why inspectors ignore checking most of the BS stuff; plus they are running around justifying the tax checking things that do not need it or enforcing the stupid rules (along with the good ones.)
I just got finished paying a 15% permit tax on top of the 7.5% sales tax for changes I made which were not inspected other than asking what the general plan was. On a huge solar installation that would be crazy just to have them make sure a few wires were connected properly.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
I take it you're talking about a full size fridge, not a cube?
It's not the size of your home that's the kicker, it's the maximum draw you need to size for. I'm not going to call your contractor incompetent, but he was probably sizing the battery bank for you to be able to run your whole service off of it. If you're willing to deal with something like no AC during a power outage, the battery system can be a lot smaller. Did he quote wattage and kwh, or even run time for that bank of batteries? Was it supposed to provide power overnight?
A quick google search showing a 2Kw battery bank, 4 batteries. It'll run your fridge(or a sump pump) and some lights, beyond that it'd need the pictured generator pretty quickly. Pictured here is a battery bank for an off-grid house.
I don't read AC A human right
Capacity not storage - storage is very lossy.
Also those intermittant power sources become far less so when they are spread all over the place. So all solar in the USA gets blocked out in summer daylight almost at once - short of Yellowstone going up and dropping pumice on Chicago that's not happening. You think they'll be a day with no wind in all of the USA? Go ask a small child to explain the nightly weather chart to you and what those pressure lines mean about moving air.
These things are small widely distributed generators that are brought on one by one when base load is not enough. Thinking of them like always connected base load is silly, but a surprisingly frequent mistake here. That solar on your roof that may be selling stuff back to the grid is only doing it when it's wanted and not at all times that it's generating power.
Just thought I needed to point this out - if your power bill is less it is cheap. It would be nice to get off grid and future proof against bastard weasel "connection fee" and "network costs" games from energy suppliers, but savings can be made even without battery storage.
No, because the consumer gets the choice between the retail cost or generating the power themselves.
So while it may cost a lot more per MW than coal the person actually buying the power doesn't get to see the benefit from a cheaper power generation source.
It may be illegal to be off-grid but there's no law against opening the main house breaker.
They'll still make it illegal because, you know, you could always turn the breaker back on. ;) They'll remove the meter, and you won't care until city officials show up and condemn your house because solar panels or no, without a grid connection you 'can't sustain a quality of life there'. Never mind that the alternative had her sleeping in her car... I'd take my house unheated over trying to sleep in my truck, even in an Alaskan winter.
I don't read AC A human right
About 10 years ago I studied a graph of the cost of solar versus conventional energy over time, extrapolated out, and saw them crossing in roughly 10 years. So, I invested in solar companies thinking they are going to take over conventional energy.
I got the crossing part right. What I got wrong is that those were domestic companies. Chinese companies generally have beaten domestic companies such that my stocks languished.
Predicting the future is not good enough; you have to predict the location also. Warren Buffet, I am not.
Table-ized A.I.
This is a great development. The End.
The only way I could ever save money on my power bill is if I go off the grid completely.
I had been using normal PSE&G (southern NJ) and paying about $600/mo for my business. I switched to a different provider that locked me into a 10.3c/kWh supply contract. Now I pay $550/mo in delivery fees and $75/mo for supply.
I tried contacting the state agency that regulates power companies but, as expected, they neither knew nor cared what the expensive items on my bills were.
Retail customers only need to displace retail costs. Avoiding net metering, the best thing to do is self-consume your solar energy and avoid the retail rate you would be otherwise charged.
Okay, the two older sibling posts make sense to me. Thanks for helping me clear my mental fog.
... Equal to the retail price of conventionally generated electricity ('economic parity'), then why are utilities being forced to buy excess electricity from customers with solar panels at a premium price (cost plus)?
Ken
Which is why it's a tradeoff and why government enforced monopolies often produce results that suck. For example I'm dealing with a telecommunications company that has done fuckall since 1996 because they only have to keep their network more or less in one piece for the money to keep rolling in.
It's a tricky situation. Often governments have been given a lot of money to keep the situation as a monopoly and throw capitalism out the window, but the public/consumers want some sort of improvement that would normally occur with competition, and in the complete lack of competition improvement is not going to happen unless conditions for a continued monopoly are updated every now and again. What is reasonable for both parties is going to vary with the situation, but in nearly every case the customers of the monopoly get to bear the cost of any "charity handout", often with a bit of extra fat added.
I agree we may well see cheap compact nuclear fission reactors in the 2020s like from Hyperion., Also, it is a sad truth that we could build much safer reactors if engineers had been asked to prioritize safety over other things (Freeman Dyson's TRIGA design being one example) and if the USA has not focused on a Uranium nuclear cycle that intentionally could be easily weaponized (instead of Thorium).
Still I'd expect solar will actually continue to fall in price by the 2020s too. It would not surprise me if PV was in the 15 cent per watt range by 2030 (or even less) other things remaining constant. Consider how "cheap" used "solar collectors" in terms of tree leaves are in the Fall in the USA. Solar panels potentially could be printed as cheaply as aluminum foil using advanced nanomaterials and special inks.
We haven't really seen anything like the amount of research in PV we will probably see when it reaches grid parity everywhere and people really invest in it in a huge way equivalent to previous investments in fossil fuel production and research. Some people (myself included) have been predicting this turning point for a long time, and it has been dismissed and ignored. It is easy to say PV progress will never get to grid parity until it actually happens. That has been true even though the trends for decades show a clear line towards zero cost (no doubt it will go asymptotic at some point to just be dirt cheap though).
Unfortunately, in our short-term-oriented society in the USA, until PV is cheaper than the grid it is only a niche thing for special circumstances or motivated environmentally-minded people. That has been what has been funding it as only a relative trickle of investment. Once PV is cheaper than the grid, assuming a good solution to energy storage exists (fuel cells with nickle-metal hydride storage, Lithium ion batteries, molten salt batteries, compressed air, or something else), it will be economically foolish to use anything else to generate power than PV. And then, sometime after the stampede, we will see enormous sums of money flow into PV research and production. Electric utilities may collapse all over the place as his happens because grid power becomes too pricey once the cost of delivery exceeds the cost of on-site production. Except for the value of their right of ways as internet conduits, and maybe the value of their copper wires, I would guess that most utilities if properly accounted for, given decommissioning costs and outstanding long-term debt in sunk costs, most utilities may well have a negative net worth right now given any forecast that includes these trends.
Personally, I still think it possible that hot fusion or cold fusion will displace PV (as well as nuclear fusion) in the near future. Those could potentially be really really cheap. Even if fission gets cheaper and better (including potentially as small batteries), I don't see it could compete with workable fusion (and probably neither could PV for most applications).
We'll likely also see energy efficiency increase greatly. The current best construction in Europe is to build passive solar superinsulated houses without furnaces; search on "no furnace house".
I'd love to see the solar roadways thing work out... Or even just for parking lots or driveways.
http://www.solarroadways.com/
Still, as I said elsewhere, the same reasons PV s getting cheaper (cheaper computing leading to cheaper collaboration and better designs by cheaper modeling and newer materials and so on) are the same sorts of reasons we will also see much cheaper nuclear power. Of course, there are other trends that all interact with that as well... A post by me from 2000:
"[unrev-II] Singularity in twenty to forty years?"
http://www.dougengelbart.org/c...
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I got interested in these "new leasing models" and they are not good for homeowners. They often run over 20 years requiring leasing payments for 20 years, regardless of who owns the house. And after that? The panels will be EOL and the owner is stuck with replacing them. While there is still a level of satisfaction to be 'green' it is also a matter of economics. And these "new leasing models" clearly only favor the sleazy companies who rake in not only the money for any excess power sent to the grid, they also sack any tax incentives...and who knows which yahoos they hire to drill holes into the roof and muck around at the panel. I rather buy panels and have the choice of hiring an expert installer. I am sure I can pay off the loan in way less than 20 years, keep my tax incentives, and keep the payments for the excess power. As with anything, leasing is a great option for people who do not have any money or credit, or that have too much money. Like leasing a car, almost pay as much as you would for outright buying a car, but once done you don't own anything but are stuck with plenty of liability.
Last month I was 414 kWh - 1 computer running at all times(mixed SSD & spinning disk, disk will spin down if I'm not using it). Fridge is greater than 5 years old(considering new one, waiting for a good sale), heat is oil boiler, no AC, water is from well w/electric pump on MY meter.
I'll echo the others - I recommend investigating. Turn ALL the breakers off. Make sure your meter isn't still spinning. Spring for an individual meter like the 'killavolt' or even a clamp ammeter. Get a run-time clock for the AC system and water heater(if it's electric, probably not given your description). Check out your appliances.
Then again, you might have a family member running a space heater when you're not looking.
I don't read AC A human right