Solar Power Capacity Installs Surpass Wind and Coal For Second Year

Lucas123 writes: Residential rooftop solar installations hit a historical high in the first quarter of 2015, garnering an 11% increase over the previous quarter and a 76% increase over the Q1, 2014. New installations of solar power capacity surpassed those of wind and coal for the second year in a row, accounting for 32% of all new electrical capacity, according to a new report by GTM Research and the Solar Energy Industries Association. Residential solar installation costs dropped to $3.46 per watt of installed capacity this quarter, which represents a 2.2% reduction over last quarter and a 10% reduction over the first quarter of 2014.

Comments

Did not RTFA

[mystuff]

I know the average Slashdot reader doesn't bother to click through to the linked articles anyway. But to then just provide no clickable links whatsoever is a bit harsh, don't you think?

Why bother with installed capacity?

[Elledan]

One of the hallmarks of PV solar and wind (turbine) power is that its installed capacity is so completely out of sync with its utilization rate. While a coal, nuclear or gas plant can hit utilization rates of 90 - 99%, PV solar and wind tend to fluctuate around 20-30%.

In short, 70-80% of installed PV solar and wind capacity has to be discarded in order to close to the utilization percentage. It also means that you need 3-5 times as much installed capacity to get near the power delivered figures for baseload power sources.

In summary, in terms commonly used here in /., I believe this article is what is referred to as a 'circle jerk' :)

Re: Why bother with installed capacity?

[matfud]

http://www.world-nuclear.org/i...

The section on improved performance is quite interesting. The US averages 81% utilisation

Re:Why bother with installed capacity?

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is that a 100MW nuclear power station is a perfectly good substitute for a 100MW coal power station. When it's mid-winter and the big game is on, and everybody is running heaters, lights and TVs and goodness knows what else, either of those plants will put out 100MW unless it's shut for maintenance. Not a problem.

But a 100MW solar station is useless as a replacement, it will produce only a fraction of the power, because "100MW" is peak, not mean or median output and the solar station produces its peak output for a few hours here and there, not regularly and certainly not on demand.

A 500MW solar station is a replacement, so long as it's coupled to a 100MW medium term energy store, just as pumped storage. But the headline power of that plant is five times as much.

So when "solar surpasses coal" that doesn't mean what it appears to, for example if you had 100 years of building the same capacity of solar as coal, you might think half the power generated would be solar, right? No. More like 10% would be solar. Only when there's 10 times as much solar as coal are you actually producing more power with solar than coal.

Not because solar is "bad", it's just _different_ and that matters.

Re:Why bother with installed capacity?

[ChumpusRex2003]

It depends on the nuclear plant design, but in general a LWR nuclear plant has better load following characteristics than a coal plant (the compact core has low thermal mass compared with the large furnaces and boilers of a coal plant). Load following, however, may not be permitted under regulatory regimes (for example, in the US). The availability characteristics of a typical LWR are not much different to coal - there are longer, less frequent maintenance/refuelling periods.

A 100 MW wind farm is not a perfectly good substitute for a 100 MW coal plant. Typically the load factor for wind is in the 25-35% range, with off-shore wind being higher. However, the "firm capacity" (i.e. the capacity that can be relied upon) is poor - about 2% in the UK, whereas for coal it is about 85%.

Both wind and solar have very poor load following capacity - as they cannot automatically respond significantly to changes in grid frequency (except in the case of overfrequency), whereas most thermal plants have the capacity to automatically increase power, provided they are not at capacity, in response to a drop in grid frequency. Im Germany, this is partly mitigated by requiring that rooftop solar installations be electronically limited to 70% of their nominal capacity and/or be able to receive remote configuration updates from the utility, so that there is frequency reserve margin.

Small scale embedded generation (i.e. rooftop solar) has an additional problem which is that of grid failure detection and anti-islanding (i.e. the embedded generators must not be allowed to supply energy to the local area in the event of failure of grid connection). The problem is that grid instability is not easily discriminated from grid islanding, hence there is a tendency for a severe grid imbalance to trigger cascading disconnections of small generators, which makes the imbalance worse.... This has happened in the UK, and very nearly caused a country-wide blackout. It was only arrested when underfrequency protection started blacking out regions of the country in an attempt to reduce load on the grid.

Go Solar, it can make good financial sense.

[Calibax]

I installed 48 panels on my roof back in 2003 which generate up to 8.8 kW DC (7.5 kW AC). The installation generates 10,500 to 12,000 kWh per year depending on the weather. The total cost was $65,000 which after subsidies and tax breaks dropped to $31,000 - which is roughly the same as my installation would cost today before any subsidies. Since installation I've had to cover the meter rental (currently 16.3 cents per day) but I've had no other utility costs and no maintenance costs.

In the year before I installed solar, electricity cost me a tad under $3,000. Utility costs have increased considerably since then, so I've more than covered the cost of the installation. And I should have another 20 years of life in the panels. Perhaps more.

If you plan to stay in your house for 10 years or more, it may make good financial sense to consider solar. Based on my experience, it's certainly worth considering.

Re:Go Solar, it can make good financial sense.

[tburkhol]

You must have a real dilemma when you fill up your vehicle with gas...

You're mistaken: Rockoon is so principled, he never uses any subsidized product. He obviously doesn't own a car, as the automotive industry itself has been bailed out far too often. Public transit is right out, obviously, He can't even bike, because the rubber subsidy means no tires. So, Rockoon walks everywhere on pure leather shoes, bought only from chain stores with over 1000 employees to avoid "small business" subsidies. He rents a house rather than accept the government subsidy on a mortgage. Even there, he has to sit in the dark to avoid subsidies on all forms of electrical generation. He eats no sugar, corn, wheat or dairy. He is fortunate to be able to wear wool clothes these days, because the cotton subsidy means no BVDs. But it's all worth it, to avoid selfishly taking money from other taxpayers.

Really, when you think about it, it's easy to understand why he's such an angry guy. If you spent your days in woolen underwear, you'd be a little irritable, too.

Apples to oranges

[Solandri]

Power generated does not equal installed capacity. Power generated = (installed capacity) * (capacity factor).

For the U.S.:

• PV solar's capacity factor is about 0.145 for the country overall. In the desert southwest (where most of the solar installations probably are) it's about 0.18.
• Onshore wind's capacity factor is about 0.20-0.25.
• Coal's capacity factor is about 0.6.
• Nuclear's capacity factor is about 0.9.

So solar has to have about 40% more installed capacity than wind to generate as much power. It needs almost 4x as much installed capacity as coal to generate a comparable amount of power. And it needs 5.5x as much capacity as nuclear to be comparable. Comparing power generation based on installed capacity is like trying to compare how much food people eat based on the size of their refrigerators.

Re:Apples to oranges

[radl33t]

yet, solar's output can be tailed very conveniently to peak loads that would otherwise be served by peaking plants, which by virtue of their operation (low capacity factor) are 2-4X more expensive than regular generation, and, as it turns out 15%CF solar. That's before we throw all our natural gas on boats and sell it overseas for a 300% profit.

Re:Apples to oranges

[CrimsonAvenger]

If anyone would sell me a small reactor (e.g. from a sub or whatever), I'd be more than happy to install it in my back yard.

I'm curious - how big do you think submarine reactors are? And how big is your backyard?

A couple of useful hints, by the by:

1) a naval nuclear reactor is bigger than your house.

2) they require an ocean to provide cooling water for the system. Though they could probably manage with a decent sized lake or small river.

3) One man can't operate a naval nuclear reactor.

4) One house can't use the electricity they produce.

Re: Very misleading headline

[Anonymous Coward]

Just so we are clear, you are calling Hungarian Jew George Soros, who was 15 in 1945, a nazi collaborator? Ok then Glenn Beck...