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?

[thegarbz]

What do you mean by utilization rate? Do you mean the amount of energy a solar cell generates or do you mean the amount of energy generated at a time it is consumed?

You can call it circle jerking all you want, but an increase in the amount of renewable energy regardless of your other metrics is always a good thing providing the energy source pays for itself and offsets the energy that went into getting that energy. For solar we've reached that point a long time ago meaning at this point more = better regardless of how it compares to other energy sources.

Re:Why bother with installed capacity?

[fustakrakich]

Yeah, but it can only help mitigate peak demand in the daytime. Building one less coal plant won't kill anybody.

Re:Why bother with installed capacity?

[rjmnz]

I noticed you left out two other base load options.
Geothermal at >95% utilisation (usually 100%)
Hydro at 30 - 40% utilisation.

Here in NZ wind is nearer 40%
All of these numbers are well known and factored in when the economics of power generation are considered.

In practice Hydro and wind often go well together as a working pair.
Our neighbours over the ditch (Australia) have just had their government cut funding for renewables because windfarms are ugly and noisy (in favour of coal).

Re:Why bother with installed capacity?

[MrKaos]

While a coal, nuclear or gas plant can hit utilization rates of 90 - 99%

I'm curious how you arrive at this figure. You are implying that a Nuclear reactor is utilized for 99% of its lifetime which can't be true simply because of the Availability of the plant when it is being refueled and serviced pushes that figure well below 99%.

How do you arrive at a 99% utilization rate for a Nuclear Reactor?

Re: Why bother with installed capacity?

[renergy]

The right keyword here is "capacity factor". There is a decent article about it on wikipedia. Solar power tends to have around 15%, nuclear around 80%, generally - but it varies from country to country. Basically it is a portion of time the plant is able to run at peak rated power; and since for solar the peak can be attained only around noon and without any clouds, it is so low, compared to other types of powerplants.

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.

Re:Why bother with installed capacity?

[thegarbz]

Is it the 'best' way to spend our money to get carbon free electricity? That matters when you look at what needs to happen to make a real impact on a global scale. Seems like that is a question many don't like to ask.

Actually it's a question that many have asked and determined that, yes right now it is. It allows the re-use of existing infrastructure co-located directly at the energy consumer negating transmission losses. Combine it with storage which I think everyone can agree is something that is becoming mainstream and you have a system that can take a very serious dent out of the daily energy peak and cut household electricity carbon emissions (I'm so specific here because as we all know electricity is only a small portion of our footprint).

Funny side note we just installed 35kW of solar panels on the roof of our main switchroom at work to offset our huge air-conditioning bill. The panels made the switchroom cooler by keeping the sun off the roof and covers the air-conditioning energy. The punchline: I work at a natural gas power station.

Re:Why bother with installed capacity?

[NotDrWho]

I explain why a 100MW solar farm (which is what this story is about) is a perfectly good (indeed in many ways superior) substitute for a 100MW coal power station.

Yeah, just as long as you build it somewhere where there's 24/7 sunlight and no clouds. Non-geostationary orbit maybe?

Re:Why bother with installed capacity?

[ArcherB]

I live in Texas. There are several months out of the year where the LOW is still above 90. Good luck sleeping through that without AC. Maybe we should put some light bulbs above our panels so we can run our AC.

Re:Why bother with installed capacity?

[DanielRavenNest]

> The solar industry will continue to tout capacity rather than actual generation because most folks don't understand the difference.

The solar industry reports capacity because the whole electrical industry uses that to size their wires, from transmission lines to the wiring in your house. Every electrical device you plug into the wall outlet has peak power draw listed in Watts or Amps. That's so you don't overload the circuit (typically 20 Amps or 2400 Watts). In the same way, transmission lines that carry power from plants to cities have a maximum capacity, and the grid operator has to know what peak power level each source can provide.

What you are calling "actual generation" is just "energy", or power x time. For a power plant, it's typically listed as "Peak capacity (MW) x capacity factor (%) x 8766 hours (in a year) = Energy output (MWh)". The capacity factor is the average output divided by the peak output. It varies from 90% for nuclear, to as low as 15% for solar in a bad location like Seattle (not recommended). Every power plant, without exception, has less than 100% capacity factor, although the reasons vary. A hydroelectric dam might theoretically run nearly all the time, since individual turbines can be shut for maintenance. But that does not account for weather. During a drought, there may not be enough water behind the dam to keep running at full power.

The job of a grid operator is to have enough power sources and transmissions lines to meet demand every minute of every day. That demand varies all the time: daytime vs night and weekends, seasonal cycles, weather variations. They prefer to use generating plants with the lowest operating costs first. So solar, wind, hydro, etc. that don't burn fuels are the preferred choice when available. They also prefer to use long-running plants like nuclear for "base load", the demand at the lowest point of the day, because they are slow to start and stop. "Dispatchable" plants (like Hydro), which can be turned on and off quickly are preferred to adjust supply to match demand as it varies. It's not as simple as "X is better than Y"

The grid operator also has to have enough reserve capacity for when something unexpected happens. A severe storm could knock out a bunch of demand (by downing distribution lines, or people are snowed in and don't go to work, thus businesses stay closed). A power plant can shut down unexpectedly, and other sources have to fill in. A heat wave or cold snap could drastically affect demand.

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.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your air doesn't look like China's. You're coming out ahead.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is it that if a corporation like GE or Microsoft takes advantage of the government subsidies or tax structures it's smart business, if a politician who ardently complains about spending taxpayer money takes federal campaign money he's just taking his fair share, but if a homeowner utilizes a government subsidy he's a selfish prick who's bad at math?

Do you quibble with Wall Street over earnings reports as well, because they're all bad at math? Or do you only whinge about people who you think don't support your political viewpoint? Seriously, what's your problem?

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

[Maxo-Texas]

Providing a court system... stealing from other for personal gain using government force.
Providing a police system... stealing from other for personal gain using government force.
Building a road system... stealing from other for personal gain using government force.
Building tanks...stealing from other for personal gain using government force.
Building tanks and parking them immediately in the desert with no intention of using them...stealing from other for personal gain using government force.

My point... your point is not really as strong as you think it is.

You had a say in the matter. It was every election in an even numbered year since you started voting. I don't like a lot of stuff the government does using money it takes from me. But I live in a democracy, not a dictatorship of me.

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

[niftydude]

I'm always astonished at the high price of solar power in the USA. Here in Perth, Australia a 5KW system can be had (fully installed, no rebates or other breaks needed) for $5k AU (which is under $4k US). You can get a German (Bosch) 4.4KW system in the $7k AUD range.

Why is is so expensive in the USA?

Can you provide a link to a vendor's website that has those prices? Even with shipping that would be a good deal for us US-aliens

Here: https://perthsolarwarehouse.co...

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

[AmiMoJo]

It doesnt matter that the extra $5K is actually going to be borrowed by the government, a debt that will have to be services by your children, and their children, and their children, and their children....

The alternative is to do nothing, and break the planet so badly that our children's children find their homes under water and there isn't enough food for them to eat. But hay, at least there is no debt...

It's the much lesser of two evils. By subsidising solar to increase the pace of development and installation we are heading off a worse disaster than a relatively small amount of government debt in the future. A tax payer with principals would realize that sometimes things need to be done for the long term greater good.

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

[Barsteward]

well... lets check the maths. He said he was paying $3000 per year before installing, so in 22 years it would start paying for itself if the unit price he was paying remained the same as in 2003 but as we know that unit price would have gone up in 12 years so it would probably be less than 22 years. But as he got subsidies of over $30000, he's probably already getting a return after 10 years. The panels appear to have a estimated 25 year life time.

"Oil industry gets bigger subsidies than any "green" industry." - its a valid comment because if they didn't receive so much subsidy then you'd be paying a lot more your for fossil fuel power generation, you also have to work out just how many decades fossil fuel has been subsidised compared to the one decade solar has been subsidised.

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

[Barsteward]

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

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.

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

[dave420]

Your scientific ignorance is only shadowed by your hubris. You know so little, yet are convinced you know so much. It must be hell to be you.

Re:Install is not a noun

[ShanghaiBill]

The word "install" is not a noun.

Any verb can be nouned.

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:Apples to oranges

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

First thanks for the info. I was trying to find it myself.

The capacity factor definition uses 24 hour day. So for day time power generation without storage you would rate PV at 0.29 immediately. Further instead of averaging it over the entire day, you average it over just peak six hours of generation. The number is 0.58, not too far off from coal.

Why would you skew it like this in favor of solar? Because solar generation matches the peak demand so well. The peak demand is late afternoon in hot sunny states when everyone runs their A/C at full blast.

Solar installations targeting just to meet the peak load could replace coal 1.2 MW of peak solar capacity = 1 MW peak coal capacity. Solar installations spread over four time zones all linked by a grid can avoid issues of storage of electricity. Solar has reached parity with coal and is going down. When it crosses the 80% mark, all hell is going to break loose. This is what sending shivers down the spine of powerplant operators. Base load has very little profit. They make money in the spot trading of peak power. That juicy profits are being threatened by solar.

Already last year one Australian traditional operator had negative peak price, they had to pay people to connect to them!

Re:Install is not a noun

[GNious]

The word "install" is not a noun.

Any verb can be nouned.

Stop verbing nouns!

Re: Install is not a noun

[oobayly]

This is all perfectly cromulent grammar.

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...

Re:Install is not a noun

[famebait]

But that's not an apply of nouning.

Deceptive wording

[Chas]

Capacity installs.

Basically it's talking about new installs versus already installed capacity.

Not overall capacity or utilization in the overall power budget.

Never mind that solar installs tend to be smaller and MUCH lower capacity than a coal burning plant.

Also, there's the fact that coal provides more power in the US by more than an order of magnitude.

So yay. We went from half a percent to 0.51% total power input.
And oh darn. We maybe stayed around 20% at coal.

Basically this is a "Rah Rah" article. Kind of like a small company that puts on big, slick productions and appears bigger than they are.

Re:Deceptive wording

[radl33t]

Do you feel threatened by a growing solar energy industry?

Re:Deceptive wording

[Chas]

No. Currently the solar energy industry is in the neighborhood of "statistical anomaly".
Nobody's threatened by a statistical anomaly.

But trying to compare growth in the solar industry at this point, to something entrenched (and nearly peaked, as coal is in the US), it's like comparing baseball statistics between MLB and and the Poughkipsie Pee Wee League.

In other words, would it change how you look at the data if I told you:

"We sold 10 home sausage grinders last quarter, this quarter, we did 11. In this same quarter last year, we did 7 installs. While GrindCo, who only makes industrial-plant-sized grinders the size of a 4 story building, only had one install this quarter and none at the same time last year."

That's, essentially, what's being said here.

Again, I don't mind that the solar industry is growing. I just dislike the deceptive wording that makes the industry appear larger and attempts to magnify the contribution it provides.

Re:Ending soon

[Maury Markowitz]

> We'll see how well solar competes when it gets (almost) the same tax treatment as other power sources

You mean when we dump billions of dollars of into a military side-project and let that flow downhill into the panel prices?

Yes, I await that day.

Re:Install is not a noun

[dave420]

Like those muppets who use "connect" instead of "connection". Ugh. I know languages evolve, but if we are just going to conflate words, we're going to lose a lot of the awesomeness of English. We'll end up with one word, which will probably have its roots in the word "booty" or "pie", depending on which side of the Atlantic gets started first :-P

Re:Powerless Solar

[oh_my_080980980]

Same with coal once it's done burning. What's your point? The only continuous power generation is hydro. All other forms are limited based on the capacity of that source. Hell, even power utilities does not have limitless forms of electricity and need to "guess" how much they need at any given time. They can't just produce more electricity when there are spikes. That's why you have brown outs. So you still have the issue of storage regardless of source. That's why battery storage is important and will go a long way to help all power sources because you can over produce the current need and store it for later use.

Re:Very misleading headline

[dave420]

Coal and oil are also heavily subsidized. You might want to stop being so angry and start educating yourself. You seem to be woefully ill-informed. It's sad.

Re:those numbers?

[Calibax]

You happen to be lucky by living in a cheap electricity area. Here in northern California the cheapest rate is 16.3 cents/kWh. That's for baseline usage of 7 kWh/day (depending on where you live) and anything above that costs more in tiers that go up to 33.5 cents/kWh. If you have air conditioning, you are certain to end up paying far more than the baseline cost in non-winter months.

Supposedly, there's a 0.5% drop in solar cell output per year, but I'm not seeing that at all. Last year my installation generated more than the first year - of course, climate change affects that figure.

My roof is metal tile - don't you think I factored that into my purchase decision?

Maintenance costs have been zero so far. There are three components - the panels, the wiring and the inverters. The inverters are likely to fail first, and the cost of replacement is drastically lower than when my system was first installed.