US Projected To Lead the World In New Solar Installations This Year (computerworld.com)

Lucas123 writes: The U.S. solar market is expected to grow 120% this year, with 16GW of new solar power, more than double the record-breaking 7.3GW installed in 2015. The total operating solar PV capacity in the U.S. is expected to reach 25.6 gigawatts (billion watts or GW) of direct current (DC) by the end of the year, according to GTM Research's U.S. Solar Market Insight Report 2015 Year in Review. When accounting for all projects (both distributed and centralized), solar accounted for 29.4% of new electric generating capacity installed in the U.S. in 2015, exceeding the total for natural gas for the first time and it will put the U.S. ahead of all other nations with regard to new solar installations for 2016.

Comments

Meanwhile in Indian

[AmiMoJo]

It's easier to win if you are screwing the competition: https://slashdot.org/submissio...

Re:Meanwhile in Indian

[MyLongNickName]

You made an asinine comment. The reality is that India put in protectionist rules in place to ensure their folks got jobs and didn't have to compete internationally. Apparently you think it is perfectly acceptable for US tax dollars to go to a project where their own citizens don't have a chance to get some of the work because the Indian government won't allow it.

The trade agreement specifies that contracts have to be competitive and India chose to ignore this rule. It isn't a really hard concept.

Re:Meanwhile in Indian

[Zocalo]

There's clearly a lot of spin in the article linked to by the OP, for instance, they mention that the US has a similar protectionist clause in place, but the US version is apparently OK with the WTO - yet they don't explain why that is, which is a rather crucial point. If the US had somehow manipulated the WTO into letting them do something then used the WTO to stop India doing the same that's entirely different to the US complying with WTO guidelines and India failing to do so. I also suspect there's more to it that just some Ts I simply don't believe the Indian government would scrap a multi-billion dollar project just because they couldn't be bothered to re-tender it without the problematic clause.

On the other hand, the US *does* have a track record for abusing the WTO to get what's best for the US (along with many other countries), blatantly ignoring WTO rulings that go against it (e.g. online gambling), and the main point of the article, that treaties like TPP are almost certainly going to be abused to enforce what corporates what over what's best for the population at large, is still valid, even if they possibly didn't find the best example of such abuse.

Re:Meanwhile in Indian

[MyLongNickName]

"When we violate it regularly, you have no fucking place to say anything to the contrary."

Wait. Your argument seems to have flipped 180 degrees. First you were saying that only the country's national laws applied, WTO rules be damned. Now you are saying that you are upset because you perceive that the US ignores the WTO. Rather inconsistent arguing.

Alleged "violations" (your term) are taken up with the WTO which decides if the complaint has merit and what the appropriate next steps are. This is exactly what happened with India and the United States.

And the reality is that the WTO rules against the United States often. A couple times each year I'll read about something where the US is found to have violated a rule, the WTO rules against the US and the US is forced to change its trade practices, pay restitution or both. In fact many groups in the US would like to see us out of the WTO because they say it hinders our ability to be competitive in the global market. I am not sure I agree with that, but it does show that the US doesn't simply ignore the WTO as you seem to think.

And I have viewed your posting history and strongly suggest you get counseling. You are obviously a very hateful person who flies into abusive comments for no reason. Your constant insults are consistent with a person who deep down feels very inferior and uses harsh words to try to cover for it. Truly successful people don't brag about how great they... only insecure people do that. If you behave like this in real life then you will never have any healthy relationships. You may view this as a personal insult, but it is not... simply a deep concern that you are in need of serious help.

What is it per person?

[houghi]

As the US is bigger than e.g. Denmark, just saying they are largest means not that much to me. Sure, it is a lot, but how much is it per person and where will they be on the list then?

And 29.4% of new energy sounds nice as well (wind was even higher with 39%), but what is it in the total amount of energy and where is the US in that (trow in wind if you like)

This reads like the average CEO presentation where a lot of numbers look nice, but mean nothing. At least not really.

So I would like to see:
1) Numbers per person.
2) Compare it to ALL of the energy (including car fuel) not only new installs

Re:What is it per person?

[110010001000]

Lots of things are subsidized by the government and our tax dollars. Like $550,000,000,000 PER YEAR IN DEFENSE SPENDING. More than 20 times the amount of the top 10 biggest spenders COMBINED. I'm not worried about tens of millions in subsidized alternative energy rebates that arguably helps to make our country cleaner. Get a grip people.

Re:What is it per person?

[110010001000]

What difference does it make "per person". Not only people consume energy for running their households. Many of these installations are for industrial and commercial purposes. Lets just say the entire world installed 40GW of solar power and 16GW is from the US. Impressive.

Re:What is it per person?

[Diss Champ]

From the article:
"The IEA singled out the Middle East as a region where fossil fuel subsidies are hampering renewables. It said 2 million barrels per day of oil are burned to generate power that could otherwise come from renewables, which would be competitive with unsubsidized oil."

While my general view on this is that my govt should get out of the habit of subsidizing any particular energy source, quoting an article focused on what govts on the Middle East are up to is hardly a fair reason to call someone a "dumb shit" when they are arguing over what the US govt is up to. You could redeem yourself by finding an article on the ways the US subsidizes the other energy sources if you like- that would be on topic and interesting instead of abusive.

I think that ideally, one would regulate and tax various methods exactly the right amount to normalize for externalities, and go from there. Figuring out the proper cost of the externalities is where it can get crazy of course, and where special interests get right back in the door.

Re:What is it per person?

[FlyHelicopters]

Lots of things are subsidized by the government and our tax dollars. Like $550,000,000,000 PER YEAR IN DEFENSE SPENDING. More than 20 times the amount of the top 10 biggest spenders COMBINED. I'm not worried about tens of millions in subsidized alternative energy rebates that arguably helps to make our country cleaner. Get a grip people.

While that is true, it is worth noting that the spending on defense is in fact the primary purpose of our federal government, it is right in the Constitution.

Spending on solar panels is not. It also isn't a few tens of millions a year, it is closer to a few tens of BILLIONS a year.

However, even that number is fairly small when all things are considered.

The REAL point is that if solar ever takes off for real, it'll have to do so on its own. The current government support for solar could never last if it started to get deployed in a serious way, because then it would start to cost what the defense budget costs.

The next question is: "Is this the best way to replace coal, oil, and natural gas power?" I would submit that we could outright give away a free nuclear power planet each year for the cost of all this solar, and in reality, if we simply provided $5 billion towards the cost of each plant, we might get 3 a year built.

What brings more value to us, the solar we are getting or 3 new nuclear power plants a year? That is a separate debate, but I think it is one worth having.

Re:What is it per person?

[FlyHelicopters]

While my general view on this is that my govt should get out of the habit of subsidizing any particular energy source

I tend to agree there...

I wouldn't have said it 5 years ago, but today I think I'd rather simply have a carbon tax and no subsides for anything. Rather than try and pick winners, pick the losers and let the market sort out the winners.

Start the carbon tax of REALLY small, but with a slow and steady rampup published way in advance over the next 50 years, so that people would understand that while tomorrow it is nearly nothing, in 5 years it is a small something and in 25 years it is a big something and in 50 years it is a crazy big something.

If you double the price of gas tomorrow, you just crush the economy and actually make things worse, it takes time for people to shift. So maybe you need carbon taxes to add a penny this year, 2 pennies next year, 4 the year after that, and so on, until it is maybe $2 a gallon in 30 years. If everyone knows that today, there is at least a chance that action will be taken before 30 years arrives.

Or at least I could hope. :)

Re:What is it per person?

[CaptainLard]

While that is true, it is worth noting that the spending on defense is in fact the primary purpose of our federal government, it is right in the Constitution.

Maybe time to read it again....

http://www.archives.gov/exhibi...

Article 1, section 8 lays out congress' jobs and it actually lists 8 things including the post office and "patents" before talking about the military. The primary purpose of the federal government is to enable a functioning state of which a military is surely a part but there is much more to it than that, thank goodness. If you look around the world, bad things happen when the military always comes first.

Re:What is it per person?

[drinkypoo]

What brings more value to us, the solar we are getting or 3 new nuclear power plants a year?

Given that the nuclear plants cost us money to build and then cost us money again to decommission, and can easily get us into a position where we're losing money on them if something goes wrong, that should be an easy one. And if we had made that decision intelligently in the 1970s, then we'd have a whole hell of a lot more solar in the field today. It was economically viable back then if only the subsidies given to other, more harmful power generation technologies had been diverted in its direction.

Re:What is it per person?

[penguinoid]

Lots of things are subsidized by the government and our tax dollars. Like $550,000,000,000 PER YEAR IN DEFENSE SPENDING. More than 20 times the amount of the top 10 biggest spenders COMBINED. I'm not worried about tens of millions in subsidized alternative energy rebates that arguably helps to make our country cleaner. Get a grip people.

While that is true, it is worth noting that the spending on defense is in fact the primary purpose of our federal government, it is right in the Constitution.

Spending on solar panels is not.

Isn't spending on solar the same as spending on defense, security-wise? Isn't our need for oil, and our giving tons of money to countries which hate us, one of the major reasons we need so much defense?

Energy self-sufficiency is national security.

Re:What is it per person?

[Khyber]

"I'm not worried about tens of millions in subsidized alternative energy rebates that arguably helps to make our country cleaner."

I actually love it and would encourage more of it. I just bought a fuckton of 99-cent 9w LED bulbs. They're great with 90+l/w (92 by my measurements) 3000K 92CRI. Every single fixture that has an E26/27 socket has one in it. If I include my LED-lit aquarium and patio, I can keep my entire house lit 24/7 for ~$0.42/day.

From there, my only real power usage is cooking and computers and AC, and with computers getting much more efficient, the only real power hogs are the electrical cooking elements and AC, and with the lighting and computing power requirements dropping like a rock, the need to run my AC to compensate, even in the SoCal desert, drops dramatically. The overall power savings from subsidized LED lighting alone when you factor in other costs of things like heat elimination and replacement needs totally makes up for the subsidy. This is smart usage of our tax dollars.

Re:What is it per person?

[Grishnakh]

Most of the oil we use goes to gas for our cars, and solar doesn't power our cars. Yea, yea, EVs and all, but EVs won't be a major thing for decades.

Teslas and Leafs are already proving that EVs are perfectly viable right now, just a bit too expensive compared to comparable gas cars and not that suitable for road trips. Cars like the GM Volt (50-mile range plug-in hybrid) are also very viable, not using any gas for commuting but still allowing road trips. Battery costs are coming down so pretty soon EVs will make even more sense for commuters. However, cheap gas hampers adoption; if gas taxes were jacked up a lot to account for the true costs of gasoline cars to society, EVs would become a lot more popular.

With a lot more EVs on the road, power generation switching to renewable sources will have a big effect on oil demand.

What is that in REAL wattage?

[Anonymous Coward]

So.... what is that in AC Wattage units? (Considering I've worked at several power plants I ought to know this.)

Reading towards the end of the article it seems to indicate 100-200 MW total, which is not worth bragging about considering how much electricity we produce and consume in the United States.

The plant I work at now consumes around 100 MW when running, we have 6 on site gas turbines producing 20MW each.

Solar Photovoltaic and solar thermal unfortunately do not have a good track record for going up to the 500 to 1000 MW range which is what you want for a nice utility sized power plant. Maybe we could have more small solar power plants, unfortunately they have a large foot print in terms of space used. (How many square miles would it take for a 1000 MW sized PV plant?)

Before anyone even starts, de-centralized power is in 'development' stage. I see rooftop solar as more of an energy saver/efficiency more than anything else but not a 'break even' per se. I expect most of the coal plants in the U.S. will get replaced with natural gas.

The real interesting thing will be when all the nuclear units that went online in the 70s and 80s need to be replaced... fun times ahead.

Re:What is that in REAL wattage?

[FlyHelicopters]

Before anyone even starts, de-centralized power is in 'development' stage. I see rooftop solar as more of an energy saver/efficiency more than anything else but not a 'break even' per se. I expect most of the coal plants in the U.S. will get replaced with natural gas.

I've looked into rooftop solar three times, the most recent two months ago.

I spoke with a local solar installer. It just makes no sense, no matter how far you turn your head to the side. And that is with the federal government picking up 30% of the cost outright, plus another rebate from the local power company, plus cheap financing. It STILL makes zero sense.

You have to REALLY make a lot of assumptions about the future for it to kinda sorta make sense. As in, regular power prices will double over the next decade. And the new equipment will work for 20 years trouble free. And you'll always get net-metering. And it will add 50% of the system cost to the value of your home.

And so on. Do all that, and yea, it can make sense. But it takes ALL of that, plus the tax money, to work.

Re:What is that in REAL wattage?

[Registered Coward v2]

One of the limiting factors right now is residential solar is an add on, so you have to overcome the cost factor as well as the appearance factor in selling it. To really take off it should be designed in at construction, so the roof is designed to incorporate the panels as well as for ease of maintenance, a storage battery and inverter are built in as well and the wiring is designed for AC and DC operation. For example, wall plugs could provide standard AC as well as DC for devices via a USB plug, eliminating the need for wall warts. A higher voltage DC line and plug would be nice but given their really isn't a standard in wide use that would be less likely despite its advantages over AC to DC devices; such as having DC LED lights throughout the house, plug in and hard wired. If it were built in the costs would be lower and part of the purchase price.

Re:What is that in REAL wattage?

[sumdumass]

It is not that support for oiland coal are patriotism or anything. It is cost and artificially increasing them that seems to be necessary for it to make economic sense. If the power plant can deliver the energy more reliable and cheaper, using that makes sense. If rooftop solar can, that makes sense. Where the objections come in to play that gives you the patriotism impressions is when the costs of one are inflated to make the others more attractive. It is simply unamerican to have the federal government dictate you need to pay more for something just to pad the pockets of a sector of business. That is also one of the biggest objections to Obamacare - the individual mandate.

Unfortunately, Most Americans do not consider externalities that they did not have to bother considering previously as justification either.

Re:What is that in REAL wattage?

[AmiMoJo]

Where do you live? In most parts of the world you can't lose with solar now. You don't need to make assumptions about future energy prices or anything like that, and the panels only need to last a few years to pay for themselves in most places. In any case, any reasonable quality panel will come with a warranty longer than the pay-back period, and ditto things like the inverter.

Even without feed-in, there are few parts of the world where solar won't pay for itself in under a decade, and then it's all profit.

Re:What is that in REAL wattage?

[LtNacho]

Do you have some actual numbers to back this up? For our installation our payback period is 7 years with subsidies. The panels have a 20 year warranty and are likely to produce power for another 10 after that. How does that not make sense?

Re:What is that in REAL wattage?

[AmiMoJo]

DC distribution in the home has some issues that make it somewhat impractical and not worth the bother for small devices like lights and some appliances. You would need to step it up to a pretty high voltage to avoid having more loss in the wires than you would get with AC, but that brings its own problems with safety (isolation in particular, you don't want arcing).

You also can't use a transformer for simple isolation, because transformers only work with AC. There are other options, but none as easy and cheap as a coil of wire.

In short it's usually better to distribute as AC and then convert to DC for anything less than maybe 1000W. Once you get to car charging or air conditioner levels it can be worth doing DC from your panels.

Re:What is that in REAL wattage?

[FlyHelicopters]

What is your current monthly bill?

Average $250 a month

What effective interest rate were they charging?

I can borrow from my house at 3.5%

What have you done to improve the energy efficiency of your home?

Replaced HVAC with a really good Trane 2 stage, 2 speed 16 SEER unit, cut $100 average off my bill overnight, best upgrade I ever did. For $17,000 (5 ton and 3 ton units, including everything inside and out), I get a colder house and $100 a month back in my pocket. And my old unit broke, so I had to spend money anyway.

Did you need to do any upgrades to your roof to make it viable?

No, I have a brand new roof as of 2 years ago, thanks to hail (and Allstate)

Generally speaking, rooftop solar is $3/W for a complete installed system

$3.50 a watt here, I've been quoted by three different companies, that is just the going rate. $35,000 for a 10KW system.

advantageous if your blended cost of electricity is $0.15/kWh or more at a minimum effective rate of return of 13%

I pay 10 cents per kWh and my cost is $5K more than your estimate. :) That is part of where it torpedoes.

If you are at a more risk tolerant and only need 8% return then you are good down to $0.10/kWh.

It is actually closer to 5%, given my install cost and my power cost. But even that might be worth doing, if I could get a 10 year net-metering guarantee.

But yes, the kicker is net metering.

Yep, that is what torpedoes it. There is no chance that net-metering will survive as it stands today. Taken to the logical conclusion, imagine if we all had solar enough to offset our annual bill, but that we needed the power company to provide power at night, but we all fed power back during the day. And we all had zero bills because of net-metering, yet expect the power company to provide a grid.

That will never happen of course, so somewhere between today and then it would have to change.

---

In principle, I would LOVE to have solar power, how cool would it be to have clean free power from the sun! But it has to make financial sense, and it just doesn't.

BTW, to give you an idea, I live in a city of 250,000 people and there is a local solar association here. By their own count, a whole 150 homes in my city have put solar on the roof. Out of 250,000 people. It simply doesn't make sense here. I have never actually seen a solar install on a roof in person, only pictures on TV or the Internet. It just isn't done here.

Re:What is that in REAL wattage?

[AmiMoJo]

Texas has plenty of sun. Your electricity is currently coal powered, which means it is damaging your health (or some other person's health).

It makes sense to put some solar up where you live. In a few years it will have covered its costs and you will be making a profit.

Comparing commercial scale solar and wind to your coal power, you forgot to include the environmental and health costs. Maybe you are lucky and don't have to deal with them.

Re:What is that in REAL wattage?

[shawn2772]

I pay 7 cents per kWh for my office power and 10 cents per kWh for my house power, both coal.

That's dirt cheap, among the cheapest in the country. In fact, it's below the average for Texas, which is 11.5 cents. And, are you sure that's the total rate? Most utilities do a tiering system where usage above certain thresholds costs more. For example where I live (Utah, which also has very cheap power, coal and hydro), I pay 8.9 cents per kWh for the first 400 kWh, 11.6 cents for the next 600 kWh and 14.5 cents above that (perhaps there are more tiers; that's as high as I've gone, even in a hot summer and with an electric car charging in the garage).

My payback period, assuming rates are unchanged, would be about 12 years. Without the government subsidies, it jumps to 15, but the system I looked at is warrantied for 25 years (equipment and labor). That unsubsidized payback is marginal, but not bad, assuming good financing and a lowish discount rate. I think it may make even more sense to install just enough solar to ensure that I never buy any power at the 14.5 cent tier, and knock out a chunk of the 11.6 cent tier.

People living on both coasts are paying closer to 20 cents per kWh, and in areas with peak/off-peak pricing it can go as high as 35 cents per kWh on-peak -- which is when the solar panels are generating the most. In those areas solar is a no-brainer even without any subsidies. Given decent financing terms, those peoples' monthly solar loan/lease payment will be lower than their monthly electric bill from day one, and after the system is paid off their power is free.

So... even unsubsidized, solar is a clear win for a huge swath of the population (most of the population lives on the coasts) right now. It's less clear for the rest of the country, but I think carefully-constructed deals can still be a win with subsidies and perhaps without. As solar prices continue dropping and efficiencies continue increasing it will soon be a clear win for almost everyone.

At that point things are going to get really interesting, because the fixed costs of operating and maintaining the grid will start to become a much more significant portion of the utility companies' costs, and all of those grid-connected solar-powered homes will become a drag on the utilities' finances. They'll have to introduce high monthly connection fees which will make solar less attractive. Maybe by then storage will be cheap enough that people will choose to disconnect from the grid, making the utilities' problems even worse, requiring even higher connection fees. State and local government may end up requiring that all residences be connected to the grid and pay the connection fees, or start collecting monies for grid maintenance as part of the property taxes or something.

SolarCity - Tax dollars - Why this is happening

[FlyHelicopters]

Last year I called SolarCity, they are offering to install panels for "free" to your home, then sell you the power for less than you're paying now.

Sounds like a no-brainer, right? No up front cost, no maintenance, guaranteed power for less than you're paying now.

Why NOT say yes?

Except, they won't install in my area. They WILL install 2 miles away, because that is a different electric energy provider that gives bigger rebates than mine does (I live in a co-op that doesn't provide huge rebates and tax incentives).

---

So it really comes down to the fact that all this solar makes sense only if you count on a whole pile of tax dollars.

Even utility scale solar, which I've looked at investing in purely from an investment point of view, requires tax dollars to make work.

http://www.absolutelysolar.com...
FIT Program Areas
FIT â" LADWP: The Department of Water and Powerâ(TM)s new solar Feed-In Tariff program. Buildings and land in the city of Los Angeles and parts of the Owens Valley are eligible.
Look at the very bottom of that page:

http://energy.gov/savings/ladw...
And there is the program, promising to pay FAR above the "going rate" of power.

So solar works, assuming you can count on the government money to keep flowing.

Re:SolarCity - Tax dollars - Why this is happening

[GLMDesigns]

Which subsidies are you referring to. Every time I ask I get the same answer: accelerated depreciation. Sorry. I don't consider that to be a subsidy.

I'm not a fan of fossil fuels so if you have links to subsidies (again not accelerated depreciation) I would be interested in seeing them.

40% distributed PV capacity is in CA

[FlyHelicopters]

A few interesting points from the article:

1. Almost 40% of the distributed PV capacity in the U.S. is located in California. The next nine states after California account for another 44%, according to the EIA.

This is key because CA pays one of the highest kWh rates in the US (places like Hawaii are higher, but there aren't that many people there).

http://www.bls.gov/regions/wes...

San Francisco pays 40% higher energy prices on average than the rest of the US. So of COURSE solar makes more sense there. But it doesn't most other places.

California's leadership in distributed solar capacity is driven by a combination of factors, including high electricity prices, a large population, strong solar resources, and state policies and incentives that support solar PV, according to the EIA.

2. One of the factors spurring growth last year and this was the impending expiration of the U.S. government's solar investment tax credit (ITC). That measure, passed in 2008, offered a 30% tax credit for residential and business installations. It was due to expire this year, and the tax credit was supposed to drop to a more permanent 10%. In December, however, Congress passed a three-year extension on the 30% ITC.

So a crap load of tax dollars are propping this market up. It actually goes further than this. There are many state and Dept of Energy programs that further fix the rate of solar power to above market rates, to provide guaranteed returns for utility solar power.

http://energy.gov/public-servi...
Just a sample of some of the various programs to pay for solar and wind.

3. The total operating solar PV capacity in the U.S. is expected to reach 25.6 gigawatts (billion watts or GW) of direct current (DC) by the end of the year, according to GTM Research's U.S. Solar Market Insight Report 2015 Year in Review. Last year, solar installations broke all previous records, but the amount was only 16% more than in 2014 with 7,260 GW of new DC solar power.

That sounds impressive, doesn't it? Well, consider this:
In 2014, the United States generated about 4,093 billion kilowatt hours of electricity.

So the new DC solar power being installed is 7.2 billion out of 4,093 billion total. It is nice, but we could install that much every year for the next 20 years and it wouldn't make a real dent in the total.

Re:40% distributed PV capacity is in CA

[Anonymous Coward]

3. The total operating solar PV capacity in the U.S. is expected to reach 25.6 gigawatts (billion watts or GW) of direct current (DC) by the end of the year, according to GTM Research's U.S. Solar Market Insight Report 2015 Year in Review. Last year, solar installations broke all previous records, but the amount was only 16% more than in 2014 with 7,260 GW of new DC solar power.

That sounds impressive, doesn't it? Well, consider this: In 2014, the United States generated about 4,093 billion kilowatt hours of electricity.

So the new DC solar power being installed is 7.2 billion out of 4,093 billion total. It is nice, but we could install that much every year for the next 20 years and it wouldn't make a real dent in the total.

I'm not sure if you don't know the difference between a Watt and a Watt.hour, or if you think that there is only one hour in a year. But anyway you got saved by your other mistake, which was to go from 4,093 billion kilowatt hours to 4.093 billion total, forgetting the kilo and the fact that solar panel don't output power during night and don't work at full capacity during day. The order of magnitude of your 7.2 vs 4093 should probably be somewhere around 12 vs 4093. (24*365 hours in a year, solar peak capacity vs average power ~0.2, and the missed k taken into accound)

You dont need to spend anything to save with solar

[jaketeater]

Let everyone else waste their money buying solar panels, it lowers the demand for from-the-grid energy, which lowers the price of the electricity for which you pay...

Wordsmithing is Fun!

[Irate Engineer]

I love it how it is phrased "U.S. leading in new installations!" vs "U.S. catching up to per-capita installed capacity already found elsewhere."

Gotta be #1, always!

Re:You dont need to spend anything to save with so

[tomhath]

Except when power companies are forced to buy the power generated from the panels at a premium price, everyone contributes to that subsidy