Quote:
Originally Posted by RedDevil
Such a pity those panels are so expensive, or else...
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But , how expensive are they in the long run?
What is the Energy cost over the operational life time?
PV industry was able to dropped below $1/Watt years ago.
1 Watt x even just a conservative ~5 hours an average day x 365 days a year = ~1.825 kwh year one ... If we conservatively assume the PV will only just barely achieve it's warranty ... 80% by year 25 is industry standard ... although some have tested better than 86% by year 25 and others about ~70% of year one by year 40 ... but if we stay very conservative at just the 80% and only to year 25 ... that's a conservative average of ~1.46 kwh per year by years year 25 ... for an average of ~1.6425 kwh / yr for 25 years = ~41 kwh for ~$1 ... or $0.024 / kwh.
Even if we were to worsen that number a bit more ... to be even more conservative ... over the operational life time ... I would argue that Solar PV is already ... fairly cost competitive ... even financially... still getting better ... but it isn't horrible now when looked at in the longer time scale.
The issue has been ... most people think about their costs in much shorter time scale terms ... weekly ... or monthly ... so they aren't used to paying for ~25 years of electricity all at once ... but in the long run ... I think the cost is already fairly competitive... but I'm glad to continue to see the market trends for improvement.
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Of course it can be much better than that in better locations ... Say instead of being overly conservative I were a bit optimistic ... say a slightly better made modern panel with a lower ~0.4% per year degradation ... I could optimistically still be producing over ~80% of year one , out to year 40 ... If I did that closer to the equator I could get on average about ~6.7 hours a day from a fixed array ... that could reduce the life time operational energy cost down as low as about .... For a fixed array ~$0.011 / kwh... not too shabby ... I pay a lot more than that now for Fossil fuel kwh.