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Old 09-04-2017, 12:50 PM   #292 (permalink)
sendler
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There are many numbers flying around about the declining price of solar panels. But are they true? Let’s look at an example of a state of the art solar farm in Calfornia. The Desert Sunlight farm in Cali is one of the newest and was completed in 2014 using thin film cells and is doing 26.7% of the 550MW nameplate. NY installations are predicated at 13%.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert...ght_Solar_Farm
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The stated loan guarantees are $1.47 Billion but I don't know if that even tells us all that was spent to complete the project. Were there any government rebates ot tax incentives? But that is the only number published so we will run with it. So the cost per namepkate capacity is $2.67/ Watt. The cost per actual output is $10 / Watt when you factor the actuall output versus the nameplate capacity that is always talked about in the media.. And this includes no storage. Which Tesla power is quoting at $0.40 / Wh for grid modules. So to store only 12 hours of the average would add another $0.7 Billion. Let’s say the first time installation of the batteries was free while doing the other work. Which will smooth the output for 1 day. Total initial install costs of $15 / Watt? with 12 hours storage? If it rains for a day the batteries will run out overnight and you will get nothing. 1 day of rain. Nothing. Please wake up people. We are in a solar trance of misinformation.
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Distrubuted + storage is fine to help with personal needs. If you have the solar area. But most people will live in appartment buildings. The baseload consumption for infrastucture of society is immense. Way too much for rooftop to even make a dent. 3 TeraWatt continous average just for electricity. Which is 20,500 of these solar farms. 10 TerraWatt average for all energy would triple that. Which is forecast to double by 2050. Solar plus storage cannot do any small portion of this by then. Storage becomes the big issue when you try to commit to a solar baseload grid.
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Over a 25 year service life if they don't spend another penny, The solar farm divides out to 8.5c/ kWh. With no storage. The final consumer of solar farm energy will pay an additional 1.3 times that for distibution, fees and taxes and some profit. That is without the storage. Lets say the storage batteries will very optimistically last 3000 cycles. 8 years. you will go through at least 3 sets of batteries in 25 years. Let's say the first set was installed for no additional cost. $0.7 Billion The next 2 sets will have installation costs. 0.1 Billion each? Who knows? So $2.3 Billion to store 12 hours of average output for 25 years. Total system price of $3.8 Billion for 25 years. 35.4c/ kWh with 12 hours of storage. Cost. Not distributed. Your home mounted system would be a bit more due to the smaller size and increased share of the cost as installation. 37.4c / kWh? with storage over it's 25 year life.