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DragoonXNucleon t1_iyrxq0p wrote

Reply to comment by TheFrontierzman in Solar energy in Europe will be 10 times cheaper than gas by 2030 by EnergyTransitionNews

Yea this headline is horseshit in so many ways. First solar is always cheaper... because its free. The cost is upfront vs gas which is both upfront and fuel based. Therefore its intellectually bankrupt to compare cost of generation if you don't include equipment cost.

Second, if solar was cheaper, gas prices will fall, keeping the two in rough equilibrium. Some places can extract gas as cheaply as 20$ a barrel so solar per kw and gas per kw will peg to each other as mpre goes electric.

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reboot_the_world t1_iys4ka7 wrote

>Yea this headline is horseshit in so many ways. First solar is always cheaper... because its free.

I never get "solar is free" talks. It is only free if you ignore everything that is needed to use it. If you think like this, gas and oil is also free, because they are only condensed energy from the sun.

Back to reality. If you have PV on your roof, your cost per kWh is near 10 cent in northern germany . If you have PV storage, your cost is near 28 cent per KW out of your storage. This is not free.
The cost for gas before the war was 5,3 cent per kWh. Thanks to the war, we are now up to 16,8 cent.

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Roadrunner571 t1_iyv4g7c wrote

But 10ct/kWh is already really cheap compared to getting energy from the grid. Even 28ct/kWh is quite a competitive price.

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reboot_the_world t1_iyv4p9f wrote

Yes, i wrote that PV is an good investment, but it is not free. The 28ct/kWh was not really competitive price before the war. Now, it is.

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Roadrunner571 t1_iyv5t4d wrote

But we already paid >28ct/kWh before the war. And with PV storage, you are nearly immune to price hikes.

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reboot_the_world t1_iyv6ffk wrote

I paid 14ct/kWh before the war, thanks to having a combined heat and power plant and i have an old gas contract that guarantees me a gas price of 5,3 cent/kWh till the end of 2023. I am not sure what i will pay then since i will have solar and pv on my roof till then.

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Surur t1_iysjsiq wrote

Explain that to me like I am 5 years old.

You will need electricity in any case, so you have a fixed cost of say 3000 euro a year.

You buy 9000 euro of solar + battery and now you pay nothing per year (in theory).

In 3 years your system had paid itself back, and for the next 7 years your battery lasts, your electricity is without any additional cost, ie free.

Why is it not free?

The only reason I can think of is that you could have invested 9000 euro, but then you would still have spend 30,000 over 10 years, and you 9000 is unlikely to turn into 30,000 over 10 years.

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reboot_the_world t1_iysnj8k wrote

>Explain that to me like I am 5 years old.
>
>You will need electricity in any case, so you have a fixed cost of say 3000 euro a year.
>
>You buy 9000 euro of solar + battery and now you pay nothing per year (in theory).
>
>In 3 years your system had paid itself back, and for the next 7 years your battery lasts, your electricity is without any additional cost, ie free.
>
>Why is it not free?

The 10 cent per kWh for photovoltaic and 28 cent per kWh for energy from storage is the cost over the lifetime of the system. Many things in your PV system will degrade. Mainly your storage and your inverter. But also your PV modules. In 25 years your modules degraded and new modules are much better. It will be more economical to change them.

When somebody buys an oil tank and oil for 9000 euro, nobody will think that he will then get his house warm for free thanks to not having a yearly energy bill. Everybody understand, that some day, he must buy new oil. This is exactly the same with an pv system, but you don't need to buy oil but inverters, storage and modules over and over again. Why is this so hard to understand? There is no free lunch.

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SatanLifeProTips t1_iyspmti wrote

The WARRANTY on modern PV panels is 25 years. The projected lifespan of those panels is closer to 50 years. You’ll probably be replacing the inverters every 20 years. Longer if modern inverters use better quality caps.

The panels may drop in production a little bit. You’ll get 80% or the original capacity after a 3-4 decades. So size the system a little bigger than you need.

Batteries are also dropping in price rapidly so that is a tough one to judge. Modern LFP batteries are rated for 4000+ cycles. Sodium ion just became commercially available at $100/kWh and 4500 cycle rating. If you design your battery to only use half of it’s capacity any day those are 20-25 year batteries. They are claiming the gen 2 sodium batteries may hit 10,000 cycles at $50-$75/kWh within 3-4 years. Those will be 30 year batteries by the sounds of it.

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reboot_the_world t1_iyss7lq wrote

>So size the system a little bigger than you need.

How do you do this, if you already used your whole roof?

Like i told you, the prime cost in northern germany for PV are around 12cent where i live. This was before the war. Now it should be around 15 cent.

Here is a study from one of THE research institutes in germany (sorry, only in german): https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/de/veroeffentlichungen/studien/studie-stromgestehungskosten-erneuerbare-energien.html

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SatanLifeProTips t1_iyt1g2e wrote

Invest in energy efficiency if you are out of roof space. You can spend money on anything from better appliances to insulation to reduce consumption.

Or simply rely on your grid tie to make up the surplus. If you only meet 80% of your energy needs…. Well that is fine. You reduced your power bill by 80%. Stop worrying about 100% solutions.

As for expensive prices right now, ever hear about the chip shortage? China fucked up hard between covid lockdowns and the complete collapse of their power grid this year. The answer is patience, grasshopper. We’ll get back into a PV equipment price falling price cycle quickly enough. EVERYTHING is overpriced and expensive right now. All the forecasts are for the chip market to shift from famine to feast (glut) within 6-18 months. It is a 3+ year cycle for industry to ramp up and we are over half way there.

You’ll also probably see all sorts of rebate programs come and go. The governments of the world are offering all sorts of subsidies. Milk one.

You can also put a PV system on your garage, shed or even in the yard. We have a 3kW system on the old bus that we use as our RV and I am wiring a new breakout plug in my shop so that when the bus is plugged into shore power it will heat and cool my shop.

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Surur t1_iysoxss wrote

Amortising the cost over the lifetime of the solar kind of ignores the concept of payback time, doesn't it, which is much more important for home users.

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reboot_the_world t1_iyspsrg wrote

Are we having a conversation about "solar is free" or about "solar is a good investment"? Thanks to the war, our energy cost rose from 28 cent per kWh to 45 to 60 cent per kWh form an energy supplier. Having photovoltaic on the roof is an awesome investment.

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Surur t1_iysr8p9 wrote

No, I dont think you understand the consumer viewpoint.

Because you have to make an upfront payment, and also because you cant opt out of electricity bills, getting solar is not just like switching to a cheaper electricity provider which sells energy at 28c per kwh.

Consumers have to decide if the upfront investment is worthwhile which is where the payback period comes in.

And obviously, after something is paid back, it's free afterwards.

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reboot_the_world t1_iysvmf8 wrote

You mean the consumer that has no clue about economics?

You don't live for free in your own home. You need to invest in the preservation of it, or you have no house after a while. The same with photovoltaic. The components of your pv system have a finite lifetime. It will break down if you not renew parts of it all the time.

Here is a quote of a study from the fraunhofer institute from germany: In 2040, the electricity production costs are forecast to be between 3.58 and 6.77 cents/kWh for small PV roof systems and between 1.92 and 3.51 cents/kWh for ground-mounted systems. From 2024, the electricity generation costs of all PV systems (without battery storage) will be less than 10 cents/kWh. https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/de/veroeffentlichungen/studien/studie-stromgestehungskosten-erneuerbare-energien.html

Quote: 'Fraunhofer Society for the Advancement of Applied Research' is a German research organization with 76 institutes spread throughout Germany, each focusing on different fields of applied science (as opposed to the Max Planck Society, which works primarily on basic science). With some 29,000 employees, mainly scientists and engineers, and with an annual research budget of about €2.8 billion, it is the biggest organization for applied research and development services in Europe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraunhofer_Society

But i am sure that they only need to talk to you and you can convince them, that pv energy is for free after a short time. Sorry, but you are wrong.

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Surur t1_iysw1lt wrote

I dont think you understand - its just another way of looking at the same thing, and one which makes a lot more sense.

But you don't seem to understand - pity.

You probably do not understand why people are so eager to install solar despite the costs actually going up this year, but let me explain - its because the payback period has reduced.

Like I said, pity.

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reboot_the_world t1_iysxp56 wrote

I gave you an example. If you have an big oil tank and fill it full, you pay many years nearly nothing till it is empty you and you need to fill it again. It is totally stupid to say you have free energy, only because you paid the cost upfront and than many years nearly nothing.

This is the same for solar. You pay the cost upfront and then many years nearly nothing and than you pay again a big bunch of money to renew the parts of your system. Yes, like when you pay upfront to fill a big oil tank, you can think a few years, you get your energy for free, thanks to not getting a bill for a few years. But it is dead wrong.Hint: I have pv on my roof and i am not able to get drunk enough to think one second that i get the energy for free. Maybe i am not the right consumer, or maybe i have reality on my site?
The right thinking is, that you have energy cheaper than your neighbor without pv.

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Surur t1_iysyypk wrote

> I gave you an example. If you have an big oil tank and fill it full, you pay many years nearly nothing till it is empty you and you need to fill it again.

That is a silly example, isn't it. Again, you are ignoring the payback period. You paid for your fuel ahead of time.

If you buy 2000L of fuel oil ahead of time and use it over a year, there is no payback period - it costs exactly the same as if you bought it month to month.

It's more like buying a hacked satellite dish and getting free TV.

You are investing in the capability, not the fuel.

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reboot_the_world t1_iyt1vom wrote

If your bought the oil for 2000 Euro and thanks to the energy crisis, it cost now 10.000 Euro, you also save money.

But i understand now what you mean. You are right, it is a different view on the same thing.

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HardCounter t1_iysdu0b wrote

You're forgetting a key component: government. Taxes and regulation. You are imagining a free market world where the market decides and are forgetting that the government plays favorites. There are no taxes on sunlight and the government can't charge you to hell and back for it just yet. The reason gas is so expensive now is because of the government.

This headline could very well be true by 2030 even with equipment costs if they just keep raising the taxes on gas. I definitely see the EU installing electric monitors to determine how much energy was harnessed via solar panels and taxing you on that, though.

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SatanLifeProTips t1_iysq18d wrote

Carbon taxes are also a thing now. Because the atmosphere is not a free garbage can.

We also pay the disposal cost of those PV panels when we buy them so that the end if life is already taken care if.

I could not see a PV energy tax happening. People would lose their shit. Everyone would bypass the meters. We need to meter grid power so that was easy. Metering home generation would be a logistical nightmare.

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HardCounter t1_iysyrfc wrote

> I could not see a PV energy tax happening. People would lose their shit.

If only that were true. They'd do it incrementally so each step seems reasonable until 'surprise' there's a sudden tax with all the infrastructure in place to monitor it. They'll probably start by saying it's for tracking purposes only so they can see how effective panels are at mitigating costs and snowball from there.

Then suddenly oh my, there's a cost for using those monitors. Then oh my, in order to cover the environmental costs of making them there needs to be a tax. Then oh my, here's a tax 'cuz fuck you that's why, what's 1 cent per kwh? It's nothing, drop in the bucket. Oh my, gas taxes used to cover roads but now everyone is EV so we have to tax your energy.

Just going to boil that frog.

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SatanLifeProTips t1_iyuf1ew wrote

It’s one thing tracking centralized systems. Oil gas water. All metered. Stand alone solar? It’s actually difficult and expensive to develop a monitored metering system that works across a vast spectrum of different custom systems that are all different? Not an easy task at all.

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HardCounter t1_iyv3t6m wrote

It's really easy. Force a centralized entry point into the system, a single monitor. Electricity does that already and anything attached to the grid must go through that monitor. That portion is already in place.

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jadrad t1_iyubmsr wrote

You’re forgetting a key component: the global oil and gas cartel. We literally had Saudi and Russia coming to a deal to cut millions of barrels of oil per day to blow up the price at the pump, and Russia disabling and bombing its own gas pipeline to create shortages to keep the global price of gas high.

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