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Future of Solar Power

Started by Gary_C, April 19, 2016, 01:23:46 PM

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Brucer

Quote from: florida on June 01, 2016, 07:45:46 AM
...You're right, he's way, way up there! ...

The utility charges the same base rate in another community it serves, but the generating rate is not as high as it is in Inuvik. The difference seems to reflect the distance along the highway.

Quote
... I thought he was n BC which would have been bad enough weather wise ...

Hey! :D
Bruce    LT40HDG28 bandsaw
"Complex problems have simple, easy to understand wrong answers."

florida

brucer

Compared to Inuvik you're almost in Florida!
General contractor and carpenter for 50 years.
Retired now!

tmarch

Quote from: florida on June 01, 2016, 07:48:29 AM
tmarch

How about some more information? Where are you? How much did your system cost and how much of that did you pay?  How many Kwhs did you use before your system was installed? What's your net metering return?
I'm in northwest Nebraska.  My system cost $25000.00 which is a net cost of $17500.00 after the 30% tax credit.  I withdrew the cost from an IRA basically tax free+ with the credit.  The balance of the IRA is presently earning .08% and even at the cost back when I installed it it's returning far more than the IRA.
Our rate when I installed it was .2151 per kwh for the first 500 kwh and then dropped to .1095 for the next 500 kwh plus a $17.00 "facility charge" per month.  My usage is and was less than most so I never really got much of the second 500 kwh.
As far as a net metering return, I have no idea what that means, but my April bill will be less than the "facility charge" and on average my bill is very close to that.
At todays prices for components I could do the same size system for .75% or less than the cost of mine.
Retired to the ranch, saw, and sell solar pumps.

florida

enigmaT120

Very true but all of those costs are included in the price when you buy diesel.
General contractor and carpenter for 50 years.
Retired now!

John Mc

Quote from: florida on June 02, 2016, 08:04:54 AM
enigmaT120

Very true but all of those costs are included in the price when you buy diesel.

Florida - this branch of the debate was touched off by your claim in reply #67 to this thread:

Quote from: florida on May 29, 2016, 08:32:43 PM
... solar doesn't have a smaller carbon footprint.  The footprint of diesel is easy, you just measure it at the point of use. Since solar has no point of use footprint you have to go back to the manufacturing process to measure the footprint. In that case price is a good proxy  for the footprint since everything that goes into a solar panel has to be made which creates its own footprint.  Since the power density of solar is so low more land, steel and other raw materials go into manufacturing an equivalent amount of power.   

If you are going to compare carbon footprints, you have to compare the entire manufacturing and supply line of both products fro zero to point of use. You can't arbitrarily decide to include the manufacturing and supply chain of one product (solar) simply because it has no carbon emissions at the point of use, an dcount ONLY point of use emissions for the other product (diesel). The carbon footprint (or the costs of just about any other form of pollution) of diesel is not "included" in the sale price any more than it is included in the sale price of PV panels. Carbon emissions (at least currently in the US) are externalities - the costs are born by someone else other than the manufacturer or end user (in the case of carbon emissions, it is born by the world).

To the extent that a manufacturer is forced by regulation to reduce emissions (or simply by the chooses to do so), the costs of carbon emissions or other pollution will be reflected in their costs. However, unless that emission is reduced to zero, the selling price has not fully accounted for the true costs of that pollution and has thus not covered the full "carbon footprint" of the end product.

In the case of solar PV, that cost is essentially a one-time thing: you make the panels and install them. Panels are guaranteed for 25 years, and typically last much longer than that. (If you use a string inverter, you'll also have to replace that every 10 or 12 years, or every 25 years or so for a micro inverter.) In the case of diesel, there is a point-of-use cost, as well as a production and transportation cost every single time you use it.

For just about any product in the US the carbon footprint is in very large part an externality. A carbon tax would change that externality into something reflected in the price to the end user, but there are other problems with that approach (mainly that few politicians have the guts, the political will, or the desire/ability to figure out the appropriate level)

And before we get going on subsidies, keep in mind that the fossil Fuel as well as the nuclear power industry are heavily subsidized as well. Their subsidies just take a different form than a tax credit to the end user.
If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.   - Abraham Maslow

florida

"If you are going to compare carbon footprints, you have to compare the entire manufacturing and supply line of both products fro zero to point of use"

The problem is the difference in power density. Let's use Mr Sharpe in Inuvik mentioned earlier in this thread as an example. He has a $50,000.00, 11 Kw  solar system that produces 13,000 Kwh a year. Over its life of 25 years let's assume Mr Sharpe can get 13,000 Kwh every year out of his system for a total of 325,000 Kwh. Over that 25 years Mr Sharpe is going to pay a total of $135,688.26 in principle and interest for his system. All that after tax money has to be earned which has its own huge carbon footprint.
For $6,250 off ebay I can buy an 11Kw diesel generator that will produce 13,000 Kwh in 1 hour 11 minutes on 1.1 gallons of diesel fuel.  My genset will produce that same 325,000 Kwh as Mr Sharpes solar system in 29 hours on 32.5 gallons of fuel.  Just to be fair I'll borrow the $6,250.00 for 25 years for a total cost of $16,961.03. Adding in my $80.00 in fuel gives me a total of $17,041.03.

In this situation the $135,000.00 solar system has the same power density as 32.5  gallons of diesel fuel worth $80.00.
General contractor and carpenter for 50 years.
Retired now!

Delawhere Jack

Skimmed through this thread, didn't read every post but...

Within just a few miles of me there are several rooftop solar arrays that are either/or/and:

Oriented noticeably north of the latitude line.
Shaded for a large portion of the day by trees or other buildings.

I seriously doubt these arrays would have been installed if they were not being subsidized.

Plant some trees to shade your home in the summer. You'll have less need for AC, get some exercise cleaning up leaves and limbs, attract songbirds, and in 40-80 years have a reason to call a portable sawmill.  ;D

Larry

Quote from: Larry on May 21, 2016, 04:52:15 PM
Our electric utility, Ozark Electric Cooperative, just put a one megawatt solar power generation station on line.  I haven't read how it is going as of yet.  One megawatt doesn't seem like much, but maybe they get green credits or something.  You can read about it hear.

https://www.ozarksecc.com/press/pr/solar-facility/july-15-2015

We just had a thread about electric rates and it seemed I had about the cheapest, so I'll won't say nothing bad about our utility.

I have heard rumor of a new idea.  Invest in the utility company to install solar panels than get a break on your bill.  This would be in lieu of the homeowner buying and installing there own solar panels.  The idea is to eliminate net metering.

In this mornings paper it was reported that one could buy a solar panel from the utility for $340 (100 panels maximum) and receive $1.83/month credit on your bill.  Not enough information to determine if it would be a good investment.  Tax treatment and what happens when the panel expires.

Another interesting fact.  They oriented the panels to the west instead of the usual southerly direction.  At a complementary angle they have a mirror oriented to the east which reflects into the panel during the morning.  The intent with the west exposure is to generate maximum juice in the afternoons to knock down the peak caused by air conditioning.

This will be the utilitys only alternative energy project as there contract with there wholesale energy supplier only allows them to use one megawatt of alternative energy.  Interesting.

Larry, making useful and beautiful things out of the most environmental friendly material on the planet.

We need to insure our customers understand the importance of our craft.

John Mc

Quote from: Larry on July 25, 2016, 09:34:48 PM
In this mornings paper it was reported that one could buy a solar panel from the utility for $340 (100 panels maximum) and receive $1.83/month credit on your bill.  Not enough information to determine if it would be a good investment.  Tax treatment and what happens when the panel expires.

If that is just the PV panel (no inverters, other hardware or installation), that's not a very good price.
If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.   - Abraham Maslow

Larry

The power company installs and maintains the panel on there property.  The buyer (utility customer) does nothing other than hand over $340 in return for a $1.83 credit/month on there bill.

Larry, making useful and beautiful things out of the most environmental friendly material on the planet.

We need to insure our customers understand the importance of our craft.

John Mc

Quote from: Larry on July 25, 2016, 10:00:43 PM
The power company installs and maintains the panel on there property.  The buyer (utility customer) does nothing other than hand over $340 in return for a $1.83 credit/month on there bill.

Does it say for how many years that $1.83 goes on?

Figuring the net present value (NPV = value in today's dollars of all income less all expenses): If you assume 25 years at 3% discount rate and a fixed monthly payment of $1.83, you get a net present value of about $42 for one panel.  If the credit only goes on for 20 years, the NPV would be a net loss of $13.

Of course, you can make this calculation come out just about any way you want by fiddling with the discount rate. 3%/year seemed reasonable to me, but I'm no financial analysis guru.
If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.   - Abraham Maslow

Ianab

Is that $1:83 + the slightly reduced power bill?

I can see where the local utility might want to cut their peak demand, because that's what much of their charges is based on, and also the main feeder capacity has to be sized for. If they can knock ~10% off those peaks it saves them a LOT of $$. The savings of being able to trim that peak demand can be more significant than the value of the units of power generated. But if they only compensate the panel owner for the units generated, the investment in the panel isn't a good one. But work it out on value of the power + a share in what they save on the peak charges, the maths might work.   

And if those peaks come on hot summer afternoons, because of AC loads, then solar panels could take a significant bite out of those peaks. Because it's generated and used locally they don't have the costs of distributing it though the national grid. They don't generate much on a cloudy day, but that's days peak power is a lot less.

But they will also want to limit the amount of uncontrolled local generation. Otherwise they can get in a situation where one part of the grid is producing more power than it can distribute, and they don't have control of the solar panels to shut them down.

Now this wouldn't work locally because peaks here are on cold evenings when everyone flicks on electric heaters / heat pumps / starts cooking dinner. On a nice sunny day the power demand is lowest, and you would be generating some of the least valuable base load power. A lot of the local power suppliers keep smaller hydro plants in service for a similar reason. They leave them idle most of the day, and "bank" up the water. Then they can run them at 100% for a few peak hours. You can see the on-line river level gauges going up and down in a regular cycle.
Weekend warrior, Peterson JP test pilot, Dolmar 7900 and Stihl MS310 saws and  the usual collection of power tools :)

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