SOLAR POWERED: A cyclist on a cross-country camping jaunt pauses in a California state park to charge his laptop from a folding solar array.
Image: Flickr/docentjoyce
Large consumer electronic brands are likely to enter the solar energy market and fuel a worldwide boom in panel installations that will surpass most expectations as the rooftop technology becomes cheaper than gas, a report by Citigroup says.
Although worldwide solar installations grew by an average of 59 percent per year from 2007 to 2012, much of that advance was due to subsidies and legislation mandating solar spending. That's about to change, according to the report.
Solar has reached residential parity in many regions, and utility-scale parity will follow over the next few years. Some U.S. utilities are already choosing to build solar farms instead of gas plants to deliver peak loads based on pure economics.
"In Germany, Spain, Portugal, Australia and the South-West of the U.S., residential-scale solar has already reached grid-parity with average residential electricity prices," Citigroup analysts Shar Pourreza, Jason Channell and Timothy Lam wrote in their report. "In other countries grid parity is not far away. We forecast that grid parity will be attained by Japan in 2014-2016, South Korea in 2016-2020 and by the U.K. in 2018-2021."
On the other hand, China, India, Russia and Saudi Arabia will not attain grid parity until after 2020, despite good solar conditions in some regions, due to their low residential electricity prices, which are subsidized by the state, the report says.
As far as utilities are concerned, giant solar farms must be able to compete against wholesale power prices from combined-cycle gas turbine plants. That's currently impossible with U.S. shale gas selling at $3 per million British thermal units. But Citigroup says $3 per MMBtu doesn't reflect the true cost of production of shale gas. In addition, gas costs more in Europe and Asia (in some cases much more: $16 per MMBtu in Japan), so solar can be highly competitive there even at utility scale.
One issue will be that solar growth will lead to lower utilization rates at conventional generation plants, which will nevertheless need to remain online to cover power demand on less sunny days, at night and during the winter.
"Ultimately we believe that the system will move to a capacity payment mechanism to remunerate utilities for low utilization rates on plants that must remain open as backup generation," the analysts said. "Ultimately, while solar can reduce costs directly, the consumer will end up paying for these capacity payments."
Consumer electronic brands likely to move in
"We are likely to see large consumer electronic brands dominate the space, potentially alongside large industrial manufacturers," Citigroup said. "These companies would bring their existing brand strength, customer relationships, route to market, balance sheets, access to cheap capital and purchasing power to the party. If they were to build 5 [gigawatts] of capacity using the latest equipment, they would achieve economies of scale and lower costs by a technology advantage of two to three years."
Solar panel manufacturing is a relatively easy activity to gain entry to, with most companies using the same machines manufactured by the same few equipment providers, and with little to differentiate themselves apart from size of facility and location.
While new entrants could try to buy distressed assets from existing solar market players -- as has happened with German producer Q-Cells, taken over by South Korea's Hanwha -- such deals would come with older and higher-cost equipment or with production based in higher-cost locations like Europe or the United States.
"While consolidation of existing capacity is likely to happen to an extent, we suspect it is more likely that it will be new production facilities using the latest equipment, and with larger unit facilities to gain extra economies of scale," the report says.
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22 Comments
Add CommentIf this new product comes to fruition then solar will not only challenge natural gas but make it obsolete as it would coal and oil
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130227085942.htm
That's because current technology has 15 to 20% efficiency and this new design can produce 70% and possibly higher.
That's nearly 5 times higher than current manufactured panels and would simply be revolutionary.
With new grid level storage technology hitting the market solar will be able to move center stage as a major utility power source.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne idea is to marry natural gas and solar. Many homes already have natural gas piped in. In a recent electric power outage, the gas furnace wouldn't work. It has electric blowers. But the gas hot water heater uses pressure from the water, and has a gas pilot. So, we were able to keep the tropical bird warm in the bathroom by filling the bath tub once an hour or so.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSolar electric power depends on sunlight. It doesn't require solar cells. One can use solar energy to heat water, and a turbine creates electrical power. The efficiency isn't great, but you end up with hot water, which can be used as hot water or as heat. Hot water can be easily stored for night time usage. If it isn't sunny, you can use natural gas to heat the water and run the turbine. Multiple turbines can provide redundancy, insulating against failures. Your house can go off-grid.
Natural gas is about half as bad as coal for global warming. If half your energy came from solar, then it'd be a quarter as bad. We really need to get to an eighth, on average. Time to improve housing insulation.
Not using waste heat while generating electricity is criminally stupid.
Because of system wide methane leaks gas is a worse GHG forcer than coal - real science not the Big Oil junk variety.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLove to see the efficiency of you refrigerant powered turbine though. Now that would be a breakthough that nobody has succeeded with yet.
The stockbrokers at Bloomberg are well into their Big Oil assigned and paid for disinformation project, trying to fool the rubes that solar is the way to go thereby generation trillions in sales for Big Oil for the gas backup.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisActually solar is currently 90 cents/kwh when 5 to 7 times sized transmission requirements and gas backup are included. Replace the gas with the best projections of grid level storage add a buck a kwh to that. Primarily backed up with inefficient fossil plant run inefficiently its less ghg's less fossil fuel far less money skipping the solar and just using efficient fossil plant.
The cost of solar having already achieved its maximum economy of scale benefit will resume its slow annual cost increase once Chinese dumping ends.
90 cents for solar. How's that:
Lets take Vermont for example. Lotsa greenies there telling us the wonders of solar.
https://openpv.nrel.gov/rankings
So vermont $7.53 watt/peak or 7530 kw/peak installed average. Ok so using pV watts in Burlington the one watt peak gets 1.117kwh per annum. Financing at 7% home equity over 20 year life gives approx
53 cents a kwh
now lets add in for the array on every roof scam the low information greenie is wont to propose, 17 cents a kwh for gas backup, and 10 cents a kwh for 7 times sized transmission systems and we get
80 cents a kwh.
While the installed cost might be lower, commercial is similar but financing rates for the typical fly by night solar/wind operator are at least 15% so
90 cents a kwh.
Here's a 17 MW peak solar install in service Jan 2011 by expert engineers at Duke Energy using real solar panels made in the USA not the Walmart quality Chinese junk with the same service life as everything else you buy at Walmart.
www.pv-tech.org/project_focus/davidson_county_solar_farm_north_carolina
$43 a watt average, 65 cents a kwh at Dukes discount rate. To that we need to add 17 cents a kwh for gas backup and 8 cents for transmission. 90 cents a kwh
Now remember because of gas backup to solar no GHG's are saved. The DOE projects future of Green storage at $120/khr resulting in a buck a kwh added to your power bill.
There is a cost to the silly obsession of the uninformed in these worthless forms of power and its paid in the blood of millions of innocents.
If all the money wasted on wind and solar in the last 10 years had been spent on nukes the world would now be coal free, 30 million air pollution deaths worldwide wouldn't have happened and the AGW precipice be moved back 20 years.
Ummm, I think all your numbers are WAY WAY off.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI use a solar utility (SunRun) where they install the panels on my house, maintain them, then bill me for the electricty generated. I have a 19 year deal with them at a fixed rate for what they generate, and the rate is lower than the delivered rate from the local electric company (NSTAR).
So I save money on my bill, they deal with any maintenance issues (there haven't been any yet after the first three years), and everyone's happy.
If Solar was so much more expensive than coal/gas, SunRun would be out of business quickly, but somehow the numbers work to make this affordable for them and for me.
Plus the price of solar panels has plummetted even since they installed mine, so while yes, there were some government incentives to help make this work out, the amount of those incentives is quickly approaching the amount saved on ever cheaper solar tech.
Plus when you do the math for the cost of gas (or coal) where are you adding in the environmental damage they cause? Clean up of spills, health issues to humans and wildlife, all the government subsidies those companies have received over the years, and what about the huge looming problems of global warming? When many cities around the world are constantly being flooded, storms are causing huge amounts of extra damage each year, droughts are destroying wilderness and crops, (the list goes on) are you adding the countless billions of dollars of damage into your price for gas/oil energy? No you aren't, so you aren't representing the real cost, just a HEAVILY subsidized one... subsidized both in actual government money, and in hidden costs from immediate environmental damage and longer term global damage.
Sticking your head in the sand about these hidden costs doesn't make them any less real.
Compete with...not really. Solar has it's place but not on the larger scale.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe're on the third generation of solar panels on our sun room (32 years). any cost saving is out the window because of installation and maintenance costs...we have them almost as a hobby. There are local subsidies for solar but not much of a dent in the scheme of things.
If something to generate electricity works cost effectively on a long term basis it will be adopted by the public and individuals will become wealthy supplying the product.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen new technologies to generate electricity are not cost effective on a long term basis, but still release less CO2 than fossil fuels, they are promoted by SA.
It would be great if solar power is successful, but I an skeptical of when that may happen.
If I was playing the market I'd be more likely to invest in companies developing new battery and capacitor technology. It is probably more important.
A big benefit of solar is that it can generate power at the point of load during peak usage hours of the day. This is why rooftop solar has already reached "grid parity" in many places is because it generates RETAIL electricity, the price of which is much higher than the WHOLESALE electricity large solar farms generate. Peak retail electricity is the most expensive and solar power can generate during some of the highest electricity prices of the day. Generating at the point of load also eases grid congestion since the solar PV appears like a negative load to the grid operator while it is producing. This keeps the utility from having to fire up nearly as many inefficient and dirty "peaker" power plants as they would have if the solar wasn't in place. The eased grid congestion also reduces stress on transformers and other equipment, lengthening their life span and reducing the utility's cost.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhile the utilities may want compensation to keep plants open to cover for cloudy days and at night, these plants are already built and no new plants are being constructes to "back up" solar energy. Since utilities were already covering both daytime peak demand and the nighttime demand that is mostly made up of "baseload" demand, the fact that a portion of peak daytime demand doesn't have to be satisfied anymore doesn't require them to build more plants. As an anology, riding your bike to work 1 or 2 days a week instead of driving a car you already own doesn't mean you need to buy ANOTHER car for the 3 or 4 days a week you still drive.
All this bellyaching from the utilities is because distributed renewable energy threatens their business model of seeking guaranteed returns on large capital investments such as centralized power plants and grid infrastructure. If I have a solar array on my roof, I don't mind paying the utility for staying connected to the grid and getting energy when my array doesn't satisfy all of my demand. However, I ALREADY pay the utility for this service, but they want MORE money when I use LESS of their electricity? Gimme a break! This is just a desperate attempt to cling to their increasingly obsolete business model and use as many of their incumbency advantages as possible to do it.
Don't worry, seth isn't being completely honest in his (just guessing) post and isn't telling you that he thinks nuclear power is the only way to solve all the world's problems. All the silly "calculations" he posts are part of a propaganda campaign to discredit other energy sources and nothing gets him in a tizzy faster than solar power.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI really don't understand where he gets this nonsense of "average" watts. Solar PV, nor any other energy source for that matter, generates "average" watts. When the sun is shining, solar panels output power. Good thing we humans do most of our activity during the day so solar power can be there to satisfy our PEAK, RETAIL demand.
And I don't know why seth hates solar power so much when he CONSTANTLY complains about the dangers of fossil fuels. Since utilities with a lot of solar don't have to fire up dirty and inefficient "peaker" plants as often as they would have without it, you would think he would be all over it. But alas, the TROLL is strong with this one...
tharriss, you won't get anywhere refuting Sethdayal. If there were an article on new technology for diapers, he would comment about how nukes are beneficial to diapers, and in every single article about solar, he claims solar costs $0.90/kwh and that there are additional costs making solar supposedly 10 - 20 times current rates. Its hogwash.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor instance, the distinction between your example and his, in your example solar payback is achieved in 3 to 6 years. Seth builds in a 7% interest payment for 20 years as a slight of hand via the fact that solar panels are rated for a 20 - 40 year service life. His numbers for nukes will never address decommissioning of a plant, so I believe he thinks old plant licenses should be continuously renewed or be granted in perpetuity. He will never acknowledge the subsidy realized by making taxpayers insure nukes for catastrophic loss that private insurers are unwilling to offer. But yet, he shuns subsidies for renewables. Every installation of a new nuke site in the US has resulted in increased prices for electricity for consumers. Solar has to compete at the existing consumer price, seemingly without the equal advantage of higher pricing. And if you give Seth credence, solar has to do it without the subsidies nukes get today.
Every utility that operates a nuke in the US receives taxpayer supported subsidies beyond the prices charged to consumers, and beyond the increased prices that nuke construction causes.
To be fair, centralized large solar construction will reap some of the same taxpayer advantages as nukes, but not as large as those that got nuke power off the drawing board. The nuke industry would not exist in any form today, if not for even larger, massive initial subsidies. Now is the time solar is in that early developmental stage. As is stated several times in this article, subsidies for residential (read that distributed or de-centralized production, which I favor) are fading internationally, as the cost/benefit threshold of solar is materializing for more and more locations.
Its time we end the subsidies for nukes and fossil fuels. Those who support solar, wind, and other renewables need to tie nukes and fossil fuels together in discussions of ending subsidies to mature industries with massive, record breaking, largest in the world, profits. Why should the taxpayer pay for an industry that is established and profitable? Extortion? un-regulated markets? Large corporations buying legislative votes? None of these potential answers are acceptable in my view.
You need to get a better installer...or at least get an INDUSTRY STANDARD WARRANTY on your panels. You're getting ripped off since basically ALL solar panels are guaranteed for 20 years or more. No wonder you have something against solar power; you've either allowed yourself to get swindled or you're just making this stuff up!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSince polluting energy sources can release their waste products into the environment for free and have enjoyed the lion's share of government supports for over a century, there is no way you can accurately score an energy source's cost effectiveness without taking these into account. The fact that fossil fuels are currently cheaper than renewables (in a shrinking number of markets as shown by this article, however) is partially due to their incumbency, regulatory and subsidy advantages that have NOTHING to do with their actual technical merits.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's a shame that we don't incorporate the benefits of a cleaner environment into the cost analysis of renewable energy since it provides real and tangible benefits to society. Controlling the pollution from fossil fuels as much as possible is one way of evening out this unbalance in the market, though.
Well put. Your comment was eloquent and logical. I was going to post a comment regarding two of your points, but I am certain I would not have been as clear or concise. I understand and support your call for decentralized production, and your questioning the antiquity of a current business model; and a fabricated demand for capacity payment as a new model. My hope is that we end up with a hybrid mix of centralized and decentralized that reaps the benefits of both.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd what do you think happens to the trapped methane & other gasses when coal is mined?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat I would add is that natural gas is exempt from hazardous material laws. Since the price has dropped from $9/unit to $3/unit, I believe the US should discontinue the exemption of oil and gas companies from the EPA rules for hazardous regulations. They can certainly afford to conduct business appropriately and ethically; and the price is proven to support additional costs. And according to the article, the US price is lower than the global price.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDid you know that refineries actually add benzine into the process as an octane booster for gasoline? They buy it as a byproduct of manufacturing (eliminating the cost of disposal to organizations that are required to comply to the environmental laws) Then they just make all of us burn it up in our cars to make us their distributed pollution disposal system. Calif legislated lower benzine levels, and the benzine that was eliminated from Calif air mysteriously showed up in the air in Oregon. (higher than previous levels there) Refiners were putting the additional benzine previously used in Calif into the refined product sold in Oregon. Was it to conflate the air test data? Was it to dispose of the benzine? All that is known is that Calif drivers had to pay higher prices for the cost of not adding it in.
The very companies that cry about over-regulation, are, in the case of fossil fuels, exempt from these important ones; but do not want the public to be too familiar with that fact and what it means to their organizations.
You may be on to something. In the mid 70's, following the oil crisis of '74, it was said that solar would not be cost effective until oil went from the then current $9/barrel price to $30.00. Now, accepting that the price of gold and oil has been stable, long term, and that it is the really the value of money that has changed, it has been calculated that since the elimination of the gold standard, one US dollar is now worth 5 cents of its original value. So if you do the math, oil would have to be worth $90/barrel today for solar to be cost effective.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThen, solar PV was about 7-14% efficient. Today, solar is 16-40% efficient. As production capacity went up, solar PV came down (actually down faster due to Chinese dumping, but compensating tariffs kicked in last Sept, 2012).
So logically, solar should be well established as cost effective; practically, it is just becoming so.
We have a high efficiency, inexpensive, scalable multifuel turbine to steeply reduce the cost of on site electricity or vehicular/craft propulsion. While NG is fuel of choice, copious amounts of biomethane, syngas, strand gas are available for the mix, to further reduce the cost/ btu, using “NG”, or NG et al as Fuel. Our turbine also hybridizes with solar thermal, which can compete with PV, and does not necessitate the huge costly wafer production lines. Hybridizing is a plus, with a small additional cost for significant boost in renewable power. Sannerwind@gmail.com
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't understand why you are saying solar REQUIRES a gas backup. This simply is not true. A gas backup may be convenient, but it is far from required. Also, you are figuring the cost of the gas into your kwh cost, but you don't address the fact that that gas would only be used when the solar array/batteries are out of juice - it's not as if you're running a gas generator 24/7. And, like I said, a gas back up is purely optional. Solar functions just fine without it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"..gas back up is purely optional. Solar functions just fine without it.."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt does, if you use coal, nuclear, hydro or geothermal instead. The latter two severely limited by geography. In the USA gas is the most economical complement to Solar - actually the correct statement is Solar is minor fuel reduction source for NG power - a savings of about 2.5 cents per kwh. Batteries can replace fossil fuel/nuclear/hydro backup on a daily basis, but that boosts the already outrageous cost of Solar into the stratosphere. Not a viable energy source. At that cost are economies would quickly collapse and those giant Solar PV factories would cease to exist.
And then you have weeks of cloudy weather, you have most areas with seasonal, usually winter, low to nil in solar while demand may be maximum. Batteries are infeasible for that situation. So no, backup is essential. Please explain how you figure you can do without backup, show numbers and details.
"..inexpensive, scalable multifuel turbine to steeply reduce the cost of on site electricity.."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAn interesting idea. Show us details, a link.
I was thinking how many like the idea of independence from the utility, of self-reliance, of energy efficiency and small-is-beautiful. I sympathize with that and even have cautious support for the concept.
Utilities are often a big rip-off. OPG, Ontario Power Generation, being a good example. Politically appointed incompetent administrators with multi-$million salaries and even bigger pensions. A workforce who get $million pensions, whereas most of us in the private sector get zip. I don't get the high, inflated cost of supplying grid electricity.
So, the practical way I can see to make Solar work is having a neighborhood Co-op energy supplier. Kick the utility out. You would need a common system of hot potable water, building cooling/heating hydronic system, CHP/absorption cooling & power generation likely gas powered. And Ice storage (and heat storage for northern areas). Solar PV and battery bank, in some rare areas supplemental Wind Turbines. Solar hot water (the most economical Solar) can directly power air conditioning or in many cases a ground source heat pump will work well. Very important must use LOCAL CURRENCY - not globalist debt money. Community currency gives work to the unemployed and underemployed. At most you might have a VERY SMALL connection to the utility which would only supply the tiny supplemental average power requirement. For a typical home avg power consumption is 6 amps @ 240v, vs the utility service is usually 100 amps or 200 amps @ 240v. Demand charge would then be very low.
And of course community CO-OP gardens & greenhouses in Northern areas. And all trade/labor in the community using community$, not debt money. And internally all walking & bike paths. Community powered EV charging stations, which could double as battery storage for those who don't drive that often. But most economical would be CO-OP vehicles, esp ICE vehicles for the odd occasion someone would want to make a long trip.
That type of system could work, though best applied to a new development. The devil as always is in the details. Optimal system design is very much dependent on the local climate. Somebody should work that out.
Biomass Pyrolysis produces biochar and biohydrogen. The gas can be stored in gasometers and be used to generate electricity when solar or wind power is unavailable.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSee www.eprida.com