Solar module prices reached a new low this week, says Leen van Bellen, business development manager Europe for Search4Solar, a European purchasing and selling platform for solar products. He tells pv magazine that prices will remain low in the short term.
Because grid level power delivery is about FAR more than just raw wattage numbers. Momentum of spinning turbines is extremely important to the grid. The grid relies on generation equipment maintaing an AC frequency of 60 hz or 50hz or whatever a country decides on. Changing loads throughout the day literally add an amount of drag to the entire grid and it can drag the frequency down. The inverse can also happen. If you have fluctuating wind or cloud cover you can bring the whole grid down if you can’t instantly spin up other methods to pick up the slack.
reliable consistent power delivery is absolutely critical when it comes to running the grid effectively and that is something that solar and wind are bad at
Ideally we will be able to use those technologies to fill grid level storage (batteries, pumped hydro) to supply 100% of our energy needs in the not too distant future but until then we desperately need large, consistent, clean power generation.
You aren’t wrong, but you are assuming that the grid is required. Solar panels can be installed at the point of use, and then the grid doesn’t come into it at all.
That’s the worst way to do solar, though. It doesn’t get to take advantage of economies of scale in installation and inverters. Some levelized cost of energy studies put it just as expensive as nuclear.
Solar gets its cheapness when it’s in fields or on top of large, flat commercial/industrial buildings.
Do commercial/industrial buildings not require power then?
There’s often enough space on those buildings for excess power. Not all those buildings have particularly intensive energy needs. Many are just warehouses.
I agree, but off grid solar requires a lot more panels and personal infrastructure owned by the customer than grid tied solar. and a storage solution for night time and winter and cloudy days.
A typical house isn’t going off grid and maintaining a worry free electric schedule without a minimum of 25,000$ of panels, mounts, inverters, batteries, BMS, cabling, installation, and permits.
To be fair, the cost is still less than the amount of time the system will last so economically is can be viable but who has 25,000$ just sitting around…you have to be able to install it yourself to save enough money to really even think about doing it.
I am on your side, but we should be focusing on storage technology right now because solar is honestly really advanced at this point. Once those technologies can work together all the arguments against solar that make sense disappear.