Maybe you missed my point. I want to see exponential growth in watts per dollar for total system cost.
There’s a paragraph near the end that doesn’t make a lot of sense, with a chart *with data only from 2005 to 2009, projected out to 2031.” The fact that someone would project out 5 years of data for 27 more years does not fill me with confidence. Even the supposed crossover point is 2020, 11 years after his 5 year window of data.
This is another guy who is looking either dishonest or sloppy, conflating power per dollar for system and panel costs.
Very simple. Show a multidecade plot of power per dollar for system cost—with actual multidecade data, and not just projections. Let’s see if it’s exponential, and let’s see what the doubling time is.
And then given the cost, let’s see if Ray’s projections for solar power generation look reasonable. I really doubt it.
Here’s the Nation Renewable Energy Laboratory market report.
Page 62 has whole-system costs for 1998-2010, which fall about half (which doesn’t reflect the recent drop of solar cell prices towards production cost, the alleviation of the silicon shortage caused by unexpectedly rapid growth, and the overshoot below cost due to Chinese subsidies).
There are module (not just PV cell, those are earlier) price data back to 1980 on page 60, also with a doubling time around a decade.
You can also look at this paper for more LCOE data:
I think the graph on page 63 has the best installation data. Again, same years as the graph on 62, but breaking out the installation and pv costs separately. The installation costs went down about a third in 12 years. The internal trend looks a lot worse, with 2005-2010 being essentially flat, but lets go with the 35% drop. You wanna get out a calculator to figure out the halving time? Let’s say conservatively, 15 years.
Meanwhile, Kurzweil’s talk, from 2011, says that solar will rule the world in 16 years. Will another 35% reduction in installation costs make solar “rule the world”?
From last time, we had $3.30 per watt on installation. At $2.20 per watt in 15 years, and assuming free solar cells, will solar rule the world?
Maybe hopeful. They had coal at 2.10 per watt on the wikipedia page. Of course, the PVs won’t really be free, but it does look competitive.
You’ve made me a little more hopeful.
I think it’s materials science that eventually makes the difference, when we start replacing window panels with gorilla glass solar panels. The difference comes when solar is no longer something extra you add to a building, but part of the structure itself.
Hmmm, I’m not so sure. Yeah, we’ve got price per watt (Power), but it really should be price per kWh averaged over a day, which would include capacity factor, which is a big problem for solar. The panels seem cheap enough, but we need a big breakthrough in installation costs. I think it could happen, but the data doesn’t predict it coming in Ray’s timeframe.
Demo innovations (i.e. grist for the future, not already in the aggregate data) lately have included robots to do installation, designs with reduced installation reqs. The US DOE Sunshot Initiative page has the details of their programs supporting BOS, easier permitting, and so forth, although they have some interest in spinning a positive picture.
Cheap panels does suggest risk of slowdown, but there’s also some room to shift further tradeoffs in design, i.e. as cost of manufacturing and efficiency become less of an issue more effort will go into designing panels that work well with the BOS improvements.
and assuming free solar cells, will solar rule the world?
It won’t dominate dark areas, or assume 100% load (without batteries that push back dominance later), or price out already built nuclear plants (or coal and gas plants, absent massive carbon taxes). The claim that we might build so much solar as to match today’s world electrical output (but not the output of that future time) wouldn’t be shocking to me, although my guess would be for it to take longer than Kurzweil predicts (there are more efficiency gains to be had, but efficiency gives you free BOS savings by letting you use fewer panels, and the other areas will have to step up, especially for the later parts of his prediction).
Maybe you missed my point. I want to see exponential growth in watts per dollar for total system cost.
There’s a paragraph near the end that doesn’t make a lot of sense, with a chart *with data only from 2005 to 2009, projected out to 2031.” The fact that someone would project out 5 years of data for 27 more years does not fill me with confidence. Even the supposed crossover point is 2020, 11 years after his 5 year window of data.
This is another guy who is looking either dishonest or sloppy, conflating power per dollar for system and panel costs.
Very simple. Show a multidecade plot of power per dollar for system cost—with actual multidecade data, and not just projections. Let’s see if it’s exponential, and let’s see what the doubling time is.
And then given the cost, let’s see if Ray’s projections for solar power generation look reasonable. I really doubt it.
Here’s the Nation Renewable Energy Laboratory market report.
Page 62 has whole-system costs for 1998-2010, which fall about half (which doesn’t reflect the recent drop of solar cell prices towards production cost, the alleviation of the silicon shortage caused by unexpectedly rapid growth, and the overshoot below cost due to Chinese subsidies).
There are module (not just PV cell, those are earlier) price data back to 1980 on page 60, also with a doubling time around a decade.
You can also look at this paper for more LCOE data:
Thank you for the diligence.
I think the graph on page 63 has the best installation data. Again, same years as the graph on 62, but breaking out the installation and pv costs separately. The installation costs went down about a third in 12 years. The internal trend looks a lot worse, with 2005-2010 being essentially flat, but lets go with the 35% drop. You wanna get out a calculator to figure out the halving time? Let’s say conservatively, 15 years.
Meanwhile, Kurzweil’s talk, from 2011, says that solar will rule the world in 16 years. Will another 35% reduction in installation costs make solar “rule the world”?
Looks like we’re continuing our previous conversation: http://lesswrong.com/lw/dm5/why_could_you_be_optimistic_that_the_singularity/71cs
From last time, we had $3.30 per watt on installation. At $2.20 per watt in 15 years, and assuming free solar cells, will solar rule the world?
Maybe hopeful. They had coal at 2.10 per watt on the wikipedia page. Of course, the PVs won’t really be free, but it does look competitive.
You’ve made me a little more hopeful.
I think it’s materials science that eventually makes the difference, when we start replacing window panels with gorilla glass solar panels. The difference comes when solar is no longer something extra you add to a building, but part of the structure itself.
Hmmm, I’m not so sure. Yeah, we’ve got price per watt (Power), but it really should be price per kWh averaged over a day, which would include capacity factor, which is a big problem for solar. The panels seem cheap enough, but we need a big breakthrough in installation costs. I think it could happen, but the data doesn’t predict it coming in Ray’s timeframe.
Demo innovations (i.e. grist for the future, not already in the aggregate data) lately have included robots to do installation, designs with reduced installation reqs. The US DOE Sunshot Initiative page has the details of their programs supporting BOS, easier permitting, and so forth, although they have some interest in spinning a positive picture.
Cheap panels does suggest risk of slowdown, but there’s also some room to shift further tradeoffs in design, i.e. as cost of manufacturing and efficiency become less of an issue more effort will go into designing panels that work well with the BOS improvements.
It won’t dominate dark areas, or assume 100% load (without batteries that push back dominance later), or price out already built nuclear plants (or coal and gas plants, absent massive carbon taxes). The claim that we might build so much solar as to match today’s world electrical output (but not the output of that future time) wouldn’t be shocking to me, although my guess would be for it to take longer than Kurzweil predicts (there are more efficiency gains to be had, but efficiency gives you free BOS savings by letting you use fewer panels, and the other areas will have to step up, especially for the later parts of his prediction).