How Solar Power Got So Cheap … So Fast

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[sparkytas]

My advice (I'm a highly experienced accredited solar installer) for anyone thinking about installing Solar on their home is to very carefully choose your installer, and run away from any cold canvassing company. Solar is brilliant for most people with an unshaded roof, but the quality of the install workmanship is critical to a low maintenance system. It is also critical to keep the "As Installed" info pack in your switchboard. In 8 years time if something goes wrong, having detailed info at hand on how the system is wired (string layout map) can save a technician ALOT of time when trying to make repairs. I've also gone off micro-inverters as far less cheap/easy to rectify faults on. If a micro-inverter fails, unless you have a map of where each of the micro-inverters is located, replacing one or more micro-inverter that's failed can be cost prohibitive - climbing up onto the roof, potentially removing multiple panel to find or access it etc. Significantly easier/cheaper to walk up to the wall where the string inverter is located and swap it out.
I love my own 10kw system. Even with an EV I pay tiny winter bills and no bills any other time of year (located in Tasmania, Australia - no battery installed yet).

[rdanilb]

The incentives where indeed quite important but, at least in Europe, the solar adoption increased greatly after Russian invasion of Ukraine and subsequent energy crises. Suddenly people realised how important is to be energy independent and electricity is the energy that can be created by anyone. And also, other countries as well, realised the importance of being energy independent.

[DrewskisBrews]

I just began seriously considering rooftop residential solar, and it didn't take long for me to uncover how unfair and anti-solar my local monopoly electric utility is. The unfair net metering arrangements and fixed monthly "grid connection fee" changed my long-term plan to completely disconnect from the grid to spite them.

[mv]

There's also the tech argument: the computer chip industry made silicon the most studied material ever in terms of manufacturing processes. The latter is what drove mass production at minimal cost and enabled profitability for volume sales.

[uddek]

Imagine if the cost to install solar on your roof also dropped as substantially. It's roughly the same here as it was 7 years ago when I first looked into it.

[AnvilCreekLodge]

Cheap solar PV was surprising for even me. While planning my off-grid net-zero lodge and cabins development, I had been planning on a mix of solar PV and thermal vacuum tubes, but an advisor pointed out that even if I use resistive water heaters, for my climate of Nome, Alaska it’s better/cheaper to use just PV. Of course I’m using heat pumps, so it’s even better.

[ben_sch]

Matt, You explained the mechanisms by which Solar got un-stuck from it's early adopter stage - but you didn't exactly specify the incentives that were given (except for the feed-in tariffs). Would have loved to hear more about that. IIRC the US played a critical role in the R&D of solar in the late 20th century and Germany in the 2000s. Could have reflected more on what happened in between these stages of adoption and decline. Great video nonetheless!

[sleeepylittlesheeepy]

My parents recently got solar, my father didnt want to get it at first but I started talking about solarpanels and other interesting things to do with energy when I discovered this channel.
But also you pay a lot of money up front, luckily the incentives helped a lot with that. We could borrow money without any interest at all from the government and have multiple years to pay the original money back, and possibly less if we cant afford to pay it back.

So at least you played a big part in our solar, thank you for that.

[jwestney]

China dumping subsidized pv on the market also had a huge effect. It accelerated the adoption curve that you described so well.

[jeromebarry]

That $20, 000 price point for putting PV on my house has been unchanged for the past 10 years. At this point I'm of an age to realize I won't live long enough to justify the cost of buying it.

[ab-tffl]

It should be noted that the low LCOE figures mentioned in the video are for utility-scale solar installations, where they buy up large chunk of desert and fill it with several megawatts of solar panels all at once. Rooftop solar LCOE is much higher than this, as installation is much more expensive when crews are working on top of roofs than on the ground, plus it's being done one house at a time, rather than in bulk.

[royhi]

The biggest incentive was the price per KW in my area...and the price is always increasing.
Being independant from the 'Grid' with a battery storage system is also a plus when the power goes out.
After doing the calculations, the PV system with battery back up/storage will be paying for itself in 7 years...maybe less.
DO IT NOW WHILE THERE IS A TAX REFUND!

[martintokinaga]

I think you left out one important point. The cost of panels drops significantly because of the low production cost in China. I don't know whether there are state subsidy or cheap labor or both or whatever reasons. Whenever technology able to get into China, they can produce it cheaply. Initially not the very good quality but can later get better. Like the high speed train. They get the tech from Germany and then they produce it in much lower cost and then improve from it. And they then even export these tech. But it seems Germany did not benefit from that. Another example is the car industry, they are giving it away to China.

[winrampen]

It might be worth mentioning that solar PV usefulness is greatly influenced by latitude. In the northern UK the turn down ratio from summer to winter (when we really need electricity) is something like 9:1. Fortunately the sun also creates wind.... A second point is that silicon-based PV takes a lot of input energy - so that, at higher latitudes, it can take years to pay back the input - which means spending the energy long before you break even. If Perovskite panels can be made robust enough, this will change. And this could really be an avalanche.

[LILEE]

In my country the price of the solar panels did not reduced at all in the last 10 years. It is like when someone said the price of the EV-s will reduce because of the cost of the battery packs are reduced in the last 10 years greatly… nothing happened or lots of EV became more expensive. Here we the solar energy is never generate profit. Need 15 years just to get back the cost of it, but probably during that time lots of thing would break. Here solar energy is good for those only who does not have any other choice, away from any electrical grid.

[darrylrichman]

I did always think solar was going to be important. In the 1980s in LA, we installed a solar hot water system on our roof. It halved our natural gas bill and we never ran out of hot water. Now we have a 12kw PV system that has been running since 2001. It took 12 years to break even (1.5 years shorter than I had penciled out at installation), but we expected to stay in our house longer, and it has worked out for us. We are now contemplating upgrading the system to 20kw and installing some kind of battery storage. With the IRA, I expect a much shorter payoff period, and an end to power outages (which are regular occurrences where we live now, and why both of my neighbors have installed generators). The change in rules here in CA means that either it wasn't worth just having a PV system; it has to include storage to make it economically feasible.

[vaakdemandante]

The thing is, still it ISN'T cheap, because:
1. the state heavily subsidizes the buyer - at least in EU
2. there's no viable plan for recycling the huge amount of solar panels that are getting old
3. there's still no cost effective way to store the energy when the sun isn't shining

On the grand scheme of things PV panels are *expensive* - just because the owner does not bare the full cost, does not mean that other people, in the future won't have to.

[stevesolaris]

I used to fit solar water heating equipment around 2008 - 2010 and it really was good but as you said, it was hard to get people to commit to it just because of the payback ratio and when the UK gov cut back the feed in tariff sales dropped to the point the company i worked for literally changed how much i was getting paid per job whilst i was fitting it. Getting told i was getting paid £150 for a 1 panel/ cylinder replacement and all the pipe work, which would take about 3-4 hrs only to find when going back to the office they had reduced what i was getting paid to £120. Needless to say i quit.

[fredrhodes]

I own a solar installation company and have been in the solar business since 2008. The biggest reason is government policies promoting Solar while demonizing oil. We have a major issue on how to dispose of solar modules. We are a very small company and have over 100 that have been removed due to damage or failure and the cost to dispose is prohibitive. Without the continued government subsidies we would see a different market.

[SarcasmoRex]

The biggest issue I'm having with getting on solar is that in my neck of the woods, the installation on my home would be something like 65K, and that's before the battery setup.