Solar has always an extremely high ratio for megawatt per mass unit.
This price is really good
Good news perhaps but I’m sure I won’t see any benefit in Scotland, still thousands to add solar panels.
Scotland has really good wind power, anyway. Between that, nuclear, and a few other renewable sources, you guys are down to 10% fossil fuel energy use. So don’t worry about solar.
Yup. Average here in south US is 25k for a home system without battery backup.
At the risk of getting political, you should expect that to go up under Trump. The tariff war with China during his first term kept panel prices high, and it’s going to be worse this time. And that’s not his only policy that will affect pricing.
For electricity generation: Solar across the UK was about 5% in last year, while Wind was about 29% and Nuclear 13.9%, and hydro 1.3% - so 49.2% of electricity generation over the last 12 months was carbon neutral.
That’s a huge success story - still a long way to go, particularly as that does not include Gas burned in homes, but the UK is moving in the right direction. And Scotland is a huge source of Wind & Hydro power for the whole country.
So even if the barriers to solar in your home are still high, the grid is getting cleaner and cleaner every year. There are also community projects installing wind generators which you can join/invest in if you do want to try and get a slice of cleaner energy and solar is not realistic.
Edit: Source on UK electricity generation: https://www.energydashboard.co.uk/historical Good data on UK electricity generation
Installation the trouble. Roofing is expensive. Next time you have to redo the roof: then it’s time
Just have to buy 1100 panels 😋 but then the price is 0.055€/watt …
I Want one, but only one or a couple, to put on my balcony…
These are topcon modules only. Considering a 400W panel will have about 72 modules in it, that’s only about 15 panels worth. Of course, then you have to actually build the panel and connect the modules, put it behind glass inside a frame, then put in a bypass diode and leads for connection. So an actual panel ends up being about 5-10X the cost of the modules per W.
You can pay a lot less than 10x for completed panels. https://store.santansolar.com/ amazed me.
Thousands of people buying rooftop panels was never going to be the best way towards a Water/Wind/Solar (WWS) future. Fitting panels to the roof has to work around the roof geometry and obstructions like vents. That makes every job a custom job. It also means thousands of small inverters rather than a few big ones.
Compare that to setting up thousands of panels on racks in a field. As long as it’s relatively open and flat, you just slap those babies down. You haul in a few big inverters which are often built right into shipping containers that can just be placed on site, hooked up, and left there. Batteries need inverters, too, so if your project includes some storage, then you only need one set of inverters.
I get the feeling of independence from the system that solar panels on the roof gives people, but it’s just not economically the best way to go. The insanely cheap dollars per MWh of solar is only seen when deploying them on a mass scale. That means roofs of commercial/industrial buildings or bigger.
Rooftop units might not be the least expressive, but they are absolutely the way to go. The less we rely on the utilities, the more demand we take off of their adding grid, that they refuse to upgrade. It also means more energy independence. A friend of mine has a small rooftop setup that has completely offset his electricity isn’t to the punt that he bought a plugin hybrid that never goes out battery for his day to day travels and costs him nothing to charge.
If you want energy independence, push for community solar. Neighborhoods or municipalities get together to own their own solar field. Then you get a measure of independence while also taking advantage of economies of scale.
deleted by creator
When panels were 30c/watt, projects at $1/watt in EU and US happened. 70c/watt was spent on labour, copper, support structures, and grid connection equipment. All of those can be locally produced, with possible exception of last item.
At 6c/watt, that is over 90% of power projects are local economy boosting instead of 70%. It provides cheaper energy that is useful for industrialization and cost of living benefits too. US tariffs on solar are entirely about protecting oil/gas extortion power instead of a $10B solar production industry that needs fairly expensive support.
Solar imports does not cause energy dependence. You have power for 30+ years with no reliance on continuous fuel supplies. Shoes and apparel is a $450B industry in US. You need new supplies every year, and it makes much more sense to secure supply in that industry for war on the world purposes.
Yep the EU will be beholden to a dictatorial regime again. Instead of placating Putin for gas it will be Xi for solar panels and batteries.
At least those items you only need to buy once.
What? Have you ever had a battery powered device for longer than 2 years?
You’re either an astroturfer or useful idiot spreading oil lobby talking points.
Either you believe the climate science or you don’t. If you do, you know that we don’t have time for industry protectionism.
Europeans demolished their manufacturing sector when they stripped all the wiring out of the walls during the austerity years.
You can’t blame people for buying foreign when you’ve been defunding domestic infrastructure for over a decade.
By providing big subsidies to green energy developement. Something the EU could also have done but refused to. And so they lost their entire lead.
If EU wants to compete they’re welcome to utilize the same style of subsidies that enabled China to produce these so cheaply.
0.001$ per watt would be way ducking better
Assuming these prices are ideal for a solar grid, which EU country(s) would have the highest chance of shifting towards solar; I wonder
Probably all of them. Germany is really not ideal for solar in terms of weather, yet they are installed by many people all over the place, even today. With the cheaper prices things will get even better.
Germany is already over 50% renewable. :)
Appreciate that, glad to see there is data pointing these things out
