Comment by londons_explore
1 year ago
The market need for cheaper solar cells seems to have evaporated, since the vast majority of the cost of solar projects these days is always in labour/land/wiring/inverters/grid connection/maintenance contracts.
That means saving a bit of money on the panels in return for lower efficiency is never a good deal.
Cost of labor might be significant in some countries, but in a lot of countries, cost of materials is still the significant cost barrier to installation of solar. If the cost of materials were to come down significantly, even if it is at the expense of some efficiency, and also make the installation much more flexible, then definitely more installation will happen. Capital invested will be recovered in a shorter duration making the investment a lot less risky. This makes lending programs much more accessible, making the whole thing a more self-reinforcing cycle.
If the materials are cheap enough, we might be able to build them into other stuff that was going to use labor anyway (shingles, asphalt, siding, etc). No idea what the economics of this look like though, and electricians (a pretty expensive form of labor) will need to be involved no matter what, but at least theoretically cheaper cells can also deal with labor costs.
>> other stuff that was going to use labor anyway (shingles, asphalt, siding, etc)
No. None of that ever works. Everyone has the "good idea" of cramming PV into some other product thinking that doing so will somehow reduce labor. It never does. Solar shingles are typical. They sound great but in reality require hundreds or thousands of electrical connections all spread over the moving flexible surface that is a wooden roof. You will be chasing electrical gremlins the moment the temperature shifts. And fixing any of those gremlins will involve penetrating the waterproofing, the core function of any roof. It is far easier to build and maintain a normal roof and then mount dedicated panels atop. The same too with siding. Want solar walls? Build normal walls and hang solar panels on them.
It is like building a computer into a desk. It seems like a great idea that will save space and keep your office tidy. There are lots of youtube videos about such builds. In reality, it is expensive on day one and extremely inconvenient to maintain in the long run. Nobody ever does it twice.
Part of why it doesn't work, though, is that PV is too expensive.
If it's cheap enough, you can tolerate failures and poor illumination of the panels for things like fence panels or whatever.
I do agree you need big panels to not have excessive labor from connections.
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PEV in metal roofing seems more workable.
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Like solar fences: https://next2sun.com/en/solar-fence/
Solar panels are already cheaper than wood, which is amazing.
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Ya, that's my take too. Continuing R&D on alternatives like perovskite might open up new use cases. Like using transparent solar cells as windows. It's worth investigating.
Bonus, it keeps scientists employed, maintaining our capacity.
I think future designs of panels might be designed in such a way an electrician isn't required. All foolproof plug'n'play connectors and designed in such a way you cannot plug them in in an unsafe way.
You don't call an electrician every time you plug in a hairdryer, and a hairdryer is typically higher voltages and currents than a single panel.
Higher voltage than a single panel, but a string of panels easily hits hundreds of volts. Even worse they can be hard to make safe, since as long as the sun is shining they are generating energy and roof installers don't like working at night.
You can avoid this by using microinverters, but they're a pretty substantial premium on each panel and an added point of failure.
There is lot of tech around solar panels that is being effectively obsoleted by the plummeting costs of the panels themselves. Why bother trying to squeeze out the last few percentage from each panel when it's so much cheaper to just install a couple more panels to make up the difference? This is the big difference between countries like the US where solar installs are still expensive at $3-$6/watt and countries like Australia where home solar installs are under $1/watt.
Perovskite solar cells are the best candidate for solving the problem that you pointed out. The best perovskite/silicon tandem cells in the laboratory have 33% efficiency, and the theoretical limit for this type of cell is 43%.
Do you know if there is any (even theoretical) work to solve the lifetime issue? Perovskites degrade in sunlight (order of months) making it seem unlikely they would ever be useful outside the lab.
I've been waiting for consumer level panels to get cheaper forever. You'd think by now that you could get a 200W panel for $50. But they have been the same $200 for what seems like a decade now (I suppose they didn't go up with inflation, but still)
You can pull up at MO Wind and Solar off of MO 60 and grab 600W panels for $195/ea today: https://windandsolar.com/risen-595-watt-mono-solar-panel-bif...
That's ballpark where you say, about $65/200W.
They also have remanufactured panels, like the 410W trina ones, even cheaper. Good outfit, nice and helpful, bought several lots of panels off of them.
It seems like the size & cost of the panel has stayed the same and the power output has gone up.
It's frustrating. Panels around $0.25/W exist, but it's really difficult to get your hands on them in small quantities as an individual. You can either string together a bunch of tiny eBay specials or drive halfway across the country to find a distributor of the panel you want who's willing to sell to consumers.
I just put another 5x550W panels up 2 months ago, and they are now 101eur per panel including tax! 30e less than I just paid. wish I had space for more!
In Germany, 405 Watt panels new can be had for 65 euros. The law allows up to 800W to be connected to homes with relatively little bureaucracy, as a balcony solar power plant which renters can install without modifying the building. This seems to have pushed the price down, so there are many 800W kits including panels, an inverter and cables available for under 400 euros.
Mind sharing a link to buy one? Not in Germany but am in Portugal looking to buy
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True but the cost of labor goes down if they get cheap enough.
For example: buy panels so cheap you just leave them on the ground. If they get damaged who cares. Some people are already using them as material for fences. Not a great angle, they’re cheap who cares.
It's even worse, perovskite degrades faster than silicon cells so you are getting lower efficiency short life cells. Tons of money is being invested in trying to fix the lifespan problem.
Some are trying to combine perovskite with silicon solar cells because they specialize at capturing different wavelengths. So-called tandem solar cells.
I wonder what happened to singlet fission cells and other things trying to get around the SQ limit
Still being worked on.
https://interestingengineering.com/energy/paderborns-new-sol...
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Labor costs are less when the weight is 10x less.
A little, but the design of the support structure is dominated by wind loads. Depending on where you are, it can need to survive wind gusts of 90 - 160 mph. At the low end, 90 mph corresponds to 1000 N / m^2, which is more than the weight of any kind of solar panel.
> That means saving a bit of money on the panels in return for lower efficiency is never a good deal.
This does not at all logically follow from your proceeding statement. Cheaper solar panels mean they can be used in different ways with different labour/land/wiring/inverters/grid connection/maintenance requirements.
It feels like the problem here is less about the solar industry and more about the construction and skilled trades generally. Everything involving an electrician / electrical contractor has gone way up in the last 10-15 years, along with other things. So whatever savings are being saved on materials are just being eaten up by rising labour costs.
That and government incentive programs for home energy efficiency seems to have just inflated prices and stimulated demand to make the installation costs worse. Quotes I've gotten on heat pumps for example have been ridiculous, and solar much the same.
Hate to say it, but a recession might be what "fixes" this. Not that I want to deprive trades people of a good livelihood, but it feels like the end consumer is getting screwed right now.
The are plenty of places with really low labor costs that would love cheaper panels
Ground/roof solar is still >60% panels around here
(In the US)
In my part of EU the cost of getting 10kW of solar installed has gone from around €7000 in 2021 to €2000 or even less today. That is after government incentives, but the incentives have not changed during that time - it's a fixed amount per kW. The price reduction is due to the cost of panels and equipment going down.
if the substrate really can remain even a little bit flexible however, this opens up entirely new deployment opportunities.