Posts Tagged ‘ photovoltaic ’
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“…solar could achieve grid parity next year…”

Thursday, November 26th, 2009

Increase in PV’s worldwide manufacturing capacity will only impact price if demand continues. This might be the threadlike. What is not mentioned is the price of commercial power vs residential. The focus is residential, but the observations that PV might be the same if not cheaper than the current prices off the GRID is something business need to track.

Read on …..

Another observation by New Energy Finance released Monday, Solar power 50% cheaper by year end, says New Energy Finance, points out that:

…” the steady decline in the cost of equipment in sectors like solar and wind has been largely offset by the increasing costs of financing,” said Michael Liebreich, chairman and CEO of New Energy Finance. “By the end of this year, however, as capital markets loosen up and equipment prices continue their decline, we will see the levelized costs decline, finishing the year 10% below the end of last year across the board and far more than that in solar.”

Declining cost of PV based on increased manufacturing capacity, cost per Kw on PV going down, and an a indication that there is pent up demand because of lack of capital are all factors leading to a trigger in the market which would accelerate PV adoption. That trigger might be a global market force (oil prices), an international force (Climate Change Summit), or governmental force (expansion of feed-in tariffs to the US). It would be interesting to look back 6 months from now and see what really happens.

Approaching one year on our personal Solar – net metering for all?

Thursday, September 10th, 2009

We’ve had our home PV Solar installation going for close to a year. It is amazing the rethinking that goes on the house when 1) you move to net metering and 2) you look at your usage data.

The move to net metering was required for the solar installation. Like move home owners who put in PV Solar, it is a kick to watch the feed into the grid vs pulling from the grid. But then something kicks in. A new behavior dialog starts. How much more can be feed into the grid? This is when the in-depth look into how we use power really starts in the house. Sure, you see these commercials and talks about how people are being mindful of their power usage. But reality 101 of behavior is that you need reinforcement.  You need to see, touch, and be reminded to keep the behavior actualized. For us, it was the combination of the monthly net metering analysis from PG&E and the data we get from our system (see below). We get the usage per time of day from PG&E. That let us know which time of the day we should be consuming energy that is offset while conserving energy which is being pulled from the grid. For our systems there are some counter intuitive usage patterns. We set our dishwasher to go of ~10:00 a.m. every day. That sets of the dishwasher’s consumption to be during hours where we’re producing power. The same goes for laundry – doing that when the kids get back from school (~4 pm). This is not the normal communicated wisdom, but it does minimize the power we pull from the grid.

This sort of counter intuitive example is based on a behavioral reinforcement net metering provides. It raises the question of who not more net metering? What would happen if an entire city moved to net metering, got usage data, and provided the monthly reinforcement needed to change behavior.

My hypotheses is that we would see interesting and dramatic consumption changes, efficiency efforts, and actualization of the practices which are advocated to have people conserve.  I also think that any shift to net metering on a wide scale would be opposed by the power companies. The actualization of behavior changes would mean a loss of revenue for them.

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