Your post focuses on PVC's - what's the impact of / where does thermal solar fit in with these projections?
But solar thermal has the advantage of integrated storage. When solar overall is at some reasonably high penetration (say, 10-15%) storage will become important. At that point, it depends on the cost curve of storage technologies.
If batteries or other energy storage technologies have gotten cheap enough, PV + storage will be cheaper than solar thermal. If batteries haven't dropped in price enough, solar thermal may see a resurgence.
My bet is on PV + storage, though there is no certainty here.
Of course, thermal generators required direct incidence (don't work well on diffuse light), but the long and short of it is that with thermal we (may) need about half the total area we would need for PV. (On the other hand, PV can practically uses space - rooftops - which is inaccessible for thermal.)
Nice blog, by the way :-)
I know they're different technologies, but I wonder on the cross-over effects of the two. If people see a solar thermal plant going up near their town, will it encourage or discourage them from installing PVCs? Are nation states that encourage / subsidise large-scale solar thermal deployments more likely to encourage end-user scale (PVC-based) systems?
Entirely agree managing storage is increasingly the pain point - in both scales of systems (thermal just rides out cloudy / dark periods more smoothly, I believe).
Is it still true that the most $-effective large-scale power-storage mechanism is to pump water up a hill?
I don't think this will make much difference - individual PV installation is an investment decision (just like other big home improvements) based on cost of energy and subsidies. It makes some difference to how "green" people feel, but the cost matters more. It may have an effect in planning battles. Here in the UK (esp Scotland) it's all about the wind farms. European solar thermal is currently struggling against low natural gas prices: http://www.estif.org/statistics/st_markets_in_europe_2014/
Pumped storage requires naturally occuring suitable locations (not too many available) and incurs environmental damage of damming a river.
(Calling it "PVC" is really confusing me with the flexible polymer)
As to influence - I think HN types are more informed than the GP, so in our bubble it may be hard to speculate accurately on any such influence. By which I mean, if you're not informed about the technology or the trends, then any intrusion of these technologies into your life will be more significant. Perhaps I am wrong.
For Scotland I would think we're some way off a sufficiently efficient cell, given hours and angles of incidence of sunlight.
Disclaimer - I'm in Australia, about 35 degrees south, and to be candid don't really understand how even places like Germany have so much love for PVCs ;)
How do you think the fact that natural gas is guaranteed to decrease in availability / increase in cost (over the long term) compared to the guarantee solar will decrease in cost, will influence users? And how do you think the idea of users being able, or being primed, to think of themselves as producers as well as consumers will influence their decisions on power?
I don't think individuals are very good at adapting to the long term market. If I know gas will be more expensive in 5 years, I can't do very much with that today. There's also the old "the market can stay irrational longer than you stay solvent": if I invest too early I can just as easily lose money.
In the UK, I think the general public are ahead of the media and politicians on the issue. There's a noisy anti-environmentalist and anti-windfarm contingent, but most people recognise the tradeoffs. I don't think people want to be their own producer en masse, any more than grow their own food or be their own bank, but if they can make a capital investment that saves money and produces income then you're speaking the right language to the middle class.
People might start to get vocal when gas prices go up in the UK; complaints about fuel poverty and demands for more fracking. It'll require a long period of gas being more expensive than electricity for fuel and heating for people to switch their homes over.
How serious are grid stability issues presented by solar PV (without storage) at high penetration rates (say > ~ 20%)? Important? Not? Thanks.