Solar power is now the cheapest form of energy in almost 60 countries | Hacker News Reader

Solar power is now the cheapest form of energy in almost 60 countries

sciencealert.com

142 pointsmanojr70 comments

I work in solar, and here's my favorite climate change joke:

"They say we won't act until it's too late... Luckily, it's too late!"

Solar is no longer an experimental thing, and the industry is now focused on scaling. How can we deploy more solar faster? It's ridiculous how cheap panels have gotten, but a significant amount of the cost savings in the past few years is coming from soft cost (logistics, overhead, engineering, etc.) and balance of system (wires, fasteners, inverters, etc.) price reduction. And there's still a ton more to improve, and we really need the help of the tech community (y'all are good at scaling, after all).

Unfortunately, I always get the sense here on HN that the tech community still thinks of solar as a novelty or experimental. Why? Is it because you're still reeling from the 2008 cleantech bust? Is it because the bay area has good climate and you don't have to pay $400/mo for air conditioning in the summer?

I'd love to hear some feedback on why you're not interested in getting involved in the solar industry. What would convince you to work as a software engineer for a cleantech company? What would convince you to start a cleantech software (i.e. cleanweb) startup?

I know next to nothing about Solar so pardon my ignorance, but what do you suppose the solar industry is looking for from the software industry?

Storage technology ;)

Thanks for the comment! Gotcha, yes, it does take quite a bit of understanding of the dynamics and incentives of the industry to see how important software is to the industry. Here's a rundown of the problems that software can solve.

Front End and User Experience: Customer acquisition costs in the U.S. for distributed solar is extremely high. Think of cleantech sales like the insurance industry 20 years ago. Most of the sales are human-to-human, and take a lot of time and legwork. We need to follow the path of the insurance industry, and start automating the initial quote and feasibility analysis. A consumer interested in solar or batteries or thermostats or whatever, should be able to get a savings quote instantly and buy the product online without having to talk to anyone. It's a complex problem (you have to combine energy pricing data inputs, easy user experience, complex data science, and dynamic pricing calculations), but the insurance industry has solved it, so we should, too. Whenever you go to Home Depot, you should be able to get a free energy audit with recommendations for what energy products would save you what. Software like this is how you scale energy efficiency and distributed energy resources.

Data Science and High Scalability: Intermittent power from solar and wind will become a huge chunk of the grid's power. What happens when the sun doesn't shine or the wind doesn't blow? How do we keep the lights on? Storage? Demand response? It's going to be an extremely complex operation that will require much more complex software to be able to optimize deploying storage and demand response. If you want to do software in machine learning and NP optimization, grid operations is a place that needs it yesterday.

IoT and Security: All of the new distributed energy resources (solar, storage, demand response, HVAC) are internet connected. The firmware and cloud software that run these resources are now a critical part of grid operations. If there's anything we've learned on HN, IoT software is complete shit when it comes to security. Beefing up the software security of all these resources is critical to keeping the lights on. That's all software and efficient protocols.

The next Google will be an energy company.

Edit: Shameless plug. If you're in the bay area and interested in getting involved in the cleantech software sector, check out the Powerhouse solar startup incubator (https://powerhouse.solar/) and my energy events calendar (https://bayareaenergyevents.com/). Just start showing up!

> If there's anything we've learned on HN, IoT software is complete shit when it comes to security.

Yes, but I think most people here will till you it's not because of a lack of engineering talent. Rather security takes time and a lot of money (in particular security engineers) and IoT companies would rather do without for the most part. And even if you do pay the price it doesn't always work out. It's not an engineering or talent problem, it's a management and P/L problem.

True, however since the distributed energy resource (DER) IoT (inverters, thermostats, etc.) is more critical to grid infrastructure than your WiFi router, there's a bit more incentive to start doing more security testing on these deployed devices. Consumers won't pay for the better security, but grids likely will.

Maybe it will take a huge hack to push the industry into requiring better DER security, or maybe an ambitious security firm could hop on this early and control the market. Either way, eventually we're going to end up with a set of security requirements for DERs that need to be tested and certified.

Seems like a good opportunity for some ambitious tech cybersecurity startups. DERs are a really new sector of the energy industry, so there aren't any entrenched security firms (like there are in the wholesale grid). It's an open field for ambitious entrepreneurs.

Are solar panel inspections via drone a thing? E.g. find cracks in panels, locate all panels in the area, detect bad modules, etc.

Shameless plug: We (tensorflight.com) do computer vision on drone imagery and heard a customer asking about solar panels. We are in Mountain View, so please get in touch if you have use case in mind.

Not really. You can remotely tell if a system is broken based on the power it producing, and you usually clean the panels at least every few years. So any cracks would be discovered relatively quickly, but they are pretty rare anyway. The glass they use to protect the panels is super strong, and designed to withstand large hail. The only time I've seen broken panels is when someone hits a baseball into one.

However, drone imagery is heavily used in the solar industry for roof inspection. For rooftop solar, you need to inspect the roof to make sure the panels will fit and won't be obstructed. Google maps can give you a ballpark, but closer imagery is needed. There's a few companies doing this (Solar Census, Google Sunroof, Sun Number, etc.), so might check them out.

FYI, the coolest cleantech application I've see for areal imagery is Ceres Imaging, who flies over crops to detect where you need to water. Something like a 50%+ water savings because you can target water to where it's needed. Crazy effective.

What's the selling point for residential rooftop solar versus buying industrial-scale solar from the power company?

Appetite, mostly.

Utilities want stable production so have been slow to embrace renewables at high penetration (even though the economics are there). The exception the U.S. is Texas with over 50% wind at night, because the utilities don't have much say in the production portfolio (it's heavily deregulated).

For distributed rooftop solar, consumers are much more swayed by the savings, so many solar companies find it easier to sell hundreds of systems directly to consumers instead of one system to utilities.

This is changing slowly, because the economics are getting too much for utilities to ignore, but unfortunately federal rules like the clean power plan will likely be made toothless soon, so many utilities will continue to be stuck in the mud.

Retail vs. wholesale pricing is one reason -- depending on how the rules are set in your part of the country, you can get a considerable boost in cost-effectiveness by having all of the energy you generate with a residential system save you paying retail for power from the grid.

From the little experience I have with solar what I've noticed is that its mostly a hardware issue. Storage is the biggest cost now. Which is why you see things like the gigafactory. We've got the ability to produce electricity from wind and solar down pretty good. There are efficiencies to improve but storage is the main block. My experience with batteries is that lithium ion on a large scale is still too expensive and there are quality issues. For that reason I use lead acid batteries in my home. They are a tenth the cost and a proven and reliable technology. Meaning if I use them correctly they can last for five to seven years. I know people who use lithium ion in their home and either they built them or spent a lot of money on them. In most cases the system has not lived up to its promises and from a cost perspective still isn't quite there. If I were to upgrade now it would be to AGM batteries which are similar to lead acid but easier to manage. If I were smart enough not to get electrocuted I'd be playing around with this stuff more. Not sure how much software is in that though.

One area where software would be helpful is potentially with the distributed grid stuff. You have a large set of panels in a neighborhood that create power shared to everyone. It seems there's a lot to keep track of with something like that. Solar city has a pretty good lock on things until the consumer understands it's a terrible deal for them. They are leasing the solar panels to you and bolting them into your roof. it would be like leasing your water heater except 100x more expensive. We went with a local installer for our system and saved money and had a great experience. the vc people don't have the potential of making tons of money like in solar city's case.

It doesn't seem like there is a ton of need for software in solar, but I could be wrong. It seems to me that solar technology is mostly in line of something like a power semiconductor. You need lots of people who understand semiconductor physics and process to manufacture the panels. Then an EE puts is all together. There is software at all of those steps, but it seems to be more of a cost than the primary product.

You're right, there isn't a lot of software in the solar panels themselves (they are indeed just a semiconductor). However, that's not where the costs are. Only about 34% of the cost of a solar installation is actual hardware. 64% of the installed cost is customer acquisition, overhead, engineering, labor, etc[1]. These are all costs that can be optimized with software.

For example, my startup focuses on automating the initial energy cost data collection for customers so they can get instant energy savings analyses. The customer acquisition gain we unlock shaves about 5-10% off of the overall installed cost of solar and energy efficiency products.

Don't think of the solar industry as a technology problem. Think of it as a scaling problem. Scaling is all about software.

[1]: https://energy.gov/eere/sunshot/soft-costs

Yeesh. Good luck.[1]

[1]: https://www.google.com/get/sunroof#p=0

Heh, Google Sunroof needs customer usage data, which is what we do :)

This is true, but software engineers often prefer to work in software-driven companies instead of companies where software is used to reduce costs.

They feel valued more in co's where software is the main source of profit - this is the same reason a lot of software engineers aren't excited to work for the big companies in the (massive) retail industry, or infrastructure more generally, which also are "scaling problems".

Solar has some appeal in that it has large long-term impact, and nerdy problems - but I think it's still less appealing generally than space, or maybe medicine, let alone tech companies where the core product is software.

Hmmm, it really depends on the company.

Many newer energy companies have recognized that software is a profit center. Something like half of solar leads are referrals from existing solar customers, so there's a ton of effort put into good customer experience (pre and post installation) to drive more referrals.

Also, many firms are wanting to offer grid services (demand response, load smoothing, etc.) back to the grid, which also is potential profit driven by software. I think you'd be surprised at how much importance is placed at the larger firms on software.

Also, for smaller shops that can't afford their own programmers, there's vendors who sell the software to do all the analysis, financing, engineering, etc. Those cleantech software vendors obviously see software as the profit center (my startup is one such example). And solar is like HVAC in that there's thousands and thousands of smaller local shops in addition to the half-dozen nation brands, so lots of customers for SaaS providers.

Batteries are still a huge cost. To be truly off-grid, you need a lot of storage capacity. You could easily spend 2 to 4x as much on batteries as on PV panels right now.

The cost of batteries (or other energy storage methods) needs to go down, because PV panels on their own are just not quite good enough for residential. I'm out of the house during most or all peak hours for solar generation.

I would need one or two Tesla Powerwall 2's in order to be off-grid. I also don't have an (electric) car. If I had a car, I would need more energy storage in order to be able to charge the car at night. Though of course, electric cars might also be charged at work during the daytime, directly from PV panels

The goal of the storage industry is not to take everyone off grid. The goal is to increase the penetration capacity of intermittent renewables. You can get to 50% penetration without storage, but you need demand response and storage to push beyond 50%. So, most storage isn't priced to be off-grid, it's priced to provide the most value to the consumer (demand response, peak shaving, backup power, etc.).

At the end of the day it's all about economics, and there's lots of economics in favor of connected storage in addition to off-grid storage.

> Think of it as a scaling problem. Scaling is all about software.

Interesting. But to me, solar feels like a utility (water, sewer, power, gas), which scaled before digital computers or software.

>>What would convince you to start a cleantech software (i.e. cleanweb) startup?

The most successful startups are founded by those who possess domain knowledge. Without that, most software engineers trying to found a startup in another technical field (i.e. energy) wouldn't even know where to begin.

True, so perhaps it would be better to ask you to join the cleantech industry as an employee first? Then, when you have learned the ropes and pain points, quit and start a company to solve that pain point.

If the goal of solar power is to be able to justify spending ever more MWh in air conditioning, I think there is nothing clean in it.

Why? Clean power is clean power, regardless of what it's used for. The alternative is to make electricity expensive enough that people ration its usage, which will make us regress economically since the economy is effectively driven by energy.

Electric cars are well on their way to becoming mainstream, if that happens, A/C power usage will be insignificant compared to cars, whose charging loads dwarf residential A/C.

If you were to draw a box around a air conditioner and measure the neat heat input/output, you would measure a net heat output. An air condition is a net heating device due to inefficiencies. Even if the power source is clean, excessive air conditioner usage has long term effects of adding heat to the atmosphere. An air conditioner is only one example. How it stacks up against global warming, I don't know, but it is not something to neglect.

I don't think you are correct. Take wind power: You're taking atmospheric energy, which comes from the sun originally, turning it into electricity, then turning that into heat (in the form of AC). You're merely moving the heat energy from the sun around; there's no net increase in heat.

The PV panels are mostly a solved problem and firmly in the realm of physics, chemistry, and semiconductors. This field is dominated by research institutes like Fraunhofer ISE, and startups that spin off from its researchers, but to play in this field requires a very unique set of domain expertise.

Methods like load management, demand response, and other ways of dealing with the mismatch between momentary generation and demand -- sometimes lumped into the catch-all term 'smart grid' -- lie at the intersection of data science, algorithms, public policy, and infrastructure. The parts are inseparable: this is a field very reliant on meatspace and subject to the whims of the economy, nature, and the political process.

This is a lot of factors to base your profit on (in case of a startup). And while employment at energy companies is stable and moderately lucrative, the fruits of one's labor are subtle and not immediately observable by the general public, while at the same time being fairly high-stakes. This limits the field's appeal.

"fruits of one's labor are subtle and not immediately observable by the general public"

For balance I suppose this characterization applies to most jobs.

Err...then what elon musk is doing exactly? Is not he dreaming of wiping out whole big power plant industry from face of earth using only solar power. What more you are asking for ?

In addition to rooftop solar and residential-sized batteries, Tesla also sells grid-scale battery solutions. In fact, they say that 80%+ of their non-car battery business is grid-scale solutions, either utilities or large industrial users.

What cleantech companies would you recommend?

I'm a mechanical engineer who is looking to switch industries in the near term future. I have controls experience, as well as mechanical design, electrical, and system integration experience on side projects. What solar companies would you suggest? Where are they geographically located?

I'd recommend checking out the exhibitor list for the big solar conferences[1][2]. Start browsing the companies and see if any interest you and have job postings on their websites.

[1]: http://spi16.mapyourshow.com/7_0/search.cfm

[2]: http://www.intersolar.us/en/attend/exhibition/exhibitor-list...

I'm seeing a fair amount of people I talk to in North Dakota thinking of doing solar installs (personal windmills are a pain in the rear). I think our problem is that there is so much problematic information that we cannot get a straight answer. Its really sunny a lot of the winter[1], and seems like the price is getting right. Plus, getting the proper cutoff to go off grid would be welcome given the large number of power outages in the last couple of years.

There doesn't seem to be "that" brand in solar. Who should we look into?

1) a friend who ran a sunglass store in ND said most of his sales came in the winter because the bright sun bouncing light off the snow / ice makes driving a pain.

I'd recommend treating it as a normal HVAC or construction project. Call local contractors who have experience in the area and climate, get bids and recommendations, then choose a contractor. Most solar contractors either have financing options (like car dealerships) or can point you to one (like realtors). Also, try to find someone who has solar and talk to them. In smaller markets like this, local experience is important.

My problem is that we really don't have any local experienced outfits. Chicken and egg problem I'd imagine.

I suppose. Electrical contractors are usually the ones with the closest experience to solar installation, so they are usually the ones who start installing systems in a new market first (then the national solar brands start offering packages, too). Might want to reach out to local electrical contractors to see if they have any NABCEP training.

Where in North Dakota? If you provide a rough location, I will come back with options for you.

58335 - North East

Why would a solar company need software engineers? It seems to me like a mechanical and electrical engineering field. It would never occur to me to look for a job in the field because I see no way my skills would be relevant. Nor am I interested in being someone else's cost center.

I am no solar skeptic; I have had a solar array on my house for three years now. I just don't see how you get from "solar is here now and not something we are still waiting for" to "you should get involved in the industry".

> What would convince you to start a cleantech software (i.e. cleanweb) startup?

Hire remote workers and advertise salaries for the positions you're trying to fill.

$27.4 per mwh is as cheap as buring raw crude in Saudi Arabia.

Math: 1 BOE is 1.7 MW/h

Cost of getting 1 barrel out from the oilfield with all infrastructure costs amortized: $6

Accrued logistics costs to get the oil from the oilfield to the power station + powerplant operation cost/per unit of power: $8

Per BOE cost: $14

Cost per MW/h of generated electricity assuming 30% conversion efficiency (SA is a hot place): $14/1.7/.30 = $27.5

More evidence (as if we needed it) of just how ridiculous Trump's promise to revive the US coal industry is.

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/22/trumps-big-plan-for-the-coal-...

I wouldn't count on Canadian ramp down, most of the coal power stations are in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Alberta's current government has been going on a green binge that most of the residents despise (approval rating for the government are quite low). As for the other provinces, the federal government unilaterally imposed those decisions without consulting the provinces which has caused issues.

Well, if you look at the bar graph, exports of coal from the USA to all the main users has dropped precipitously in 2016, so Alberta isn't going to make a huge difference.

Also, there are a lot of factors behind the decline in coal (particulate pollution, CO2, lowering cost of renewables, etc), so it seems highly unlikely that the downward trend is going to reverse itself.

Original source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-15/world-ene...

These numbers don't take the cost of storage into account. It doesn't matter how many kilowatts you can produce at noon when you need them at midnight. Simply taking kilowatt hours produced and multiplying by the average market price is not a good estimate of the value produced by solar. Sure those numbers work now while solar is only providing a fraction of the total energy being consumed but if solar were to become the dominate energy source we would have to solve the storage problem and this will greatly increase production costs. Solar is still more expensive than the alternatives when considered at realistic scales.

Kudos to China!! We should give credit when it's due.

* after subsidies

... and without taking into account that after 15 or 20 - maybe 25 - years the panels will need to be replaced.

How "clean" is disposing of these depleted slabs of glass and silicon (or whatever other elements)?

How much will it cost?

It seems like most manufacturers have a 20/25-year standard, meaning that their panels should still be capable of producing 80% of their peak efficiency after 20/25 years in the field [1].

A 20% decrease over 20/25 years isn't bad at all. Compare that to the 3-4 automobiles that the average American family might buy during that period, or the normal 30-40 year lifespan of a coal generator [2].

Recycling glass and silicon is fairly straightforward, compared to other recycled materials (paper, plastics). Panel recycling will probably be complicated by whatever rare earth minerals are currently used in solar cells, but that's just another potential market.

[1]: http://www.engineering.com/ElectronicsDesign/ElectronicsDesi...

[2]: http://qz.com/61423/coal-fired-power-plants-near-retirement/

[3]: http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/smart-energy-solutions/de...

Edit: Forgot the source on 3-4 cars [4].

[4]: https://www.kbb.com/car-news/all-the-latest/average-length-o...

The 20 or maybe 25 years duration is not bad at all in itself, but before or later it has to be done, and usually noone talks about that when illustrating the "advantages" and "cleanness" of the solution.

I was not saying that disposing properly of such materials is not "straightforward", only that its costs (as well as those for the disposal of batteries, thanks _red for mentioning them) are rarely included in most cost estimations.

In EU countries it is now (since around 2012-2014 depending on the country) at least in theory OK - since you pay the cost of disposal to the manufacturer at install time, and when the plant will be depleted you can have the panels disposed for free (your money goes indirectly to a consortium for disposal of electronics goods).

Certainly. I chalk that up a certain amount of optimism surrounding solar energy (and renewables in general), not willful ignorance of the real costs of deploying any sort of infrastructure on a national scale.

Based on what you said, the EU seems to have figured out a responsible way to handle those costs, at least on the individual level.

Yes, though it has to be seen how well it will work out in the long term, when huge amounts of panels and batteries will be in need of being disposed of.

In any case the Law represents a good provision for the consumer/end user, JFYI:

http://ec.europa.eu/environment/waste/weee/index_en.htm

http://www.solarwaste.eu/

Specifically in Italy:

http://www.solarwaste.eu/in-your-country/italy/

The resources are "distributed": >Waste originating from PV modules classified as household (B2C) waste (those installed in PV plants with a nominal power below 10 Kw) is financed by the Producers present in the market in the year when the costs occur according to their market share.

But only for "household" plants: >Waste originating from PV modules classified as non-household (B2B) waste (those installed in PV plants with a nominal power equal or above 10 Kw) placed on the market before 12/04/2014 is financed by the Producers when selling a new PV module replacing the old, in all other cases the financing is upon users. For waste originating from B2B PV modules placed on the market after 12/04/2014, the financial responsibility is upon Producers for the modules they placed on the market.

So there is IMHO a risk about companies that sell today but will be not anymore in business in 20/25 years time to pay for the disposal ...

... cannot say if there are some forms of insurance (or whatever) covering this possibility.

Right now (just for the record) the fee for WEEE (for business) is between 0.30 €/kg and 0.50 €/kg + shipment, which seems very little when you are dealing with "light" items like - say - LCD TV's or laptops, but not so little when you are dealing with CRT's or similar.

Thanks for the resources.

A bigger environmental problem is that many solar use mandates having batteries.

The average armchair environmentalist loves to ignore the thousands of tons of earth that must be mined to get enough rare earth minerals for a single battery to be constructed.

Lithium isn't a rare earth element. Batteries don't use rare earth elements. Some electric motors do, but that's a choice; Tesla's doesn't.

If you mean to say that lithium mining is a bad thing, then you might want to try to come up with a better measure of environmental impact than the number of tons of earth moved.

I can't find any evidence that Powerwall, for example, has any rare earths in it.

Can you?

How "clean" is taking off the top of a mountain for coal?

Compare the costs of restoring a mountain after we tear it down, extract the coal and burn it into the atmosphere. How much will that cost? What about moving cities inland? will that be more expensive than recycling solar panels?

There is no perfect energy system, but the status quo is clearly unsustainable, and solar disposal is a much more tractable problem than destructive extraction and atmospheric pollution.

We also subsidize the coal and oil industries by not aggressively factoring the externalities they produce into their taxation.

      Energy Source		Subsidy per kwh	 Externalities per kwh

      Coal			$0.0006		~$0.02

      Natural Gas	        $0.0006		~$0.01

      Nuclear			$0.0031		(unspecified)

      Renewables		$0.0154		(unspecified)

            Biomass Power	$0.0020		(unspecified)

            Geothermal		$0.0125		(unspecified)

            Hydroelectric	$0.0008		(unspecified)

            Solar		$0.9680		(unspecified)

            Wind		$0.0525		(unspecified)

http://environmentblog.ncpa.org/which-energy-source-receives...

Those calculated externalities seem to be based on a fixed carbon tax. They don't take into account the human cost of living near a coal-fired plant (including productivity loss!), the financial damage of oil and oil-byproduct spills, or water table pollution from fracking.

Each of these externalities, in turn, has consequences of their own -- fewer tourists, increased cost-of-living from bottled watter, higher medical bills from persistent lung and throat disorders. If harm to individuals isn't compelling, consider the danger of a polluted water table to predominantly agricultural areas.

The NCPA doesn't consider these realities in their flat estimation and, based on their sources of funding, are not likely to in the near future [1].

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/jul/01/exxon-mo...

Question: how many solar panels would you need to power a large steel producing company?

This is a distracting red herring argument and you know it.

Solar makes up less than 1% of the US energy supply. No one is saying we power our high-energy industrial consumers until we get up to say 50% renewable with all existing the low-hanging fruit out there.

Energy is not an all-or-nothing proposition. You can still use the energy-dense sources where they're the best tool for the job while still decreasing our existential risk elsewhere.

You are looking for an argument that isn't there. I was asking because someone else brought up the question, and I still think it is interesting to know the answer.

Apologies if it was genuine curiosity, tone doesn't get across on the internet. Interpreted it as another leading question. Point is, the shift to renewables is an incremental process where industries with high/dense energy requirements will likely not be the first applications.

Please ask in terms of Mwh so that we can do the math (multiplication) for you.

If you just need a lot of heat, then you can use the sunlight directly by focusing it with mirrors:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_furnace

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEvbj3O_yt8

* http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/04/this-s...

Related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13217320

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