China solar module prices keep diving
pv-magazine.com
pv-magazine.com
In practice, inverters probably also need partial redesign for a high loading ratio. Higher ILRs in large solar farms has appeared to contribute to faster inverter failures in recent years.
Maybe carbon capture, if that's a thing yet?
They're capturing carbon to turn into a useful product (fossil fuels) though.
Brutalism has been back for a while on webdev
> "Why does our website look like this? At TI we believe we can change the world by displacing fossil hydrocarbon production at global scale. Like our website, our machines are simple so we can build millions of them as quickly as possible. Our website embodies our cultural commitment to allocating resources where they solve the most important problems."
One could also make hot water for their own DHW use or charge their electric car.
I'd also love for appliances to entirely adopt DC.
- Homes should run on batteries.
- Batteries should be trickle charged from the grid with a cheap rectifier.
Hell sneak some data in and you have smart control of all these connected usb-c cabled devices too. Make for game changing smart home rollout.
Gimme lamps, lights, speakers, fans, window motors, TVs all on usb-c power plus data pls.
Also, PoE does have significant loss over longer distances. It isn't a problem with low power devices but would be a huge issue for higher power. It is almost certainly more efficient to send power as 120V AC and convert to USB-C.
The alternative is outlets with USB-C ports, or power strips with USB-C.
Places that use 12V/48V DC have much thicker cables. They also have shorter lengths on RV, boat, or cabin.
You're the first other person I've seen to point this out. Better even is negotiated power means normally the wire would only deliver 15W which isn't going to burn down anything.
I'm also seeing more and more cordless appliances. A cordless vacuum doesn't need much power when charging.
AC arcs self extinguish every 100 or 120 Hz.
This way DC -> DC fast charging could be a thing, also my DC -> DC oven could pull a lot more Amps and pre-heat very quickly.
Inputs:
- Solar Panels -> Battery Bank
- Grid <-Inverter-> Battery Bank
Outputs:
- Battery Bank -> Washing Machine
- Battery Bank -> Lights
- Battery Bank -> Induction Stove
- Battery Bank -> USC-C to charge devices (my devices could charge so fast!)
A lot of the things you are talking about will require conversion. LEDs will still need conversion from line voltage. Any incandescent lights will need AC conversion. The USB-C adapter will still exist, and there would no effect on charging speeds.
You can get most of the benefit by having DC power cables between the battery, solar panels, and inverter.
Most certainly DC to DC is faster. It is only limited by the local infrastructure. i.e. want to charge faster? own a bigger / better battery bank, with bigger charging cables and a better car.
DC -> DC (with some PWM / battery management) can also be slowed down (or use reduced amps) to best suit the moment. So if versatility is better, then DC to DC is again "better".
Batteries need DC to charge and putting the transformer in the external fast charger means the one in the car itself only needs to be sized for lower power domestic charging.
e.g. cordless vacuums / lawn equipment with swappable batteries.
e.g. water proof electric shavers, toothbrushes, blow dryers.
Likely soon induction stoves, air fryers (for instant pre-heat), heat pumps (including the fridge / freezer), blenders, etc. If it can run on USB-C, off the wall cool. If it can't add a battery.
Resistance is inverse to the cross sectional area of the wire so to compensate you need thicker wire, 10x the diameter (100x the area) for 1/10th the voltage x 10x the current. That’s why the wire that connects to your car battery is so much thicker than the mains wire in your home.
You could have high voltage DC in your home but then you still need the transformer so I’m not sure it really buys you anything.
If you're prefer you can think of it as: each room gets its own Tesla powerwall, and therefore the battery to wall socket resistive losses are negligible.
Latest standards seem to max out at 90W. https://www.analog.com/en/technical-articles/ltpoe-extends-p...
Over the 100M max cable length voltage will drop 25% from 56V input to 48V output. http://poe-world.com/Calculator/
For the same power draw, losses are 4x as high as at 110V, and 16x as high as at 220V. DC/DC power adapters are more efficient at low power (a few watts), so PoE might conceivably be marginal efficiency win for powering a bunch of low power VoIP phones. But as soon as you want to do something like power a laptop or even fast charge a mobile phone, you’re going to be better off plugging it into the mains with a modern AC/DC adapter that can be 95% efficient.
It’s not that AC is better than DC, it’s that higher voltages are far more efficient than lower voltages as soon as you need even moderate amounts of power over moderate distances.
Caveat: Unsubstantiated statements follow. There would be some EMF around the wires. While 60 Hz is probably less detrimental, the harmonics (of higher frequencies) are. The effects are subtle and possibly not obvious for healthy people, but can make a difference with autoimmune issues.
Note most of his experiments correspond to radio waves ( WiFi, AM FM etc). But I see no reason to not extend the concept to 50/60Hz and resulting harmonics.
That seems like a bad trade-off to me. Batteries live 5 years? Inverters live 20+.
Inverters are also cheaper than batteries. I'm not seeing any advantage to your idea.
Also safety is harder on DC. For one the relays must be made much larger to withstand the nasty arcing. Arc extinguishing is much harder too.
Efficiency is a toss up. On one hand, rectifiers are very efficient and you could get by with one rectifier instead of many. On the other, they're not 100% efficient and the voltages are much lower -> more copper.
Reliability wont be as good. Rectifiers go all the time (think PC's CPU), there's no comparable failure component in the AC home.
Overall the idea has merit, mainly because the most home loads are DC nowadays anyway. But your AC, washer, fridge, garage opener, pool pump, furnace blower, refrigerator, dryer and dishwasher will not be pleased.
The big problem is that everyone has AC sockets, and it isn't worth the trouble to switch. It is going to be huge expense to buy new appliances for potential small efficiency gain. The in-wall voltage is going to mean that need adapters for other DC uses.
A better approach is to have a standard for DC power between AC side, batteries, and solar panels. Then have a single big inverter between AC and DC. It also makes possible to have DC-only in places like cabins that aren't connected to the grid.
Finally, many houses and apartments can't add batteries or solar panel. Not everyone has space like a basement. Like there is efficiency advantage like with utility solar, it might make sense to put batteries in substations where can use containers.
But problem is places with lots of devices, then would need power strip and might as well use AC one.
The problem is appliances that draw too much power for USB-C. They also draw too much power for 48V DC. There isn’t any advantage to switching the wall voltage.
Leviton makes a 60W unit now that supports PD. Be warned it's a little janky in that it tries to be "smart" and re-negotiate (well, outright drop to 5V) the port if your device stops drawing substantially less current than requested. This can confuse some devices - especially those without batteries. Otherwise I can say the 20V/3A profile works fine on my macbook.
I don't think anyone would switch the wall voltage altogether; not in one generation, at least. But a majority of the devices we plug into AC outlets these days convert that power to DC before doing anything with it, and a majority of those devices do so using USB; so one could imagine that a house which had solar panels and batteries could also have DC power wiring and dedicated USB-PD receptacles, skipping the inverter and all the rectifiers.
Also, the DC voltage for house wires and batteries need to be much higher than USB voltage so will need conversion. Might as well have it be AC to DC converter.
There is a problem connecting solar panels to batteries and needing two inverters. But that could be solved with higher voltage DC between them.
My oven should already have its own battery installed, or a capacitor bank for very fast preheat.
My fridge can do the same. It’s rarely actually compressing.
I’m mostly just trying to avoid needing to buy very expensive inverters.
Induction stoves with batteries built in, and why they matter
A conversation with Sam Calisch of Channing Street Copper Company and Wyatt Merrill of DOE.
https://www.volts.wtf/p/induction-stoves-with-batteries-buil...
Current voltage AC is still ideal for powering a house '
Some new fridges seem to have much smalker compressors, which run all the time.
The compressor run continuously, it just changes speed so there is no noisy and inefficient start-up surge current.
Also common in heat=pumps, Air-conditioners, etc.
Old buildings had elevators, lights, and so on, that operated on DC.
Serious power, in the kilowatt range, would require much higher voltage, and still much bulkier connectors and thicker conductors. OTOH 400V DC should be comparable in this regard with 220V AC, which has a 380V amplitude. The 400V DC standard is relatively widespread and well-supported by existing industrial equipment. Connectors are comparable in size to the (grounded) Euro plugs.
Industrial DC devices get around these issues with stricter rules and bulkier/more complex devices. E.g. electric cars use contactors to connect batteries rather than a simpler relay/switch.
But the standard clearance for air gaps is 1 mm / kV, and arching distance is below 0.4 mm / kV. More advanced and faster mechanical switches should work fine at 400V DC.
Also IGBTs may be a preferred way, especially with various smart switches.
Sockets and plugs seem to be the hardest part to make cheap and reliable. But industrial solutions can likely be adapted.
I could imagine a scenario where every outlet also has a USB port. It could run your laptop and your lights. Obviously it can't run a fridge or a stove; maybe future fridges would run off the same current as the stove?
What I'm most unclear on is the middle range. I know you can't run a hair dryer or microwave that way. What about a food processor? Maybe a toaster?
I'm trying to figure out how much that middle range makes this a deal breaker.
They expect a number of panels to be connected in series, but you can have as many of those batches in parallel as you want.
Additionally: microinverters can support higher voltages, so you can just hook them up in series. It's also possible to use an adapter to hook them up in parallel.
It doesn't work so well in the north east, but if weather is only bad for a few days, you might need much less backup or generator power. Batteries and generator power tends to be much less than adding excess solar.
I have 12kW of panels, and a 10kW inverter. I get a nice 10kW flat-line for a few hours each day through summer, and a better-than-it-would-otherwise-be return through winter (though never reaching max).
Inverters already allow a substantial amount of undersizing, e.g. I'm using a 10 kW Fronius inverter with 14.5 kW of panels installed. This does lead to the plateau you are looking after so if that is something you want, go for it In my case the 10 kW inverter just happened to be the biggest one available in this series (GEN24 Symo, a 3-phase hybrid inverter using high-voltage batteries (which I have yet to install, waiting for prices to come down and my 5 year sell-back contract to expire)). I would have been fine with a "thin hill" instead of the wide plateau we get now since that hill would stand on top of the plateau, maximising production.
> As the cumulative installed capacity increased, the price of solar declined exponentially. Solar technology is a prime example. For more than four decades, the price of solar panels declined by 20% with each doubling of global cumulative capacity.
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2018/04/14/the-weekend-read-chin...
> "When potential expansions from other mono ingot and wafer makers are factored in, this points to a tectonic shift in the supply of monocrystalline silicon which threatens to reconfigure the entire upstream solar landscape and potentially push monocrystalline silicon solar into a dominant market position in much shorter timeframe than previously anticipated."
Inverter: Cost of materials, assembly, and QA. You want good stuff for the amount of current passing through.
Cabling: Cabling is mostly materials in cost. Conductive metals are expensive.
Metal Mounting: It's heavy, and requires lots of raw material and expensive equipment to create it.
Where do you get these things?
I have a 50x100 shop with a metal roof I'd like to cover at least one half of, someday.
So many other priorities here though :-(
There's definitely 1% of land there that's almost desolate and lifeless.
https://www.multpl.com/us-median-income/table/by-year
Regardless of whether wages match inflation completely or how long they take to do so, the fact is that if solar panels cost the same in dollars as they did 10 years ago, the average person's wage buys more of them.
You could counter-argue that other things gone up by so much that despite this, people have less money to spare for solar panels. But given that solar panels are competing with some of those things, importantly fossil fuels, it's still important to be clear that they are getting cheaper - as the trend continues a solar panel pays for itself more and more quickly.
The backpacks with built in panels are still expensive because I'm guessing it's hard to find customers who want to be in direct sunlight long enough to get significant charge, while carrying a backpack.
I got 3.7Kw panels, 5Kw inverter and 10Kw battery - only our stove is not on the PV circuit - water heater is already solar based (not PV) and it has been brought some measure of sanity back to our lives.
The worst outages was 6 hours daily.
Should have done this a long time ago but it is now helped by banks tailoring financing packages for such installs.
Any ideas on a portable solar panel that could power those during the summer? Portable because I rent and can’t fix anything down, it doesn’t have to fit in a backpack or anything like that.
That being said, there’s a lot of options nowadays which is exciting! For instance, you could have a 200W port panel and a 1kWh battery system from eco flow that should run both with room to spare. Anker has a new system meant for patios but it’s only for Europe.
Just 75W.
Specifically 1 Watt-hour==3600 Joules.
kWh is obviously inconsistent with SI conventions if commonly used; but 'kW⋅h' or 'kW h' is completely acceptable. As is 'W⋅h'
A full list of acceptable non-SI units can be found in the brochure here under: "Non-SI units accepted for use with the SI units"
If you want to run a line into your house you can get by with one, or just get a panel with a usbc pd output.
Personally I'm interested in a DIY mod to add solar panels directly to the back of a laptop screen. It probably wouldn't be able to actually charge unless the machine is in sleep mode (which also would have the lid closed which would help), but it would extend the battery - if the machine averages 10W and the panel gives 1W, that's an extra 10% runtime for free, and better if it sleeps in the middle (which works, because I'm unlikely to use a laptop continuously for 10 hours).
Or environmentally sustainable?
A solar panel has life-span of 25-30 years, will you be utilizing that? or are you just creating more waste?
If you wanted to protect the environment, it's probably better to find a wind-farm project or solar farm project to invest in.
It's really easy to think that adding solar panels everywhere is a good idea; but you might just be making e-waste.
(The range at the local big appliance retailer is about 35W for the cheapest models to 10W for the most expensive.)
For almost all people they are only appropriate when you are off-grid.
https://www.macrotrends.net/2575/us-dollar-yuan-exchange-rat...
China PPI is in Yuan, but sales prices of panels are mostly in Dollars.
Practically this was possible by pegging the currency which lowers the purchasing power of all their citizens.
[1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.PP.CD?locat...
[1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.KD?locat...
It's the natural progression of anything in this universe. Even people.
Your rate of physical growth between the ages of 2 and 22 was enormous. Your rate of physical growth between the ages of 22 and 42 was likely minimal. (Unless you grew, um, laterally.)
A 22 year old should not be comparing himself to a 2 year old and lamenting that he can't match the 2 year old's growth rate.
The US is at 80k, Germany is at 66k, Canada is at 60k, South Korea is at 56k, Romania is at 41k. China is at 23k.
If Germany or South Korea can't reach the US, China getting there seems incredibly hard.
Though if China reaches Romania's level (funny when presented this way :-) ), the nominal total GDP of China will probably be 1.5 - 2x the US one, just by virtue of them having 5x the number of people compared the US.
Population
• 2023 estimate
Neutral decrease 1,411,750,000[7]
Population
• 2021 census
Neutral decrease 19,053,815[3]
Even the poorest country in the world has at least a multi millionaire in dollars.
It's a good metric for a rough comparison/transformation, but has relatively weak prediction power. That said, the same holds for any economic metric used in isolation (eg. HDI, GDP, GDP Per Capita, GDP Growth Rate, GDP PPP Per Capita, Debt Rate, Median Income, etc.)
All metrics need to used together to gain a holistic view on economic development. It's the equivalent of driving and only concentrating on the odometer at the expense of the fuel gauge, speedometer, and tachometer.
to that end, what metrics would you use instead to compare purchasing power?
This implies that this is a microeconomics problem, not a macroeconomic one. This means that metrics like GDP PPP, HDI, etc are completely useless when investigating a subsegment of industrial production.
If I was analyzing the Photovoltaic sector, I'd probably look at
1. Current TAM, Future TAM, TAM growth rate (both past and present)
2. The price of the inputs used (wafers, polysilicon, cells, modules, labor, R&D, tariffs, subsidies)
3. The growth of comparable manufacturers globally
4. Adjacent markets/segments (if I am specialized in solar wafer manufacturing tools, can I potentially pivot into tools for IC wafer manufacturing)
This is a non-comprehensive list, but in general I'm not surprised with a collapse in the price of Photovoltaic Cells.
This was kind of the whole point globally of spearheading the industry - it helped build domain experience or subsidize the adjacent semiconductors sector as well as helped countries like the PRC and the US pivot away from foreign ONG dependency, and is why countries like Vietnam, Malaysia, and India also invest heavily in the sector.
Plus, Walmart has pretty terrible payment terms. Suppliers hand over the product, and maybe Walmart pays them for it in a year.
Walmart is too large to ignore, but too cut-throat to survive exclusively on.
But Walmart isn't the only company like this. The entire domestic auto industry operates like this (supplier costs are known to the fraction of a cent, and manufactures know exactly what margin to give in order to keep them around, but just barely), as is Apple.
How cheap are we expecting things to be?
Plunging Solar Stocks Fly in Face of Booming Panel Demand https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-20/solar-sto...
U.S. solar installations to fall 23% this year due to China goods ban -report https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-solar-installatio...
This is reinforced by 50% in price cuts in real estate listings in tier 1 cities, 10X increase in real estate inventory this year, and 90% physical retail decline
China’s Latest Source of Unrest: Unpaid ‘Zero Covid’ Workers https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/16/world/asia/china-covid-pr...
China's Industrial profits in the January-March period declined 21.4% from a year earlier https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-04-27/china-s-i...
Also, the bearish 2-3% growth rate estimation was derived independently of the PRC government - it was reached by both Blackstone and the IMF.
None of this is to say there isn't an economic malaise/recession in the PRC circa 2023, but honestly it's playing out the same way a similar growth slowdown happened in Mexico, Türkiye, South Korea, Thailand, and Brazil in the 2000s when those countries hit similar economic metrics to China in the early 2020s.
2.) There's nothing comparable to what's happening to China right now, except for the Russia sanctions, where an entire economic engine (export, 25% of GDP) is being ripped out or shut down, by companies pulling factories out of China
3.) Blackstone and IMF have been plenty wrong before. also, there's no chance they don't at least use some part of the data from the Chinese's National office of statistics.
The PRC is absolutely in a recession. No one is arguing against that, but to say a recession will lead to a 50% collapse in GDP is absolutely ludicrous.
The only middle income countries that have seen such a dramatic collapse in GDP are those in an active state of war like Ukraine, Syria, or Lebanon.
I think it's likely GP is wrong about the 50% figure, but if they were correct the CCP would never publish the number for fear of scaring away foreign investment. So it may be worth looking into more deeply.
You can't have either the US or China in a great depression without it taking everyone down with them. If china is in a great depression, then so is the rest of the world. If china is in a great depression, apple stock would have cratered as would most indices around the world. Go read about the 1929 stock crash. Money front runs economic depressions. Meaning wall street will let us know.
The anti-china nonsense hasn't changed since the early 2000s with gordon chang. China was supposed to collapse decades ago according to the anti-china "experts". Today it's the like of peter zeihan and youtube grifters like serpentza, et al. Same old nonsense - economic collapse, falun gong genocide, organ harvesting, environmental devastation, end of "da ccp". All of that turned out to be outright lies in the 2000s.
My advice is stop watching silly youtube videos by silly grifters and silly news from silly media organizations. Watch the money. If one day, the dow or s&p drops 10% ( even with circuit breakers ), then we may have something. If it continues to drop and stay down, then we may have something. Can't believe the amount of nonsense people believe when it comes to china. Especially when it's the same old debunked nonsense.
At this point I don't know whether people like gordon chang or peter zeihan work for "da USA" or "da CCP". Cause their outlandish bullshit always end up being wrong and making china look good in the end.
Just because one person spouts disinformation doesn't mean all criticism is false. [0][1][2]
[0] - https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2021/06/china-un-hum...
[1] - https://bmcmedethics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s129...
[2] - https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
The organ "harvesting" is something that happened in chinese dominant countries. Even in taiwan, which strangely enough didn't get the same "press" coverage. But I'm guessing you already knew that.
Whatever happened to the "death camps" in china with millions of muslims? Did that turn out to be fake as well? We had satelite images and graphic testimony and congress even pass a bill declaring it a genocide. And then magically radio silence. That's exactly what happened back then too.
But then again, we send warships along the chinese coast and accuse them of threatening us.
And how did you arrive at this conclusion? US seems fine right now with record low unemployment, strong dollar, and increased factory activities. While detachment from China is already in progress, with China's export slumped 7.5% in May, which is atrocious since that number is compared from a year ago when China was in lockdown. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/07/chinas-exports-plunge-by-7po.... Fact is, the world is moving away from China, and it seems to be doing ok, but China is suffering from double digit decline in real estate/export/retail.
> The anti-china nonsense hasn't changed since the early 2000s with gordon chang
Yes, discount everything logical because of one pundit who is too early. Nevermind most of the business leaders this year have mentioned moving business/factories out of China as a long term plan.
> Watch the money
No, watch all the multinationals pull factories out of China. watch the increasing panic from normal Chinese citizen online video with respect to foreclosure/job loss/unemployment. then watch the money.
It's fine to occasionally post on divisive or political topics as part of a general mix, but we ban accounts when they are primarily used for that, and single-purpose accounts are definitely not ok here. We want curious conversation, which is pretty much the opposite of these things.
(and no, we're not secret communists or whatever - we're just trying to have an internet forum that doesn't suck in predictable ways)
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36451477.
That being said panels still produce multiples of their embedded energy throughout their lifetime, so it's still worth it.
It's their construction industry which is incredibly wasteful and isn't a result of outsourcing.
For an example of why focusing on one segment does not give you a full picture, china is the world leader in solar, hydro, and wind energy production.
they also use less fossil fuel energy per capita than the united states.
for a more accurate comparison of how clean their power is compared to the united states, i would say a better metric would be that they are 26% renewable while the US is 17% renewable.
Similarly, differences in renewable percentages aren't particularly helpful when there is a large disparity in CO2 production by non-renewable type. Coal produces roughly twice as much CO2 per kilowatt hour As Natural Gas. Therefore, if you want to analyze the footprint of a PV panel, the composition of non-renewable fuel types used to manufacture it is very relevant. Something that is manufactured with 20% Renewables and 80% Natural Gas is comparable to something with 60% Renewables and 40% coal.
Comparison would be CO2 per kilowatt hour in China versus the US, which is 40% higher in China, at 530g/kwh vs 370g/kwh in the US. [1]
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-intensity-electric...
Doesn't counting this as china energy used rather than US energy used mean china's doing even better? That embedded energy should be counted with the consumer, where it naturally shows up on the supplier's energy bill
My point was very simple. Producing PV panels in China probably makes more CO2 than if you manufactured it in the US.
If you want to change the subject to some other question, the analysis would be different and we would have to know what the question is.
This is also why using nuclear instead for this is such a bad idea: the CO2 emitted by the fossil fueled sources while the nuclear plants are not yet online far outweighs the embodied CO2 of either PV or nuclear construction themselves.
Similarly, if you have a need that PV can't fill, you might want to look at alternative fuel sources with a longer lead time
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335083312_Why_do_we...
Also, that paper had this statement:
> For example, every step in the production of solar PV power systems requires an input of fossil fuels
which is false. None of the steps in making PV require fossil fuels.
That paper appears to not have been published in any peer reviewed journal. Also the claim that wood chips have to come from clearcutting of rain forests is hilarious. Where did you get this bullshit?
If you want to shake your fists about fossil fuel emissions this is by far not the appropriate direction to aim them IMO.