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Comment by voiper1 | Hacker News Reader

Compared to what?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#...

Coal is $4000 per kW

This solar project is right on the average at $1,327, although NREL says it can cost upto 2743.

Some investment group says a 1MW coal plan would cost similar or upto 4x the cost: >estimates suggest that the construction cost of a coal-fired thermal power plant can range from less than $1,000 to $4,500 per each kilowatt of installed capacity. https://esfccompany.com/en/articles/thermal-energy/coal-fire...

So, seems just about average and on just the construction cost - cheaper than coal.

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That is just capital cost. You have to add the cost of fuel (and the cost of carbon certificates).

> Compared to what?

My comment was based on 1kW panel on Amazon.com is $500 delivered but there's likely a lot of nuance in quality and lifetime and labor for these projects

That is… literally not how solar works.

Coal runs 24/7 pretty predictably. 1kw of coal means 1kw of power 24/7.

Solar output varies heavily throughout the year, with only limited times where 1kw will be produced by that panel. On average, you’d be lucky to get 2-3 hrs a day at that capacity, and 8 hrs total of any significant output.

Also, the output from that panel needs to be converted/inverted to be used, and those inverters are expensive too.

If you want to produce electricity 24/7 from those panels, you’ll also need batteries.

So figure 5-10x the cost of a single panel to somewhat reliably produce that panels equivalent in energy 24/7 - assuming you have the space.

There are so many problems with simplifying power usage and production, there is no silver bullet. The costs are always based on todays markets. I think coal should be relegated to a baseline emergency power role, there are several problems with that statement depending on where you are in the world and what role coal has there.

Who is paying to build, maintain, and operationally staff a coal plant fired up a few times a year? Or the infrastructure to mine said coal when needed on such an intermittent basis?

This is where the cost calculations of solar fall apart to the point of being outright fraud. You need to add the cost of the natural gas peaker plant you build and keep around for nights and “seasonal” energy troughs before the number makes any sort of sense whatsoever.

I’ve said it before - but solar power has been the easiest ever to predict investment I’ve ever made so far in life. The investment was into natural gas.

Solar is cheap until you reach a saturation point that is already there in some areas - rapidly approaching in others. Battery deployments currently are measured in the hours of duck curve they cover at the moment, not nights or number of days they can cover in totally predictable seasonal energy shortage scenarios. It’s trivial when you can ignore and socialize the actual expensive hard problems to solve.

I love solar and wind - they should be primary generation sources for humanity. I hate the utterly rampant financial fraud going on sold to the public by professional grifters.

Expert bean counters, whose input always weigh heavier for the energy industry than the opinion of environmental scientists, already did the maths on this and concluded that solar is vastly cheaper already in the short run. You should let all of them know they goofed up.

Bwaha. Have you wondered why California and Germany have some of the most expensive energy in the world, while also being on the forefront of renewables - especially solar?

It is because of this. Literally. You’ll need to do your own math though, because it’s too politically embarrassing to acknowledge. After all, California now has ‘too much solar’!

It’s also why California is keeping their Nuke plant alive (doing a strong about face), and building a ton of natural gas peaker plants, and Germany imports massive amounts of electricity during certain times of day and year - and has been keeping coal around a lot longer than they were supposed to.

Because this is a way harder problem than naive back of the envelope calculations suggest. But that would be awkward to acknowledge. So, we don’t.

Or is it really ‘there is no way they could be lying to us, or doing something stupid! That would be crazy!’?. Because if so, I’ve got some math that shows it literally could be no other way.

And what about the inverter, the mounts, cables, high voltage grid connection, monitoring, land purchase?

1kwp (2 panels) should cost no more than 120-150 USD delivered.

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