Understanding Solar Energy

Great article. Unfortunately his California duck curve graph only shows 2023. A graph including 2024 shows how batteries are dramatically flattening the duck curve:

https://cdn-ilcjnih.nitrocdn.com/BVTDJPZTUnfCKRkDQJDEvQcUwtA...

https://reneweconomy.com.au/battery-storage-is-dramatically-...

And similarly the battery prices are very outdated. I don't blame the author for using those estimates, I frequently do too just because getting access to current data usually requires paying money.

But making decisions on that data without understanding that current prices and near-term prices will be about half of that price will lead to bad decisions. And when thinking 5-10 years out, not taking the full exponential drop in battery and solar prices is beyond foolish.

Actual battery prices may be dropping but cost to install batteries to your solar installation in CA have not dropped - in fact they've gone up.

Not sure why this is the case.

This is by design in the regulatory infrastructure, from local permitting offices all the way up to CPUC and rate structures.

We pay about $3/W for solar installation in the US, but Australia pays about $1/W.

For batteries, there's still a supply crunch and the only people getting really good prices are those people who buy in huge bulk or are willing to take a risk on a lesser known manufacturer. If you want well-proven brands the prices can still be very high for small purchases, and a solar installer is not going to want to take a risk with a new supplier.

These systems are not super complex, most technical people could figure them out fairly easily, and in fact off-grid disconnected systems are really easy to do. It's the grid tie that will kill you or first responders to your house, we have made the process of setting the whole thing up very expensive because nobody on the regulatory side has an incentive to make it straightforward and cheap. And since NEM3 killed solar in California, all the installers are barely scraping by and need to rely on very high margins on few projects.

> This is by design in the regulatory infrastructure

I don't see how this can be true. I installed my own ground mount array, and the costs directly attributable to regulatory infrastructure were about US$35 (for the permit). It would have been no higher if I had added batteries. The material costs were completely comparable with AU, CAN and UK pricing.

Perhaps you're arguing that the certification and licensing regulations for paid installers drives the installation cost up (i.e. that labor costs for US solar installs are too expensive) ?

> and the costs directly attributable to regulatory infrastructure were about US$35 (for the permit)

That may be true if your time is free, but for a company, they must deal with a permitting scheme for every county and city that they do business in. Additionally, unpredictable changes to rate structures will drastically change the demand for solar in areas year to year, and so the solar installers that survive are the ones who are well attuned to that change, and pounce on new markets that are suddenly opened up by new rate structures that make solar easy to finance or pay off quickly. That means that about $1/W of the $3/W that installers charge actually goes to customer acquisition costs.

Most areas do not have super onerous labor requirements for solar installers, and generally the contractor licensing part is quite reasonable. But perhaps insurance like workers comp and disability is a lot higher in the US than in Australia.

I'm surprised that US tariffs have not resulted in higher materials costs than in the other anglophone countries!