Deregulated energy markets accelerate solar adoption

> Solar panels are different from oil in that their producers cannot turn them off

Uhh they don’t last forever. So yeah. They can be controlled like oil if you are unable to make or source replacements.

> Uhh they don’t last forever. So yeah. They can be controlled like oil if you are unable to make or source replacements.

They last for decades, and the resources (unlike with oil) to produce, repair, and rebuild them are readily available in the US (if through no other resources than recycling failed panels).

The biggest risk is that the US stops training engineers, scientists, and technicians who would be capable of doing that work.

They are conventionally warranted for 20 years, but that's just a guarantee they won't lose more than 20% from their nominal capacity over that time period. Silicon PV (the kind that dominates the market currently) continues to produce after that, continuing to degrade, but more slowly than in the first decade after installation. Many of the PV panels produced in the 01970s still work today.

So embargoing or blockading PV exports to the US would be a threat that the US might start to produce less energy 20 or 30 years in the future. This is very different from the situation with oil, where the Strategic Petroleum Reserve contains 19 days of petroleum consumption. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Petroleum_Reserve_(U....

20 years versus 19 days is a significant difference, I feel. 20 years would be long enough for a functioning country to develop a solar-module industry from scratch, though the US probably couldn't. Think about the state of the Chinese PV industry 20 years ago, for example.

Just pointing out that they are not forever. And the use of it in reasoning if flawed. We can but 20 years of oil too. It being a long period only lessons the affect not removes it.

> We can but [sic] 20 years of oil too.

The US annual oil demand costs around $500 billion (over 7 billion barrels used per year, but it's not all for energy). Since that does include other uses besides energy and energy demands are only increasing, it's still a useful baseline figure for estimating (because it's conservative, we'll likely need more in the future).

To acquire 20 years worth of our current demand would cost over $10 trillion (+ storage costs + future processing costs). Do you really think we can acquire 20 years worth of oil as easily as we can acquire solar panels? Panels which cost a fraction of that and don't require you to literally burn them to get energy, and instead can produce energy for decades with a little bit of maintenance (clean them, keep trees from growing over them).

>Uhh they don’t last forever. So yeah. They can be controlled like oil if you are unable to make or source replacements.

I do not want to resort to Reddit-level insults but you are so misguided to imply you are trolling.

1) The Australian government is spending millions of dollars to ensure we can turn off excessive solar production to protect grid stability.

Every grid operator will do similar things when solar and wind reach 80% of the generation

2) Solar PV has an effective life of about 25 years and still produces about 75% of its nameplate capacity in 25 years.

If you are genuinely concerned about what the energy supply chain will look like in 25 years, you are either a fool or a liar or both.

Solar PV was invented at Bell Labs in 1954. Since then it has reduced in cost by more than 99.9%. And continues to fall in price.

To demonstrate how quickly solar can be deployed; Pakistan added 1/3 of its total generation capacity in 2024. That is over 17GW of solar in a poor and disorganised country.

> embargoing or blockading PV exports to the US would be a threat that the US might start to produce less energy 20 or 30 years in the future

It means you can't replace panels destroyed and can't grow your energy production. If one side can and the other can't, that's a major problem.

> 20 years would be long enough for a functioning country to develop a solar-module industry from scratch

The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best is today. We're twenty years ago.

kragen's point is that worrying about solar panel embargos is unreasonable given the duration that panels last. An oil embargo is much more impactful to the US. A 6 month oil embargo would significantly harm the US despite our diversified energy infrastructure. A 6 month solar panel embargo wouldn't be a blip even if we were getting 100% of our energy from solar (+ battery storage, presumably). The panels we have will still be working. For it to be impactful:

1. The embargo would have to last decades.

2. The US would have to sit on its hands for those decades and deliberately choose not to develop its own manufacturing capability.

> worrying about solar panel embargos is unreasonable given the duration that panels last. An oil embargo is much more impactful to the US

An oil embarge is absolutely more impactful than a PV embargo. That doesn't mean the latter isn't a problem.

> embargo would have to last decades.

My point is it wouldn't. An embargo would immediately limit America's ability to grow its energy base and replace e.g. panels destroyed closer to China (or hell, on the homeland through presumably sabotage). If you're at war and your energy is capped while your enemy's isn't, that's a strategic problem. Waiting for that predictable problem to manifest versus cauterising it today is madness.

Here are Lazard's 2024 LCOE numbers, a popular reference (though they're often too generous regarding renewables). https://www.lazard.com/media/xemfey0k/lazards-lcoeplus-june-...

You will notice that utility PV and CCGT are relatively similar in cost. Of course, replacing most of our energy infrastructure would have massive capex that one would add to the solar option. Note that the solar numbers do not include the cost of storage. And the storage requirements as you replace each GW of generation get higher, not lower.

Unfortunately this PDF doesn't explain Lazard's calculations, so it won't convince anyone who employs any critical thinking. Key factors like types of PV panels, whether tariffs are included or excluded, to what extent the panels' peak capacity exceeds the inverters' capacity (if at all), interest rates, etc., are not provided at all. Capacity factor is only mentioned as a broad range, with no mention of factors like what country it's in, fixed vs. sun-tracking, transmission costs for especially sunny sites, etc. Maybe it's fine if you want a rough guide, if it's correct, but it presents no evidence to show that it is correct.

Some evidence that it's not correct is that Saudi Arabia signed a PPA for wind last year at US$15.65 per MWh https://renewablesnow.com/news/saudi-arabia-signs-1-100-mw-o..., which is barely over half of Lazard's minimum LCOE for wind of US$27. So I don't think they're being too generous regarding renewables, though their solar numbers do look more reasonable.

Here's a quick LCoE exercise. Unlike Lazard, I show my work, so that, if it's wrong, anyone can see that and correct it. Suppose you're a utility that can freely import Chinese solar panels at the current €0.110/Wp (https://www.solarserver.de/photovoltaik-preis-pv-modul-preis...) in a region where single-axis trackers give you a 25% capacity factor, you are borrowing money at 5% to build a 100-megawatt-peak plant, the panel cost is 30% of the total plant cost, and the plant life is 20 years. (These are fairly typical numbers.)

The panels will degrade over the 20-year period, so you'll only get about 90% of your rated peak power on average over that time, and the capacity factor of 25% brings that down to 23 megawatts on average. (This is front-loaded, so the panels produce more toward the beginning of the plant's life when it matters more, but let's ignore that.) This works out to about 200'000 MWh per year.

To amortize a €36.78 million loan over 20 years at 5% you need to pay €2.9 million per year.

Dividing €2.9 million by 200'000 MWh gives you €15 per MWh (1.5¢/kWh, 55¢ per gallon of gasoline, US$4.30/GJ).

This is pretty far below where current European and US solar PPAs are coming in, and about half of what Lazard gives as the low end. So, either I'm missing something fundamental, or one or more of my assumptions above is inapplicable to most of Europe and the US. Here are my best guesses about what it is:

- A lot of European plants are being built in very polar and cloudy countries like the Netherlands and Germany, so the capacity factor is much worse than 25%. Like 10%.

- The US has massive import tariffs which more than double the price of solar panels.

- Maybe balance-of-plant costs have fallen far behind the precipitous drop in solar module prices, so maybe currently the cost of modules is only 15% of the plant cost instead of the usual 30% or so.

- Maybe lenders consider solar energy projects risky and so demand higher interest rates than the 5% or so that is usual for utility bond flotation.

What do others think?

The graph on page 17 tracks the historical costs and shows a massive blip for the top of the price range over the last two years, even as the low end continues the trend of dropping lower.

It's really only that last couple of years top end that lets the comparison to gas prices stand. Without it, the document clearly shows that building new solar is as cheap as buying the gas to burn in an existing gas plant.

I think Lazard cost estimated have always been US specific, though I didn't see that spelled out explicitly at a glance.