Solar Economy, is it healthy?

webbbn said:

Where do you get your news? If they're only reporting core inflation, then you should get your information from somewhere else.

You can get the full reports here if you're interested: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.toc.htm

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There is a large factor of trust here. The economy is complex - especially with government involvement. Because I have determined that the government has been not trustworthy before, I don't trust them to be better than that now. To weed out the simple basic economic factors from the manufactured economic information is too cost-benefit negative (time) for me. My great hope is that the government will stop printing money, loaning money over night to special high dollar customers, front loading the economy with debt, dropping helicopter money across the nation, and so many other tactics they use to promote their political agendas. When that happens, I will take their information offerings with joy.

HLB

Subdood said:

I'm curious as to whether SS will extend their free shipping again after they extended it already another week last Sunday. That's why I made the move today.

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Shouldn't reply to myself, but I just checked to see if they let their free shipping deal expire today, and it appears it did. Not to suggest they'll re-instate it later. Glad I got my order in yesterday and saved $230.

OffGridForGood said:

Ah, but ONE DAY those pv panels will need to be up-dated, and THEN they will be available for residential use,...at 10-cents on the dollar of original cost?
If there is a slow down, pause, recession, (call it as you will) prices will drop with demand, creating an opportunity for low cost purchases to expand my On Site Power Plant!

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One of the best things that could happen for the individual versus corporate and government dominance is for that individual to control their own power and other basic needs. That leaves less for the big boys to control and lessens their power over the individual.

HLB

OffGridForGood said:

Ah, but ONE DAY those pv panels will need to be up-dated, and THEN they will be available for residential use,...at 10-cents on the dollar of original cost?
If there is a slow down, pause, recession, (call it as you will) prices will drop with demand, creating an opportunity for low cost purchases to expand my On Site Power Plant!

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With the speed at which panels are dropping I don't see a serious market for used, . The price will have to be almost free.

I bought new panels for .40/w. All my calculations were based on .5/w so I thought I made out like a bandit.

two weeks later I saw similar panels for .35/w and now a couple of months later I'm seeing new for .28/w

I wonder sometimes if the low price on used is really just to entice people to take away the 'e-waste' for the power co.
Not a lot of these deals in my neck of the woods, so I always buy new. Hope these outlast me! since I can't imagine being able to change them myself in 20-years time.
Lots of guys on the forum seem to get panels for $25 each, used, and just make a big array from them. If these were available near by to me, I would be tempted for sure, I have a lot of space available.

webbbn said:

Where do you get your news? If they're only reporting core inflation, then you should get your information from somewhere else.

You can get the full reports here if you're interested: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.toc.htm

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The operative word “ when“…obviously a word you missed..! … there are many reports given out and many contain different contents and metrics for different reasons… generally to suit a cause, a talking point or to be viewed more favorably by those receiving the report ….. that was the essence of my comment…it happens all the time ……it’s called pitching heat, dis-information … skewed news… fake news…lies…etc …...WHOOOOSH.>>>>
thank you for your help in economics…
J

JRH said:

The operative word “ when“…obviously a word you missed..! … there are many reports given out and many contain different contents and metrics for different reasons… generally to suit a cause, a talking point or to be viewed more favorably by those receiving the report ….. that was the essence of my comment…it happens all the time ……it’s called pitching heat, dis-information … skewed news… fake news…lies…etc …...WHOOOOSH.>>>>
thank you for your help in economics…
J

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To discuss the details of economics may be of little use unless you have a lot of time. It may be a history of economic events would serve better. You really don't know what happened until later on, and then you are in another economic cycle. I recommend reading "Bubble in the Sun" by Christopher Knowlton. It is truly fascinating from an information and humor point of view. I am using it as a guide for our current economic situation.

HLB

HLB said:

To discuss the details of economics may be of little use unless you have a lot of time. It may be a history of economic events would serve better. You really don't know what happened until later on, and then you are in another economic cycle. I recommend reading "Bubble in the Sun" by Christopher Knowlton. It is truly fascinating from an information and humor point of view. I am using it as a guide for our current economic situation.

HLB

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Honestly it’s too tiring to discuss economics at all anymore …in such a polarized world where few understand and even fewer care …. been doing it since the early 60s…

So now I just use the short version …it’s more youth friendly and gets to the point…

“the fix is in.…like it or not ,get ready to deal with it”

thanks for your recommendations on info…
thank you for your comment too.
J.

1201 said:

Solar is getting ready to be in serious decline

Installer are charging $3.5 a watt
Tack on $1.5 a watt for financing

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Global trends tell a different story.

There will be local variations but total installed capacity is still rising strongly. 239 GW of PV capacity was installed in 2022. It will be something like 350 GW this year and it's rising quickly, on a path towards 1 TW/year.

Meanwhile, PV costs, after a brief pause, are declining even further. e.g. this is the weekly trend with solar PV module prices this year:



Professionally installed PV systems here in Australia are available from as low as US$0.5/W. It's hard to understand the large price gap with where you are. In a market with the most rooftop solar PV per capita in the world, solar PV installations are still growing very strongly.

You can monitor global PV module price trends here:

Year on year, at week 44 (3 November) prices for PV modules are down by over 40%.

wattmatters said:

Global trends tell a different story.

There will be local variations but total installed capacity is still rising strongly. 239 GW of PV capacity was installed in 2022. It will be something like 350 GW this year and it's rising quickly, on a path towards 1 TW/year.

Meanwhile, PV costs, after a brief pause, are declining even further. e.g. this is the weekly trend with solar PV module prices this year:

View attachment 176282

Professionally installed PV systems here in Australia are available from as low as US$0.5/W. It's hard to understand the large price gap with where you are. In a market with the most rooftop solar PV per capita in the world, solar PV installations are still growing very strongly.

You can monitor global PV module price trends here:

TaiyangNews PV Price Index – CW44 - TaiyangNews

TaiyangNews PV Price Index – from polysilicon to solar modules: CW 44 Product Price WoW (%) YtD (%) Polysilicon RMB/kg (USD/kg) N-Type Silicon in China (New) 75.0 -11.8 – Reusable Chinese 9N 70.0 -6.7 -66.7 Chinese 9N 65.0 -9.7 -67.5 Granular Silicon (New) – – – Global (USD/kg) 20.0 0.0 -33.3...

taiyangnews.info

Year on year, at week 44 (3 November) prices for PV modules are down by over 40%.

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Don't feel so bad missing out on the free shipping from sig solar now. By the time they have their next promo prices should be down abunch more, I wonder if they'll bump their minimum of 10 panels up to 20 if prices keep dropping.

wattmatters said:

Global trends tell a different story.

There will be local variations but total installed capacity is still rising strongly. 239 GW of PV capacity was installed in 2022. It will be something like 350 GW this year and it's rising quickly, on a path towards 1 TW/year.

Meanwhile, PV costs, after a brief pause, are declining even further. e.g. this is the weekly trend with solar PV module prices this year:

View attachment 176282

Professionally installed PV systems here in Australia are available from as low as US$0.5/W. It's hard to understand the large price gap with where you are. In a market with the most rooftop solar PV per capita in the world, solar PV installations are still growing very strongly.

You can monitor global PV module price trends here:

TaiyangNews PV Price Index – CW44 - TaiyangNews

TaiyangNews PV Price Index – from polysilicon to solar modules: CW 44 Product Price WoW (%) YtD (%) Polysilicon RMB/kg (USD/kg) N-Type Silicon in China (New) 75.0 -11.8 – Reusable Chinese 9N 70.0 -6.7 -66.7 Chinese 9N 65.0 -9.7 -67.5 Granular Silicon (New) – – – Global (USD/kg) 20.0 0.0 -33.3...

taiyangnews.info

Year on year, at week 44 (3 November) prices for PV modules are down by over 40%.

Click to expand...

There is a sudden drop at Week 23-24 ie around 2nd wk of June 2023 - what was the cause? any idea.
From your chart, a RMB (Yuan) which is about 14-cents USD per Watt.

wattmatters said:

Global trends tell a different story.

There will be local variations but total installed capacity is still rising strongly. 239 GW of PV capacity was installed in 2022. It will be something like 350 GW this year and it's rising quickly, on a path towards 1 TW/year.

Meanwhile, PV costs, after a brief pause, are declining even further. e.g. this is the weekly trend with solar PV module prices this year:

View attachment 176282

Professionally installed PV systems here in Australia are available from as low as US$0.5/W. It's hard to understand the large price gap with where you are. In a market with the most rooftop solar PV per capita in the world, solar PV installations are still growing very strongly.

You can monitor global PV module price trends here:

TaiyangNews PV Price Index – CW44 - TaiyangNews

TaiyangNews PV Price Index – from polysilicon to solar modules: CW 44 Product Price WoW (%) YtD (%) Polysilicon RMB/kg (USD/kg) N-Type Silicon in China (New) 75.0 -11.8 – Reusable Chinese 9N 70.0 -6.7 -66.7 Chinese 9N 65.0 -9.7 -67.5 Granular Silicon (New) – – – Global (USD/kg) 20.0 0.0 -33.3...

taiyangnews.info

Year on year, at week 44 (3 November) prices for PV modules are down by over 40%.

Click to expand...

When it all started, I knew I could never have solar, unless I had one panel in orbit close to the sun. Now, my not-so-perfect solar radiation location seems very affordable; at least for panels. The inverters; well, they are still a problem. I may look in to winding my own ferrite toroids and sinusoidally switching them with a small controller; maybe an Arduino if it is fast enough. I don't know, I have never done an inverter before. I don't think they have to be as complicated as they are making them now. I know the commercial operations can not be updating firmware every week.

HLB

HLB said:

When it all started, I knew I could never have solar, unless I had one panel in orbit close to the sun. Now, my not-so-perfect solar radiation location seems very affordable; at least for panels. The inverters; well, they are still a problem. I may look in to winding my own ferrite toroids and sinusoidally switching them with a small controller; maybe an Arduino if it is fast enough. I don't know, I have never done an inverter before. I don't think they have to be as complicated as they are making them now. I know the commercial operations can not be updating firmware every week.

HLB

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I think if you go with a tier 1 like midnight solar, Schneider, Victron, SMA etc you don't generally have to worry about firmware updates and stability.

HLB said:

When it all started, I knew I could never have solar, unless I had one panel in orbit close to the sun. Now, my not-so-perfect solar radiation location seems very affordable; at least for panels. The inverters; well, they are still a problem. I may look in to winding my own ferrite toroids and sinusoidally switching them with a small controller; maybe an Arduino if it is fast enough. I don't know, I have never done an inverter before. I don't think they have to be as complicated as they are making them now. I know the commercial operations can not be updating firmware every week.

HLB

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If you decide to make your own check out the back shed, there are also a few brilliant members here; take @Hedges and @Warpspeed for example. This thread should also be extremely valuable to you.

Someday I do want to attempt to make my own as well but need a lot more education first.

OffGridForGood said:

There is a sudden drop at Week 23-24 ie around 2nd wk of June 2023 - what was the cause? any idea.
From your chart, a RMB (Yuan) which is about 14-cents USD per Watt.

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No, I don't watch it that closely. But the people behind that site do, you can always go back through their news feed from around that time.

Brucey said:

I think if you go with a tier 1 like midnight solar, Schneider, Victron, SMA etc you don't generally have to worry about firmware updates and stability.

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42OhmsPA said:

If you decide to make your own check out the back shed, there are also a few brilliant members here; take @Hedges and @Warpspeed for example. This thread should also be extremely valuable to you.

Warpverter

Because fifteen cells stack as 5 x 3 very neatly, and sixteen cells stack together as a much less convenient shape at 8 x 2 I design and build all my own solar electronics, and can have any system voltage I want. So I decided that thirty cells at around 3.3v nominal = 100 volts. Dare to be...

diysolarforum.com

Someday I do want to attempt to make my own as well but need a lot more education first.

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I am a little off topic from this economic thread. After I contend with a few projects I don't see why we could not start a thread on inverter construction. When you build your own, your software serves for the firmware, and it is known to all - not hidden. You don't have to build a Cadillac to start with. You can build a small test unit to power an AC electric motor. I ordered a wide selection of various transistors a while back just for this purpose. Things move slowly though. We can find all interested parties and have a stab at it. But, back on topic for now.

HLB

Brucey said:

I think if you go with a tier 1 like midnight solar, Schneider, Victron, SMA etc you don't generally have to worry about firmware updates and stability.

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It may reflect on my lack of a real life anymore , but when ever I see that little red dot on my Victron phone app that says there is an UPDATE to the firmware , OMG ..I get a rise….its not often I see that red dot thing…but at this age I love seeing that there is an update…I am always certain it will make all the dots in life connect …..but maybe that’s just me…
J.

A few random thoughts:

1. The article cited in the OP focused on SolarEdge and Enphase, whose products focus more on the residential rooftop segment. Utility-scale installations continue to boom.

2. The Inflation Reduction Act will spur sustained growth in both supply and demand of solar hardware. A huge increase in US manufacturing of solar-related components (PV panels and ESS) is already underway.

3. Pricing of cells (the building blocks of panels) just hit an all time low. N-type M-10 mono cells fell below 7 cents/W last week, down almost 50% this year. But I expect there will be price volatility in the PV panel markets over the next couple of years while the boom settles into longer-term trends. For example, the Biden Administration adopted a two-year waiver on some tariffs applicable to some panels manufactured in several Asian countries; those waivers expire in June 2024. Expect at least a temporary bump in panel prices around that time, above what they otherwise would be, as a result. (Unless the waiver is extended, or tariffs are reduced).

4. I think the long term price of Solar panels will trend lower. Manufacturers in China, India, and the U.S. are racing to add capacity. The burgeoning adoption of Solar might exceed manufacturing capacity at times, but companies have a habit of increasing production to meet market demand where there’s money to be made.

5. Technological advances will continue to drive PV panel price-per-watt down over the long term, just as in most other products. Perovskite and tandem-cell technology is already achieving 50% improved efficiency over the best panels on the market today. Don’t be surprised if you see panels on the market in the next five years that produce at or near the 45% theoretical efficiency of those technologies, which would be double what we can buy today.

JRH said:

when they don’t include housing costs and food in the inflation numbers what we hear reported will be very skewed…

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Yeah. Except that food and housing costs (as reflected by rental rates) ARE included in the CPI-U numbers reported. In fact, reports this year have noted that housing costs have been a major part of the costs in 2023.

Oh, and for those people in this thread saying that the numbers are fudged, do you realize that all of these economic reports from the govt (labor and employment rates, CPI, GDP, etc) are compiled by CAREER data nerds, NOT political appointees? Do you have any idea of the extraordinary steps taken to insulate the data analytics people in those agencies from political influence? If anyone has any actual evidence that the reported numbers have been fudged due to political pressure, please by all means share it.

GuyG said:

Yeah. Except that food and housing costs (as reflected by rental rates) ARE included in the CPI-U numbers reported. In fact, reports this year have noted that housing costs have been a major part of the costs in 2023.

Oh, and for those people in this thread saying that the numbers are fudged, do you realize that all of these economic reports from the govt (labor and employment rates, CPI, GDP, etc) are compiled by CAREER data nerds, NOT political appointees? Do you have any idea of the extraordinary steps taken to insulate the data analytics people in those agencies from political influence? If anyone has any actual evidence that the reported numbers have been fudged due to political pressure, please by all means share it

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From my life's experiences and since the beginning of time, the government always fudges to get what they want. I have not studied their inflation methodology in particular, but I have studied other realms in which they claim excellence, and found them lacking. However, I will say that the total inflation consideration is the sum of many parts, some of which may be correct. Here is an Investopedia article discussing some of this:
It says, "Some critics view the methodological changes and the switch from a cost of goods index (COGI) to a cost of living index (COLI) as a purposeful manipulation that allows the U.S. government to report a lower CPI."
With out digging too much further I see that the government has changed the method by which they calculate CPI. This is a red flag because you can not compare the present with history when you move the goal posts. When you can not compare the past with the present you are on "full self drive" with out being in control any more. That is like landing on Mars with out having the correct value of the gravitational constant there. Your landing will likely be off kilter. The next red flag is why did they change it? The answer is because it gives a result that fits their needs better. It did not give a higher number causing them to say, "Gee, we changed the method so that the number would better represent the truth, and even though it went the wrong way for us we have to accept responsibility for that and we are sticking with it". No, the method they chose just happened to send the number in a direction that made life easier for them. The current method yields a better number to report than the old method. It does not matter which method is better, really, it is the context and the historical consistency in which the method is used that matters most. Well, the government is the expert in all such matters, correct? Obviously, an individual can not contest the expert. If so, then why have all economic crashes been associated with government activity, such as creating fiat money, and so on? If so, then why did we not experience "transitory inflation" in 2021? History tells the truth all the time, if you can find it unfiltered on the internet or in libraries where books have not been banned. This is not about a science problem, this is resultant of a human trait. It is not about politics in the sense that one party is better or worse than the other. It is about government and the way it is used to affect our lives.

End result here? I use government inflation figures cautiously because the organization that created them is not trustworthy.

Is the solar economy healthy? That is what we are trying to determine. I don't know at this point.

HLB