Price of solar dropped 89% in ten years

Imagine how steep that line would be if the fossil fuel lobbies hadn't been fighting it tooth and nail all these years

Without saying anything about politics, environment, or source:

Why, for the love of Satan, does this graph have only 2 data points per source?

Why use a line chart 📉 for that?

This is clear bar chart territory 📊.

And this shows exactly why investing in nuclear is not the answer every tech bro thinks it is. Its far cheaper to built renewable and more importantly far far far quicker.

Dang, it's almost like it was worth all the research money the government crammed into it in the long run, unlike what my dad said to me a million times.

What surprises me, in a way, is that photovoltaics are literally 3,5 times cheaper than just mirrors reflecting light onto a tower. It got REAL cheap. Wish it'd go further!

The installation just keeps getting higher. Now to add onto mine I need a load of additional equipment that was not required when my first lot of enphase inverters was installed. Also what was quoted for the labour and materials that are not the panels and inverters has almost tripled in 4 years. Have to get the roof sorted before I go ahead with it and the higher output panels and inverters mean that I would get about another 1.5kw in the same space compared to my first installation.

Sweet, now get the panels and installation cheaper so I can afford to put it on my house

I just installed a 9.3 kW system with individual microinverters under each panel for grid stability and it is absolutely amazing how much you can power all day without threatening a massive bill at the end of the month. I still import power at night, but the power companies usually have agreements where you get credits for all wattage exported to the grid to cover your imported power at night, because both parties win in that contract.

my bill has gone up 89%

Pretty clearly shows why there’s no future for nuclear power.

Even for filling gaps in renewables, peaker plants are getting cheaper and don’t take 15 years to build.

Thanks, China.

Is this just the cost per raw Watt produced?

Is it a fair comparison vs conventional fuel-based power (coal/nuclear)?

Ie: if you wanted to build a plant capable of producing continuously, 24 hours a day, you would need some multiple of solar panels to produce an excess during daylight, and storage.

Not that drastic drops in solar costs aren’t bad, just what would the cost-per-watt be if you had to power an average city on just solar for a year?

It's frustrating seeing a graph showing the price of electricity going down while my utility prices go up. Does this take into account infrastructure cost?

Government subsidies work for getting new technologies out of the prototype stage and into practical deployment. Solar and wind are both good demonstrations.

Off-grid living is becoming more and more enticing.

Cool…but where’s offshore wind?

I want a battery in my house big enough for me to lose power for 2 days and still cook with electric stove and have hot water from water heater.

That is my dream for every house. To be able to have a stable power well from some kind of battery fed by a solar + grid sharing. To be able to offer extra power to a neighbor if they need it for a project or a party or help however.

I don't want to be energy isolated from the grid. I want to be energy insulated and be of the grid.

I know it's basically a physical impossibility but here hoping to another 89% in the next 10 years (compared to today)

I wish hydroelectricity was there.

Are the renewables including cost of storage in this graphic? Batteries are a lot more needed with wind and solar since they aren't always available.

Also, I'd imagine nuclear would enjoy a similar level of success if there were more countries willing to invest in nuclear.

What happened to Nuclear option?

Price of onshore wind is about as low as solar.

I'd like to add wind to my solar eventually. Multi-modal makes a lot of sense to me. Pretty sure my solar installers don't do that and I have no idea who does do that...if anyone. I'll investigate someday.

https://xkcd.com/1281/

It's wild to me that 19% difference between the drop of on shore wind and solar to the same price point is massive, like that extra 19% drop in solar is quite literally more than half of the solar previous cost, about $230.

Where's hydro? Because it would be a straight line at the bottom...

The price of electricity produced is an interesting metric to look at but can be very misguiding alone without more data around it.

It like comparing the price of rain water compared to well water.

The same way that solar is cheaper than nuclear, rain water is much cheaper than well water, you just need a roof with a gutter to get rain water.

Does it means that we should stop using wells and rely only on rain water and use water only when it rains ? Or do we also want to have tanks, do we need a backup for when the tanks are empty ? ...

Gas peaker? I hardly know her!

It doesn't matter how cheap solar is. Fossil fuels are still more profitable, because once a fossil fuel plant is built, it needs fossil fuel to run. You can't do the same with sunlight. We literally cannot shift away from fossil fuels under the current profit driven model.

Unless you’re in California, where the second highest utility rates in the US exists and solar benefits are being capped by the state.

13% utility increase next year, a 95% increase in utility costs since 2014!

Then there's California where NEM 3.0 makes it less than worth while to install or upgrade your existing solar installation.

Data stops in 2019. It's completely outdated. Good try.