Scientific American article on distributed power

[pleppik]

Interesting take away is that module costs are about $.75 a watt as pronounced by the founder of Sunpower.
If someone could tell me where I can purchase their modules at that price I would corner the solar market!

Well of course if it costs them $0.75 to make, you won't be able to buy them for less than $1. That's just business 101.

[russ]

One interesting thing I've noticed is how many people are interested in going off-grid, even knowing that it's more expensive than grid power. Maybe 1 in 10,000 - you see very few come to the sight that will pay a premium if the grid is available

It seems that to some people, there's some real value to being "energy independent" on a personal level. What would that value be?

If the storage technology ever gets to the point where going off-grid is only a slight cost premium (1.5x instead of 5x-10x) I think we'll see a lot of ordinary suburban folks cutting the cord. The utilities are right to be worried about the possibility of a death spiral of stranded assets sometime in the future.

Stop, get off the green wagon and think.

1) Most people have no possibility of installing solar panels - apartment dwellers - house roof faces wrong - no money - no credit -

2) Industry uses the most power - that will never be solar with present technology

3) The percentage of total energy supplied by solar today is 1%? Got a ways to go I guess?

4) As more EVs come into use most will be powered off the grid

What you suggest isn't going to happen without a major improvement in PV technology as well as storage technology - neither of which are going to be here in the next 20 years.

[Naptown]

Interesting take away is that module costs are about $.75 a watt as pronounced by the founder of Sunpower.
If someone could tell me where I can purchase their modules at that price I would corner the solar market!

[bcroe]

If the storage technology ever gets to the point where going off-grid is only a slight cost premium (1.5x instead of 5x-10x) I think we'll see a lot of ordinary suburban folks cutting the cord.

That's true, it would solve so many problems. But, not in my lifetime. First question I get from
interested people is if I'm off grid, but hardly any understand the implications. Bruce Roe

[pleppik]

There's probably little in this article which will be new to people who follow the solar industry closely, but it's a nice trend summary of the challenges facing power companies and how they're trying to get ahead of the game.

One interesting thing I've noticed is how many people are interested in going off-grid, even knowing that it's more expensive than grid power. It seems that to some people, there's some real value to being "energy independent" on a personal level. If the storage technology ever gets to the point where going off-grid is only a slight cost premium (1.5x instead of 5x-10x) I think we'll see a lot of ordinary suburban folks cutting the cord. The utilities are right to be worried about the possibility of a death spiral of stranded assets sometime in the future.