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@PetraKann

8 ай бұрын

Where are the bulk of the world's solar panels and inverters manufactured Matt?

@timkbirchico8542

8 ай бұрын

yes

@DeathsGarden-oz9gg

8 ай бұрын

I think they way we do solar now is bad like just 5 miles down the road they built one removed all plant life left it bare and the solar is really close to the ground like 6 feet off it. But the worst part it's now a big heat dome and a driving hazard just driving at it when the sun is behind you ya you'll get a big glare from the solar farm blinding you just this year alone car crashes in that area has gone up 70% 70 wtf how is that ok. Geothermal is best but if it must be solar it needs a change like a big one like native plants under them give just a little more space between the solar so more plants can grow helping cool the solar. Also if they will alow solar farms along side roads why can't we fill the dead space on freeway off ramps inside cities and yes and native plant life there to not rocks. Ps I'm in nv not a wet state and I've seen a massive decline in joshua trees mesquite trees and other cactus and native bushes and grasses there being removed for more homes and solar farms.

@dennisenright7725

8 ай бұрын

I doubt that it will be dominant as baseline power, at least until elon musk puts the fifty mile wide fresnel lens solar collecters into orbit. The intermittency is always going to be a problem. And for your area, Boston, the intermittency does not line up well with energy demand. And it will become even less useful as fewer homes are built without gas or oil furnaces and people heat their homes with electricity. When is the greatest demand for electricity? The answer is going to be very different for New England as for someplace like Arizona or Australia. In a cold climate like yours electric heating means that the maximum demand happens early mornings in January or February at temperatures of minus thirty five degrees. When the sun hasn't risen above the horizon and the air is perfectly still. Unless battery systems are magically invented that can store months worth of power, you will either need fossil fuel generating capacity equal to peak demand, or to build nuclear. Or build transmission lines to the more dependable hydro stations five hundred miles to your north

@owenwilson25

8 ай бұрын

Star Trek - The Voyage Home predicted it be solar.

That was a really insightful episode

@grapesforallofus

8 ай бұрын

😲😲

@shanusharma901

8 ай бұрын

👍

@Deepak_4578

8 ай бұрын

Nice

@Deepak_4578

8 ай бұрын

Nice

@sweetsha8002

8 ай бұрын

Great

My advice (I'm a highly experienced accredited solar installer) for anyone thinking about installing Solar on their home is to very carefully choose your installer, and run away from any cold canvassing company. Solar is brilliant for most people with an unshaded roof, but the quality of the install workmanship is critical to a low maintenance system. It is also critical to keep the "As Installed" info pack in your switchboard. In 8 years time if something goes wrong, having detailed info at hand on how the system is wired (string layout map) can save a technician ALOT of time when trying to make repairs. I've also gone off micro-inverters as far less cheap/easy to rectify faults on. If a micro-inverter fails, unless you have a map of where each of the micro-inverters is located, replacing one or more micro-inverter that's failed can be cost prohibitive - climbing up onto the roof, potentially removing multiple panel to find or access it etc. Significantly easier/cheaper to walk up to the wall where the string inverter is located and swap it out. I love my own 10kw system. Even with an EV I pay tiny winter bills and no bills any other time of year (located in Tasmania, Australia - no battery installed yet).

@rogerm3708

8 ай бұрын

Ever installed solar shingles? Does it have a future?

@Remotesteve2

8 ай бұрын

Tesla string over enphase

@godspeed133

8 ай бұрын

Guessing you have a battery installed if you pay nothing for electricity? Do you bother to check beforehand to see when the lowest light time of year (with historical data) was and whether you would need to draw power from the grid then? i.e. the worst case scenario

@kadmow

8 ай бұрын

@@godspeed133 - the bothering bit (outcome, likely not intended came across poorly, laugh it off..)- is a simple math function based on latitude with allowance for shading at the fringes - taking one totally offgrid exponentially increases costs depending on the % of reliability one is comfortable with - in the end to get through the deepest solar doldrums, one could have $40k+ of battery standing idle for most of the year, or a $3k generator with fuel ready to go for the once in 3 year eventuality... One's own call, lol...

@justiceifeme

8 ай бұрын

Good to know this for future solar system installations

There's also the tech argument: the computer chip industry made silicon the most studied material ever in terms of manufacturing processes. The latter is what drove mass production at minimal cost and enabled profitability for volume sales.

@ricardokowalski1579

7 ай бұрын

Yes. And the move to larger silicon waffer sizes resulted in surplus "smallish" silicon ingots, waffer and lithography machines. Before solar cells had to compete with actual computer chips for machine time. Now the surplus equipment is a sunk cost and solar cells are not part of the node reduction race, so they are using the previous generation litho machines. Regards 👍

@tamnguyen-bl7jf

7 ай бұрын

oik

@jameshughes6078

5 ай бұрын

And allll of it comes back to both computers and solar power needing semiconductors

I just began seriously considering rooftop residential solar, and it didn't take long for me to uncover how unfair and anti-solar my local monopoly electric utility is. The unfair net metering arrangements and fixed monthly "grid connection fee" changed my long-term plan to completely disconnect from the grid to spite them.

@cryptickcryptick2241

8 ай бұрын

One can build out a system that can reduce your need for power. EG4 has solar powered minisplits. With a few panels, one can build a standalone power system, not connected to your traditional wiring and take solar and decrease you dependence. Much of a homes load is heating and cooling, and with a "supplementary system" powered primarily from solar, you can use solar to heat and cool. The electric company won't punish you if you have a small power bill every month instead of a big one.

@DrewskisBrews

8 ай бұрын

@@cryptickcryptick2241 indeed, but the utility's connection fee will remain

@frostydog860

8 ай бұрын

This is where I’m stuck at as well. The cost of solar + the monthly connection fee is higher than my current utility bill. So in the summer months it’s close to breaking even, but the winter months will be like paying 2 utility bills.

@apostolakisl

8 ай бұрын

How is it unfair? For example, right now, 10:30am in Texas on a Tuesday, the wholesale market for electricity is at $15/mwh. To put that in perspective, you are asking your utility to buy your excess power at 12 cents per kwh (using a national avg here), which is roughly 10x the current wholesale market. And then when you come home at 5pm, and you rev up your house and need more than you are producing, the wholesale cost is closer to $150/mwh, but you want the utility to sell to you at at 12 cents, below the cost of power alone, not including the grid and administration costs. So you want the utility to buy your power at a high price during the times the wholesale market is cheap, and you want them to sell you power for cheap while the wholesale market is high. Obviously, this is a system that simply can't work if anything more than a small percentage of people do it. Visit Ercot.com and you can follow along. Other markets are very similar, I just don't know the website.

@veedrac

8 ай бұрын

Given grid infrastructure costs are a sizable fraction of energy spending, how is it unfair to ask users to pay for it?

The incentives where indeed quite important but, at least in Europe, the solar adoption increased greatly after Russian invasion of Ukraine and subsequent energy crises. Suddenly people realised how important is to be energy independent and electricity is the energy that can be created by anyone. And also, other countries as well, realised the importance of being energy independent.

@samsonsoturian6013

8 ай бұрын

No one is becoming energy independent. That breaks basic economics

@cp37373

8 ай бұрын

@@samsonsoturian6013 more fake facts already? How exciting.

@buddysnackit1758

8 ай бұрын

Yet another reason for the false narrative this video makes. Politics is what is driving it not science.

@samsonsoturian6013

8 ай бұрын

@@cp37373 Don't be silly. Power generation heavily favors economies of scale. It's a fact that cost Edison a lot of money back in the day

@ayyappanchithambaram4575

8 ай бұрын

@@samsonsoturian6013 That moment when you're liking own comment.

Imagine if the cost to install solar on your roof also dropped as substantially. It's roughly the same here as it was 7 years ago when I first looked into it.

@InvisageStudios

8 ай бұрын

I got solar on my home in 2009 and it cost me $8500 for a 3Kw system. Today you can get that for $2500. (Australia). Mind you - when I purchase it, I was also guaranteed a high feed-in Tarif. I still get $0.49KWh today

@XanderMarjoram

8 ай бұрын

Something to consider though is that if it is exactly the same price, then that's actually a ~30% drop relative to inflation over the same period. If your income hasn't risen at all though then that's a different matter.

@garethbaus5471

8 ай бұрын

The same price over 7 years for something that is mostly hard to automate manual labor is actually kinda impressive.

@simon359

8 ай бұрын

Shipping costs for panels 💸💸💸

@garethbaus5471

8 ай бұрын

@@simon359 True.

The moment i noticed Solar roofs on Amish houses. I knew, Solar is good to go. Found out my local Amish are allowed small electrical systems for their homes now. Stuff like freezers, fridges, lights and phones (typically for 911 etc). The only way they are allowed to have it though is if they farm their own Electricity. Which in there eyes matches with the self reliant and work for what you have. The stuff is never located in the house, typically a shed near the road. Most have massive setups for just a few things. When i asked why, the dad looked at me and said "English men are such poor farmers they cant even farm light. Local farmers argue over solar fields... a field is a field, we harvest it in many ways. All crops and grasses is stored light, this cuts the middle man for a specific need, a need we mostly need for safety". I laughed at that the whole way home. Here is a guy with a 8th grade, at best, education and he gets it better than most higher educated people. smh

@magesalmanac6424

8 ай бұрын

The Amish once again being cool af

China dumping subsidized pv on the market also had a huge effect. It accelerated the adoption curve that you described so well.

That $20,000 price point for putting PV on my house has been unchanged for the past 10 years. At this point I'm of an age to realize I won't live long enough to justify the cost of buying it.

@simon359

8 ай бұрын

If you do it DIY, it’s cheaper! I started building a small system and added onto when I could afford it!

@aaronhauth8880

8 ай бұрын

two things that go into that high cost: the panels, and the labor. Labor is expensive because not a lot of folks provide that service, that's going to change as panels get adopted more widely, and create incentives for businesses to engage in providing that service. and the panels have been expensive, but are continuously getting cheaper as the process to automate, and the materials required to build them, get cheaper. Last, and i think this is a big takeaway from this video, is the idea of this being a technology that will fit that sigmoid curve with the slow growth + fast widespread adoption + slow acceptance from detractors. Maybe the past 10 years have been a part of the slow growth, but things appear to be changing fast. Maybe within the next 5 years it'll be cheaper!

@eulldog

8 ай бұрын

The $20k cost may have stayed the same but the Watt Hours and performance of the panels have increased significantly in the past 10 years.

@NSBarnett

8 ай бұрын

Yes, @@simon359 but if jeromebarry1741 is getting on a bit, we don't want him mucking about on his roof, do we? Jerome! First, you might live that long, you never know; but second, the value of your estate will be $20,000 greater when you snuff it -- are you leaving it to someone? They might appreciate the investment.

@percyfaith11

8 ай бұрын

Adjust that $20k price for inflation and it would cost over $26k today. So the price has dropped if it still costs only $20k

It should be noted that the low LCOE figures mentioned in the video are for utility-scale solar installations, where they buy up large chunk of desert and fill it with several megawatts of solar panels all at once. Rooftop solar LCOE is much higher than this, as installation is much more expensive when crews are working on top of roofs than on the ground, plus it's being done one house at a time, rather than in bulk.

@animefreak5757

8 ай бұрын

i'm not certain, but i'm reasonable certain it also doesn't include energy storage. If it doesn't you can't really compare it to something that doesn't need it (hydro, nuclear, or fossil fuels)

@AlecMuller

8 ай бұрын

I did a DIY ground mount for our house, and with a 25 year life and 6% ROI, I figured we're spending $80/MWh LCOE for generation + an additional $90/MWh for storage before tax breaks (or the cost of my labor), so it's more expensive than his figures, but not as much more as you might think. Where I live, grid electricity currently runs $0.30/kWh ($30/MWh), so our system is paying for itself.

@IL_Bgentyl

8 ай бұрын

@@AlecMullerdon’t forget peak hours. We spoke to around .70c it’s wild.

@altrag

8 ай бұрын

Still beats the LCOE of a personal drilling rig in your back yard!

@animefreak5757

8 ай бұрын

@@altrag or a personal backyard nuclear reactor! since we are going into the absurd. With fairphone coming to the NA market, and framework already here, I'm curious to see how many they will sell. World seems full of people on the climate bandwagon these days, time to see who's going to put their own money down for it.

Imagine where we'd be in the US with solar if the Big Power Utilities weren't actively trying to fight solar. It's as if the Power Utility CEO cares more about his personal compensation than he cares about making America renewable.

@ebx100

8 ай бұрын

As if??? He does!

@magesalmanac6424

8 ай бұрын

I live in sunny SoCal and the push back here from our local utility (SDGE) has been ferocious. You can’t even sell your unused power back to the grid. They’ve got a stranglehold on electricity.

@humblecourageous3919

8 ай бұрын

@@magesalmanac6424 We live in North San Diego County and have had solar for 21 years. I am hoping California legislates against SDG&E on their push to raise monthly rates for solar customers. Somehow 10 months into our yearly bill it is -$60 (minus 60 dollars). I think CA must have given some incentive that caused that. We only have a 3.5 KW system but we make about 1,000 more KW per year than we use.

@erikdietrich2678

8 ай бұрын

There's a nugget of a real reason behind power companies'resistance to solar: it adds power to the grid at times when it isn't necessarily needed, yet also drops production when it *is* needed. So power companies are paying out money to consumers with home solar installations, but can't actually reduce the number of power plants they need to maintain. In fact, because solar power production creates such a spike and trough, power companies have to use peak plants instead of normal baseline plants to try to balance load. Peak plants are more expensive and pollute more than baseline plants, so the net effect can be that is that electricity becomes MORE expensive and MORE polluting.

@WindFireAllThatKindOfThing

8 ай бұрын

And new construction companies. The ones building skinny homes for nothing but charging big. Big corporate tract housing builders will cut any corner yet raise every price of new homes, which means they are also actively avoiding integrating solar into new home construction except for 'halo' upscale projects. They slash everything, right down to the minimum size of property.

Cheap solar PV was surprising for even me. While planning my off-grid net-zero lodge and cabins development, I had been planning on a mix of solar PV and thermal vacuum tubes, but an advisor pointed out that even if I use resistive water heaters, for my climate of Nome, Alaska it’s better/cheaper to use just PV. Of course I’m using heat pumps, so it’s even better.

@markbernier8434

8 ай бұрын

I'd be interesting to know more, if you are willing. I live in Canada and so far, it would seem that PV doesn't produce enough during the snowy times to be worth while. Clearly your numbers don't agree.

@AnvilCreekLodge

8 ай бұрын

@@markbernier8434 Just to be clear, I’m comparing solar photovoltaic panels to solar thermal tubes (thermal tubes beat thermal panels for cold climates) For this it now makes sense to just use PV and not use thermal. We will still need diesel generators for 2 to 4 months a year, but we can use the waste heat from that to offset the load on our heat pumps.

@upnorthandpersonal

8 ай бұрын

@@AnvilCreekLodge Pretty similar to what I did. When I started planning, I made a leap of faith that solar would come down in prices (I'm in the tech sector, I saw a solar panel in the same way as a microprocessor). I'm off grid now (you can find my blog about the entire place on my channel) here in Finland at 63 degrees north. I also need a generator in winter, but I make my own bio diesel from waste cooking oil so I'm still pretty much fully energy independent.

@stucorbishley

8 ай бұрын

I’m finding a similar situation emerging with my setup in South Africa, we have plenty of sunlight - and I’ve considered putting a solar heater in addition to my PV+battery setup but I’m finding with the upfront cost of retrofitting a solar heater not working out very attractive compared to supplementing/powering the resistive element with PV on a scheduled basis. I’m able to absorb about 40-50% of the hot water bill with just PV. Automating the time of use with an external temperature/timer control would be ~$200 vs ~$1000 for a solar heater retrofit.

@alanhat5252

8 ай бұрын

I'm surprised at this, is the problem with solar thermal the price of the control gear & a tank with an extra coil? I'm not in the market yet but from what I've seen the systems are overly complicated. Solar thermal should be good because it can accept more energy than the 22% current maximum of PV.

Matt, You explained the mechanisms by which Solar got un-stuck from it's early adopter stage - but you didn't exactly specify the incentives that were given (except for the feed-in tariffs). Would have loved to hear more about that. IIRC the US played a critical role in the R&D of solar in the late 20th century and Germany in the 2000s. Could have reflected more on what happened in between these stages of adoption and decline. Great video nonetheless!

@diatonicdelirium1743

8 ай бұрын

In Germany there was a guaranteed feed-in reimbursement for 10 years, making the investment safe and decoupled from price fluctuations. In the Netherlands we're still enjoying 100% netmetering for all electrical energy we use, including all taxes! This will slowly be replaced in the next 8 years by a mandatory feed-in reimbursement of 80% of the bare kWh price (excl. taxes!). Not as good as before, also not terrible. It will be an incentive to try and use more of our own production.

@vonnikon

8 ай бұрын

In short: USA did the scientific research on PV, Germany's "energiewende" incentives provided the funding needed to start proper mass-production, and China were happy to take said funding and build a mass-producing PV industry.

@christo930

8 ай бұрын

He's missing the most important part. Solar production was moved from the West to China. China subsidizes solar panel production, wages are extremely low in China and compliance costs are next to nothing because they don't enforce the law. In the West, waste has to be treated and then verified to be safe before disposal. In China, you just put the waste directly into the environment. If some Chinese person gets their leg caught in machinery and loses it, well, tough for him. If we were to start producing our own solar panels, prices would skyrocket back to where they were.

@baileescott401

8 ай бұрын

@@christo930 So in short, Solar has become cheaper as we've shifted the manufacturing to have less concern for the wellbeing of laborers and the environment?

@chris27gea58

8 ай бұрын

@@christo930 Do you have the data to support that series of assertions? Or maybe you are wrong. Maybe, China had success with these technologies because it put a monumental development effort into them when other players beyond China's borders, transfixed on immediate financial benefits, viz. high profit margins, elected to abandon further expensive work on improved solar cells. Do we see other examples of production of technically advanced industrial and/or consumer goods ramping up in China more quickly and more successfully than elsewhere? We do. China has had great success in mobile phones. More significantly, EV automaking in China has reached critical milestones that demonstrate the maturity of the EV industry and market there. In other localities/regional markets EV automaking is still in its infancy. There is nothing controversial about any of these observations. It was after having made the same observation, viz. that China had attained a level of technical and manufacturing prowess that put it in a leadership position in some key areas of industry, that the authorities in the USA launched the current 'trade war' with China, which is more an embargo declared by the USA that is meant to selectively ban trade in advanced microelectronics and microelectronics fabrication equipment with China. (All the other tit for tat nonsense and geopolitical posturing just obscures the underlying fact that this is a struggle over technical and industrial leadership.) You can kid yourself as much as you like that low wages explains China's success in certain fields and conversely that high wages in the USA and Europe explain their lack of success but that is complete rubbish. Chinese high tech businesses persevered in doing the demanding development work necessary to realise critical technical advances while similar businesses elsewhere threw in the towel. China did indeed have some advantages that made perseverance with high cost development work a bit more likely there. China had little to lose (bar a bit of investment capital) if perseverance didn't pay off and an enormous amount to gain. For many years Chinese authorities have sought to increase the scale of internal and international trade in advanced industrial goods. Now, as it happens, many of the world's largest and most successful manufacturers likewise had been keeping an eye on China because of the massive size of its domestic market and the opportunities that a presence in that market offered. The development of automaking in China is an interesting case. The Chinese Joint Venture company model was born to give all parties some part of what they wanted. The Chinese side in these JV operations learnt a lot from their European and American partners and reapplied everything to their own wholly owned domestic manufacturing operations. That big market (China has been the largest car market in the world since 2009 and the market has grown at an annual rate of 10.6% on average from 2001 until today) offers plenty of scope for new players to enter into competition with China's more established automakers for a piece of the action. And, with many companies competing with one another and driving prices down long term survivors need to make technical advances and advances in manufacturing efficiency in order to hold their place/improve their position in the automaking pecking order. To do that you need a first class product development team packed with talented engineers. And, in China, thanks to a clear policy direction to concentrate financial resources on the provision of high quality University degrees in the engineering disciplines assembling such a team is doable. You elected to rely on preconception and bias to explain China's long march to the top of certain spheres of manufacturing. That is lazy and it doesn't give rise to explanations of anything but rather delusions. Do a bit of research if you want to make a comment worth offering. Note: It is notable that the advanced manufacturing skills acquired by the local Chinese side by way of JV collaborations gave these Chinese auto makers the opportunity to substantially increase salaries. (Note: The average salary for an auto worker today in the United States is USD$62,500 per annum and in China it is USD$35,900.) So, the claim that something is explained by low Chinese wages faces a big problem: these days wages in advanced export oriented industries in China simply aren't that low. And, moreover, wages are growing at around 4% per annum.

I did always think solar was going to be important. In the 1980s in LA, we installed a solar hot water system on our roof. It halved our natural gas bill and we never ran out of hot water. Now we have a 12kw PV system that has been running since 2001. It took 12 years to break even (1.5 years shorter than I had penciled out at installation), but we expected to stay in our house longer, and it has worked out for us. We are now contemplating upgrading the system to 20kw and installing some kind of battery storage. With the IRA, I expect a much shorter payoff period, and an end to power outages (which are regular occurrences where we live now, and why both of my neighbors have installed generators). The change in rules here in CA means that either it wasn't worth just having a PV system; it has to include storage to make it economically feasible.

@cryptickcryptick2241

8 ай бұрын

So there is one method that can work around this. Install a small solar system, but do not connect it to your panel. Instead use it to decrease your power needs. The EG4 mini split heat pump can take direct solar power and offset heating and cooling needs. There are other ways to use solar, hot water ect. A partial system, can give benefits but without all the costs.

Also the production of panels in China led to a HUGE decrease in price. Like the DVD player, once China starts miking something the price gets dirt cheap. Affordable panels + Tax Credits + High utility bills = Fast Adoption.

My parents recently got solar, my father didnt want to get it at first but I started talking about solarpanels and other interesting things to do with energy when I discovered this channel. But also you pay a lot of money up front, luckily the incentives helped a lot with that. We could borrow money without any interest at all from the government and have multiple years to pay the original money back, and possibly less if we cant afford to pay it back. So at least you played a big part in our solar, thank you for that.

The biggest incentive was the price per KW in my area...and the price is always increasing. Being independant from the 'Grid' with a battery storage system is also a plus when the power goes out. After doing the calculations, the PV system with battery back up/storage will be paying for itself in 7 years...maybe less. DO IT NOW WHILE THERE IS A TAX REFUND!

The big advantages of solar are it's simplicity, there are no moving parts, and the fact that it enables power generation at the point of use. And the thing about storage is that cheaper options, some of which you have already covered like flow batteries, are coming to market. Soon enough it will be cheap enough for almost everyone to have solar + storage to where power outages due to downed power lines will be non-issues for homes.

@Entropy67

8 ай бұрын

Would make handling the power grid a lot easier, less kickback when starting up a "downed" grid

@tonybaldwin6280

8 ай бұрын

Almost everyone 8 billion and increasing?

Solar has always been the dominant energy technology. By going from coal to solar Panels, we are just eliminating the middle process. By the way I installed solar panels five years ago and they are showing a 10 % degradation I hope this has improved since then.

Archimedes (inventor, philosopher, astrologer, politician, and alchemist): First recorded solar tech harnessing sunlight. It is said that Archimedes prevented one Roman attack on Syracuse by using a large array of mirrors (speculated to have been highly polished shields) to reflect sunlight onto the attacking ships causing them to catch fire.

Let's not forget that oil has been subsidised massively. We don't hear about that often enough.

If they were so wrong about the way solar was trending in the past, they should get a knowledgeable group together to figure out where it's going. Sort of like a solar panel.

@macmcleod1188

8 ай бұрын

A committee of solar luminaries.

@OhHeyTrevorFlowers

8 ай бұрын

They should eat a lot of hot soup. Pho tons, one might say.

I would love solar. Here is why I hesitate: 1. Finding a good honest installer 2. If the installer is not the same company as the one selling, finding an honest seller 3. Insurance. I've heard that some insurance wont cover you if you have over 10kw (?) of power 4. The cost 4. Where I live, if the power goes out in the middle of the day, I can't have Solar power my house because the power company says no and I would need batteries 5. Batteries are pricey and I dont have room in the garage.

Thanks for these videos. I appreciate the research.

It might be worth mentioning that solar PV usefulness is greatly influenced by latitude. In the northern UK the turn down ratio from summer to winter (when we really need electricity) is something like 9:1. Fortunately the sun also creates wind.... A second point is that silicon-based PV takes a lot of input energy - so that, at higher latitudes, it can take years to pay back the input - which means spending the energy long before you break even. If Perovskite panels can be made robust enough, this will change. And this could really be an avalanche.

@jimurrata6785

8 ай бұрын

You've already got wind aplenty! Horses for courses... Lots of opportunities for crude tidal as well, but people would be up in arms over that.

@kadmow

8 ай бұрын

@@jimurrata6785 - though wind scales poorly for personal systems - much better suited to grid scales - esp. when talking offshore.

@jimurrata6785

8 ай бұрын

@@kadmowI'm not sure where the OP mentioned personal use? Though I'm also not sure where they're going with pervoskite cells other than they should be cheap to produce when the process is finally sorted.

@oyuyuy

8 ай бұрын

I didn't know the UK even had sun!?

@LeJimster

5 ай бұрын

When it's possible to generate enough electricity in winter where I live (northern latitude) to be fully off grid I will be all in. Hopefully technologies aren't too far out to do that.

The wonders of automated mass production and huge investment by the Chinese has brought this amazing technology to the world...

Hi Matt. Just stopping past here again to say thanks for posting an article version of the video with sources cited. I really appreciate the extra effort it takes to do that. :)

Thanks for this it was great seeing you in Vancouver last week. got my solar and love it!!

Installing a 5kw solar array next week. Your videos helped me make an informed decision.

Really good video. I just hope energy storage tech sees similar adoption and improvements.

The thing is, still it ISN'T cheap, because: 1. the state heavily subsidizes the buyer - at least in EU 2. there's no viable plan for recycling the huge amount of solar panels that are getting old 3. there's still no cost effective way to store the energy when the sun isn't shining On the grand scheme of things PV panels are *expensive* - just because the owner does not bare the full cost, does not mean that other people, in the future won't have to.

If the us govt paid the installers rather than in small chuncks yearly to the purchaser, you'd get an even higher movement over to solar.

The biggest issue I'm having with getting on solar is that in my neck of the woods, the installation on my home would be something like 65K, and that's before the battery setup.

@justinnkim

8 ай бұрын

THIS ^. I could have bought a new truck for the cost of the panels on my roof. Its very sad.

@pohkeee

8 ай бұрын

There’s the rub…we’ve been trained! The wealthy always run two calculations…short term and long term ROI, not initial investment. The most prohibitive factor right now is interest rates…but that will follow a cycle, so we’re back to weighing the timing of current interest to future inflation of the item. Getting the timing right is always the trick.

@bradallen1443

8 ай бұрын

Find a good electrician that installs solar, most solar install companies are worse the car dealerships. My roof is flat so we did some of the grunt work ourselves. We also bought all the panels etc from a wholesaler to control costs and quality. 65K is insane.

@gregcollins3404

8 ай бұрын

Do a little learning and do it yourself. Its not that hard. Solar panels can be bought for less than 50cents a watt. We solar installers are making bank off the government subsidies and consumer ignorance.

@EmpereurFrancois

8 ай бұрын

Same here... the prices are soooo inflated and that kill the momemtum.... DIY :)

Solar has an edge in markets like Puerto Rico or the Philippines that have very unreliable power grids. The missing ingredient there is low cost batteries which should be on their way soon.

@scurvofpcp

8 ай бұрын

I get most of mine from battery recyclers, medical e waste is a godsend for that, because those batteries have to be replaced very often they will often still have 90% plus of their effective life span un touched.

@andrikurniawan531

8 ай бұрын

can u tell me what e waste is that?@@scurvofpcp

Really great info, thank you. Great video!

Very informative! As always, sir. 🎉😊

I used to fit solar water heating equipment around 2008 - 2010 and it really was good but as you said, it was hard to get people to commit to it just because of the payback ratio and when the UK gov cut back the feed in tariff sales dropped to the point the company i worked for literally changed how much i was getting paid per job whilst i was fitting it. Getting told i was getting paid £150 for a 1 panel/ cylinder replacement and all the pipe work, which would take about 3-4 hrs only to find when going back to the office they had reduced what i was getting paid to £120. Needless to say i quit.

@magesalmanac6424

8 ай бұрын

That’s awful, sounds like they pulled the rug out from under you. I hope you’ve got a better company now.

@WindFireAllThatKindOfThing

8 ай бұрын

The marketing hook that nobody employed properly is even more relevant today: Everyone wants to flip their home for a profit. They waste absurd amounts of Home Depot cash on kitchen and bath remodels, etc. when sellers should be catering to home buyers LOOKING for Solar pre-installed. Buyers don't want the hassle of a retro-fit afterwards. You wanna invest in home value...do the Solar install.

@dougrogan379

8 ай бұрын

​@GreaseMaster2000 there are some awful solar scams out there putting people.into massive debt that will take them 20 to 30 years to pay off because of the interest rates associated. These are from unscrupulous companies and sales people making millions by deceiving people who don't do their research. I did mine and I realised by the time I paid the solar off I was better off paying cheap grid electricity. That said in my new house it came with panels already on it. The lady who had it installed them and she was getting about 50 cents per kWh because the government subsidies. I get 4 cents. Which extrapolates to about $3 off my quarterly bill. It's not always worth it

Back in the 90s I *knew* it would eventually win out. I was only like 10 at the time but the value proposition as I saw it was that you buy it once, and it generates energy for you continuously. I was obsessed with making “set it and forget” type things (I also loved Rube Goldberg machines, lol) and I knew that once it became cheap enough, it’d become one of the major ways we make energy.

@chaoswraith

7 ай бұрын

Same, its free energy literally raining from the sky. It almost doesn't matter how inefficient it is at collecting, when you build enough "buckets" to collect the free rain, you will have unlimited water

@adamhero459

7 ай бұрын

It hasn’t won where I am. Not enough sun, especially on winter. Plus a lot of maintenance needed in winter or have a good deal of energy wasted with heating systems to keep snow off them. Although I’m sure over time they will win where I am as well as the tech being invested into the most usually wins. So eventually I’m sure they will get efficient enough where it can get eaten so much power that even where I am it would be feasible to be only on solar even with the winters I have.

@cheeseisgreat24

7 ай бұрын

@@adamhero459 I mean, you don’t need to have solar directly where you are to benefit from it, plus it doesn’t affect it being an energy generation winner just because it doesn’t work where you are. For your own energy generation you just probably need to invest in something else like wind since where it’s very snowy is usually also fairly windy. Like where I am, we get really snowy winters, but also get plenty of sun for solar and plenty of wind for wind.

Rooftop installers in my area made sure to raise their prices for installation to compensate for panel prices going down.

Matt great video and thanks for the information and education

That’s the best ad you’ve ever done in your video. Pursuasive, quick, well-shot. I actually kind of want a Larq bottle now and might get one soon.

@UndecidedMF

8 ай бұрын

Good to know!

Matt, great video and thanks for the information and education. Wondering if another video of this type might be good for EV's. Providing additional information on the reasons for the slow transitions from ICE to EV's.

@alexwalker2582

8 ай бұрын

There are still a number of technological hurdles for mass adoption, quite frankly. It certainly isn't going to be used in a shipping or industrial capacity in it's current form as the amount of work you get out of those battery packs vs. charging time just isn't profitable at all. As for the average person, the sheer amount of rare earth minerals used in the battery packs, combined with a lack of mines that are NOT owned by China, who we are in a new cold war with, means that the cost of those packs will remain artificially high until alternatives can be found. Combine all that further still with the sheer amount of computer chips those vehicles need and the overall cost of the vehicle and it's maintenance (replacing those batteries ain't cheap or easy, I say this as a Ford tech) is simply going to be out of reach for the average consumer for the foreseeable future.

@billweir1745

8 ай бұрын

@@alexwalker2582 You don't need to replace an entire battery pack if just a cell goes bad. It's also warrantied for 10 years by mandate, and most people don't even own a car that long. Also, there are already Semi fleets that are EV in commission now.

Adoption curves have been something I've paid attention to for a long time, and solar power as well as EV adoption have performed as predicted. That said, the drop in solar cost this past year is more than I expected. Great program, thanks!

I think it may have been overlooked that the amount of investment into solar vs fossil fuels is not only a case for the value of solar but political will of state actors. Fossil fuel companies aren't legally allowed to build more power plants or refurbish existing plants in many locations while renewable plants are allowed and perhaps even subsidized. it isn't a wonder why solar has risen so fast by getting legislative backing while fossil fuels are getting hampered.

@waltb4415

8 ай бұрын

Agreed, it's not a free market, more like a dictator's election. Imagine if the government authorized the police to give $100 to every dog owner using a leash and shoot every dog not on a leash. Then this channel would have a gee-whiz breathless video about the popularity of leash technology.

@migBdk

8 ай бұрын

Fossile fuels are still getting by far a lot more government support than all other every sources, globally. Both direct support and simply being able to pollute for free.

@D-Vinko

8 ай бұрын

Intangible Drilling Costs Deduction, Percentage Depletion, Credit for Clean Coal investment Code § 48A, Last In, First Out Accounting, Foreign Tax Credit, Master Limited Partnerships, Domestic Manufacturing Deduction DOE Advanced Fossil Loan Programs Office. Papers documenting the estimated subisidies to fossil fuel and clean energy industries do not count implicit subsidies, just the explicitly mentioned ones. Trillions of dollars are filtered into implicit subsidies with the intent of fossil fuel industries taking a normally unprofitable drilling project, and making it profitable.

@TDPlusPT

8 ай бұрын

@@migBdk There is a huge difference between bribing a company to build in your territory because they are going to build anyway because its economically feasable (oil) - and subsidizing an industry that literally could not build or survive without cash injections. (solar).

6:52 I didn't know Shell made solar panels at all but BP had essentially stopped making them years before this date, they were good panels though, well made & reliable, you can still see them on top of road signs & sometimes traffic light control boxes across the UK, sometimes accompanied by a small wind turbine mounted on the same pole. It definitely feels like lucrative Government contracts ran out & they had to charge market prices so the sale price went down to eye-watering from astronomical & that didn't suit shareholders.

Great video! I first investigated solar roof panels in 1995. The cost was estimated to be $35k just for the panels for a small system. It was seen as a strange request and difficult to even find anyone that could quote on the job. Fast forward to today. I upgraded my roof top solar for $12k fully installed for a 13.3kWh system. Here in Australia over 30% of homes have solar panels on the roof. Payback period is estimated to be around 5 years.

@kenoliver8913

7 ай бұрын

Bearing in mind these are Australian dollars - multiply by 2/3 to roughly convert to US dollars. Also 13.3kWh is big for a rooftop system - the financial sweet spot for payback period is a system smaller than this.

@UndecidedMF My predictions were not wrong. I went off grid in 2003 with just a 45 watt HF panel and an old truck battery. That panel cost me almost $300 but it was enough to run my water pump, a few lights and a radio. I was the first on youtube teaching people about off grid solar and the Chinese started producing panels for off gridders and improving the technology. It was off gridders that drove the movement to cheaper and better solar panels. It took a long time for solar to get past the off grid market to commercial and grid tied systems and you should thank an off gridder for making that possible because we proved to the world you can live with just solar power. 20 years later and I am still off grid with just a 1.4Kw system and 800Ah of LFEPO4 batteries which runs everything I need and I have most modern appliances. An average home in the US can run off a 5Kw system with the right appliances. Now I will make another prediction and green hydrogen from renewable energy will replace fossil fuels for most uses where direct electricity won't work so invest in that.

This is all well and good. My Dad worked in the solar energy industry in the 70s and into the 80s... a real pioneer of the tech - and our family were big supporters. What is not being said is the precious rare earth metals that are needed to produce these panels and how they are mined. Perhaps the tech has changed, but I was SO wishing you were going to cover this and then I could be up to speed on just how extensive this problem remains to be.

@Kentsj

8 ай бұрын

Matt is guilty of not telling the whole story!!

@GM4ThePeople

8 ай бұрын

Mark Mills addresses this issue in several KZread vids. o/

@DrShiny

8 ай бұрын

Rare earth metals are not used in the manufacture of solar panels. You have mixed up your conservative talking points that are funded by the big oil lobby. You're thinking of electric vehicles, not solar panels. (which are also moving away from dependency on rare earth metals, fyi.)

@UndecidedMF

8 ай бұрын

I've covered that in other videos, so didn't think it was necessary to rehash it here. I view most of my videos as bricks in a wall I'm building. Not every video can tackle every point ... or it'd be a 2 hour long video ... and my videos are already pretty long. 😂

@GM4ThePeople

8 ай бұрын

@@UndecidedMFReply appreciated, Matt. For me, what felt a bit off was something a little too close to a presumption of a rapid, certain electric transition, where attempts I've seen to cost this out (particularly at a fundamental, elemental level) cast significant doubt on this. Still, many exciting advances are in the works. As ever, we will know more in time. Regards & thanks for your channel, G.M. o/

Great explanation of adoption and human psychology, but what were the key innovations that drove down the cost of the panels and how they were manufactured? There have also been substantial innovations for inverters: more efficient, producing less heat that also reduces fatigue/aging of the electronic parts resulting in longer lifetimes and enables long warrantees for the installation protecting investment.

Here's what you didn't cover which is what REALLY brought prices down. The cost of silica, and hence the cost of making silicon crystals had been going up and up, to the point where companies weren't even thinking about using it anymore at least for solar panels. This was in the period of 2003 - 2009. These high costs for making silicon crystals was doing two things. It was making ICs more expensive to produce along with solar panels. The bigger issue BY FAR at that time was making ICs which has been hundreds of billions of dollars a year industry for a long time now. Solyndra was a company that was a startup in the US who was trying to make panels using other materials. Yes, Democrats got BROW beat for funding this company even though it was a sound idea. But once again, just as companies in the US and Europe abandoned solar panels (oil companies, what do you EXPECT?? them to explore for silica??) Chinese companies were basically coming on line. This price increases in silica had another effect in the world of electronics. Companies that deal with making equipment to make ICs invested very heavily into new techniques to reduce the size of transistors so ICs could get smaller so less surface area of the silicon crystals that are produced to make ICs is used. And since 2010 to now the amount of reduction in transistor size is pretty astounding. China opened up mines for silica and this shot the price down by 90% and THIS is when it became feasible to make solar panels for sale to the general consumer. This was somewhere around 2009. However by the time this happened, along with the first benefits of this going to making ICs, as you mentioned different companies abandoned the market, but NOT in China. In fact it wasn't long after these companies dropped out that low cost panels started to become available in China, and here you can thank Chinese engineers and their govt. They improved the manufacturing process for solar panels, really bringing almost everything together. They also improved the efficiency of solar panels. The Chinese govt. helped by putting incentives into the development and improvement of panels and also incentives for installation. Now, for the Chinese haters, no, their govt. no longer subsidizes the production of solar panels. In fact there are a few Chinese companies making them now and there is good competition. This is when other countries started to understand they could grow their solar industries. There is a key to ALL of this. It's low cost silica. Something about like 80% of all silica that goes into the market comes from China, about another 10% comes from Russia, and about 10% comes from the rest of the world. So EVERYTHING about costs coming down for solar is about what happened in China. And for those who are going to say silica is common, yes it is. But it's not common to have good deposits of it, and the US used a lot of deposits in making ICs from 1975 - 2005. You can NOT go out to a beach, scoop up sand, attract the silica out, and dump the sand and get another scoop. Sorry, doesn't work that way, WAY too expensive. You need rich deposits of silica for it to be low cost. This also means more deposits need to be discovered so the world isn't dependent on China for almost all its silica.

Thank you very much for this content!

In planing a solar house in 1969, the collectors were for heating, some using water and other types using air. The heat battery was the enormous mass of the house for heating when the sun was down. The windows were double pained and insulation beads were blown in at night from a bead bin in the basement. Electricity was from the grid.

YUP! The death of net metering in IN took my solar plans off the table. Storage is too expensive for the non-tiered rate we pay.

@raullasvegas

8 ай бұрын

Im in MI, and Im just going totally off-grid. We have 2 electric companies in the state, and they are trying to do everything to make the consumer NOT go off-grid. If you figure in storage, you will still save money. Energy costs will not stay the same as they are today. Quite the contrary. They started with tiered rates this year. Net metering is pointless, and while our cost per kWh is low, there is a cost just to be a customer. In the end, Im going off-grid to be independent of the energy companies. Big changes are coming for the grid, and the cost of electricity. The other issue is reliability. Ive lost power 3 times this year that lasted longer than 3 days. I put a simple solar system in the front yard, with a battery and the last 5 day outage didn't matter to me. The critical things in the house were powered. The whole system was under $2k. Scale this out to power the entire house, the batteries and the panels are around the same cost. Battery prices are dropping.

Wow great video showing examples and pictures to go with the information 👍👍

Solar panels are VERY vulnerable to economies of scale in manufacturing. That’s because solar panels are extremely simple - they’re basically just fancy windows. Despite what you’ve been told about “exotic” materials, there are hardly any. It’s mostly just glass, with some aluminum and plastic framing - materials so cheap they’re used for disposable packaging! The most expensive part is silver for wiring, about $20 worth in a panel. The actual cell is mostly silicon (the second most common element on Earth), doped with either boron or phosphorus. Once they started getting manufactured at scale, prices fell 90% and still have plenty of fall left to go.

I always thought Solar was "the future" or would be important in the future. I just didn't think it's growth would be so rapid in the last 4 or so years. This is somewhat anecdotal but we got solar installed earlier this year. It caused me to be more aware of other people's solar arrays and I never realized how many people in my general area have at least some panels on their roofs.

There's one absurd factor hurting solar: the expectation that there will be more massive price drops in the near future. An investment protection subsidy that kicks in when prices drop further would be awesome. But either nobody has thought of this or the expense is making this prohibitive.

@justayoutuber1906

8 ай бұрын

That isn't needed. As the cost of panels drops, the incentives get smaller.

@Remotesteve2

8 ай бұрын

Solar already saves most people money…why would it get cheaper as the “competition” utility companies raise there rates?

In 1940 Robert Heinlein wrote a short story 'Let There be Light', that described the development of what we now know as LEDs and PV panels. Douglas-Martin sunpower screens, named after the scientists who developed the technology, would provide almost free and inexhaustible energy. Later stories detailed the consequences of the development. One was also written in 1940, 'The Roads must Run'.

Could you discuss the efficiency improvements with PV? It may be worth noting that the amount of energy generated per area is also going up (although not fast enough) which adds additional value. Very informative video as always.

A simple question that bypasses any need to calculate levelized cost or any other metric: Have the customers of any utility that has replaced fossil fuel power generation with grid scale wind and solar actually seen their electricity bills go down?

@captainheat2314

8 ай бұрын

Net energy prices have quadrupled so no

I agree solar is the solution, especially with all the new battery technologies for storage that you have referenced that may come on line soon. I am an early adopter of solar and have enjoyed the sun providing power for my home for over 22 years. Keep up the great work on your videos!

@Keneo1

8 ай бұрын

Why not wind? Theres more wind in the winter…

@humblecourageous3919

8 ай бұрын

@@Keneo1 We've had solar 21 years (not 22 like the above poster). Where I live, there is not enough wind but a whole lot of sun.

@Keneo1

8 ай бұрын

@@humblecourageous3919 where i live there is no sun half of the time in summer and 4/5 of the time in winter

Matt, thanks for your videos. They are fantastic. I have been wondering, have you ever looked into home solar carports? I don’t have sun exposure to justify solar on my property, but was curious if a solar carport would make sense. I just don’t know if they are viable for home (vs commercial)

Remember when everyone got mini satellite dishes? The big dishes had existed for decades prior to the mini dishes... but because their installation was fairly complicated (they were motorized and had to be precisely pointed at each satellite) they never took off... the mini dishes delivered a whole service on a single satellite (due to digital video compression) and hence their installation could be done much more cheaply. I suspect there is a similar curve in solar that we haven't hit yet. Once the panel efficiency gets to the point that a typical home could get by with 4 or 5 panels I suspect we'll see a free standing DIY solar solution become massively popular.

@thamiordragonheart8682

8 ай бұрын

I think if that's what we're waiting for it's going to be a long while. polycrystaline silicon solar pannels, which are the standard for large scale systems, are about at the limit of the possible efficiency at 20-25%. The theoretical maximum efficency for a single junction sillicon solar cell on earth is about 32 percent according to the wikipidia page on the Shockley-Queisser limit. Assuming that's correct, the only real way to get more efficiency is to go multi junction with a more tunable band gap. Practically, that requires someone figuring out how to make perovskite solar cells that can survive real world conditions for years intead of weeks, then scaling up and optimizing the process while competing with traditional sillicon solar cells.

@jimurrata6785

8 ай бұрын

Satellite revolution wasn't about 'mini dishes' it was about having an advanced geosynchronous constellation, uplink, backhaul and the breakthrough to broadcasting smaller wavelengths. This is all infrastructure (on the utility side) Single junction solar cells are pretty much at their theoretical efficiency limits. Unless you want to live on a planet without a protective atmosphere, magnetosphere and radiation belt...

Matt, as always, i love the presentation! I, like many I suspect, have a reluctant HOA. While your presentation is wonderful, sadly, it will not help sway these people. A current video examining purely cost and societal benefits might. Please consider such a video. In the meantime, thank you!

Thomas Edison suggested that solar would some day dominate. Even Jimmy Carter was a fan. I was somewhat late to the game, only putting up my first solar array in 2016, but I've finished my 4th this year and plan for 1 more. Two different homes.

@godspeed133

8 ай бұрын

Did you do it yourself as a DiY installer or are you professional installer already?

@jal051

5 ай бұрын

TBH, In most things it isn't good to be an early adopter. You end up paying a lot more for lower quality.

Thanks for your insights.

New solar productivity, plus expansion of wind, is the reason the Texas grid didn't implode during the weeks of 110° afternoons this past August.

I remember going to a local gun show this year and having to laugh at an anti-solar booth. Recently near my city a solar farm was built and i over heard them talking about it saying they just went out there, built it and haven't touched it since, they have only seen a few workers go over there every once and awhile. It is as though these people do not understand that that that is exactly why solar is so beneficial. It is largely set it and forget it. It will sit out there and make electricity. It is baffling the ignorance of some of the people around where I live in the deep south on the subject of renewables and its benefits. Even with co workers i am always told solar is way too expensive and takes up to much space when a house roof has plenty of space for solar to run off solar completely during the day. Indefinitely with battery storage.

I always thought solar would be the primary energy production technology eventually. But I also always thought that would be in the far future, not in the next decade or two.

@animefreak5757

8 ай бұрын

it won't be until we get energy storage figured out (at a state ational level)

@IL_Bgentyl

8 ай бұрын

I assume nuclear will be. It’s much safer in terms of deaths.

@whattheschmidt

8 ай бұрын

@@animefreak5757 we have the batteries we need for it, coming fast, just need to let the vehicles do V2G, charger cheaper during solar hours, release it later for a higher rate, etc.

@TonkarzOfSolSystem

8 ай бұрын

@@IL_Bgentyl Problem with nuclear is it's expensive and hard to make a nuclear power plant. There's a ton of nuclear power projects that failed part way through construction.

My local council has a deal that maybe more should do. They can install a system, up to $6000 (not including batteries unfortunately), and they initially pay for it. You pay it back over 10 years. It's designed so that what you have to pay is less than what you save on your electricity bill. So, it effectively costs me nothing. It really incentivizes people who are on the fence. Looking forward to getting it installed.

35,000$ to put it on my roof. Insurance companies are dropping insurance when you install panels. Too expensive, too risky

Well done Matt. This one was a strong one. Great graphics, editing, and most importantly a very clear message to all. Thanks for sharing.

@tahirhussain-fj6jp

8 ай бұрын

Nice

Great video Matt, and especially pleased to see your sponsored company deals with alternatives to bottled water which has got to be one of the most idiotic products ever.

@cryptickcryptick2241

8 ай бұрын

The super ironic part is that bottled water was brought to you by hippie green environmentalists. In the 1990's they were the only ones who would buy bottled water because of "contaminants" in tap water. Bottled water was a very hippie selection, and did not go main steam until 1998-2002. Prior to then, generally social events had tap water, a water fountain, or such. I remember my first time "buying water" it was dumb, sort of like "buying air" why would you pay money from something that comes for basically free from the faucet. Over time though, with parties and social events, it was too easy to just have bottled water with all the other drinks. People would buy bottled water, put it in the cooler with cokes, and beverages, and more and more people even drank it at home and offered it to guests. Now it is everywhere.

@leswallace2426

8 ай бұрын

Exactly!!!! They were bumming up any claims about contaminants in our tap water as an easy way to get attention and support from the public. While millions of people abroad were dying because they had no access to clean water Western consumers were fed rubbish about the potential for 'blue baby syndrome' etc. Now a phenomenal amount of money that could be doing good is instead being spent creating mountains of waste and lots of polluted air by packaging and freighting water for sale in bottles when it could just come from a tap/faucet.@@cryptickcryptick2241

Great video! I think it might also be worthwhile to mention how solar technology evolved to be more cost-efficient. Its can almost be compared to how TVs were once big, heavy, expensive. Just like flat-screen TVs, solar inverters (especially in the residential market) are now smaller, lighter, and more efficient, leading to more accessibility to the public.

Ray Kurzweil predicted this in his 'Law of Accelerating Returns,' It's happening so often now we really should be used to it.

Matt, love your videos. You are so correct about incentives. I want to pull the trigger so bad, but at 60+ yrs old I'm terrified of incurring $20K+ of debt (loss of savings, etc). But the other side is will my $200+ bill be $400-500 (per month) when I'm 70!

@UndecidedMF

8 ай бұрын

Glad you're liking them! You might want to look into community solar projects in your area. Simple way to benefit from some reduced prices without having to install anything on your house.

Great video. Good to hear that Solar is nice percentage of electric power these days. I have bought Solar in the summer of 2018. I love having it, but noted, only in 2019 did I reach roughly net zero (net 5 kilowatts used overall during the year). This is partly due to the neighbor's tree sometimes during the year blocks a bit of the light, and mainly due to 1 or more additional family members ended up being home compared to being in school/work as before. So, there was an increase of electric use in the home. One main issue why people do not get solar is really the cost as you have stated $20,000 on average is a huge upfront cost for people. Even with tax incentives, that is a ton of money to have on hand to use for Solar installation. So residential conversion would be slower overall due to that. Other factors, especially in cities with tall apartment buildings, solar is not fully practical since it will not cover all the apartments nor in some cases, even get enough sunlight due to other structures may block the sunlight at different times during the year. I live in NYC so we have a ton of high-rise buildings which would cast long shadows at certain times of the day. Lastly, for some Solar panels are unsightly on the roof and prefer their roof not to have such panels on them. I can attest to the last one as a friend of mine falls into that category.

Have you ever done a full comparison of environmental impact of solar vs fossil fuels from start to finish? I know there will probably be some pieces that are estimates or impact or just generally unknown at this time. But I am curious as to what the overall "cost" or impact is comparing the two.

@beachcrow

8 ай бұрын

Mining the materials for creating a solar panel happens once in its 30 year life span. Mining or extracting the fossil fuels to produce energy has to happen continuously. Many studies have shown the very short timeframe for renewables to gain the environmental advantage.

@mathieusimoneau3358

8 ай бұрын

​@@beachcrow Thats a wrong assumption. Once the well is drilled and the piping installed the pressure regulate the flow. Pipes, drilling equipment and pumps can all be moved to new site. None of this is true for solar and wind. Its a one shot deal that we don't even know how to recycle. Have you seem pictures of old solar farms? An horrible sight to witness.

@beachcrow

8 ай бұрын

@@mathieusimoneau3358 There's a whole lot of processing and transport before the crude oil or coal can produce electricity at your home.

@davestagner

8 ай бұрын

@@mathieusimoneau3358I haven’t seen pictures of old solar farms, because there aren’t any old solar farms. Minus a handful of small experiments from the past, almost the entirety of the world’s solar farms are less than ten years old. The official working life of modern solar is 25-30 years. In practice, it’s much longer than that! Modern panels only lose about 0.3-0.5% efficiency per year. They’ll still be producing useful amounts of electricity a century from now. (This also begs the question on recycling… why recycle, when someone will probably take them off your hands when you’re done with them because they still work fine? We can deal with recycling all that glass and aluminum long after any of us are dead.) Speaking of recycling, how’s that CO2 recycling business coming? A gallon of gasoline produces about 20 pounds of CO2 when burned, which goes straight into the atmosphere - where it is extremely difficult to collect, far harder to recycle than solar panels, AND contributes directly to global warming. I’ve hit a point where people saying “What about recycling?” for solar/wind/batteries, while IGNORING the fact that we’re not recycling CO2, just pisses me off. It’s at best a lack of thinking, and at worst malicious.

@mathieusimoneau3358

8 ай бұрын

@@beachcrow Same for wind and solar. How do you produce the silicates required? With a heavy lump of high carbon coal. How do you produce the fiber glass and epoxy for turbines? Petrolum products. So you take oil&gas and coal, use them for low density energy production and a end product that is so energy intensive to recycle you simply don't. Its called a waste. While geothermal is so simple and available everywhere.

I enjoy your video’s Matt, they are always full of insight and thought provoking. In regards to Solar, I’ve always thought that as the technology progressed, it would become more widely used and was excited to think about the possibilities. Now that it is becoming more widely used however, I had not realized what that would mean to our world’s landscape. As shown in several of the pictures throughout your video, these panels cover thousands of acres and are unsightly. As I travel the interstates around our nation, what would once be trees or pastureland has now become a stench of these panels. I’m surprised that the owners are not even trying to hide them from view. And when I think about what our children are going to have to do with them at the end of their life (~20 years), it is going to be an environmental nightmare. Energy technologies must be used responsibly or we’ll end up as before, destroying the world in which we all enjoy.

@garethbaus5471

8 ай бұрын

Aesthetics are subjective, and photovoltaic cells have a lot of valuable material in them for recyclers once we actually have a significant number of panels that have reached the end of their usable lifespan.

@cryptickcryptick2241

8 ай бұрын

Many others pass by those same solar fields and do not see "ugly," they see "beautiful." They see an environmentally responsible clean power system. A forward working society and innovative people making clean environmental decisions with a diverse power grid. The same can be said of many other innovations, (Indians were happy to see railroads, buggy manufacturers were not too happy about automobiles). Certainly, the transcontinental railroad was a huge achievement to be proud of as it brought settlers west and food east resulting in world where there is very little famine. While today, many coal power plant smoke stacks bring sadness to environmentalists, when built those plants provided stable cheap electricity, jobs and light to countless homes in the community. Until you have been to a place that does not have those innovations, it is hard to appreciate just how important they are.

In my area our electricity provider is a quasi-governmental agency, Electrical District #3, akin to a rural electrification district. They have disincentivized solar additions by adding a 'Solar Customer Fee' to supposedly pay for the infrastructure maintenance costs, and also by limiting the number of solar connections they process. I can see their point that they still have to pay for and maintain the infrastructure for customers who would normally use little power from their distribution system, but I would think that is what the standard customer charge would be for. This eats into the pricing advantage of rooftop solar.

Where I live, unfortunately with electricity prices so low it would currently take 20-30 years to break even due to install and battery cost. With how the average person moves every 5-10 years I would never see a return and it isn't one of those needle movers in terms of ROI where I live. Now if I were to move or electricity prices start to skyrocket where I live then I am 100% on board.

Not everyone failed to predict Solar's rise. Tony Seba was spot on

@samsonsoturian6013

8 ай бұрын

With so many random guesses some idiot was right

@cp37373

8 ай бұрын

@@samsonsoturian6013 do you want some cheese with that whine?

@samsonsoturian6013

8 ай бұрын

@@cp37373 dude, the person they are talking about is a known fake guru scammer.

I gotta say it, sorry... First! (I already know I'll like the video so great work)

@DynamicHaze

8 ай бұрын

You aren't first lol.

Two key points affecting the adoption of solar: politics and technological innovations. I studied Solar for my masters in ME in the early 80's. The emphasis was entirely on heat collection and storage; domestic hot water (DHW) preheat and passive for residential and HVAC for commercial. Active system residential system costs were over $20K, optimistic break-even was 20 years, and few but researchers and my professors had solar installed. A single PV panel cost around $10K and PV use was limited to critical remote power and satellites. When I graduated in '83, there were no opportunities in Solar. The Reagan administration had removed the solar panels and the tax credits of the Carter era, defunded SERI (the solar research institute), and suppressed the US solar industry. Although scientists at the time were warning about potential climate change, the US population were unconvinced. We now have substantial tax credits for solar due in part to changing public perception of climate change. The industry switched from DHW to PV. An astounding drop in solar cell cost was enabled by technological innovation. Solar cells of the 80's were cut from monocrystal ingots, the same as used for IC manufacture. These were slowly grown in a furnace over a period of weeks, sawed into circular wafers (losing substantial amounts of silicon), then processed into solar cells. You can still spot these cells in old panels because of their round edges. The breakthrough was the switch to using polycrystalline and amorphous silicon in solar cells, which can be extruded and made much thinner than cut wafers, saving both on manufacturing and materials costs with only a small loss in cell efficiency. A standard panel now can cost less than $250. Residential PV nowadays is cheaper and easier to install, can be installed in more regions, requires much less maintenance, doesn't require storage, and can break-even in 8 years or less.

Fun fact: here in Spain solar had a terribly low uptake because in 2015, due to lobbying from Iberdrola, the then PP gov brought in the "Sun Tax", which meant even if you bought solar and fed it in to the grid you had to pay the power company. In 2018 the PSoE Gov repealed this and now solar is going ballistic - as you would expect in the sunniest country in Europe. Every building has a roof that points at the sky, so it would seem a no brainer to me to make every roof be a solar collector and so have every building at least somewhat self generating of power and hot water

@percyfaith11

8 ай бұрын

Leave it to the Socialists to F things up.

@chrisroyle4813

8 ай бұрын

My understanding is that South Africa also oppose feeding in of PV generated power to the grid - despite having a failing government run/owned national supplier that is falling apart, which is causing great economic damage.

@jal051

5 ай бұрын

@@percyfaith11 They are the ones on unfucked them in this case.

China

@samsonsoturian6013

8 ай бұрын

No one outside China uses that trash. It was always just a ponzi scheme

@cp37373

8 ай бұрын

Good job. Somebody went to elementary school.

@samsonsoturian6013

8 ай бұрын

​@@cp37373not really. That ponzi scheme is dead

This video completely ignores the title and makes no attempt to explain the price of solar panels. He simply goes on about how big they've gotten and speculates how big they'll get as if he owns stock options on these companies

@cp37373

8 ай бұрын

Awwww is somebody stock in oil going down? Poor baby

@samsonsoturian6013

8 ай бұрын

​@@cp37373what's with the taunt? I ain't on anyone's side here. Sycophancy on your part is a sign of dishonesty

@UndecidedMF

8 ай бұрын

Appreciate the feedback, but I did address the title in the video (it's the whole thesis). We may have to agree to disagree on that. Public policy is a big section of the video, which is one reason solar has had such a fast growth ramp up. The second aspect is about adoption curves in general (technology adoption rates are speeding up over time).

"For every dollar invested in fossil fuels, about 1.7 dollars are now going into clean energy." So, what is the IEA calling clean energy? Renewables, electric vehicles, nuclear power, grids, storage, low-emissions fuels, efficiency improvements and heat pumps. How much if that is solar? Just 13% 😢

thanks for the explanation of S curves. I had a basic understand but you helped fill in the gaps I have seen Solar pool heaters since the 1980's and there were mini solar devices like solar powered calculators but back then it was always a niece market .. and for small innovation... also remember making solar stoves with foil for camping... but again it was mostly see what we can do with foil when you can not use wood or propane stoves I have always thought solar would be in the future but i figured it was a when gas prices go up over.... $4 (1985 numbers) about $11 in current prices

@manifold1476

8 ай бұрын

/niece\ *niche* /

You mean besides heavy government subsidies bring down overall costs by ~30%?

@cp37373

8 ай бұрын

Ok fake news

@samsonsoturian6013

8 ай бұрын

​@cp37373 lose the rhetoric. You will recall that President Obama introduced tax breaks to every stage of making and installing solar panels up to 30% of total tax burden. There are also grants and local subsidies involved, but a lot of these solar companies are losing money anyway so they have no income taxes.

@grimaffiliations3671

8 ай бұрын

they're still the cheapest without subsidies now

@samsonsoturian6013

8 ай бұрын

​@@grimaffiliations3671come on. We all know you'd say that even if you knew it wasn't so.

@cp37373

8 ай бұрын

@@samsonsoturian6013 you should look up the word fact because you obviously have no clue what it means

I live in The Netherlands. Cost of solar installation went up after the war. I got mine installed in Oct 2021. Total capacity 4980 kW. 9 panels on the roof and 3 on the shed in the garden. Total cost was 5600 euros without any subsidies. I don’t know why it’s much more expensive in USA.

I love your videos, the way you simplify things to terms we all can understand its amazing. What are your thoughts on brown gas? Turning water into fuel? What are you thoughts on that?

Lol shopping list is one of the few things i still use paper for, .. the other stuff however XD . writing by pen while going around the kitchen/store room to check what I need is just so much faster then typing on a phone.

I first adopted solar in 2011 due to a great Feed in Tariff, later adding a 2nd 4 kWh system and Tesla Powerwall that came with no incentives. I saw it as investing in my home to reduce my monthly outgoings. Now I have an EV and ASHP and am running an all electric household. This has reduced my costs from over £5700 per year to just £1400 for heating travel and home use. My solar is on E/W spans of my roof. So yes incentives help but once you understand the benefits it sells itself.

Operational costs is where solar crushes the opposition. Basically no maintenance beyond cleaning.

One big stumbling block is local government policy. My city has a municipal utility. Residents are forbidden financing for alternative energy projects, whether solar or wind. And solar companies in the surrounding area know this and generally don't do business here. If you have deep pockets, you can finance the entire cost of the project yourself (which in this area is about $30,000 without battery backup). And even if you do, don't expect it to help you out during a power outage if you're tied into the grid. In that case, the city requires homes with alternative energy to shut down until the city restores power. So currently, if you're wealthy and don't mind living completely off-the-grid, then alternative energy is an option in my city. As you might imagine, very few residents go that route.

That was a really insightful episode Monsieur Ferrell. It was great to listen to the commentary.

I own a solar installation company and have been in the solar business since 2008. The biggest reason is government policies promoting Solar while demonizing oil. We have a major issue on how to dispose of solar modules. We are a very small company and have over 100 that have been removed due to damage or failure and the cost to dispose is prohibitive. Without the continued government subsidies we would see a different market.

Great video! The old solar h20 heaters piqued my curiosity. That might be an idea for a show on its own.