Solar: to wait or to install?

Hello Readers,

I recently had a conversation with a potential customer about installing solar PV. The customer was asking whether it makes more sense to wait a few years before installing solar or to install solar now. In particular the customer was curious whether upcoming technological improvements would mean that waiting a few years will result in a better payback.

In any event, this was my response (as part of an on-going conversation):

I take your point, but it was never my intention to indicate that the technology won't improve. I certainly expect that it will. It is simply a matter of timelines. If you read the article carefully, it says that such panels are just about to be developed and 39% efficiencies have be seen in the lab. To put this in context, that means that it will likely be 10-15 years before manufactures actually have such devices on the market (and at a reasonable price). 10-15 years is about half the life of a system, and it is about double the amount of time it takes to payback the costs of the system.

Thus, if one were to hypothetically install a system today, 10-15 years from now that system will have earned enough money to pay for itself and an additional system! Not to mention the fact that the original system will still have another 10-15 years of generating capability! Also, beyond financial benefits, installing a system today would mean that 10-15 years worth of coal and natural gas generation will have been displaced by the time your new product could be installed.

Besides, 10-15 years from now those same manufactures will still be researching and developing the next new thing, so in that case why not wait 20-30 years before installing a system? Well, I think you can see where I'm going with this. You could spend forever waiting for perfection, or your could reap the environmental and financial benefits all along! I don't know if this explanation is enough to convince you, but for right now it's the best one that I have. And assuming that you have a basic understanding of climate change, peak oil, and/or the other environmental and geopolitical issues with fossil fuel and nuclear electricity generation, I don't know that I could make a more persuasive argument without including lectures from an entire college degree. Of course, if you are interested in those topics, I could certainly recommend a few books.

 

Well, readers, of course I want to know what you think! Is it worth it to wait a couple years for better technology? If so, how long should you wait? How do you balance waiting for technological improvements with the urgency of climate change and the benefits of having solar right now?

 

~Sean

Change... in which I can (finally) believe

Hello Readers,

As you have likely heard already, White House officials recently announced plans to install solar PV and solar hot water systems on the roof of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. This will replace the system that was removed in 1986 during the Reagan administration. You will note that the 24-year gap roughly equals the 20-25 year warranty offered on solar panels, which means that the entire lifetime of a system could have been generating power if they had not been removed.

Although, a new solar energy system on the White House seemed like a bit of greenwashing, which would not have been surprising given the relative inaction (or at least lack of concrete action) on climate change and energy independence since Obama was elected nearly 2 years ago. However, an announcement today by Ken Salazar showed some substantial change (believe it or not).

It turns out that the White House has cleared the way for a 709 MW and a 45 MW system to be built on federal lands in California (with a few thousand more MW of capacity in the pipeline for approval by the end of the year). Granted, some may consider this a stunt for the midterm election. Even so, any election year stunt that allows for over half a million homes (and possibly closer to 2 million homes) to be powered by solar power is okay by me!

The New York Times article relating to the announcement mentioned a need for additional transmission capacity to be built. However, it did not mention any plans for energy storage! After doing all of the research for my dissertation, I cannot help but wonder if anyone in the political realm has considered that option as a way to alleviate the grid congestion that will occur when these mammoth solar generators come online.

Hopefully, the utility regulators in California, which are well aware of their options based on what I saw during the PJM-EPRI conference on Energy Storage, have the sway to make a suggestion about incorporating energy storage into these plans (and/or the budget to do it themselves!).

anti-schadenfreudlich,
Sean Diamond

P.S. Later this month I should be receiving the results of my dissertation, so I will be dispersing the final version of it accordingly. Thanks for waiting so long!