I bought 3.5kw and a 10kwh battery in June and it’s amazing. Bills are 90% cheaper and it’ll pay for itself in 5 years with underwritten warranties for 25 years on the panels and 15 on the battery
Solar panel costs have plummeted from $6 per watt in 2000 to just 12 cents today
Submitted 1 day ago by remington@beehaw.org to technology@beehaw.org
https://www.techspot.com/news/113860-solar-panel-costs-have-plummeted-6-watt-2000.html
Comments
deHaga@feddit.uk 1 day ago
octobob@lemmy.ml 2 hours ago
I’m an electrician and would do it myself if I wasn’t covered by trees with a house facing north in one of the least sunny parts of the country lol
TwiddleTwaddle@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
What battery is that? Most I’ve seen have a 7-10yr warranty
deHaga@feddit.uk 1 day ago
FOXESS EVO10
From octopus
Mubelotix@jlai.lu 8 hours ago
Still too high
Powderhorn@beehaw.org 1 day ago
For reference, 100W panels were running 66 cents/W when I did my build in 2023. Larger panels have always been cheaper per watt, but it means prices have dropped by up to 80% in just three years.
artyom@piefed.social 1 day ago
Where the fuck are you getting panels for $0.12/watt!?
moldy_rice@piefed.keyboardvagabond.com 8 hours ago
Most likely: alibaba
octobob@lemmy.ml 1 hour ago
My roommate is rebuilding his Volkswagen 2012 Golf R’s engine right now. We were watching on YouTube, you can get a whole engine on Alibaba for like $500. Seems like it’s 50/50 of it working and being like a brand new car, or just a huge clusterfuck that won’t run and turns into a shitshow disaster
TwiddleTwaddle@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
Skimming the article I couldn’t find any definition of terms, but I assume this is production cost, not cost to the end user after markups from the manufacturer, distributor, and retailer.
boonhet@sopuli.xyz 22 hours ago
€0.13/watt here, random store I found online in my country, but it is a legitimate business, I checked that much. Not quite $0.12, but close enough and I didn’t spend much time looking for it.
Though I feel like just a few months ago I couldn’t find anything this cheap.
Either way, for me personally, my geographical location makes it kinda useless in the winter and for some months I’d have nothing to do with the excess I would produce from just a few panels - in the summer, there’s no point selling to the grid during daytime and the nights are too short to make proper use of any stored energy, you’d have fully charged batteries all the time.
Couple of months in spring and fall where things would run into a nice equilibrium though. Unfortunately not enough savings to pay for a battery. Think sodium batteries will change that over the coming years though, so I might go for it eventually.
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 hours ago
I checked around in Alibaba and for bulk orders directly from a big manufacturer (with EXW terms, meaning pick-up at the factory, so no shipping and no taxes included) it was actually less that $0.12/watt, quite a bit less if enough units were ordered.
Such consumer price in Estonia kinda dovetails with the indicative prices per watt that I’ve seen in Alibaba being less than $0.12/watt, as even though Estonia has 0% VAT on solar panels and the EU has no Duty Tax on them so there’s no tax paid, what’s left that’s on top of the factory price (so the shipping costs + a little margin for the seller) still requires the panels to be less than $0.12 at the factory to end up sold to consumers in Estonia for €0.13
fshagan@lemmy.today 22 hours ago
Given the tarrifs and price flow in the BBB, panel prices will never be lower than .35 a watt (imported panels must cost that much or a dirty will be applied for the difference). Two Bit DaVinci covers it at 3:00 in this video: youtu.be/1nvhe2h82hY?is=5ivY0bV9cxC9T1h5
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 hours ago
That very much depends on the country you’re in: @boonhet@sopuli.xyz found then at €0.13/watt sold to consumers in Estonia, which is an EU country which has 0% VAT on solar panels whilst the EU itself has 0% Duty Tax (aka tariffs) so there is not tax at all on them and their price is just factory price in China + shipping costs (probably by ship, which isn’t actually that much when shipping full container loads of them) + profit margin for importers and sellers.
Even in the US, given that Duty Tax if applied to Purchase Price + Shipping Costs To US Border, if the purchase price of the panels goes down, the price in the US after Duty Tax will go down, though it’s ultimatelly bound by Shipping Costs To US Border (which aren’t actually all that much if shipping full container loads of them from Shenzheng by boat). The point being that the Duty Tax for solar panels would have to be many 100s or percent for them to never be lower than $0.35/watt.
fshagan@lemmy.today 4 hours ago
Yes, the US has a floor on panel prices coming that will fix the retail price at .35 per watt, if imported. It’s possible for a US manufacturer to sell for less, like .34.
moldy_rice@piefed.keyboardvagabond.com 8 hours ago
That’s pretty amazing. Building construction make up a huge part of our carbon footprint.
If we could get 100% green cement (and steel), it would significantly decrease our emissions.
davetortoise@reddthat.com 3 hours ago
Steel is a lot more tricky as generally fossil fuels are burnt directly inside the blast furnace. There are a few alternative “green steel” processing routes that avoid this but iirc none of them are hugely competitive at the moment.