Plunging costs make solar, wind and battery storage cheaper than coal

Re:Plunging costs make solar, wind and battery storage cheap... by blibble on Monday January 29, 2018 @12:17PM (#16258883)

decreasing prices also reduce an investor's return

if prices keep dropping hugely year after year: investors aren't going to be very willing to risk their capital, as tomorrow's prices might not allow them to recoup their investment

(yeah, futures are the answer, but are presumably expensive if you're talking about decades)

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Re:Plunging costs make solar, wind and battery storage cheap... by Retric on Monday January 29, 2018 @12:44PM (#16259135)

Depends on the rate of return and payback.

Panels only last ~20 years so they need to payback ~5% of the investment + interest in the first year. Assuming costs drop less than ~4% waiting is unlikely to be a net benefit. (Basically, trading 1 year now for 1 year 20 years from now is rarely worth it.)

Further, panels are far from the only cost involved so really waiting is generally not worth it. Which you can see because panels are being used as quickly as they can be manufactured.

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Re:Plunging costs make solar, wind and battery storage cheap... by chimprich on Monday January 29, 2018 @01:01PM (#16259274)

Is that true that panels only last for about a couple of decades? A quick google suggests that that's just the warranty period and they just lose about 1% efficiency a year.

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Re:Plunging costs make solar, wind and battery storage cheap... by Retric on Monday January 29, 2018 @01:44PM (#16259617)

This stuff depends on the panel. Panels may still function in 40+ years, but the decreasing power output becomes very significant.

I am more saying losing total output in ~30+ years and ~0.5% to ~1% power output until then is about the same as losing 1 year of power output 20 years from now.

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