Solar PV array prices in 2009

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bobc
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Solar PV array prices in 2009

Postby bobc » Fri Jan 09, 2009 1:27 pm

Just read a "2009 forecast" in a trade rag; apparently there will be massive overproduction of PV arays in 2009 (lots of new manufacturers & recession cutting back capital projects).
Maybe a good time to invest towards the end of the year!

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qdos
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Postby qdos » Fri Jan 09, 2009 1:58 pm

Excellent !

Well there's one good bit of news to start 2009 off with. Roll on the Sunshine and global warming I say. oooops errr umm :oops:

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MB
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Postby MB » Fri Jan 09, 2009 3:47 pm

We heard the same stories last year. Amorphous panels were supposed to drop in price from around £3 per watt to between 50p - £1 per watt.

It didn't happen.

It's a real shame, because although amorphous is relatively low efficiency in direct sunlight, it generates reasonable amounts of power on cloudy days - and even from bright, moonlit nights!

Hopefully, this time we might start seeing a drop in price on solar panels. I'd love some flexible panels that I can stick to the roof of my G-Wiz.

Incidentally, Reva are currently doing a tour of Inda in three cars fitted with lithium-ion batteries and solar panels on the roof. I heard they travelled 175 km on the first day on a single charge.

The production lithium-ion Reva reaches these shores very shortly. The range won't be as good as these demonstration vehicles, but will still be pretty good.
My new book is out: The 2011 Electric Car Guide is available from Amazon and all good bookshops.

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ChrisB
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Postby ChrisB » Fri Jan 09, 2009 9:17 pm

Its about time PV panels came down it price, along with solar water tubes.

I've always felt we (joe public) have been taken for a ride with the prices as per the norm, cos the manufacturers know their end product will save the end user money and it seems they want some of that money :evil:

ChrisB
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MB
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Postby MB » Sun Jan 11, 2009 5:18 am

I'd disagree with that statement, Chris. There is a right price for every product. When the product hits that price, the maximum quantity of that product will be sold.

Sell the product for less, and volume drops. Sell the product for more and volume drops.

Photovoltaics aren't at their optimal price point yet. Because there is a fair amount of competition in the market, I would suggest the reason they haven't hit their price point yet is either because they cost too much to manufacture or nobody has the ability to produce in the volumes demanded by the market.

Personally, I think it's the latter. Two companies last year announced they were putting amorphous panels into production at a cost of around 50p-£1 a watt. They have been inundated with enquiries and (if you believe the web sites) orders. As far as I am aware, nothing yet has been shipped.

If amorphous panels come down to that sort of price - and inevitably they will, given time - we'll see amorphous photovoltaics flooding the market as general use panels, with crystaline panels used where performance is all-important. At the 50p - £1 level, I suspect we'd start seeing buildings covered with photovoltaics becoming a common sight.
My new book is out: The 2011 Electric Car Guide is available from Amazon and all good bookshops.

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ChrisB
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Postby ChrisB » Tue Feb 03, 2009 10:26 pm

:oops: Sorry only just seen your reply :oops:

I'm still not so sure and really cant beleive we're not being taken for a ride here.

I'll take plasma and LCD TV's, the amount of research and production thats gone into these is huge yet today you can buy a 32" screen for well under £500, where as 2yrs ago you were lucky to buy one for under 1K.

Explain the reason why its like this ? for these yet PV panels which have been around for far longer we still get stitched price wise yet they have little to them.

As for the reason why the company that says it will produce panels for 50p-£1 a watt have been inundated with enquiries yet still nothing has been shipped, well I dont think it needs a rocket scientist to work out either they have been nobbled by another manufacturer :wink: and paid off ......or similar :wink:

Its not like PV panels or even water tubes have great deal in them :twisted:

Nah not convinced, still recon we are getting stitched up cos they want a cut of the free stuff the end user will be getting, same goes for wind turbines etc again not much different from an electric motor and we've known about those since 1800's, a motor can be bought for £100-£200, but some blades on it and call it a generator and you can multiply that price by 5 or 10 times or even more :shock:

Perhaps I'm being hard on the manufacturers but I'm not so sure :twisted:

What do others views....... do you think green renewables are over priced due to the fact the manufacturer knows the end user is going to be getting something for nothing and they want some of the end users savings themselves :twisted:

Note how now you can buy CFL's (compact fluorescent lamps) now for pennies yet a few years ago each one would cost about £5, so why not PV panels ??

Interesting discussion 8)

ChrisB Gets off soap box :wink:
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MB
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Postby MB » Wed Feb 04, 2009 9:30 am

The price will come down eventually, you can be sure of that.

When you buy a product, the manufacturers aren't just working on a cost-plus model. They have to take into account the cost of years of research and development, testing and productionising and when the size of the market is still a relative unknown, that means high prices.

That is exactly the same as the big-screen plasma displays. When they came out ten years ago, the cheapest cost £12,000. The early ones weren't that good either and the number of warranty returns that the manufacturers had was very high.

It took years and cost millions - if not billions - to fix the problems and make them good. Gradually the prices started to drop and in around four years the price dropped from £12,000 to £2,000.

Now of course, plasma has been superceded by LCD for most users, although if you still want superior display quality, plasma is still regarded by many as the way to go.

Solar photovoltaics is not a well understood area. A lot of people have unrealistic expectations on what can be achieved with Solar PV and a lot of people have been disappointed with what Solar PV has achieved when they have done a DIY installation.

Getting Solar PV right is actually quite difficult and to get even a simple installation working well requires a fair amount of knowledge and expertise. As a consequence, nobody really knows how big the market for solar PV actually is. Whilst it is expensive, it is being mainly used by experts and people who are prepared to put in the time and effort to learn how to get the best out of the technology. When the price comes down, everyone will buy a panel or two for a project but then be disappointed with the results. As a result, solar PV will be regarded as 'useless' or 'rubbish' by the general public, simply because they don't know what they're doing with it.

Solar Photovoltaics is being hit by a worldwide shortage in silicon at the moment. That doesn't effect the amorphous panels and I have been interested to see that larger amorphous panels are now in production and starting to encroach on the crystalline market.

Looking to the future, I believe we're going to see a widening in the price differential between crystalline and amorphous panels. Crystalline will be a premium product (although the price is already starting to drop) and amorphous will be the bread-and-butter solar stuff used for most home projects.

I suppose now is as good a time as any to do a quick plug of my book. The working title is "The Solar Electric Handbook" and it goes to print sometime in March.
My new book is out: The 2011 Electric Car Guide is available from Amazon and all good bookshops.

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Postby JonSpence » Wed Feb 04, 2009 12:19 pm

ChrisB wrote:I'm still not so sure and really cant beleive we're not being taken for a ride here.


I can assure you that if you are being taken for a ride, it's not by the people who make PV's.

:twisted:

If you were I'd be richer rather than poorer since I have shares in PV CRYSTALOX SOLAR.

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ChrisB
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Postby ChrisB » Wed Feb 04, 2009 8:06 pm

Interesting and excellent post MB 8)

And while I agree with some of it I'm still not convinced :roll: :oops:

As you say millions of pounds are spent in developement etc on new products and I agree that the end user has to cop this to a degree, how ever its not like solar panels are new :roll: we've (military and the likes) have been using these for YEARS, just one that sticks in my mind was Skylab and that was in the early 70's so its not new tech.

While I agree the panels are a bit tricky to make, we have had some practice now and we've been making them for over 40yrs, OK efficiencies have been much improved from the early ones but whats going on with the price :?

You've just said that plasma prices dropped vastly in just 4yrs :shock: so you'd expect in 40yrs panels would be at the very least at a reasonable price :evil:

I'm not sure that you can say PV panels are difficult to make work, even poorly.......you just point them at the sun :wink:
Certainly from my view point nothing can be simpler, and the single 120watt panel I have have has amazed me in the amount of power it generates, what puts me off getting more is the dam price which is I feel the issue with most people, its the same with EV's if you look at what has to go into an EV its far less than a ICE vehicle less moving parts less machining etc etc so why are we being charged more for them :?

I get this argument most times with folks and my Blingo, that and how far will it go, how fast will it go and what does it cost to buy. Bearing in mind a new blingo was about 6K, from memory, more than its deisel version :cry:

As for your shares Jon, how are the CEO's etc doing in the company :wink: but then again they arnt selling many cos they arnt priced correctly, to me its a chicken an egg issue ?

ChrisB

PS Book MB ....what book :shock: so come on then spill da beans :wink:
I reject reality and substitute my own !!!!!!

JonSpence
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Postby JonSpence » Wed Feb 04, 2009 10:04 pm

ChrisB wrote:As for your shares Jon, how are the CEO's etc doing in the company :wink:


Well I imagine that he is not doing as well as he was a year ago. I don't expect you to research the company but he has in the past put his money where his mouth is and, like mine, his share are worth half what they were a year ago.

http://www.pvcrystalox.com/Board.html
<i>He was a member of the MBO team that acquired the Crystalox business in 1994 and was appointed to the boards of both Crystalox Limited and Crystalox Solar Limited at that time. Subsequently following the merger of PV Silicon and Crystalox he became a member of the management board of PV Crystalox Solar AG in 2002 and a director of the Company on its formation in December 2006.</i>

More info
<i>* First company to develop multicrystalline technology on an industrial scale - producing the first 66cm ingots in 1996, which has become the industry standard</i>

Look PV was discovered in 1839, but that doesn't mean that it's easy to do cheaply. Indeed the company that I've invested in are not trying to make them "as cheap as possible", others are. They are tackling the issue of cost effectiveness by trying to make them more efficient.

You mentioned skylab OK tell you me why we didn't ALL have cheap PV then. After all most of us now have cars yet more time had elapsed then since PV was discovered than has elapsed between the first IC engine and today.

NOTE that I'm talking PV, solar thermal was a big hit in many parts of America before cheap energy. Ie when you had to chop down a tree to heat your water.

Oh BTW I do think MB has it right. You don't have to look far to find the true stats on how the price of PV has changed.
http://www.solarbuzz.com/statsCosts.htm
Sorry the graph doesn't go back to skylab days, or indeed the grand daddy of solar satellites, vanguard 1 (1958).

I hate to break the news but us dirty capitalists are quite happy with the idea of everyone profiting provided that we benefit in proportion to our investment.


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