{"id":3260,"date":"2013-05-03T11:27:44","date_gmt":"2013-05-03T15:27:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=3260"},"modified":"2013-05-03T11:42:13","modified_gmt":"2013-05-03T15:42:13","slug":"your-jaw-will-drop-with-astonishment-at-how-fast-solar-power-will-beat-every-other-energy-source-a-stock-trader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/your-jaw-will-drop-with-astonishment-at-how-fast-solar-power-will-beat-every-other-energy-source-a-stock-trader.html","title":{"rendered":"Your jaw will drop with astonishment at how fast solar power will beat every other energy source –a stock trader"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nA stock trader looked for causes of solar stock price rises\r\nand considered the effects of solar PV price drops,\r\nand realized solar power is going to\r\nbeat every other energy source so fast that it\r\n“will make your jaw drop with astonishment.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nMichael Sankowski wrote for Business Insider 3 May 2013,\r\n\r\nSolar Is Going To Change The World Much Faster Than Anyone Expects<\/a>,\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\n6% year is a fantastic rate of decreases, but 20% is simply\r\nastonishing. 20% is an impressive number, but putting it into\r\ncontext will make your jaw drop with astonishment.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nMy calculations show that if solar maintains 5 more years at current\r\n23% rates per year price drops, solar power will be cheaper than\r\nusing existing coal plants. That’s right — it will be cheaper\r\nto build new solar plants than to use existing coal plants. It\r\nsounds absolutely crazy.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nFirst he discovers the effects of no fuel for solar in\r\n\r\nShould solar photovoltaics be deployed sooner because of long operating life\r\nat low, predictable cost?<\/a>\r\nby Ken Zweibel for Energy Policy July 2010, doi:10.1016\/j.enpol.2010.07.040.\r\nWhile costs for every source of power go down after\r\ninitial investment is paid off in around 20 years, costs for solar\r\ngo down the most because there’s no fuel and almost no maintenance.\r\nBut something further really shocks trader Sankowski.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nExamining\r\n\r\nBloomberg’s solar price drop data<\/a> and\r\nhe finds that\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\nI hate to speculate, but imagine PV solar drops at 18% per year for\r\n20 years? Solar will be about 1\/10th the cost of coal.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nBasically, people will start begging for Solar power in just a few\r\nyears, because it will be so much cheaper than coal power.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nHe notes that even at 15% per year that will just take a few years longer.\r\nThen he discovers that\r\n\r\nEdison Electrical Institute (EEI)’s analysis<\/a>\r\nsays the real solar annual price drop is more like 22%.\r\nAnd EEI’s projection of the effects of \r\ndistributed solar on the ossified electric utility\r\nbaseload business model, which will cause costs of all fueled power sources,\r\ncoal, gas, and nuclear, to go up.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\nOuch! I did a quick chart in R to figure out how quickly Solar will\r\nbe cheaper than even pretty cheap coal electricity, with a variety\r\nof cost per year reductions. It turns out solar will be cheaper than\r\neven cheap coal in 20 years as long as the price reductions are\r\ngreater than 4% per year.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nSolar will be cheaper than cheap coal in 10 years as long as price\r\nfalls at more than 15% per year. Remember, we’ve seen price\r\nreductions of more than 22% per year for the last 5 years. Solar\r\nwill be cheaper than cheap coal if this keeps up for another 5\r\nyears. These price reductions add up very quickly. If we can keep up\r\nthe 20% per year for 15 years, we are talking about essentially free\r\npower, because the cost of solar will be 3% of its current levels,\r\nand 1\/10th the cost of current coal. It’s remarkable. And it has\r\nimplications for our monetary system.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n<\/a>\r\nHe doesn’t follow through with implications for\r\n\r\nspeed of deployment<\/a>, which include that solar will\r\nout-deploy every other power source, even wind,\r\nbut especially fossil fuels and nuclear,\r\nand this may well happen in less than a decade.\r\nAnd beyond our monetary system he doesn’t mention implications\r\nof a solar and wind powered world\r\nfor our\r\n\r\neducational system<\/a> (schools that mostly power themselves,\r\nfreeing up funds for education, like Dublin, GA High School),\r\nfor our\r\n\r\nmilitary expenditures<\/a> (no more wars for foreign oil),\r\nand for our\r\n\r\npolitical system<\/a>,\r\n\r\nas in if everybody is demanding solar, they will demand elected officials\r\nwho will deliver it, or at least make traditional utilities get out of the way.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\nRenewables are winning, nukes are dead, and coal is crashing.<\/a>\r\nNow that\r\n\r\neven Bloomberg is calling them on it<\/a>,\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nit’s time for Southern Company and Georgia Power to stop wasting our money\r\nand water and air on coal and nuclear boondoggles\r\nwhile\r\n\r\ndragging Georgia behind in solar power<\/a>.\r\nLike the automobiles, electricity, the Internet, and mobile phones,\r\nsolar power is going to change the world far faster than most people expect.\r\nAnd as people wake up to that, they will demand it, making it happen\r\neven faster.\r\nThe\r\n\r\nillusion of certainty<\/a> in the old baseload business model is evaporating,\r\nnow that Bloomberg, EEI, and even stock traders are wising up\r\nto the way solar power is rapidly changing the world.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n<\/a>\r\nWill Southern Company turn itself around towards solar and wind before\r\n\r\n\r\nits stockholders revolt<\/a>\r\nlike Cobb EMC’s did<\/a>?\r\nOr will the voters of Georgia first insist that the legislature and the\r\nGA PSC make Georgia Power change?\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A stock trader looked for causes of solar stock price rises and considered the effects of solar PV price drops, and realized solar power is going to beat every other energy source so fast that it “will make your jaw drop with astonishment.” Michael Sankowski wrote for Business Insider 3 May 2013, Solar Is Going […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[216,14,15,49,6124,104,24,36],"tags":[824,3906,6236,2906,8753,1037,8704,6234,6128,8701,8702,12,7,6235,562,8737,8714,6,8716],"class_list":["post-3260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coal","category-economy","category-education","category-elections","category-natural-gas-2","category-nuclear","category-solar","category-wind","tag-baseload","tag-bloomberg","tag-business-insider","tag-business-model","tag-coal","tag-distributed","tag-economy","tag-edison-electrical-institute","tag-eei","tag-georgia","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-michael-sankowski","tag-natural-gas","tag-nuclear","tag-solar","tag-valdosta","tag-wind"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-QA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3260"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3265,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3260\/revisions\/3265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}