A common question from my solar customers goes something like "As technology advances, will my solar system become obsolete?" It's a great question, and it turns out that solar is an interesting animal because unlike computers, phones, bikes, or pretty much any other product that can become obsolete in just a few years, solar will not. This one of the main reasons I like it. Here's why:
It's All About the Power
Solar is first and foremost a vehicle to produce electricity. As long as you can rely on the system to produce the energy you need, it will never become obsolete. It can get cheaper, or it can get smaller, but if you can always expect it to produce a quantifiable amount of electricity (at least for the next 25 years, and as long as you have a good reliable system), it won't go out of date like a computer that suddenly won't run a new operating system, or a flip phone that doesn't have a touch pad or camera.
So in two years, when there's a 25% efficient solar panel available (while yours is today's best at 21%), it won't really affect you that much. You might need one more panel on your roof to generate the same amount of electricity than someone who is just installing their system, but your system should be custom-sized for your electricity needs today, and if it's meeting those power needs as designed, how could it become obsolete?
Panels Are the Rooftop Form Factor for the Foreseeable FutureThat's not to say there isn't innovation in solar power generating technology. There is. There's thin film, and concentrated, and even solar roadways and paint. It just happens these are focused on commercial and utility scale. For residential rooftop solar, everyone agrees that the solar panel is the best form factor for the far foreseeable future, and solar panels have about reached their maximum efficiency. As they do improve incrementally by a couple percent in efficiency, they will simply become incrementally smaller in footprint by a couple percent in size, which will hardly be enough to notice or matter in most applications.
Panels Are the Rooftop Form Factor for the Foreseeable FutureThat's not to say there isn't innovation in solar power generating technology. There is. There's thin film, and concentrated, and even solar roadways and paint. It just happens these are focused on commercial and utility scale. For residential rooftop solar, everyone agrees that the solar panel is the best form factor for the far foreseeable future, and solar panels have about reached their maximum efficiency. As they do improve incrementally by a couple percent in efficiency, they will simply become incrementally smaller in footprint by a couple percent in size, which will hardly be enough to notice or matter in most applications.
The Future is in Storage and Energy ManagementThe real work in solar innovation is in storage and energy management, and a good solar system will support new iterations of these technologies as they get released and adopted. Storage is a nut destined to be cracked. Elon has his in limited release. SunPower has theirs in limited release. I've looked what appears to be at a pretty good from a startup called JuiceBox.
When you add a lithium-ion battery bank, a charge controller, and most important, the software brains to tell your home system where is the most efficient place to get power at that moment in time -- panels, battery or grid -- you are now squarely at ground zero of the future of grid energy management. You can upgrade your existing system and bolt on new technology as it becomes available because you won't have a continuously escalating electricity bill due to your solar system providing you energy independence, so you will have more capital to invest in these new smart-grid technologies. Ah the virtuous cycle of it all.
Price MattersPrice is a slightly different story, but your risks of missing a huge future breakthrough by going solar today are still minimal. Solar will continue to come down in price as manufacturing processes improve. However as long as solar continues to be subsidized in the form a 30% federal tax credit (now extended through 2019), true supply and demand market forces will not drive the solar price into the ground. Also, the cost of solar is maintained as much by the cost of the commodity it replaces -- utility electricity -- as it is the cost to manufacture. So as long as utility electricity rates continue to increase to the tune of 5 to 7 percent per year (12.5% baseline increase in the past 12 months in PG&E BTW), the price of solar will remain relatively consistent.
Takeaway
There is little reason to think that future technology innovation will leapfrog your rooftop solar system and leave you in the dark.
No comments:
Post a Comment