{"id":6733,"date":"2016-04-13T15:38:28","date_gmt":"2016-04-13T14:38:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=6733"},"modified":"2016-04-13T15:38:28","modified_gmt":"2016-04-13T14:38:28","slug":"electricity-prices-pv-grid-parity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=6733","title":{"rendered":"Electricity prices and PV grid parity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/776px-2013_Electricity-Prices.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-6737\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/776px-2013_Electricity-Prices-300x232.jpg\" alt=\"776px-2013_Electricity Prices\" width=\"300\" height=\"232\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/776px-2013_Electricity-Prices-300x232.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/776px-2013_Electricity-Prices.jpg 776w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>I found an interesting post that looks at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.renewableenergyworld.com\/articles\/2016\/04\/when-will-rooftop-solar-be-cheaper-than-the-grid-here-s-a-map.html\" target=\"_blank\">relationship<\/a> between PV grid parity and electricity prices in the US.\u00a0 The first thing to say is its complicated.\u00a0\u00a0 Whether a domestic PV system is grid parity with what comes up the garden path depends on a number of factors.\u00a0 These include;<\/p>\n<ul style=\"list-style-type: disc;\">\n<li>Orientation.<\/li>\n<li>Solar insolation (how much light the place gets in a year).<\/li>\n<li>Tax incentives\/Feed in tariff.<\/li>\n<li>How the user uses their solar electricity and how much they get paid if it goes to the grid.<\/li>\n<li>Increasingly it will depend on energy storage, storing it and using it at night.\u00a0 This is going to make increasing sense as the price of batteries falls.<\/li>\n<li>Electricity prices.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The above post bases its economics on an installed cost of $3.50\/W with the price installed falling towards $1.50 at some unspecified point.\u00a0 The good news is that in crude terms quite a few places in the US are at grid parity now.\u00a0 There is an overlap between the price per watt you would have bought your power in advance over the lifetime of your PV system (25 years) and the local electricity prices.\u00a0 In some places the cost of power is more expensive than the PV power for 25 years.\u00a0 However this relies on either getting a good export rate or using most of it yourself (difficult).\u00a0 Lowering the costs gradually to $1.50\/W installed cost is shown at the bottom of the post given in the link above.\u00a0 At this price the whole of the US pretty much is at grid parity and for most people it will be far cheaper to buy the electricity upfront as a PV system on their roof.\u00a0 (Its better than this now since the data is 2013 data).<\/p>\n<p>What struck me though was the enormous range of electricity prices across the US.\u00a0 Far more than here in the UK.\u00a0 The map above shows its more than 5 fold.\u00a0 Some lucky people are paying as little as 3 cents a watt in a limited part of Washington state.\u00a0 In places such as California\/Vermont\/New Hampshire\/Alaska\u00a0 more than 25 cents a watt.\u00a0 California I can understand with long running power supply problems.\u00a0 Some of the other differences I cannot.\u00a0 Its not based on competition.\u00a0 The link above gives another link to the openei.org website where the above map came from.\u00a0 This has a state by state guide to the number of utilities.\u00a0 Washington has quite a low number whereas the others mentioned have quite a high number.\u00a0 This regional variation is far higher than the UK which although the figures are not easy to get is about 20% max.\u00a0 Any Americans got any ideas why the big difference I would be interested to know.\u00a0 Meanwhile in some of these states it gives PV a huge opening.<\/p>\n<p>Neil<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I found an interesting post that looks at the relationship between PV grid parity and electricity prices in the US.\u00a0 The first thing to say is its complicated.\u00a0\u00a0 Whether a domestic PV system is grid parity with what comes up &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=6733\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,4],"tags":[183],"class_list":["post-6733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-costs","category-renewables","tag-electricity-prices"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Electricity prices and PV grid parity - The oil lamp - shining God&#039;s light on peak oil<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=6733\" \/>\n<meta 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