Eager to learn

[ggunn]

More efficiency means higher market share and higher market share means higher volume production which reduces per unit cost. Even in that case ZOG would still be right as manufacturers do NOT pass all the cost reduction onto the consumer, just enough to beat their competition.

Which is the underpinning principle of the Free Market System. Beyond that, anything I could say would risk careening into the political, so I'll stop here.

 

[jaggedben]

More efficiency means higher market share ...

Again, sorry, but no it doesn't. First Solar has one of the highest market shares and the lowest panel efficiency.

 

[weressl]

Which is the underpinning principle of the Free Market System. Beyond that, anything I could say would risk careening into the political, so I'll stop here.

Based on that 'underpinning' alone the market would fail to serve the consumer. Nash's paradigm expresses it most eloquently: "any group will optimize their success where each meber of the group acts in his best self interest AND the groups' interest". In other words the act needs to satisfy BOTH criteria.

 

[ggunn]

Based on that 'underpinning' alone the market would fail to serve the consumer. Nash's paradigm expresses it most eloquently: "any group will optimize their success where each meber of the group acts in his best self interest AND the groups' interest". In other words the act needs to satisfy BOTH criteria.

Taken as a group, then, the population of the US is not acting toward optimizing the success of the group. Greed rules the day.

And I know that looks like a contradiction. So sue me.

 

[weressl]

Again, sorry, but no it doesn't. First Solar has one of the highest market shares and the lowest panel efficiency.

When one makes out of context statements and does not include the whole sentence it becomes easy to make the other look like an idiot.

The whole sentence read: "More efficiency means higher market share and higher market share means higher volume production which reduces per unit cost. Even in that case ZOG would still be right as manufacturers do NOT pass all the cost reduction onto the consumer, just enough to beat their competition." Conversely if a higher efficiency product is not priced and marketed right, it could still be a looser. The trust of the argument was about market driving principles and techniques.

 

[weressl]

That's not entirely true. Austin Energy, the city owned utility here, is a staunch supporter of distributed renewable energy, aka rooftop solar. Their projections show that the addition of solar to their grid will work toward putting off the necessity of building more power plants, so they support it with their own rebate system.

Their own rebates coming from where? From OTHER taxpayers money!!! Austin Energy is free from market commpetition and BEHOLDEN to the city politicos that are decidedly green, no matter how much it costs to the taxpayers.

 

[ggunn]

Their own rebates coming from where? From OTHER taxpayers money!!! Austin Energy is free from market commpetition and BEHOLDEN to the city politicos that are decidedly green, no matter how much it costs to the taxpayers.

Not so. "No matter how much it costs the taxpayers" is hyperbole. I figure it costs the average Austin taxpayer $5-10/year (less than 3 cents/day). If it cost them $500-1000/year, Austin Energy wouldn't do it.

And yes, Austin is very green and I am glad to be living here. Viva Verde!

 

[weressl]

Not so. "No matter how much it costs the taxpayers" is hyperbole. I figure it costs the average Austin taxpayer $5-10/year (less than 3 cents/day). If it cost them $500-1000/year, Austin Energy wouldn't do it.

And yes, Austin is very green and I am glad to be living here. Viva Verde!

So then why do a friend pays $250/mo in Austin while my bill is about $120/mo in S/E Texas and I have more square footage by about 10%?

 

[ggunn]

So then why do a friend pays $250/mo in Austin while my bill is about $120/mo in S/E Texas and I have more square footage by about 10%?

I dunno. There could be lots of reasons, I guess, but the solar rebate program is a minuscule part of it. Austin Energy pays for the program from proceeds from utility bills, and they consider it an investment against having to pay for more generating capacity, or at least delaying it. It's not just because they want to think of themselves as green.

 

[zog]

So then why do a friend pays $250/mo in Austin while my bill is about $120/mo in S/E Texas and I have more square footage by about 10%?

You must have a PF correction magic box in your house (Sorry, just could not resist that one).

 

[jaggedben]

When one makes out of context statements and does not include the whole sentence it becomes easy to make the other look like an idiot.

The whole sentence read: "More efficiency means higher market share and higher market share means higher volume production which reduces per unit cost. Even in that case ZOG would still be right as manufacturers do NOT pass all the cost reduction onto the consumer, just enough to beat their competition." Conversely if a higher efficiency product is not priced and marketed right, it could still be a looser.

The rest of your sentence flowed logically from from the first clause. But the first clause was false, so therefore the rest of that sentence is false as well. Removing the context doesn't change this, but for your pleasure I haven't snipped anything this time.

There are lots of reasons beyond pricing and marketing why a higher efficiency product may be a looser, the most important being higher costs in materials, manufacturing energy or labor, as well as the number of necessary manufacturing steps.

The trust of the argument was about market driving principles and techniques.

Fine, but then talking about panel conversion efficiency being a market driver was a bad choice for an example. It is one of the least important market drivers in the solar industry right now.

 

[zog]

Fine, but then talking about panel conversion efficiency being a market driver was a bad choice for an example. It is one of the least important market drivers in the solar industry right now.

OK, you lost me. How can panel conversion efficiency be one of the least important drivers of the solar industry?

 

[jaggedben]

OK, you lost me. How can panel conversion efficiency be one of the least important drivers of the solar industry?

The only thing that higher conversion efficiency means is that you can have more power in less space. 'Space per watt' is just not a driver in the way that 'dollars per watt' is. If higher efficiency panels cost more per watt, there is relatively little that can offset this additional cost. So there is not a huge incentive for manufacturers to increase efficiency. The trend right now is the lowering of cost for modules that are basically staying at the same efficiency.

For many customers, there is little or no significant cost to space. If I'm a homeowner with 400 sq feet of roof available for solar panels, and I need 2 kW of power, it makes a small difference to me whether the 2kW of power takes up all 400 sq ft or only 300 sq feet. Maybe a little more in racking and labor costs for the less efficient panels, but that is a small and fungible part of the cost, in the low hundreds of dollars. It makes a huge difference to me if the higher efficiency panels, the ones that allow me to use only 300 sq feet, cost $6000 instead of $4000. So higher efficiency better not cost significantly more in dollars per watt. But driving efficiency higher costs money in R&D, so it is hard to keep the dollars per watt competitive and drive efficiency higher at the same time.

Finally, just look at the industry. Sunpower, the highest efficiency guys, have a big market share, but so do First Solar, the lowest efficiency guys. The vast majority of the industry is somewhere in between efficiency-wise. Everyone's scared of Chinese manufacturers producing low cost, conventional silicon panels. If efficiency were most important, then everyone would be scared of Sunpower instead, but that's just not the case. Saying that efficiency is a big driver would be like saying that Cadillac's customers are determining major trends in the auto industry, instead of Toyota's.

 

[iwire]

That seems odd to me because we were often finding it hard to find enough space to fit the panels we needed to get the KW we wanted.

 

[ggunn]

That seems odd to me because we were often finding it hard to find enough space to fit the panels we needed to get the KW we wanted.

In those cases efficiency can indeed be an important factor, but price per Watt is still very important as well. Higher efficiency modules generally cost more per Watt, which means that the increase in output is more than offset by the increase in cost.

I have encountered many instances of the converse situation from what you outline, where a customer has $X to spend and can't afford to completely fill his available space at any efficiency. For him, the best course would be to buy more lower efficiency modules rather than fewer higher efficiency ones because by going that route he can get more Watts for his dollar.

If efficiency were the only driver, then there would be no thin films PV, and module manufacturers would not be able to sell their lower efficiency units. Neither is the case.

 

[weressl]

You must have a PF correction magic box in your house (Sorry, just could not resist that one).

Yeah, that's the ticket!:jawdropDoing my best Lovitz imitation)

 

[weressl]

The rest of your sentence flowed logically from from the first clause. But the first clause was false, so therefore the rest of that sentence is false as well. Removing the context doesn't change this, but for your pleasure I haven't snipped anything this time.

There are lots of reasons beyond pricing and marketing why a higher efficiency product may be a looser, the most important being higher costs in materials, manufacturing energy or labor, as well as the number of necessary manufacturing steps.

Fine, but then talking about panel conversion efficiency being a market driver was a bad choice for an example. It is one of the least important market drivers in the solar industry right now.

The premise was and is NOT false and you second paragraph explains it well WHY in this case is not the determining factor. But your second paragraph misses the target as did the pricing and marketing of the higher efficiency panels did/do. IMNSHO the whole thing has to do with the famed tradition of the Western snake-oil salesman. I don't believe anybody made the statement that panel conversion efficiency is driving the market, but that in an ideal market it should. (The ideal market is; sales happy, customer's happy an nobody is conned.)

 

[ggunn]

The premise was and is NOT false and you second paragraph explains it well WHY in this case is not the determining factor. But your second paragraph misses the target as did the pricing and marketing of the higher efficiency panels did/do. IMNSHO the whole thing has to do with the famed tradition of the Western snake-oil salesman. I don't believe anybody made the statement that panel conversion efficiency is driving the market, but that in an ideal market it should. (The ideal market is; sales happy, customer's happy an nobody is conned.)

Not necessarily. Say a module manufacturer produces a line of modules all of the same form factor (size, weight, appearance, etc.) with a range of efficiencies (a typical range may be 245, 250, 255, and 260 Watts). They don't do that intentionally; if they could make them all 260's, they would, but there is unavoidable variance in the cell manufacturing process, so they sort the cells by output and assemble the top performers into 260's, the next bin down into 255's, and so forth.

They *could* sell the modules all at the same price because they all cost the same to produce, but then their customers would buy the top performers preferentially and they could get stuck with an inventory of the lesser modules. They could sell them at the same price per Watt, but their sales could still be skewed. So they price them so that all the bins sell at about the same rate as they are being produced, and as a result the lower efficiency modules could very easily be the best bang for your buck if space is not an issue.

Efficiency is only a part of the story.

 

[weressl]

Not necessarily. Say a module manufacturer produces a line of modules all of the same form factor (size, weight, appearance, etc.) with a range of efficiencies (a typical range may be 245, 250, 255, and 260 Watts). They don't do that intentionally; if they could make them all 260's, they would, but there is unavoidable variance in the cell manufacturing process, so they sort the cells by output and assemble the top performers into 260's, the next bin down into 255's, and so forth.

They *could* sell the modules all at the same price because they all cost the same to produce, but then their customers would buy the top performers preferentially and they could get stuck with an inventory of the lesser modules. They could sell them at the same price per Watt, but their sales could still be skewed. So they price them so that all the bins sell at about the same rate as they are being produced, and as a result the lower efficiency modules may very well be the best bang for your buck if space is not an issue.

Efficiency is only a part of the story.

You're kidding right?!

You understand the difference between manufacturing tolerance and conversion efficacy of the product, right?:roll:

 

[zog]

Yeah, that's the ticket!:jawdropDoing my best Lovitz imitation)

Acting, genius, thank you.