Does that US$35/MWh include corporate profits and executive salaries, or is it just the cost of the energy generation itself? Because somewhere along the line the price the end user is charged gets inflated high enough that residential solar becomes the cheaper option.
Well, of course there’s going to be overhead costs at the point of delivery, but saving money for individual households is not the point.
The $ amount in this report is representative of the raw materials, manufacturing, logistics, installation and long-term maintenance required by each method. The point is to do a direct comparison between them (hence “levelized”) so that we can judge which is the most effective.
Because material use and manufacturing are included, the $ amount represents environmental impact (at least in part). Based on this report, residential solar is a terrible use of resources. We could put the same resources to better use building more efficient large-scale systems.
So again, we have to solve these problems collectively, not individually.
Does that US$35/MWh include corporate profits and executive salaries, or is it just the cost of the energy generation itself? Because somewhere along the line the price the end user is charged gets inflated high enough that residential solar becomes the cheaper option.
Well, of course there’s going to be overhead costs at the point of delivery, but saving money for individual households is not the point.
The $ amount in this report is representative of the raw materials, manufacturing, logistics, installation and long-term maintenance required by each method. The point is to do a direct comparison between them (hence “levelized”) so that we can judge which is the most effective.
Because material use and manufacturing are included, the $ amount represents environmental impact (at least in part). Based on this report, residential solar is a terrible use of resources. We could put the same resources to better use building more efficient large-scale systems.
So again, we have to solve these problems collectively, not individually.