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grundar t1_iscmpl6 wrote

Reply to comment by [deleted] in FREE ELECTRICITY! Credit Suisse analysis says Inflation Reduction Act will produce solar modules for two pennies a watt in Ohio, while federal tax credits will cover 50% of project costs. by manual_tranny

> > 1¢/kWh
> >
> > pennies per watt
>
> One of these is bullshit.

No; in fact, if you work through the math, you'll see that these are saying essentially the same thing.

There are 8,760 hours in a year; average capacity factor for US solar is ~25%, so that's around 2,000Wh = 2kWh per watt per year. At a typical discount rate, the installation will be expected to pay for itself with 5-10 years of output, or 10-20kWh. At 1¢/kWh, that's only 10-20¢/W which must also include operations&maintenance, meaning an energy cost of 1¢/kWh requires an installation cost in the range of 5-10¢/W.

Similarly, you can run the math from the other direction; if you start with "pennies per watt", you get however many "pennies" that is divided by 5-10kWh (halved to account for O&M), or somewhere in the ballpark of 1¢/kWh.

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