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Comment by kragen | Hacker News Reader

this is awesome!

i do have one quibble, though, and it's a big one. in the last two years, prices on mainstream solar panels (monocrystalline with warranty) have fallen from €0.25 per peak watt to €0.12 per peak watt; low-cost panels have fallen from €0.17 per peak watt to €0.07 per peak watt.† technically that is 'fallen by 25% or more' because it's fallen by almost 60%. 2400 watts of solar should cost you 290 us dollars plus retail markup, not 1200 dollars. if you're paying 1200 dollars, you're being swindled! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41394506 goes into details on how the swindle works

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† https://www.solarserver.de/photovoltaik-preis-pv-modul-preis...

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400W solar panels cost $200-250. So 2400W will cost me roughly $1800. There are discounts if you can buy in bulk, but I don't have room for more than 6-8 panels at most.

Like all things, the raw material cost is trivial. There are the tariffs you mention (I just skimmed your link, and don't speak German), but there's also economy of scale, packaging, logistics, etc. I'm sure I could get 400W panels for as little as $100/ea if I went to the factory myself and bought hundreds of them. Maybe even cheaper. It's not really fair to compare consumer one-off costs to industrial/commercial-scale installation costs.

while it's true that there's a retail markup, that markup is not close to a factor of 4. it's about 30%. the €0.12 per peak watt cost i mentioned for mainstream solar panels is not at the factory; that's a wholesale price in european markets, which are halfway around the world from the factory. if you went to the factory, you could probably get them for €0.10 per peak watt, about 45 dollars each for your 400-watt panels. (unless you don't look chinese, in which case trying to go to the factory might get you arrested, and you'd definitely have to buy more than 6–8)

the longer comment of mine i linked explains in more detail how you're getting swindled. in english!

Will Prowse's favorite large panels are cheaper than that, including a 370w bifacial for $111 each in small quantities: https://signaturesolar.com/all-products/solar-panels/

that's great, only 2½× the wholesale prices on solarserver!

is that available in the usa? because the swindle that caymanjim is being subjected to is kind of a usa-only thing

Before you purchase anything try A1 solar. They often have deep discounts on single panels as well as container lots. For instance they have a 440 Watt panel priced at $140, six of which would get you 2,640 watts @ $840. https://a1solarstore.com/solar-panels/440-watt-solar-panels....

or you could maybe drive the rv down to mexico

Just wanted to clarify, are all these panels equal in size? Is there a "standard" solar panel format? It would be easy to otherwise get a much cheaper panel providing the same output if it was just a bit larger. It might be fine for ground installations but in your case space is at a premium

there used to be a standard size, but as i understand it, the price pressure the article is about has induced some makers to introduce larger-sized panels. somewhat surprisingly, lower-efficiency panels (such as polycrystalline types) don't cost much less per square meter, and so they seem to be gradually disappearing from the market

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