To continue driving down the cost of solar and other clean energy technologies, scientists and engineers will likely have to focus, at least in part, on improving the performance of non-solar technology, according to MIT researchers. material. They describe this discovery and its mechanisms in Nature Energy .
While the cost of installing a solar energy system has fallen by more than 99% since 1980, this new analysis shows that soft technology features such as systematic licensing practices, supply chain management, and system design processes used in implementing a solar system energy. the plant contributed only 10-15% of the total cost savings. Improvements in hardware features took the lion's share.
But as soft technologies increasingly dominate the total cost of installing solar power systems, this trend threatens to slow down future cost savings and hinder the global transition to clean energy, says the study's lead author. , Jessica Tranchik, professor at the Data Institute. , Systems at MIT. and Society (IDSS).
Transik's co-authors include lead author Magdalena M. Clemun, a former IDSS alumnus and doctoral student who is now an assistant professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology; Goxin Kavlak, former IDSS PhD student and postdoctoral fellow with close ties to the Brattle Group; and James McNerney, former IDSS postdoctoral fellow and current senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School.
The team created a quantitative model to analyze the evolution of solar plant costs, taking into account the contribution of hardware technology characteristics and software technology characteristics.
The framework shows that software technologies have not improved significantly over time and that their features have contributed less to overall cost savings than previously thought.
Their results show that to reverse this trend and accelerate cost reduction, engineers can start by making solar systems less dependent on software technologies, or they can fix the problem by improving system commissioning processes.
“Really understanding what efficiency and inefficiency are, and how to eliminate those inefficiencies, is the key to supporting the transition to clean energy. We are making huge public investments in this area, and software technology will be absolutely essential for these funds to be accounted for,” he says. . transk. .
“But,” Clemun adds, “we didn't think about developing software technologies as systematically as we did about hardware. This must change."
The brutal truth about subsidized spending
The researchers noted that the so-called "soft cost" of building a solar power plant - the cost of designing and installing the system - accounts for a much larger portion of the total cost. In fact, the share of additional costs usually ranges from 35 to 64%.
“We wanted to take a closer look at where these subsidized costs come from and why they don't drop as quickly over time as equipment costs,” says Tranchik.
In the past, scientists have modeled the evolution of the cost of solar energy by dividing the total cost into additional components (tangible components and intangible components) and then tracking the evolution of these components over time.
“But if you really want to understand where this rate of change comes from, you need to dig deeper to look at the characteristics of the technology. Therefore, everything happens differently,” says Tranchik.
The researchers developed a quantitative approach that models how the cost of solar energy changes over time, determining the contribution of individual technology features, including hardware features and software technology features.
For example, your structure will reflect the extent to which the reduction in system installation costs (cost reduction) is due to the standardized practices of certified installers, which is a feature of software technologies. It will also show how the subsidized cost itself is affected by the increase in the efficiency of the photovoltaic module, which is a feature of the hardware technology.
Using this approach, the researchers found that hardware improvements had the biggest impact on lowering the embedded costs of solar power systems. For example, the efficiency of photovoltaic modules doubled between 1980 and 2017, reducing overall system costs by 17%. But about 40% of this overall reduction can be attributed to additional cost savings associated with improved module efficiency.
The framework shows that while hardware technology features tend to improve many cost components, software technology features affect only a few.
“You can see this structural difference even before you collect data on how technologies change over time. Therefore, network mapping of technology cost dependencies is a useful first step in identifying drivers of change, including for solar PV and other technologies. ", - says Klemun.
soft static technology
The researchers used their model to study several countries, as indirect costs can vary greatly around the world. For example, the cost of subsidized solar energy in Germany is about 50% lower than in the US.
The analysis showed that the fact that improvements in hardware technology are often used around the world has led to dramatic cost reductions in all areas over the past few decades. Soft technological innovations generally do not spread across borders. In addition, the team found that countries that did best in soft tech 20 years ago still perform better today, while countries that did worse didn't change much.
This variation from country to country could be due to licensing rules and processes, cultural factors or market dynamics, such as how companies interact with each other, Tranchik says.
“But not all soft tech variables are the ones you want to change towards lower costs, like lower wages. So there are other considerations, besides simply reducing the cost of the technology, that we need to think about.” when those results are interpreted,” he says.
His analysis suggests two strategies for reducing soft costs. First, scientists can focus on developing hardware improvements that make incremental costs more dependent on variable hardware technologies and less on variable software technologies, for example by creating simpler and more standardized hardware that can reduce on-site installation time.
Or researchers can focus directly on the features of software technologies without changing the hardware, perhaps by creating more efficient system installation workflows or automated authorization platforms.
“In practice, engineers often use both approaches, but separating the two in a formal model makes it easier to target innovation by exploiting specific relationships between technology functionality and cost,” Clemun says.
“Often when we think about information processing, we lose sight of the processes that still happen in a completely non-technological way when people communicate with each other. But thinking about it as a technology is just as important as thinking about software development. ", says Tranchik.
In the future, she and her collaborators want to apply their quantitative model to study the indirect costs associated with other technologies, such as electric vehicle charging and nuclear fission. They also want to better understand the limits of software technology improvement and how better software technologies can be developed from scratch.
Read more: "Evolutionary Mechanisms of Hardware and Software Technologies and Influence on Solar Energy Cost Trends", Nature Energy (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41560-023-01286-9
This story is reprinted with the kind permission of MIT News (web.mit.edu/newsoffice/), the popular MIT research, innovation, and education website.
Sample : Scientists Propose Beyond Hardware to Improve Solar and Other Clean Energy Technologies (August 17, 2023).
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