
The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months - prostoalex
http://electrek.co/2016/05/02/price-solar-power-fell-50-16-months-dubai-0299kwh/
======
ChuckMcM
The aggressiveness of the price drops on solar is pretty amazing. I just lost
one of the inverters on my grid-tie system after it had run trouble free for
13 years. So we're looking at the first "major" repair to the system I
installed in 2003. And in 2003 my 5.2kW of panels on my roof cost $38,000
before subsidies and $19,000 after. 28 panels, two 2.5kW inverters, net about
4.2kW of generation.

I priced out replacing all the panels (now I can do in 10 panels what used to
take 28) and the inverters with a single 5kW inverter, $7,000. My price, no
subsidies. That is over 80% reduction in cost, over 13 years, of the list
price of $40K.

And that is why it is a huge problem for the power companies, it makes less
sense now to _not_ have panels on your roof.

~~~
coryfklein
> And that is why it is a huge problem for the power companies

It is a problem, but not necessarily in the way you may be thinking. Peak
residential power usage is in the evening when solar isn't available. Power
companies therefore end up spinning down coal and natural gas during peak
solar, then just spinning them back up again as the sun begins to set. [1]

So you haven't _replaced_ the coal and natural gas plants, you're just running
them less. This results in higher overall costs, because you pay $$$ to build
huge plants then just let them sit most of the day, which results in higher
per-watt cost of non-solar power because the infrastructure and maintenance is
no longer amortized over whole-day usage.

[1] My friend, a manager of 30 years at a huge mid-west power company

~~~
S_A_P
Can validate. The problem with electricity is that there is no large scale
storage like there is for other forms of energy like NG and Crude. Until
someone comes along and figures out how to store electricity, this will
continue to cause grief to power companies. Power plants are really just
options, if the price per kWh is at a certain point then it makes sense to
spin up or take down a plant and generate power. Adding a bunch of highly
variant generation to the grid can make the market more volatile since there
could be a lot of up and down with generation facilities.[0]

That said, there will be teething pains but this is a net positive thing that
is happening. Growing up I lumped solar into the perpetual 10 years away
category. It looks like I am going to see solar be competitive after all.

[0] I implement trading and risk management software in the energy sector,
including Crude, NGL, NG, and electic.

~~~
amenghra
Some countries store energy by pumping water up a dam. Seems efficient.

~~~
coryfklein
Whoa! That sounds really cool so I looked it up. It's called "Pumped-storage
hydroelectricity"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-
storage_hydroelectricit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-
storage_hydroelectricity)

~~~
mr_luc
Yeah, and I believe that it's the only game in town for storing really large
amounts of electricity.

------
d_theorist
This might seem like a weird thing to complain about, but am I the only person
who is sick to death of headlines of the form "X just did Y"? It's the "just"
I object to. It seems to be some sort of trend over the last couple of years.

I think it's to make it seem more dramatic or something. It _just_ happened!
My god!

In this case it is especially ridiculous, since the article describes
something that happened over the course of 16 months.

~~~
mattlondon
Its SEO/Click-bait 101 unfortunately. It is sensationalisation of something to
make it sound more interesting.

Next it will be "See what crazy change to solar made energy purchasers sit up
pay attention!"

~~~
mod
But can it be improved with a "just?"

"See what crazy change to solar just made energy purchasers sit up and pay
attention!"

~~~
d_theorist
You clearly have a fantastically lucrative career in annoying-headline-writing
ahead of you.

~~~
mod
I'm trying to validate my product. Would you pay me $5/day for an annoying
headline?

"10 Crazy ways to validate your product for free that startup gurus won't tell
you about!"

PS: I don't know what the 10 ways are, I just write headlines.

~~~
coredog64
7's the key number here. Think about it. 7-Elevens. 7 dwarves. 7, man, that's
the number. 7 chipmunks twirlin' on a branch, eatin' lots of sunflowers on my
uncle's ranch. You know that old children's tale from the sea. It's like
you're dreamin' about Gorgonzola cheese when it's clearly Brie time, baby.
Step into my office.

------
vonmoltke
This article is making a really big deal out of _bids_. While the trend is
encouraging, let's wait and see if the winning bidders can actually deliver at
the prices they bid before getting too excited.

~~~
IkmoIkmo
Agreed.

Now, I actually DO think they can deliver at the prices. But that doesn't mean
solar prices dropped by 50%.

Imagine this: you've got a business opportunity for a 20 year contract.
Currently it costs you $10 to run per year, but that will drop to $6 after a
few years, and drop further to $1 per year in the last 10 years.

Where will it be priced? Well if I said say $5, then most would agree that
makes sense. After all, your average cost will probably be something like $3 a
year, so locking in the rate at $5 means you're making a profit. In fact,
you'd expect others to outbid you until the price approaches the average cost
of $3. But let's say it ended up priced at $5... well a journalist might say
'prices dropped by 50% this year'. When in reality, prices will drop over the
next TWENTY years, and 20-year contracts reflect that expectation. Solar
prices today are still $10 today, not $5.

Of course these are just made up numbers. Point is, even if companies can
deliver at this pricing, it's mostly a reflection of expectations of future
prices, not today's prices.

------
kragen
A really interesting thing about this is that the price of solar _panels_ has
changed almost not at all in those 16 months:
[http://www.solarserver.com/service/pvx-spot-market-price-
ind...](http://www.solarserver.com/service/pvx-spot-market-price-index-solar-
pv-modules.html) shows that it's 0.49 to 0.63 € / Wp today, while 16 months
earlier, it was 0.45 to 0.62. This is a dramatic contrast from the continuous
36% per year reductions from 2009 to 2012.

In large part because it's night half of the time, solar has a pretty low
capacity factor, like in the 20% range (see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacity_factor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacity_factor)
for details) so it matters whether this is 800MW peak or 800MW average. I
think it's peak, which means that we're talking about something in the range
of US$400M to US$500M worth of solar panels at current prices — which are the
same prices as in 2014, when bids were twice as high! With a 35% capacity
factor (Dubai is equatorial and sunny, although even Arizona only gets 19%),
this project will have only 800 MW * 35% * $ 0.0299/kWh = US$73.4M/year of
revenue, which is only a 16% return on investment — or ⅓ that, at 5⅓%, if we
assume that the non-module costs of the project amount to ⅔ of the total cost,
as shown in the bargraph on the article.

So, is the winning bidder (strangely, not named in the article!) really
willing to accept a 5⅓% IRR for this investment, because PV solar park
competition is _really that cutthroat_? Or are they betting that by the time
they have to buy the modules, the prices will have fallen (returning to their
former exponential decline?), and/or that the notorious "soft costs" that eat
up half the project cost are becoming cheaper?

There's no real floor on the cost of silicon photovoltaic modules, since
almost all of the cost of producing them from raw materials is energy, not the
materials themselves.

~~~
maxerickson
It seems part of the story was crystal production getting ahead of demand.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycrystalline_silicon#Capaci...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycrystalline_silicon#Capacity)

The price graph a little lower is interesting.

~~~
kragen
Thank you! I remember that catastrophic price spike. Note that in the 2009 to
2012 timeframe, though, the polysilicon price was relatively stable (declining
only by half), and it's declined since then, so polysilicon pricing is only
part of the story.

------
alex20
And here in the USA some states are punishing solar customers who sell their
energy, by taxing them on infrastructure costs, to protect the big energy
companies. Their reasoning for taxing them is to "maintain the lines and
equipment". The counter-argument to that is, "customers who consume pay taxes
and fee's to maintain the lines, and on top of that, the government is giving
them tax breaks to help "maintain the lines"

i get mad even thinking about it.

Same with internet, Cable, TV. The lawmakers will always try and mitigate the
disruption, but all they are doing is delaying the inevitable.

~~~
jmcgough
My gf is an electromechanical engineer at a solar power startup (and obviously
supportive of solar power initiatives).

Just asked her about this, and she said that: 1) the electrical grid wasn't
designed for transferring power this way, and it can damage the grid 2)
because solar power isn't a constant power source (say, a cloud blocks the sun
for a minute), power companies need to keep power available for someone who's
using solar. The amount of this is dictated by their peak power usage. May not
seem like a big thing, but as more and more people switch to solar, they
suddenly need to hold massive amounts of power, as disruptions can affect
people in entire regions.

Then she started getting heavy into the physics of reactive power and my brain
stopped working T_T

Anyways, there's a reason that they're charging fees for solar usage. You're
using their electrical grid, and it costs money to maintain it and improve it
to handle some of the new challenges of solar power.

~~~
stale2002
Solar power REDUCES peak grid usage; it does NOT increase it.

When do you think solar power is producing the most electricity? In the
afternoon on a hot summer day.

When do you think peak grid electricity usage peaks? In the afternoon on a hot
summer day!

Solar power helps get rid of the peak electricity usage problem. If anything,
power companies should be paying solar users even more, because they are
reducing costs for the power company, not increasing them.

~~~
lambertsimnel
Why does grid electricity usage peak on hot summer afternoons? If it's because
of air conditioning, it's probably not universal.

I imagine hot summer afternoons are a time when factories operate below
capacity (or not at all), and people heat their homes less and spend more time
outside away from TV, etc.

~~~
ptaipale
Certainly not universal. Could be true in California or Texas, possibly. For
sure it's not here.

Where I live, the peak is a winter morning which is windless and therefore
particularly cold, at 8:00 (before sunrise). Solar output is zero, wind power
output is zero. Everyone turns extra heaters on, puts the kettle on to make a
hot cup before taking a warm shower.

~~~
stale2002
The point isn't that it is 100% universal for all places. The point is that it
is true for most places.

~~~
ptaipale
[citation needed]

------
Retric
A side effect of this, large scale grid solar is now significantly cheaper
than rooftop solar due to labor costs.

~~~
giarc
At which point would it be financially beneficial for a farmer to turn a field
into a solar farm rather than plant a crop? I have no knowledge in economics
of either so I couldn't even estimate.

~~~
SwellJoe
There's a lot of farmland and ranch land in the US that _shouldn 't_ be
farmland or ranch land. They're too dry, too hot, and competing for water
resources with people and natural (sometimes endangered) ecosystems.

So, maybe it's something that should be encouraged; the food those farms and
ranches produce would need to be replaced by food grown in more appropriate
climates, and we'd need to rethink our recent "local food" movement, in some
regards, but agriculture, and _particularly_ animal agriculture, are an
ecological disaster almost everywhere they exist. Couple that with limited
water resources (where a lot of agriculture takes place in California, Texas,
Arizona, and New Mexico) and you've got a recipe for serious problems long-
term.

That said, agriculture could also shift. Less water-intensive foods, more
foods that are appropriate for the area they're being consumed in.

Anyway, I think solar farms replacing agricultural farms could be a net win
for the environment, even before considering the improvements that come from
turning off coal-fired plants.

~~~
nashashmi
Hah! Only if dictatorship could ordain things to be done so correctly.
Unfortunately we live in a capitalistic democracy.

~~~
SwellJoe
Are you sincere in your belief that only a dictatorship could lead to more
environmentally responsible agriculture and land use in the US? It seems like
trolling, but if you're sincere, I could point you to some references on how
our current laws reward irresponsible water and land use in many cases. There
are many things a "capitalistic democracy" (if that's really what we are
living in, which I also think is debatable) can do, and many things that are
already being done, to guide how land owners utilize their land. The
unintended consequences of current agricultural and water-use law in places
like some parts of California, which have experienced more years of drought
than years of normal rainfall for more than a decade, have been pretty
significant. Government at local, state, and federal levels, have helped
create the problems I'm talking about, so why shouldn't they be able to help
alleviate them?

~~~
rspeer
Presumably those laws were put in place because somebody benefits from them.
Possibly somebody who makes campaign donations.

In that case, the government may technically be _able_ to solve the problem in
a way that's better for everyone, but not _willing_ to, as the politicians who
make the change could lose their campaign donations or their seats.

------
Animats
It's time to get most air conditioning load onto solar. In the US, areas south
of 37° (central California across to everything south of Virginia) should have
enough local solar power to drive daytime air conditioning. For that, we don't
need storage, we don't need to feed much power back into the grid, and air
conditioning is the big residential load. 21% of electricity consumption in
the South is for air conditioning. This is a no-brainer right now.

Here's an application for "smart power" technology. When a cloud comes over
and blocks the sun, air conditioner compressors should shut down temporarily.
If the cloud cover remains, start up again, on a somewhat random time delay,
to give generators time to respond. (This will probably be implemented with
some overly complex system that involves "the cloud", rather than being done
by a simple broadcast signal.)

------
cakeface
How much of these low bids in Dubai are due to the low cost of labor there?
Also I am guessing that various building regulations are significantly cheaper
to meet than in the US. I remember reading about the huge building boom in
Dubai being possible because of large groups of extremely low paid laborers.
I'd guess any other utility project in Dubai would benefit from this as well.

That isn't to say that there aren't improvements in solar cost. There are
improvements. I just wouldn't compare a bid in Texas to one in Dubai.

------
hughes
If the price of solar continues to drop rapidly, why would anyone buy solar?
Waiting a couple years for another 50% price drop seems like an obvious choice
while we're still in the $5k-10k range to outfit a home.

~~~
dabeeeenster
Some of the costs are not going to come down much more. Installation labour,
roof panel frames, inverter etc. etc. can come down a little but not by much.

[https://electrek.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/chart.jpeg?w=77...](https://electrek.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/chart.jpeg?w=771&h=514)

The price curve _has_ to start flattening out soon! (I hope it doesn't, but I
can't see how you can carry on achieving 50% price drops so rapidly...)

~~~
dicroce
If efficiency went up, installation can come down...

------
downandout
_" One can suspect that Masdar had access to long-term financing through the
wealthy emirate of Abu Dhabi that no commercial banks, the primary source of
capital for the other bidders, could match in cost."_

I was excited by this headline until I read the article. This price drop is
the result of advances in financial - not technical - engineering. It means
nothing for the cost of solar outside of this specific deal, as below-market
interest rates are just more subsidies. This is yet another eco-clickbait
headline.

------
logicallee
There is a nuanced economic issue related to this priced drop.

Today, (and for some time in the past) solar panels can be an investment, that
is paid off by the amount that is saved by not having to use the grid (for
example.)

So a homeowner might calculate that by investing $20,000 in solar panelling
today, they can have a 100% return within 72 months (6 years). It's free if
they manage to use it for 6 years. Afterward the fact that this paneling is
installed is "profit" \- they get the ongoing money from their savings.

So they are motivated by self-interest to make this investment, even if they
assign "$0" to how much it's worth to them to reduce their carbon footprint on
the planet; they don't have to care.

But look at what happens if they consider that the investment price will drop
by 50% in the _next_ 18 months. Then they will have a 100% return in 36
months, plus the 18 months they wait means their investment is repaid in 54
instead of 72 months. Or, perhaps, they can install twice the paneling in 18
months. Either way their ROI is better.

So that means for the next 18 months they are simply continuing to use the
grid, which might have a higher carbon footprint. This might, paradoxically,
drop adoption of solar paneling today (depending on people's expectation of
the price change in the future.)

~~~
mmanfrin
So then you consider that others are logical actors, and will follow to the
same conclusion; meaning that the price _won 't_ drop in 18 months and is
therefore the proper investment now.

But then you think that others will think this too, so then you _should_ wait.

And then you remember that you should never go in against a Sicilian when
death is on the line.

------
efields
Curious… does it ever get low enough that electric heat becomes desirable? We
moved into a place that had electric heat on the ground floor, ran it the
first cold month, saw the bill, then made it a purely "on demand" heating
solution. The rest of the apartment was gas forced hot air, which was on a
normal schedule.

To heat a whole home in a Boston winter seems like it might cost $1000 or so.
Is it reasonable to expect rooftop solar to ever generate that much
electricity?

~~~
maxerickson
An air source heat pump might make more sense than just using the electricity
(they often provide 3 units of heat for each unit of electricity, a COP of 3
compared to 1 for resistive heating). It depends on how much summer power
could be sold for and how much all the things cost.

Newer ones would work fine for most of the Boston winter.

------
brianbreslin
In some states, the utilities don't let you sell back I think (Florida being
one. we have a super friendly power lobby here. /sarcasm). But I am curious
about the cost and hurricane proofing of a set of panels + battery backup. My
parents would totally buy a combo for their house if they knew it wouldn't get
ripped off in a storm.

------
tim333
Pretty impressive. They need to work on cheaper batteries now.

~~~
dpierce9
Batteries would be great but they are not necessary unless you want to replace
all generation with solar which would be a gargantuan undertaking. As part of
the current generation stack, even at expanded scale, solar works very well
without storage.

~~~
dragontamer
Yup. There's no reason why we can't rely on peaker plants a little bit longer.
In general, there's a ton of power-plants designed to turn on and off
throughout the day to inject power into the grid when demand grows.

The chief benefit however, is that this happened starting at daytime hours
(when workers come into factories and tons of energy is suddenly demanded from
the grid). However, because 12:00 noon is peak solar, peaker-plants will shift
to later in the day to 3:00pm to 5:00pm or so (as opposed to running from
12:00 to 7:00 each day, they'll maybe run 3:00 to 7:00 each day).

Peaker Plants can be Hydro or Natural Gas. Natural Gas Peaker Plants are the
most expensive, and they currently happen to run during a similar timeframe as
solar.

For now, Peaker Plants can remain the solution. We need something to work on
cloudy / rainy days after all. And "battery" tech is getting better.

[http://www.aresnorthamerica.com/](http://www.aresnorthamerica.com/)

~~~
epistasis
> There's no reason why we can't rely on peaker plants a little bit longer.

No reason other than them being more expensive than batteries:

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-22/batteries-...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-22/batteries-
gaining-favor-over-gas-peaker-plants-in-california)

>We need something to work on cloudy / rainy days after all.

Even without storage, interconnecting grids with HVDC across the US (or across
a continent) solves this problem really really nicely. China is already
building tons of HVDC to do this, and we need to as well. Long haul transport
over HVDC is also cheaper than peaker plants.

That said, natural gas peaker plants stick around as long as the fuel costs
are low, and the capital has already been sunk into the plant. But for new
capacity, I think there's going to be a huge shift towards storage.

------
SFJulie
I hate these stupid work hours anyway that create this stupid habit of burning
energy when it is not "naturally available".

Couldn't changing the business hour according to the sun and wind be the real
cost killer?

No technologies, no investments involved, it just requires one smart boss,
some smart accountant and employees.

Imagine it: people would have no way to avoid raising their kids during the
down season, we could fire teacher, single could do art, we could stop funding
culture and it would be popular culture, maybe science, less working hours,
but more people would have to work.

It would solve quite a few problem.

------
Iv
Pretty trivial remark, but when the prices are so low, leading to most prices
have two trailing zeros, couldn't we maybe switch for another unit than $/kWh
? Maybe $/MWh ? So we are currently at 29.9$/MWh.

For information, the average household in the world uses 3 MWh per year and a
typical US one does a bit more than 10 MWh. Advanced and ecologically minded
countries like Germany go down to 3 MWh.

Keep in mind that the location is important. Dubai has a lot of sun, you would
not get this price with the same tech in, say, Canada.

------
martinald
This headline is beyond misleading. The reason this bid was so low that it is
financed by a state owned company in Abu Dhabi.

"One can suspect that Masdar had access to long-term financing through the
wealthy emirate of Abu Dhabi that no commercial banks, the primary source of
capital for the other bidders, could match in cost."

The cost of capital is the most important thing on these projects. If you're
getting below market capital financing then no shit, prices are going to fall
a lot.

------
toephu2
Unfortunately the price of solar hasn't dropped that much in California, and
may take some time.

If you get a bid from a solar company they almost never give you the cost per
watt (at least for the 5 companies I got bids from), but you should do that
calculation yourself and then compare against the average in California to see
if they are ripping you off:

[https://www.californiasolarstatistics.ca.gov/](https://www.californiasolarstatistics.ca.gov/)

------
disposeofnick9
The price of raw cells are super cheap now and if you're willing to reearch,
engineering and DIY, you can build great panels for even cheaper. As many
large projects come online, both li-ion and solar are going to fall through
the floor faster than Moore's Law for some time, and the slow down.

I suspect solar deployment will take the US by surprise, because of the
compelling economics.

Hint: go long on SCTY

------
ry_ry
Solar remains a long-term choice, though.

I love the idea, but I'll have sold my current house before a suite of solar
panels pays for itself, and from my limited knowledge, the price of solar-
equipped houses doesn't reflect the investment before it's paid for itself.

Disclosure: UK, we have no sunshine.

------
wesleyd
The idea of an always-on grid sized for peak demand is going to seem
hopelessly anachronistic in just a few years. Third world power grids -
frequent outages, sized for average load, cheap in every sense, barely
regulated - are the future

------
therealdrag0
I'm curious as to the reasons behind the drop, and if that has anything to do
with solar being solar. Could the same thing have happened for wind or nuclear
given certain social and political pressures and incentives to innovate and
mass-produce?

------
lucasmullens
Google Project Sunroof can tell you if you should invest in solar based on
your roof area [0]

[0] [https://www.google.com/get/sunroof](https://www.google.com/get/sunroof)

------
Clobbersmith
How can something "just drop" over 16 months? I think it's amazing that solar
is becoming more affordable, but a year and a half is hardly sudden.

------
neves
If you decide to go out of the grid almost completely, and buy batteries to
store your energy. Have any idea about how much you'd spend?

~~~
ams6110
Even with recent developments, being totally off-grid only makes sense when
it's your only option (remote rural cabin, etc).

Solar panels with enough battery backup, plus an alternate generator (gas or
diesel) for times when it's overcast for longer than your battery reserve are
still going to have a very long payback time if utility power is an option.

There's a reason utilities exist, after all. It's always been possible to have
your own electrical generator, it's just way more cost-efficient to do that at
utility scale. That will likely continue to be the case with solar and
batteries.

------
wesleyd
It still amazes me that here in silicon valley, no available electricity
tariff reflects the timing of the supposed solar glut.

------
ksec
What about land cost? Do the cost stated there include land cost? What about
in places where land is expensive?

------
samfpetersen
Is this not just a symptom of oil prices dropping? Solar has to remain
competitively priced or the industry is screwed

~~~
ohitsdom
An entire industry can't just lower prices to meet a competitor.

~~~
rhino369
Without subsidies an industry can't not just lower prices to meet a
competitor.

Especially with the sort of auction pricing in energy markets. If the going
rate for energy is 5 cents a KW*hour, then you can't sell it for 6 cents.

Solar survives off subsidies in the USA. Though in places like Dubai it might
be a competitive energy provider.

------
sc90
How low would it have dropped minus incentives/subsidies?

------
einarvollset
Without even reading comments: the naysayers are talking about peak demand
when the sun is not shining. What they're missing: distributed, fault tolerant
energy storage using eg Tesla powerwall.

------
daveheq
And the world marches ahead of America

------
sdneirf
I cannot imagine utilities lobbying group not going whole hog to squash this.

------
maxharris
The availability of solar power at night or on cloudy days just improved 0% in
16 months.

Saying that solar is okay because it's hooked up to the grid is not an answer,
because that's just another instance of a reliable energy source (fossil
fuels, nuclear, hydro) bailing out an unreliable one (solar, wind).

~~~
hueving
That same argument could be used to advocate everyone running diesel
generators at home 24/7 because of the power outages that occur on the grid.

Sure, coal and gas pickup the remaining tab, but even if they are covering
half of the usage, that's better than all of it.

------
cubano
It's interesting how no one is discussing how the governments massive subsidy
of the solar and wind power industries are completely distorting the market
for these "prices", so studies like these are pretty much nonsense.

Of course price/KW will drop massively if the entire thing is being propped up
by taxpayer dollars and not the actual need to be profitable.

I guess I just need to resign myself to the idea that so many misguided people
now believe that government can print and spend money on everything and that
will always work forever.

But it won't.

~~~
comatose_kid
"Oil, coal and gas received more than four times the $120 billion paid out in
incentives for renewables including wind, solar and biofuels"

source: [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-11-12/fossil-
fue...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-11-12/fossil-fuels-
with-550-billion-in-subsidy-hurt-renewables)

~~~
ptaipale
However, those subsidies are not paid in the same geographical and political
regions _at all_.

Sun and wind subsidies are paid out in places like EU countries, especially
Germany, where they distort the market. Gasoline on the other hand is taxed
highly.

Oil, coal and gas get subsidies in places like Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Iran
or Malaysia, where they distort the market.

That Venezuela distorts its markets in some way does not really make it a good
idea to distort the market in Germany (or USA) in another way.

~~~
g8oz
Fossil fuels have unpriced externalities even in places like Germany. And what
you call market distortion re renewables in Germany is more appropriately
called investment. The proof is the global solar industry that that country
singlehandedly kickstarted with it's subsidies. A similar story with wind
energy and Denmark.

