The Incredible Shrinking Cost of Solar Energy Drives Mega-Projects around the World









10 Responses

  1. In the first paragraph citing solar power costs you report that solar panels could be about 42 cents per KWH by 2015. Sounds really optimistic. From what I have read about there is about 1KW per square meter in sunlight. It would require one meter of area to produce 1KWH at 100% efficiency. Current efficiencies are a lot less than that. Maybe 10-20% tops. That’s 5-10 sq meters of panel. That much copier paper costs more than 42 cents. Solar panels are more complex than copier paper. When they can do a KWH for 42 cents I will be the first on my street to cover my roof with solar panels. Love your blog. Try to read it every day.

  2. Coincidently, today’s Washington Post has an article on an experimental plane that runs on solar power. The developer plans to pilot it across the United States on a test flight soon. The developers have named it “Solar Impulse.” It weighs in at 3,500 pounds, has 12,000 photovoltaic cells that form the top of the wing, a series of batteries behind the planes four engines, the wingspan of 747, can reach an altitude of 28,000 feet, and can operate day and night. At this stage, it has a crew of one–the pilot, who sits in a small, confined space. But it is a beginning.

  3. Very interesting post. However, “grid parity” does not mean it is as cheap to build solar as it is to build gas or coal. Grid parity is when the cost of solar power on your own roof can match the price of power from the grid including transmission, taxes and profits.

    There is a big difference. The raw production cost of large-scale “classic” power sources can easily be as low as a third of a country’s typical grid price including transmission. Any person who acts on grid parity thus, in essence, beggars his neighbors by contributing less to taxes and grid infrastructure. Even more so if it the installation is subsidised, of course.

    Also, unfortunately, neither Japan nor anyone else can improve their sluggish economies by increasing the cost of their electricity production. Having said that, coal is nasty business and should be taxed out of existence.

  4. Professor,

    Have you ever noticed that whenever the subject is a county with higher per capita emissions than the US, you change the subject to total emissions, and whenever the subject is a country with higher total emissions, you change the subject to per capita emissions?

  5. It’s happening little by little, but the old model reigns supreme in the hearts of the investor class until it is violently overthrown. Think of decaying Britain, trying to switch from a coal empire to an oil empire at the last minute, while America was defining new industries and lifestyles that required cheap oil and exporting them around the world.

    I.e., until there is a “Solar Empire” that can bully and overawe other countries, no one will abandon their status quo in sycophantic emulation. Since solar doesn’t create the spectacular concentrations of wealth and power that fossil fuels did, people will be slow to recognize the need for change.

  6. @Super390: Empires, violent overthrows and a single-minded investor class? Do you really think our economies works like that?

    Competition in the marketplace is fierce. The “investor class” doesn’t collude to keep any specific modes of production. If there are better ways, then obviously lots of investors are going to dive right into it and outcompete the rest. It has happened thousands of times before in all kinds of industries, and it will keep happening.

  7. I think solar power is a get rich slow scheme. It is something that every person would have if they knew what it was.

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