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Averaged over 30 years, the trend is for an annual 7 percent reduction in the dollars per watt of solar photovoltaic cells. … In the lab, researchers have achieved solar efficiencies of as high as 41 percent, an unheard of efficiency 30 years ago. Inexpensive thin-film methods have achieved laboratory efficiencies as high as 20 percent, still twice as high as most of the solar systems in deployment today. … Historically, the cost of PV modules (what we’ve been using above) is about half the total installed cost of systems. The rest of the cost is installation. Fortunately, installation costs have also dropped at a similar pace to module costs. …
The cost of solar, in the average location in the U.S., will cross the current average retail electricity price of 12 cents per kilowatt hour in around 2020, or 9 years from now. In fact, given that retail electricity prices are currently rising by a few percent per year, prices will probably cross earlier, around 2018 for the country as a whole, and as early as 2015 for the sunniest parts of America. 10 years later, in 2030, solar electricity is likely to cost half what coal electricity does today. (more)
This should be fantastic news for folks worried about carbon emissions or running out of oil. After all, projecting that a thirty year trend will continue for another ten years seems pretty safe. This isn’t some mere speculation. Why don’t we hear more about this? Do people not like hearing good news about the future?
Solar Savior
Is that even a fair bet?
Prices of oil don't really take into account all sorts of negative externalities.
I'd love it if solar could be competitive, even without considering externalities. Since let's face it, negative externalities are really hard to deal with politically as politically connected oil companies will fight tooth and nail not to pay for the externalities, nor would oil consumers really want those costs passed down to them.
One of the utility pages I find via Google describes peak use as 1-8 pm summer (AC, I assume), and 5-9 am, 5-9 pm during winter.
Those winter peaks are a problem. Those are both times when you get less sunshine.