PV Solar’s Path To 2 Cents Per KWh

[jpak]

http://cleantechnica.com/2014/02/01/pv-solars-path-2-cents-per-kwh/

Today’s Graph of the Day is a follow-up to our article on Thursday on Trina Solar, and its forecasts for the coming years for the solar PV industry.

One aspect we touched on was the levellised cost of electricity. Trina’s goal is to bring the cost of solar PV down to around 6c/kWh, which it thinks can happen within 5 years. At that price it will be competitive with gas in most countries, coal in some countries, and new build fossil fuels just about everywhere.

But how does it get below that – to say, perhaps, the 2c/kWh mark imagined by solar research leaders such as Eicke Weber, of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy.

That’s what makes this graph so interesting. It seems to suggest that solar PV will have a natural base at some point. The biggest gains can be made in the efficiency levels. But the other key measure is the cost of manufacturing. Trina’s initial goal is to lift efficiency to an average 20 per cent and reduce the cost of manufacturing by nearly one third.

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[Demeter]

1. And maybe then the bitching about solar being "not green" will stop

The theory that solar took too much energy to build is true until the installation level reaches a break-even point and generation exceeds cost of installation. We aren't there yet, but we could be, far sooner than anyone predicts.

[hunter]

2. The math goes horribly wrong when you imagine solar panels as cheap as plywood...

... then you see the true costs, both environmental and monetary, of the infrastructure required to support our "modern" sort of economy.

The problem isn't clean, alternative energy, the problem is too many people and an economic system that makes it "profitable" to destroy the natural environment.

The discovery of something like cheap fusion would be a global catastrophe at this point, comparable to the original oxygenation of the earth's atmosphere.

Humans would literally eat everything.

The weakness of solar (thank mother nature, the gods, or anyone else you like) is that energy storage still has a cost.

We need to come up with a plan to ban fossil fuel use. "Alternative energy" schemes will never replace fossil fuels, they will only increase the amount of energy available to the existing environmentally destructive economic system.

[kristopher]

3. $0.06/kWh within 5 years.

In spite of the insane way fossil fuel/nuclear industry promotors try to paint the amazing progress we are seeing with solar and wind, the 'soft path' to a sustainable planet lies with distributed renewable generation.