GreenLightsBlog

Last night I was browsing the web about solar panels, and I came across a really great, informative video clip from the president and CTO of SunPower. The video is an hour long and goes into some detail about the economics and technical background of solar electric panels (photovoltaics). It’s at http://www.parc.xerox.com/cms/get_article.php?id=543 .

(= So in case you don’t have an hour to spare right at the moment, one of the really interesting points made was that solar panel prices are coming down a very classic experience curve, similar to what computer microprocessors have done. In other words, every decade the price of solar panels comes down by half, as the market volume increases 10-fold. This rule has held true from 1970 to the present.

According to projections based on this experience curve, we will have solar cell prices of $1.50 / Watt by the year 2012, which according to another rule of thumb (installed system cost = 2 * solar cell cost), corresponds to an installed system cost of $3 / Watt. So what does that mean?

Basically, you could take a $3 / Watt solar electric system, put it onto the roof of a new home or a home you’re purchasing, wrap the cost of it into the mortgage on the new home, and the increase in the monthly mortgage payment would balance out with the electric bill that you would no longer have to pay.

So an average home using 1,000 kWh per month would need a solar electric system that costs $20,000, which corresponds to an increase in the mortgage payment of $120 / month (assuming a 6% interest rate). So you’d trade a $120 / month electric bill for $120 / month on your mortgage for the cost of the solar electric system. And in the process, you’d eliminate the very substantial amount of pollution and greenhouse gases that are produced from burning coal at the power plant for your household electricity.

 So who wants to sign up for a solar electric system by 2012?  (=

Filed under: Uncategorized on October 7th, 2007