The fate of the world depends on driving down the cost of solar power.
Yes, that’s a melodramatic way of putting it. But it’s not wrong. Any scenario that has humanity avoiding the worst ravages of climate change involves explosive global growth in solar power.
That’s why the US Department of Energy has a program, the SunShot Initiative, devoted entirely to driving down the cost of electricity generated by solar panels — the target is solar power with $1 per watt installed costs by 2020, a 75 percent reduction in costs from 2010.
So how’s that going?
Happily, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) releases a set of reports each year devoted to tracking solar prices; they’ve just released the latest editions. Long story short: Prices are steadily falling, more or less on schedule
There are two reports, one for each type of solar power. One is on “utility-scale solar,”which means solar systems larger than 5 MW. The other report is on solar photovoltaic (PV) systems under 5 MW.
Those are two very different markets, but I’m going to squish them together in this post, with the help of a bazillion charts.
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