The cost of solar power is collapsing to the point that its use is about to explode across the United States, according to Kees Van Der Leun at Grist: [1]
[T]he fact that 30 pounds of silicon, an amount that costs $700 to produce, is enough to generate a lifetime of household electricity baffled me. Over 25 years, the family would pay at least $25,000 for the same 100,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity from fossil fuels — and its generation cost alone would total over $6,000!
Paul Krugman weighs in too, [2] criticizing those who just can’t stop touting dirty coal and natural gas derived from tracking. Then he turns to the quickly falling cost savings of PV solar:
[P]rogress in solar panels has been so dramatic and sustained that, as a blog post at Scientific American put it, “there’s now frequent talk of a ‘Moore’s law’ in solar energy,” with prices adjusted for inflation falling around 7 percent a year.
Even more falling cost data at CNET. [3]
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