Solar Prices Drop Exponentially for 30 Years

FuturePundit blogs about projections for $2 a watt photovoltaics by 2010, which would be a reduction in cost of about half from today's prices.

The interesting thing in this post for me is a link to an Earth Policy Institute page which shows an exponential decline in photovoltaic prices over the last 33 years, from $100 per watt in 1975 to $4 a watt today.





That's a highly encouraging long term trend. It reflects a "cut the price in half" time of about 5 years, which bodes very well in the long term.

Lots more stats available at the Earth Policy Institute Solar Power Indicators page.

mez

A Solar Grand Plan

The cover story of this month’s Scientific American is a proposal to build out solar power in the US to supply 70% of the country’s electrical needs by 2050. It looks like a pretty doable plan, actually, requiring no technological advances in solar power beyond what’s projected between here and 2020. The price tag the authors estimate is $420 Billion, which works out to $10B a year, or about ½ of 1% of the US federal budget.

Article: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan

Sidebar with a quick summary of the plan:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=us-plan-for-2050