Cost Of PV Cells Has Dropped 99% Since 1977, Bringing Solar Energy To Grid Parity

The price of solar photovoltaic cells has dropped 99% in the past quarter century. So in an increasing number of markets around the country, solar is at or very close to grid parity.

Consider Colorado. The Denver Business Journal reported last month the results of months-long competitive bidding process:

Xcel Energy Inc. is proposing to triple the amount of utility-scale solar power on its grid in Colorado, and add another 450 megawatts of wind power….

If approved, the plan would cut Xcel’s carbon dioxide emissions by more than one-third compared to 2005 levels.

David Eves, the CEO of Xcel’s Colorado subsidiary in the state told the Journal solar power is now cost-competitive with natural gas-fired generation:

“This is the first time that we’ve seen, purely on a price basis, that the solar projects made the cut — without considering carbon costs or the need to comply with a renewable energy standard — strictly on an economic basis.”

If solar power is seeing this kind of growth strictly on a cost basis, imagine how fast it would be growing if carbon dioxide had a price reflecting its actual harm to the environment and human health.

The Journal reports that Xcel’s proposed plan includes:

• 170 megawatts of big, utility-scale solar power plants to be built in Colorado — separate from Xcel’s proposal to add 42.5 megawatts of small-scale solar power the utility proposed in July.
• 450 megawatts of new Colorado wind power, bringing the company’s total wind-based power supply in Colorado to 2,650 megawatts.
• 317 megawatts of “low-cost” power from natural gas plants the utility will use when the wind stops and the sun goes down.

Much of the credit for the sharp drop in solar prices goes to state and federal governments here and around the world for decades of R&D support, PV purchases, subsidies, and renewable energy standards.

Those who say renewables are not ready for mass deployment, that we need decades more research or more breakthroughs before renewables are ready, are living in the past. The future is now.

Think Progress

20 Comments on "Cost Of PV Cells Has Dropped 99% Since 1977, Bringing Solar Energy To Grid Parity"

TIKIMAN on Wed, 9th Oct 2013 12:23 pm 



How much carbon will be burned to create this ‘clean’ energy?

BillT on Wed, 9th Oct 2013 1:03 pm 



TIKIMAN, I have seen estimates of 4 tons of coal per panel. Sounds about right from mines to rooftop.

GregT on Wed, 9th Oct 2013 1:05 pm 



Solar panels require finite resources in their manufacturing and their use. Even if they could be manufactured for free, they would still be non-renewable.

Mike on Wed, 9th Oct 2013 2:16 pm 



As stated above, Solar panels aren’t renewable, they are very temporary ways of collecting renewable (at least on a human time scale) energy from the sun. They really need to come up with a more appropriate term for these things , fossil fuel extenders does the trick but people get arsey if you call them that.

Mike on Wed, 9th Oct 2013 2:20 pm 



“Much of the credit for the sharp drop in solar prices goes to state and federal governments here and around the world for decades of R&D support, PV purchases, subsidies, and renewable energy standards”-

Translation = The technology isn’t viable to keep the lights on so we have subsidised it with fossil fuel energy to make it look like we’re doing something.

LOL at the ” THE FUTUERZ IZ NOWZ” bit at the end. Who wrote this a fresh faced 6th former?

Arthur on Wed, 9th Oct 2013 4:14 pm 



The end of the price drop is not in sight, not in a long shot. Currently research is concentrating on thin film solar cells. Everybody in the West buys a new computer/gadget every three year or so. Soon everybody in the West will buy a solar panel installation every 25 years or so and earn the invest cost back in a few years.

The fact that EROEI of solar is in the range 19-38 and growing with every passing year, directly invalidates any notion that you need more fossil to create a panel than you get back.

http://deepresource.wordpress.com/2013/06/29/eroei-of-photovoltaics/

“TIKIMAN, I have seen estimates of 4 tons of coal per panel. Sounds about right from mines to rooftop.”

Source? Rigzone? [repeated request].

Concerned on Wed, 9th Oct 2013 6:19 pm 



Such a shame we are in a depression due to high energy costs that is making solar panels at grid parity.

When people are buying solar installations and adding it to their homes like other heating / cooling solutions that is a better measure than a number that excludes other factors such as 47million on food stamps. High unemployment, shrinking economy etc etc..

Concerned on Wed, 9th Oct 2013 6:24 pm 



One other thing I would add is if we do get thin film or other cargo cult technological style break through.

Think 1950’s when nuclear proponents were talking about unlimited free energy.

Will this roll out include the rest of the world or just the 1%. If you have no job and no income and PV’s are at grid parity. Well actually they are NOT it’s 100% unaffordable for you.

I think the analysis above looking at a dollar amount without taking a wider lens to the economy is very superficial.

Kenz300 on Wed, 9th Oct 2013 8:33 pm 



Solar — safer, cleaner and cheaper than fossil fuels…..

The transition to safe, clean alternative energy sources continues.

Harquebus on Thu, 10th Oct 2013 1:01 am 



Trees mate, trees. The only truly renewable solar collector and storage system.

BillT on Thu, 10th Oct 2013 1:47 am 



Well, Arthur consider the web that such a product requires to come into existence, many subsidized by governments so the dollar cost is lowered but, using current costs only…

4 tons of coal is less than $100 in bulk. (EIA 2012)

At $5 per watt, that would make a 20W panel or at $2/watt, a 50 Watt panel.

Even if you double the cost of coal, you still only get a 100 Watt panel.

To get that panel requires a mega-huge amount of equipment in the system. ALL of them have to be figured into the mix as ALL of them are required at some point and have to also be replaced by new from somewhere eventually.

No, it appears that you have NOT thought your techie dreams through in the real world. Before you even get out of one mine, you need foundries, factories, shipping, personnel, etc, a huge amount of equipment and energy, before you mine one gram of ores.

energyskeptic on Thu, 10th Oct 2013 2:05 am 



“Spain’s Photovoltaic Revolution. The Energy Return on Investment”, by Pedro Prieto and Charles A.S. Hall. 2013 is the ONLY EROEI study using REAL data of ACTUAL solar PV with 3 years of data from Spain and it shows the EROEI to only be 2.4 in sunny Spain, and if 100% efficient, would only be 3.5 at best. And that is a very generous assessment if you read my review at http://energyskeptic.com/2013/tilting-at-windmills-spains-solar-pv/

GregT on Thu, 10th Oct 2013 2:30 am 



BillT,

“Before you even get out of one mine, you need foundries, factories, shipping, personnel, etc, a huge amount of equipment and energy, before you mine one gram of ores.”

It would appear that there is absolutely no point in trying to get through to people that are in states of denial. Denial apparently trumps rational and critical thought.

As JMG so succinctly pointed out in a recent article:

“All this displays one of the more troubling failures of contemporary intellectual culture, an almost physiological inability to think in terms of whole systems.”

GregT on Thu, 10th Oct 2013 6:01 am 



energyskeptic,

Thanks for the link.

I would recommend for all to read it. Yes Arthur, you too!

Arthur on Thu, 10th Oct 2013 8:37 am 



@energyskeptic

Charley Hall’s calculations are debunked here in this book review:

http://www.todaysengineer.org/2013/Jun/book-review.asp

“Prieto and Hall estimate that the EROI for solar PV in Spain is 2.45 thermal units of energy output for 1 thermal unit invested. However, this figure increases to 7.35 to 1 when taking into account energy quality or “transformity,” where, for example, it requires almost three thermal energy units of coal to produce one high value energy unit of electricity. By comparison, these results are substantially lower than data compiled by the Center for Life Cycle Analysis (CLCA) at Columbia University in New York city whose estimates were found to be “squarely in the same range of EROI as conventional fossil fuels.”

EROEI 7 is the generally accepted figure for old-fashioned crystalline silicon solar cells. But who needs old-fashioned crystalline silicon cells?

If you open energyskeptic’s link you see:

“Types of PV Used

.6% HCPV
2.1% Thin Film
97.3% Crystalline silicon”

Big deal! Three years is a lot of time in a field of rapid technological development. Look again at the graph in the article to illustrate the point. The latest thin film panels have EROEIs in the range 19-38, according to another Spanish study I linked to in my first post in this thread. We have already arrived at grid parity. There is no energy problem, there is only a timing problem, that is: we are possibly too late for a smooth transition. It could very well be that we are going to see a massive die-off in the coming decades, but that a reduced humanity will be more affluent by 2100 than today.

Arthur on Thu, 10th Oct 2013 8:52 am 



“Well, Arthur consider the web that such a product requires to come into existence, many subsidized by governments so the dollar cost is lowered but, using current costs only…
4 tons of coal is less than $100 in bulk. (EIA 2012). At $5 per watt, that would make a 20W panel or at $2/watt, a 50 Watt panel. Even if you double the cost of coal, you still only get a 100 Watt panel.”

Bill, you made that argument in an older thread and I gave you a calculation why that 4 ton coal figure is absolute BS.

http://peakoil.com/alternative-energy/robert-rapier-nonrenewable-renewables

Let’s go through your argument…

You directly translate the price of a solar panel into the price of a pile of coal. That’s ridiculous. Energy and material are only a small part of the cost of a panel. The largest part of the cost of a panel is in production cost: labor + writing off an expensive solar production facility:

tinyurl . com / paklyrg

(orange = production cost)

J-Gav on Thu, 10th Oct 2013 9:25 am 



Agreed Harquebus – Got land? Plant loads of trees. Not a ‘solution’ per se to our predicament, but a step in the right direction.

Arthur on Thu, 10th Oct 2013 10:06 am 



And what do you plan to do with all these trees? Burn them for fuel? The efficiency of converting solar energy into biofuel is ca. 1%, so why bother wasting scarce land? Solar panels have 10% efficiency and can be installed on a roof, which cannot be said of trees. A roof can produce just enough electricity to cover the needs of an average family.

GregT on Thu, 10th Oct 2013 2:46 pm 



“And what do you plan to do with all these trees?”

Perhaps it would be a good idea to just let them grow?

gg on Tue, 11th Aug 2015 4:17 pm 



“TIKIMAN, I have seen estimates of 4 tons of coal per panel. Sounds about right from mines to rooftop.”

Four tonnes of coal, that equates to about fourteen tonnes of CO₂, right?

Well, here’s a reality check: http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/details/beitrag/french-institute-recognizes-hanwha-q-cells-low-carbon-solar-modules_100015628/ – about 0.1 tonnes of CO₂ per panel, or about 27 kg of coal per panel.