Solar power to outshine carbon rival on pricing

Within five years, solar power will be cheap enough to compete with carbon- generated electricity, even in Britain, Scandinavia or upper Siberia.

In a decade, the cost may have fallen so dramatically that solar cells could undercut oil, gas, coal and nuclear power by up to half.

Technology is leaping ahead of a stale political debate about fossil fuels.
Anil Sethi, the chief executive of the Swiss start-up company Flisom, says he looks forward to the day – not so far off – when entire cities in America and Europe generate their heating, lighting and air-conditioning needs from solar films on buildings with enough left over to feed a surplus back into the grid.

The secret? Sethi lovingly cradles a piece of dark polymer foil, as thin as a sheet of paper. It is 200 times lighter than the normal glass-based solar materials, which require expensive substrates and roof support. It is so light it can be stuck to the sides of buildings.

Rather than being manufactured laboriously piece by piece, it can be mass- produced in cheap rolls like packaging – in any color.

The “tipping point” will arrive when the capital cost of solar power falls below US$1 (HK$7.80) per watt, roughly the cost of carbon power. We are not there yet. The best options today vary from US$3 to US$4 per watt, though that compares with US$100 in the late 1970s.

Villages across Asia and Africa that have never seen electricity may soon leapfrog directly into the solar age, replicating the jump to mobile phones seen in countries that never had a network of fixed lines.

The Standard