Last year (Chinese manufacturer) Yingli achieved an all-inclusive cost of $0.85 per watt! (source)
MIT's Technology Review has an interesting article on PV (photo-voltaic) solar panels. One Chinese company (Suntech's) production capacity has increased from 10 megawatts a year in 2002 to well over 1,000 megawatts today. The manufacturing cost has come down by a factor of about 3 (from $3.75/watt to $1.28/watt) in only 6 years:
Global installed PV capacity has gone from 1.2GW in 2004 to 8.7GW in 2009, an increase of 725% or approx 50% per year compounded See chart below). This capacity, at 25% production factor, results in approx 19B kWh per year.
Global electricity consumption in 2009 was about 3000 kWh per person (extrapolating from this graph), or about 21,000B kWh per year. So solar is less than a tenth of a percent at the moment. But at a 50% growth rate, it could be at 44% (of today's output) in 15 years, ie by 2025.
And if you believe Amory Lovins' graph, then energy consumption could be down a few percent by 2025 anyway. And we haven't even talked about solar thermal...
PS: Thanks Big Gav!
No comments:
Post a Comment