Cost of photoVoltaics, is it coming down? - Page 2

 

Gary Helfert wrote:

The manufacturing cost is coming down, or at least it was until the
price of silicon jumped, but manufacturing cost and retail cost are not
necessarily related. Since demand outstrips supply by so much in the
current PV market, market prices have been fairly steady for awhile.
Gains in manufacturing cost should be reflected in retail prices in a
few years, when supply catches up with demand and PV manufacturers are
forced to compete with one another again.

As for the lifetime argument, as others have pointed out, silicon solar
cells should last longer than 20 years. Beyond the 25 or 30 year mark,
small increases in lifetime do not have much impact on the amount paid
for a kWh of electricity. A lot of the thin-film and "nano" solar
technologies that have been highly touted recently probably *can* be
produced much cheaper than silicon PV, but aside from their lower
efficiencies it is not clear how long they will last in the field. A
module with half the efficiency and a third of the lifetime of a silicon
module must sell for a quarter of the cost in order to produce
electricity at the *same* cost per kWh -- a fact that's worth keeping in
mind as new technologies hit the market.