Sharp President Sees Solar Power Costs Halving by 2010

[skids]

Japan's Sharp Corp, the world's biggest maker of solar cells, expects the cost of generating solar power to halve by 2010 and to be comparable with that of nuclear power by 2030, Sharp's president said.

"By the year 2010 we'll be able to halve generation costs," Katsuhiko Machida told Reuters in an interview on Thursday. "By 2020 we expect a further reduction -- half of 2010 -- and by 2030 we expect half the 2020 level.

"By 2030 the cost will be comparable to electricity produced by a nuclear power plant," said Machida, speaking on the fringes of the IFA trade fair in Berlin, the world's biggest consumer electronics fair.

Asked how the costs were likely to compare with those for producing electricity from fossil fuels such as coal, Machida replied: "Fossil fuel resources will be totally out by then."

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=reutersEdge&storyID=2006-08-31T164803Z_01_L31438550_RTRUKOC_0_US-FAIR-SHARP-SOLAR.xml

Sharp being a major producer (and of traditional Si cells no less) one wonders if they have something up their sleeve, or are just factoring in solar thermal. At any rate it's a staggering statement for a major manufacturer to make, though it's obvious that thin-film and concentrator startups have this target in mind and are moving aggressively, albeit with lower volumes than needed to shake the entire market (possible exceptions being Nanosolar and Xerox-backed Solfocus both of which are showing signs of volume scaleup.)

When we start seeing announcements of major panel producers buying up these startups, we'll know the game is really on.

[NickB79]

1. So solar will cost the same as nuclear in 25 yrs

The question is, what do we do in the meantime? Waiting is out of the question, as climate change must be addressed NOW or we'll be in a deep world of hurt by 2030.

[skids]

2. Direct to consumer, that's what.

Putting aside the subsidy issues, the cost here is deployment cost. If the PV were deployed in the traditional sense of a large power distributer reselling to the customer, chop off the markup, and solar is already cheaper, dollarwise, in the long run than any distributed power. Bring that price down and you'll start seeing payback periods more along the lines of 5 years, 2.5 years, 1.25 years. That's more in line with homeowner's expectations for an investment.

Here in the U.S. about half of the PV we install is not tied to the electrical grid, but used directly onsite by the owner. That's an unusually large number compared to other countries. I think that number is about to go up even further both here and abroad, as declining panel prices without a corresponding decline in grid-tie electronics prices will make off-grid more attractive than grid-tie.

[Massacure]

3. Cost is irrelevant if it's only available 15% of the time.

Solar needs six times the capacity of a nuclear plant, and then it needs to be stored. How much is that storage going to cost, and is that even possible???

[skids]

4. Storage costs...

This unit:



http://www.xantrex.com/web/id/231/p/1/pt/30/product.asp

...costs about $900 Canadian so in the area of $850 U.S. It contains everything needed for someone who does not want to sell the power back to the power company, just shave their own use. The total capacity is around 2.4KWh without the expansion packs. Using a 1/4th day charging period the approximate matching size of a solar PV array for it would be between 0.5kW and 1kW depending on your daytime loading differential. At $4 and change per peak watt, the associated panels cost between $2K and $4K. So we see that the cost of storage and electronics for off-grid and grid-backed PV (e.g. not "grid tied") is currently running at most 30% of the installed system cost, and more realistically given low nighttime power use, less than 20%.

Incidentally you can track charge controller, invertor, and battery costs at solarbuzz, not just solar prices.

In reality, solar does not need to be stored in it's major application: peak load shaving. It only needs to be stored if expected to satisfy the baseload. In which case, for the utility-scale storage consumers, we have beaconpower.com and the E-Stor ultra capacitors approaching market readiness, and for the residential storage consumer, products are starting to congeal into more "turnkey" solutions at affordable prices.

[Sven77]

5. Price average by month

Solar Module Price Highlights

http://www.solarbuzz.com/ModulePrices.htm