E
Erdemal
- Jan 1, 1970
- 0
H. E. Taylor said:2007/05/23: REA: PV Costs to Decrease 40% by 2010
The solar industry is poised for a rapid decline in costs that will make it
a mainstream power option in the next few years, according to a new assessment
by the Worldwatch Institute in Washington, D.C., and the Prometheus Institute
in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
"To say that Chinese PV producers plan to expand production rapidly in the year
ahead would be an understatement. They have raised billions from international
IPOs to build capacity and increase scale with the goal of driving down costs.
Four Chinese IPOs are expected to come to market this month alone."
-- Travis Bradford, Prometheus Institute, president
Global production of solar photovoltaic (PV) cells has risen sixfold since
2000 and grew 41 percent in 2006 alone. Although grid-connected solar capacity
still provides less than 1 percent of the world’s electricity, it
increased nearly 50 percent in 2006, to 5,000 megawatts, propelled by
booming markets in Germany and Japan.
Spain is likely to join the big leagues in 2007, and the U.S. soon thereafter.
This growth, while dramatic, has been constrained by a shortage of
manufacturing capacity for purified polysilicon, the same material that
goes into semiconductor chips. But the situation will be reversed in
the next two years as more than a dozen companies in Europe, China, Japan,
and the United States bring on unprecedented levels of production capacity,
stated the assessment.
[...]
<http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=48624>
See also:
2007/05/22: WWI: Solar Power Set to Shine Brightly
<http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5086>
Prometheus Institute for Sustainable Development
<http://www.prometheus.org/>
The question is: how trustable are these sources?
In the past, we have read so many bright announces leading to
nothing. It would be funny to enumerate them:
- the electric car charging 35 kWh in 10 minutes
- the new generation of PV, just as easy as a paint layer
- revolutionary battery
- ... out of topic but not less funny, the regrow teeth start up
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/05/03/teeth.replace/
....
Start Up - End Down
Yet the sun sends us a lot of free energy (1kW/m² = huge).
Let's paraphrase Galileo: "And thus it shines" ! ("Eppur si muove").
Erdy