breakeven cost to install solar panels

Grid Parity For Greedy People

We are in tough economic times!

The life suffered in the current economic mess affects the day to day life on many levels.

We are in toughest environment since last 50 yrs, and it’s affecting our life. Its just media talked about slow down with lot of echos but never talked much about the biggest problem of our recent generation – since the day we were born!

So while the economy recovers (it will recover sooner or later), we’ll go back to our greedy consumer capitalist agenda will the other problem I just stated will go in shelf too?

If every problem creates a new wide solution then well heck yeah we got a far good solution for an environment during the toughest economy of the history.

What is an economy really?

Its just a financial system for one species on this planet and affects only one species in good or bad way (and always bad ways for rest of the species including the fish you have in your tank or the chicken you just had in lunch or the polar bear and bald eagle) I see an opportunity created by the whole mess for the environment. Makes me feel happy as an optimistic environmentalist and no it’s not about those corny phony baloney ads of environment but the greedy corporations that we hate making it possible.

Lets look at what’s going on

Grid parity, the point at which photovoltaic electricity is equal to or cheaper than grid power and creates high returns on the investments making all corporations thinking over going for alternative energy fully or partially and ASAP. Not because of EPA told them or not because they dint liked what happened to comic book guy in Simpsons movie but what they calculated in a close room.

Not sure if Barack Obama will keep all of his words, but if he does even some part of it then it will still help going there faster.

We have heard all democrats talking about solar operated cars since like decades but never saw two solar powered cars in same parking lot in normal daylight. But there is hope. If Mr. Obama really meant there is “United states of America” then who knows his party will say “There is only one planet” and will go faster for extreme green economy? At least that’s what looking possible for me. And yeah US still plays important role there. If a bad economy starts there and take out rest of the world then green economy will start there too and take sooner? Same logic really and here is how I see it possible.

New Calculation standards

Instead of upfront capital cost for adding generation capacity or cost per watt peak ($/Wp), the new standard is the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE). Presented as cost per kilowatt-hour ($/kWh). This ultimately let the cost gets distributed and shows a practical picture.

Solar power cost reduction through mass production

For flat-plate PV energy systems, the learning curve generally shows a cost reduction ranging from 15 to 20% for each doubling of the cumulative sales figure. At this speed the most optimistic image to go for greed parity is 2012. Pessimistic calculations? Well 2020 and I am still optimistic because IT WILL HAPPEN sooner or later

Silicon Valley support

They caused a trouble once too in dotcom bubble. But shown much stronger results as well performance in credit bubble time. While the PC chip boom is over more and more companies are now concentrating on cheaper solar panels. Getting there fast.

Increased Ability to accommodate electricity generation into the grid

If this is treated as a transition point before we really go for grid parity then will ad more visibility to the efforts. It still needs time. But looks close, pretty close

Government

Can’t believe this is actually making the list but yes recent initiatives taken by government in the area are never been so high until now. The government should still concentrate on invest in developing technologies than just seeing to drip feed it to the grid. Now this conflicts with the earlier points I have stated because what government doing at this moment is very much transitional phase. But then government works more on the probabilities than corporations (at least for last three quarters?

So there’s one calculation…

There can be other scary calculations too. Like who knows few evil companies or governments might calculate the available resources of coal and see if they can delay the whole story for few more years. If we look at the post WWII borders we will see there are few countries there which has got enough coal for rest of the time until dooms day hits us for example Poland and looking at their economy who knows they wont prefer to join the bandwagon sooner?

The critical problem here is that resources always have borders and borders have there advantages and disadvantages. The bi-products do not see the borders though. And that’s where we will need to work together. Thanks to all of us there has not been a bigger war. We are much friendlier as nations ever than before and may be we can all work together. This then leads to the topic where we should concentrate? Korea and Afganistan problems or concentrate more on how we can work hand in hand as one united global citizens.

There is only one home because there is only one planet.