Cheaper Solar PV Panels May Not Mean All That Much

From Mother Jones:

So, Greentech Media analyst Shyam Mehta cautions that panels getting cheaper actually might not bring down total prices by much:

[There is] the issue of exactly how meaningful a reduction of around $0.20 per watt in module prices (from $0.62 per watt at the end of 2012 to $0.42 per watt in 2017) is in the overall context of [solar] economics. Assuming an installed cost of $2.25 per watt for a utility-scale system in the U.S. right now, our base-case forecast implies a system cost reduction of less than 10 percent…It’s not exactly a game-changer.David Roberts at Grist suggests that reducing the soft costs that are staying stubbornly high in the United States will be a key part of driving solar forward:

When it comes to accelerating the wide deployment and falling costs of clean energy, market innovation is every bit as important as technological innovation. Even if PV technology remains static (which of course won’t happen), enormous savings could be had simply through market building—helping markets with high soft costs match the performance of those with low soft costs.

Source: http://electricalcontractor.com/?p=11222

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