New Solar Panels Produced at Less Than $1 Per Watt

Finally! Who needs an Apollo Program? Perhaps all it takes is allocating our hard earned tax dollars towards science, instead of subsidies for coal and oil profiteers.

Anymore naysayers and (paid?) nuclear energy advocates out there who still want to contend that solar, wind, and biomass do not have the potential to fuel the entire U.S.?

The only thing stopping clean renewables from making us energy independent and drastically curbing global warming are the coal and oil industries with politicians in their pockets--not to mention the die hard (and uninformed) nuke lovers.

Before becoming too ecstatic about this development, it pays to remember that cadmium telluride is extremely toxic.

I'm all for cheap solar panels, let's just make sure they don't cause more harm than good. Carbon isn't the only form of pollution (I'd argue it's not even the most important, but that's a thought for another day)

Although this sounds promising, I would be wary about declaring this an outright breakthrough. Although they claim that these panels can be manufactured for less than $1 per watt, what does that mean ultimately for the consumer? If the shady silicone panel racket is any indication, this will continue to be some kind of niche product which will utilize the same "exclusive" distribution channels, meaning that any savings in the cost to manufacture the panels will be largely absorbed by the distributor's/installer's profit margin. My bet would be that the installed cost (including inverters, racks, labor, etc.) will still be upwards of around $5/watt (currently in the $7/watt range), which still means that a typical residential installation will be over $20K- still a very sizeable sum of money.

I remember watching a doc on PBS called "Saved by the Sun" where a number of (probably self) acclaimed pundits of the economy said that solar panels will never be cost beneficial and will never be able to compete with current or future KW/Hour prices from coal or nuc. Might want to ask them now, and then again when thin film panels explode; I suspect they'll want to refine their statements.

I keep seeing all these stories about 40% efficient panels and thin-film solar for $2/watt, but when?!? I mean if I could get a 2KW system installed for $5k including inverter, grid tie, and panels, then charge it to Visa number 4142.....

At that price you could get a cottage industry of people actually making money off of selling power to the electric company. If I could earn $50/mo from the electric company AND remove my electric bill from my budget for ever, then that's a nice investment. Down the line they put out cheaper solar and you expand for a few bucks more and increase your monthly income as an electrical supplier!

I don't want to wait till the end of next year. =(

Here is one reason why this technology won't scale beyond a certain point:

"With an abundance in the Earth's crust similar to platinum, tellurium is, apart from the precious metals, the rarest stable solid element in the earth's crust. Its abundance by mass is less than 0.001 ppm. By comparison, even the rarest of the lanthanides have crustal abundances of 0.5 ppm."

Here is one reason why this technology won't scale beyond a certain point:

"With an abundance in the Earth's crust similar to platinum, tellurium is, apart from the precious metals, the rarest stable solid element in the earth's crust. Its abundance by mass is less than 0.001 ppm. By comparison, even the rarest of the lanthanides have crustal abundances of 0.5 ppm."

yes but when can i buy them?

Bit worried about the Cadmium telluride content, as it's reported to be quite toxic ..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadmium_telluride#Toxicity

Lets hope they have done an independant Toxological study before they start producing.

Just curious, has anyone made solar panels shaped like leaves and placed them on structures shaped like tree trunks and branches? Leaves on a tree are nature's ultimate solar panels. They are not spread out on a wide open surface but divided into small parts on branches. We could biomimic how leaves are positioned on trees, and follow the same principles for positioning small solar panels on tree-like structures. The benefit is that such a system saves space but would it be efficient? Any comments?

Less money is less money. Period.

Sure there are additional cost for hardware and installation, but those are costs that can be trimmed via greater volume sales and installation.

Oil is going up.

PV is coming down.

Be glad something is heading in the right direction.

Also, both Cadmium and Tellurium are extremely rare metals in the earth. The price of these metals has tripled in the past three or so years and I am weary that the world may run into a supply crunch. I still have faith in silicon, the 2nd most abundant element of earth behind oxygen. Ahh sweet oxygen.

Oh my god cadmium telluride is toxic!!!! So is oil and coal and nuclear. At least it is less toxic than any of those.

this is about the 20th year i've heard solar power in the mainstream is right around the corner.

What is the efficiency of this new technology? Is it greater then 15% like my present solar panels?

I'm still waiting for Toshiba's nano battery that was supposed to come out in 2006.

We need nuclear generators and good batteries in the short run. With solar, wind, etc. replacing nuclear as it improves efficiency.

My guess is that any alternative fuel delivered by big diesel tanker trucks is simply a way to subsidize inefficient farms.

Extremely toxic? Awesome, it's asbestos for the 21st century.

All right!

heh but i think the most efficient solar power plant.. is a plant. (u know? green leafy? has chlorophyll in it?)

the ultimate in solar power would be to harness this power

Tim hit the nail on the head. Every month or so we get another story like this, but the panels never hit the market. I'm getting tired or reading about these cheaper-than-air promises.

Put up or shut up.

Going: "New Solar Panels Produced at Less Than $1 Per Watt"

Going: "Solar panels that cost less than $1 per watt to produce are on their way"

Gone: "Once manufactured, the cost to buyers could be brought down to $2 per watt."

A lot of toxicology studies have been done on cadmium telluride solar panels. Even when set on fire or finely crushed and left to leach into soil, no ill effects have been found. Obviously, you would not want to eat the crushed solar panel (though your more immediate concern in that case should be what happens when you swallow shards of broken glass), but all indications are that CdTe solar panels are safe to use and handle.

As for the cost, they may get the manufacturing cost down to the $1/watt level (First Solar has come close with their CdTe panels), but they should be careful about trumpeting $2/watt prices to the consumer -- retail prices for any product are determined solely by supply and demand, and if the market will support higher prices then somebody in the supply chain (not necessarily the manufacturer) will hike the prices and pocket the difference. Considering that demand for PV panels is still much greater than the supply, it seems likely that the current market will support higher prices. That said, if they do get the manufacturing cost down to $1/watt then the company could be profitable with consumer prices at $2/watt.

Finally, the solar panel is only around 50% of the total cost of a PV system. Even if the panels are free you'll still pay more for PV than for grid electricity at current prices. Developments like this one are certainly important and necessary, but don't lose sight of the fact that the PV panel makers cannot control the other costs involved in building a PV system.

Say what you will, but solar does not have the density of nuclear, and nuclear WILL happen. As soon as the fossil fuels start running out and you tell greedy people that they can't use their air conditioning, stereo, etc you're going to see thorium reactors, breeder reactors, pebble bed reactors, etc spring up on three inch centers.

The Apollo program is what made the technology economically viable in the first place. There was no market for it, and little potential market for it prior to it's development and use in the space program. Indeed, people didn't start to show any real interest in it until the research conducted for the space program made it available for specialized needs. These improvements are the result of companies attempting to decrease costs and increase sales in an existing market, and thus proves nothing about the effects of the space program.

Unfortunately, with currently known and theoretical power production systems there are now and always will be three problems which will make it impossible for us to get away from coal and nuclear power no matter how much we improve these systems:
First, it is not reasonably possibly to store power.
Second, there are no alternative energy sources other than nuclear and hydro which are suitable for baseload generation, and generous overestimates place the total hydro power generation at about 30% of our current energy needs.
Third, it is not reasonably possible to design a power grid which is capable of channeling power from arbitrary generation points to arbitrary usage points. We will not be building undersea power cables in order to transport power to and from Australia, or between North America and Eurasia.

The only method by which energy can be stored on the scale required is by building giant elevated reservoirs and pumping water into them for the period of power generation, and using that water for hydro power for the downtime. That introduces heavy losses to the system on top of the extra capacity required to do so even in the ideal case.
Hydro is a wonderful technology. Although it's highly disruptive to the environment, has a worst-case failure mode which is more damaging (And less contaminating) than a comparable nuclear plant, and interferes with things such as fish migration and ecology, it produces no chemical pollution and insignificant heat pollution. Unfortunately, we simply don't have enough moving bodies of water to make it viable.
Solar power only works when the sun is shining, and even partial clouds greatly reduce production. More importantly, solar cells must be put in series to get to a usable voltage (Yes, there are other ways to increase the voltage, but these are far less efficient and thus require more power input per output), but cells which are not being illuminated or otherwise not active act as a break in the circuit and take the entire series offline. Since the ideal places to install solar panels tend to be on buildings or in high-sun/low-vegetation places, the fact that it's basically the same as paving the area doesn't actually have much of an environmental impact.
Wind power is highly variable, and incapable of providing a consistent output. Although it *usually* produces at least some tiny fraction of it's full capacity, it suffers from peaks and troughs which are only marginally less drastic than solar. Although you can't really do much building on the land underneath wind farms, it can basically go wild as long as it doesn't develop trees. Wind farms will aways have birdkill problems, although they're making great strides to make this less common.
Tidal power can be done fairly ecologically, but is fairly low output and only produces power when the tides are changing.
Biofuels are horrifically inefficient, and are only worth considering for vehicles because they are in the same ballpark as other vehicle technologies. Using them for grid production is exceedingly wasteful. Ethanol is garbage as a fuel, has combustion byproducts that are far worse greenhouse gases than CO2, and lacks a viable method of producing the volume required. Biodiesel is green, but production capacity is only somewhat less of a problem than for ethanol.
Geothermal is not renewable, is not emission free, and has low energy output. Although the non-renewable nature may not seem immediately relevant, a long term perspective is required for ecological issues. The inside of the earth is eventually going to cool, the plates are going to stop, and as a result the atmosphere is going to dissipate into space. Large scale uses of geothermal power will accelerate this process and accelerate the end of all life on the planet. Just as America's choices over the past 200 years have resulted in the bulk of it's environmental issues today, our choices today will radically alter the environment for millions of years to come.
Barring the development of workable fusion power (A nuclear power source) Hydrogen requires more energy to produce than can be retrieved from it, and is thus not a power source in spite of various pseudoscientific claims to the contrary.

Fossil fuels are not renewable, and are to valuable to simply burn. Further, the increase in CO2 is resulting in a global climate change. They will remain ideal for emergency generators due to the ability to rapidly switch to producing constant power, and can be used for some grid production. However, the large scale deployment of fossil fuel power is not viable.

Nuclear fission power is not renewable, but provides a constant power output without any operational pollutants. Waste can be reduced and made less harmful through reprocessing and secondary reaction cycles, but not completely eliminated.
Safety is a major concern with nuclear power, but the only nuclear power incident which harmed the public (Chernobyl) was the result of designs which were used in spite of being known to be inherently unsafe, the excising of standard and vital protective systems (such as a containment dome, which would have contained the contamination if they had bothered to build one), and the intentional disabling of automatic safeties (Wikipedia has a good article on the Chernobyl incident).
Although the Three Mile Island incident resulted in a full-blown meltdown, there was no external release of radiation and only low exposure to the plant workers.

In short: We need baseload power generation, and the only technologies which can provide that in the levels we need are fossil fuels and nuclear. This is unfortunate, but life is making a series of trade-offs from what you want to what you need. Either you worsen global warming with coal plants, put up with the waste and risk of nuclear (Overrated risk, but still a risk), or simply go without power. One will cause a mass extinction event, one will give us some dangerous waste and a risk of cancer, and one will result in the deaths of billions and the end of society as we know it. (The order is Fossil fuel, nuclear, and going without power, for those who would otherwise make inane comments.)

The majority of comments to this good news demonstrate what is really wrong with America. The naysayers are quite happy to sit around and bash real progress without even bothering to go to the AVA Solar site and getting the facts. Why be critical of years of well intentioned efforts if you are not doing better yourself?

"not to mention the die hard (and uninformed) nuke lovers."

I'm of the opinion that people who do not at all support nuclear energy are the uninformed. This is because while alternatives (solar/biomass/wind) can provide the majority of our energy needs with sufficient infrstructure developement and subsidies, nuclear in terms of energy vs. waste is 1000-fold more efficient than fossil fuels. Also, instead of storing the waste product in the air, or in the water or in our lungs/food/homes...we can concentrate and seal off nuclear waste. Sure it's some of the most dangerous stuff out there, but if it's confined, consolidated and monitored, it should be relatively safe. Nuclear would more than make up for all energy needs that remain after economically feasable implementation of alternative energy infrastructure.

Nothing comes without some cost or trade off. If we are unwilling to try, to invent, to hope and to dream, to work toward goals that improve our situation, what are humans for? While it is wise to be withhold final judgment until results are confirmed, it is foolish to be so skeptical that one becomes a jaded nay sayer.

I, for one, like to know possible coming attractions. No one at TreeHugger guarantees that all endeavors will succeed. But it is nice to know what folks are doing. If we can't yet celebrate the product, let's at least appreciate the prospect, especially when the prospective producer is a university lab with credentials that are verifiable. This is not a garage tinkerer with a mysterious personal enrichment scheme.

As for contamination, there are degrees of contamination inherent in any innovation. Some are worth the cleanup or protective precautions, others are not. I suspect that if this endeavor is geared toward affordabilty, it is unlikely that the environmental costs of chemical recovery has been neglected all together. Let's wait for the data.

JCP

I'm of the opinion that people who do not at all support nuclear energy are the uninformed.

Everyone's entitled to their opinion.

nuclear in terms of energy vs. waste is 1000-fold more efficient than fossil fuels

False dilemma.

I am NOT afraid!

I am not afraid to pay more for clean energy than I would for polluting alternatives. I don't care if oil and coal are cheap, I don't want anything to do with them. You can give them away, and I will still seek clean, sustainable sources.

That goes for food, as well.

When increasingly frequent, intensifying summer heat waves make the river itself too hot to to cool the nuclear reactor in a nuclear power plant, we have a bigger, more immediate problem than the long-term intractable issue of what to do with nuclear waste.

from knoxnews.com, of Knoxville, TN, Aug. 18, 2007:

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2007/aug/18/heat-wave-ignites-problems-in-et/

"On Thursday evening, the federal utility shut down one of three reactors at Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant in northern Alabama to avoid heating the Tennessee River to dangerous levels. [...]

"Moulton said that without cool water flowing downstream from tributary reservoirs — which are an average of 19 feet below their normal levels because of the drought — plant operators had no choice but to shut down the Unit 2 reactor. The action had an immediate impact, Moulton said, bringing water temperatures below the 90-degree limit."

This event was also covered here on Treehugger ('natch!)
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/08/tva_shuts_react.php

Granted, the shut down in this particular case was due to legal permit limits, which could be adjusted upon review to allow for a higher operational temp within safe limits. There is an as-yet-unknown limit on how far that can go, however. Frequency and intensity of heat waves are not within our control.

Unless technology comes up with a viable solution to the hot river water problem, nuclear reactors will become too hot to handle. And the ten years and billions of dollars to construct them will have been time and money that could have gone to developing and deploying solar roofs on every square inch of wasted space on roofs, developing better battery and long-term storage solutions, with the end result being a decentralized power grid that is not as attractive a target as massive central power generation plant s that can kill thousands of people through breach, failure or terrorism.

Just sayin'.

"The inside of the earth is eventually going to cool, the plates are going to stop, and as a result the atmosphere is going to dissipate into space." - Krid

Ummm, in what science class did you learn this? For starters no amount of ground-sourced heat pumps or geothermal extraction will cool the interior of the earth. The heat levels in the magma are caused by friction and so its replenished.

And if the tectonic plates do stop moving, please tell me why this will cause the atmosphere to escape into space?!? The atmosphere is held to earth by its gravity, and gravity is not created by the movement of the plates. Gravity is a natural phenomenon and is directly proportional to the mass of the earth, not the movement of its plates.

Time to go back to school.

A free market will develop products faster than government. It's a proven fact. What has government, any government, done efficiently and cheaply? There's no incentive for them to do so.

The main thing stopping renewables such as solar and wind is the cost. Once the renewable resources become cheaper to operate and cheaper to buy, people will flock to them - plain and simple.

Politics only ruins a process, and it doesn't matter what side of the isle you sit on.

>>Finally! Who needs an Apollo Program? Perhaps all it
>>takes is allocating our hard earned tax dollars towards
>>science, instead of subsidies for coal and oil profiteers.

>>Anymore naysayers and (paid?) nuclear energy
>>advocates out there who still want to contend that solar,
>>wind, and biomass do not have the potential to fuel the
entire U.S.?

>>The only thing stopping clean renewables from making
>>us energy independent and drastically curbing global
>>warming are the coal and oil industries with politicians in
>>their pockets--not to mention the die hard (and
>>uninformed) nuke lovers.

"And if the tectonic plates do stop moving, please tell me why this will cause the atmosphere to escape into space?!? The atmosphere is held to earth by its gravity, and gravity is not created by the movement of the plates"

The earth's magnetic field acts to shield the atmosphere from being blown away by the sun, and would collapse without plate tectonics. This is NOT an insignificant factor with regards to retaining the atmosphere, and it does NOT take much of an atmospheric loss to cause cataclysmic problems.

"For starters no amount of ground-sourced heat pumps or geothermal extraction will cool the interior of the earth. The heat levels in the magma are caused by friction and so its replenished."

Thermodynamics first law. If you are removing energy from a system, then there will *always* be less energy in the system than when you started. The energy in a system after an energy exchange is exactly equal to the energy which was in the system beforehand plus any energy added to the system minus any energy removed from a system. Without a source to warm the earth's core, heat which is removed will not be replaced. Period.

Further, you are COMPLETELY wrong about friction being the cause of the temperature of the interior of the earth. In fact, you have it *backwards* - the earth's heat is what causes plate movements, and the friction resulting from those movements is a non-factor in the system - heat from the system was spent getting the plates to move, and the friction resisting that movement will not produce more energy than it took for the heat to start the plates moving in the first place.

As I said, that particular point will not be an issue for millions of years. However, other alternative energy sources are either too finite to last even 0.1% of that time and thus will have no substantial effects that long out, or are truly renewable until the sun dies. After we exhaust fission power, the waste products will still have had time to decay into nothing more than common matter by the time this becomes relevant. This is about as serious as the end-game case for fossil fuel supplies, where burning the entire world's supply of fossil fuels would result in the planet's atmosphere returning to a composition vastly similar to before the dawn of life.
If you want me to actually *be* serious about geothermal power, then consider that they aren't viable across much of the planet as the crust is too thick to get the the warmer layers, that they are disruptive to local volcanics which can lead to instability, and that they have a choice between low energy output and depleting a site's capacity. It's great for Iceland since the nice warm parts are nice and shallow, but wouldn't be worth the effort in most other places.

It's not a bad source of power, but it's not suitable for the demands baseload generation in a global context.

something to piss over the rest of everything here;
http://masseynews.massey.ac.nz/2007/Press_Releases/04-04-07.html
Nanomaterials Research Centre will enable New Zealanders to generate electricity from sunlight at a tenth of the cost of current silicon-based photo-electric solar cells.

Dr Wayne Campbell and researchers in the centre have developed a range of coloured dyes for use in dye-sensitised solar cells.

The synthetic dyes are made from simple organic compounds closely related to those found in nature. The green dye Dr Campbell (pictured) is holding is synthetic chlorophyll derived from the light-harvesting pigment plants use for photosynthesis.

Other dyes being tested in the cells are based on haemoglobin, the compound that give blood its colour.

Dr Campbell says that unlike the silicon-based solar cells currently on the market, the 10x10cm green demonstration cells generate enough electricity to run a small fan in low-light conditions – making them ideal for cloudy weather. The dyes can also be incorporated into tinted windows that trap to generate electricity.

He says the green solar cells are more environmentally friendly than silicon-based cells as they are made from titanium dioxide – a plentiful, renewable and non-toxic white mineral obtained from New Zealand’s black sand. Titanium dioxide is already used in consumer products such as toothpaste, white paints and cosmetics.

“The refining of pure silicon, although a very abundant mineral, is energy-hungry and very expensive. And whereas silicon cells need direct sunlight to operate efficiently, these cells will work efficiently in low diffuse light conditions,” Dr Campbell says.

“The expected cost is one tenth of the price of a silicon-based solar panel, making them more attractive and accessible to home-owners.”

The Centre’s new director, Professor Ashton Partridge, says they now have the most efficient porphyrin dye in the world and aim to optimise and improve the cell construction and performance before developing the cells commercially.

“The next step is to take these dyes and incorporate them into roofing materials or wall panels. We have had many expressions of interest from New Zealand companies,” Professor Partridge says.

He says the ultimate aim of using nanotechnology to develop a better solar cell is to convert as much sunlight to electricity as possible.

“The energy that reaches earth from sunlight in one hour is more than that used by all human activities in one year”.

The solar cells are the product of more than 10 years research funded by the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology.

Compared to the negative effects of oil, gas, nukes (and the associated devastating mining effects) -- the health risks from CdTe modules is negligible and WAAAAY overblown:

# CdTe PV modules produce absolutely no emissions during operation.
# Each CdTe PV module contains less cadmium than a "C" size nickel cadmium battery (less than 0.1% cadmium by weight) and produces 2,500 times more electricity per gram of cadmium.
# When chemically bound to tellurium, cadmium is insoluble and in an environmentally stable form.
# Risk from fire is minimal as CdTe’s melting point is 1,041°C.

Someone had responded to this, but in the deodorant article. I responded there as well but am replying here as well.
"There was one from someone "heresyoftruth" talking about solar. There'd been a recent article on there about solar dropping below $1/watt, which is big news and one of the holy grails of being at parity with other power sources. It's been touted for years (even more exciting considering the depreciation of the dollar) as "almost here!"
Anyhow, this guy was replying saying that, basically, solar isn't worth it and is way too expensive. So I made a reply addressing all of his things. I was surprised by the numbers as it was way more affordable than I was expecting.
His comment is http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/09/chemically_deod.php#comment-155523
My reply:
"I hate to clog up this comment thing, but I'll justify it first by responding to the article.
Most of these chemicals aren't a problem. If you have concerns, wiki now has good entries on almost everything imaginable and stays fairly up to date.
I was curious so I checked up on triclosan and others and I find no reason to be concerned. Then again, I only use the mineral salt version of deodorant to hold me over between showers. (Holy cow! Soap already kills bacteria by dissolving fats!)
I'm a fan of it in my toothpaste as it does make a difference with gum disease.
In reply to heresyoftruth though on solar panels (why's that here?):
$1/watt is a big deal because it's bringing solar panels that much closer to parity with other sources.
The average household uses 30kwh of electricity per day. The amount of sunlight varies and varies on if you have trackers or if you change the angle of your panels.
I'll just use my town, Seattle, not known for its sunlight as an example. It won't be great, but it's about two to three times as good in most other areas.
So, according to solar measurements, we get 3.8 kwh of sun per day. This is an average number for throughout the year. Much more in summer, much less winter, but it's the average.
So based on that to meet the average usage would take about 8 kw of installed solar panels. That's based on how the panel is rated. As in if I installed those, they'd be rated for 8 kw of energy in good sunlight. So their output in Seattle actually IS, according to the ratings, 3.8 kw/day. Not 50% of that, but that number. Otherwise the panels would be rated for 4kw. So that was the first problem. It doesn't matter peak hours or anything, we're just going off of the daily annual average.
Your "capacity factor" makes no sense. We're taking 888 kwh/mo US average (US Dept of Energy) which's about 30 kwh/day. In Seattle we get average daily insolation of 3.8 kwh/day. So we divide the 30 by 3.8 (or more depending on your area. It's 5.6 across the mountains) to get how many installed kw of panels we need, which is about 8. Which means that on a perfect sunny day over the peak hours we'll make 8kw/hour. But we're not counting on that but instead on the average for the year. It'll be putting out insignificant amounts during much of the winter.
Almost all solar panels are guaranteed for 30 years. (Not 10 years) During that time performance WILL degrade, but not by more than 15%. How many products do you know are guaranteed for 30 years with that much exposure? These are well made products, hence the price.
So, let's say that those panels are the $1/watt (holy crap it's going to be more with your BOS (balance of system: inverter, wires, etc)) but we're just going off the panels right now. So it's $8,000 for your array. We take the estimated output per day (that's our insolation, 3.8 times 8, or about 30kwh/day x 365 = 11,096 kwh/year x 30 for the guaranteed lifetime = 332,880 lifetime kwh. We'll degrade that by .9 (90%)for loss of output. 299,592 kwh total lifetime output. So we'll divide our initial investment of $8000 by that for the cost per kwh. And we get $0.0267/kwh. Now, in reality that installation would've been more like $20,00 for a professional and guaranteed install with inverters and hookups and everything. So that's about $0.07/kwh.
So what do you know? I just walked you through all the steps of a solar installation that I would do with a homeowner on if it was worthwhile to install except for how much standard power would cost. (average 7% annual cost increase for Snohomish PUD based on 50 years of rates, 15% based on the most recent 15 years)
This was an install I would NOT do. It's way too expensive. I would always ALWAYS recommend cutting your power usage with new bulbs, appliances, and other power saving measures which will often cut your usage by 30-50% because saving energy by conservation is WAY cheaper than making it with solar. Generally you'll save $3-5 of installed solar for every $1 you spend on new appliances and bulbs.
Any questions? email me at cardjesse AT hot mail DOT com."

However, double all the cost numbers because I found the article on solar panels and they're $1/watt to PRODUCE. They're about $2/watt to consumers. So total system cost brings system to about $.14/kwh (maybe a little less) and is about $.05/kwh for just the panels. You can bring the cost of BOS especially if you install yourself or can find cheaper inverters and such.
So you may be able to make it at parity with current $.08/kwh if you know how to shop around and install them yourself. However, you locked in your price today despite power prices (in Snohomish County's PUD at least, I didn't do, like Seattle's rates) going up at an average of 7% so you come ahead, especially long run, even with inflation.
So, it's actually worthwhile to install, which it wasn't when I first did my calculations 3 years ago, which was surprising."
Numbers come up much better and below parity in other, sunnier areas (but oftentimes use cheap coal at $.04/kw to contend with when comparing cost)

It's good to come back to a post (especially when you started it) and see what kind of comments arose. All in all, this was a very good discussion. I'm no expert by far so in the end I learned a lot.

1) The post about the dye-sensitized solar cells further reinforces my belief that tax-dollars should go to science and public policy should be used to create a fair market. Look at what we've created with the greatest global warming denyer in the White House to date. Imagine...

2) Of course as I expected the Nuke lovers came out to make their case. I don't know what that discussion about geothermal was about (way over my head) but I wouldn't argue for geothermal as a renewable. However, "Krid" is plain wrong and uneducated when he talks about solar and wind. There have already been scientific studies conducted by the DOE on the solar and wind potential of the contiguous U.S. The potential is 3x our current energy usage with just wind alone. Yes, Seattle will not have awesome solar potential, but Nevada will. The problem therein lies in supply chains. This can only come about with favorable regulation and markets. All of which we will never have if nukes and fossils get their way.

Oh and as 'inane' as my comment was, this nuke lover (RoadTripGuy) does agree with me: "I'm of the opinion that people who do not at all support nuclear energy are the uninformed. This is because while alternatives (solar/biomass/wind) can provide the majority of our energy needs with sufficient infrstructure developement and subsidies..."

3) I didn't realize CdTe could be potentially toxic--although some posters claim it is overrated. I guess once this company in CO goes on-line, the EPA will conduct a comprehensive study. I expect "paid" studies by the nuclear industry to push for a more toxic conclusion and bankrupting regulation. But hey, if nuke lovers say radioactive waste is so containable, couldn't CdTe?

4) Lastly, thanks for the commenter who supplied the article about overheating of rivers that are used to cool nuke plants. The fact of the matter is although there have been no catastrophic events in the U.S., no nuke facility is insurable which is why the federal government covers them with our tax dollars. Reactors are just plain unstable, they require huge amounts of water to cool, and require large amounts of energy to construct and operate. Kudos to nukes for trying to study how waste water can cool their reactors but I would gander that that means they would have to be closer to populated areas. NIMBY