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On Tuesday, the Department of Energy (DOE) announced that utility-grade solar panels have hit cost targets set for 2020, three years ahead of schedule. Those targets reflect around $1 per watt and 6¢ per kilowatt-hour in Kansas City, the department's mid-range yardstick for solar panel cost per unit of energy produced (New York is considered the high-cost end, and Phoenix, Arizona, which has much more sunlight than most other major cities in the country, reflects the low-cost end).
Those prices don't include an Investment Tax Credit (ITC), which makes solar panels even cheaper. The Energy Department said that the cost per watt was assessed in terms of total installed system costs for developers. That means the number is based on "the sales price paid to the installer; therefore, it includes profit in the cost of the hardware," according to a department presentation (PDF).
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), a DOE-funded lab that assesses solar panel cost, wrote that, compared to the first quarter in 2016, the first quarter in 2017 saw a 29-percent decline in installed cost for utility-scale solar, which was attributed to lower photovoltaic module and inverter prices, better panel efficiency, and reduced labor costs. Despite the plummeting costs for utility-scale solar, costs for commercial and residential solar panels have not fallen quite as quickly—just 15 percent and 6 percent, respectively.
It seems there are still big gains to be made in the installed costs of residential panels.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday September 15 2017, @08:06PM (1 child)
Even is we were to concede that coal-electricity powered vehicles are just as bad as gas-powered vehicles we're still only talking about 30% of the electricity in the US. [wikipedia.org]
So it's still an improvement.
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Friday September 15 2017, @11:27PM
I am sorry, I don't see the relevance?
My point was about pollution in general and energy efficiency for electric cars not being what they seemed, and actually being worse than equivalent IC cars.
The fact you may burn coal to generate electricity is a red herring, because you can always switch your method of power generation to something else if you wanted to. That is one good thing about electric cars, they are energy agnostic, if you can make electrons move about in a conductor, you can charge the car.
Generating biofuels is a bit harder (at least for the moment, although some potential breakthroughs are being worked on), so currently IC cars are not as flexible when it comes to energy sources.