{"id":1241,"date":"2011-12-02T14:23:57","date_gmt":"2011-12-02T19:23:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/solar-tipping-point-within-a-few-years.html"},"modified":"2011-12-02T14:23:57","modified_gmt":"2011-12-02T19:23:57","slug":"solar-tipping-point-within-a-few-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/12\/solar-tipping-point-within-a-few-years.html","title":{"rendered":"Solar tipping point within a few years"},"content":{"rendered":"Why is anyone still building fossil fuel (or nuclear for that matter)\npower plants when solar is within a few years of being cheaper?\nIn other words, by the time those other plants can be built,\nsolar is very likely to be more cost-effective?\n

\nMarcia Goodrich wrote for physorg yesterday,\n\nAffordable solar: It’s closer than you think<\/a>,\n

\n\n<\/a>\nIt’s a matter of economics. A new analysis by\n[Michigan Technical University Associate Professor Joshua]\nPearce and his colleagues\nat Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, shows that solar photovoltaic\nsystems are very close to achieving the tipping point: they can make\nelectricity that’s as cheap—sometimes cheaper—as what consumers pay\ntheir utilities.\n

\nHere’s why. First, the price of solar panels has plummeted. “Since 2009,\nthe cost has dropped 70 percent,” says Pearce. But more than that, the\nassumptions used in previous studies have not given solar an even break.\n

\n“Historically, when comparing the economics of solar and conventional\nenergy, people have been very conservative,” says Pearce.\n<\/Blockquote>\nIt’s not just that the cost of equipment keeps dropping;\nolder panels remain more efficient than most previous estimates:\n

\nFor example, most analyses assume that the productivity of solar panels\nwill drop at an annual rate of 1 percent or more, a huge overestimation,\naccording to Pearce. “If you buy a top-of-the-line solar panel, it’s\nmuch less, between 0.1 and 0.2 percent.”\n<\/blockquote>\nThere’s more in the news article, and in\n\nthe journal article it references,<\/a>\nA review of solar photovoltaic levelized cost of electricity,\nK. Brankera, M.J.M. Pathaka, J.M. Pearce,\nRenewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Volume 15, Issue 9, pages\n4470-4482. doi:10.1016\/j.rser.2011.07.104\n

\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Why is anyone still building fossil fuel (or nuclear for that matter) power plants when solar is within a few years of being cheaper? In other words, by the time those other plants can be built, solar is very likely to be more cost-effective? Marcia Goodrich wrote for physorg yesterday, Affordable solar: It’s closer than […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[14,23,289,24],"tags":[969,1624,165,8713,8758,8714],"class_list":["post-1241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-renewable-energy","category-science","category-solar","tag-economics","tag-energy","tag-fossil-fuels","tag-renewable-energy","tag-science","tag-solar"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-k1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1241\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}