Solar cell prices bottomed out almost 20 years ago...
--Boot Hill
Solar is getting there... traditional solar cell systems are benefitting from the process improvement in semiconductor manufacturing... if they can follow a similar price curve for power as current CPUs did, in about 3 years you will be able to buy the same system for about half the cost.
Solar cell prices bottomed out almost 20 years ago...
--Boot Hill
This is an incorrect analogy. Many facets of computer technology were not close to running up against physical limits imposed by the laws of nature. They were simply technological limits based on manufacturing processes.
Such is not the case with energy conversion. Here, you are limited by the nature of the energy source (e.g., how much 'raw' energy is falling on a unit of collection area), and the conversion efficiency. On the latter, you cannot get an efficiency equal to or greater than 100%. So if you've got technology now that gives you 20%, the very best you can do is another factor of 5 improvement. We saw greater leaps in capability in computer technology because they were not close to pushing any actual physical limits. It would be like having an energy conversion system that was operating at an efficiency of 0.00000000001% efficiency, and your next generation system showed an efficiency of 0.000000001%. Quite an improvement, and you still have plenty of leeway to get even higher, because you're nowhere near the theoretical limits. But with power conversion systems, we're not playing in the same ballpark.