I call total BS on that! Since basically all these Greenie sites are reporting that the cost of power from solar panels is currently around 12 cents per kwh (which is a total lie to begin with), all we have to do is install 8x as many of them and solar power will be only lets see... 12 - 25% = 12 - 3 = 9 cents per kwh if there are twice as many. Then 9 - 25% = 9 - 2.25 = 6.75 cents per kwh if there are 4 times as many. Then 6.75 - 25% - 6.75 - 1.6875 = 5.06 per kwh if there are 8 times as many. That would be nice, but unfortunately, it doesn't pass the sniff test. I am afraid that you are drinking the Democrat Kool-Aid on this one.
We actually installed solar panels on our camper van with 4 giant golf cart batteries and a great big inverter. We spent several thousand dollars on the setup. The first problem is that if you drove the van around town at all, carrying all of those heavy batteries used a heck of a lot more gasoline. The other thing is that the output from the panels is of course marginal if you are not in bright sunlight. It turns out that a four 90 watt solar panels put out less than 60 watts in typical fall and winter weather around here if you are lucky, and of course even at their full rated capacity that is still less than a third of what a typical 100 amp / 1200 watt van alternator puts out.
So once the batteries became discharged it would sometimes take days to charge them back up. We eventually had to hook the batteries to the alternator and through painful and expensive experience... disconnect the solar panels to keep them from getting damaged when we were charging the batteries with the alternator.
Of course the alternator or a portable generator puts out vastly more current than the cheesy solar panels and unfortunately, the solar panels actually do have a limited life span.
As it turns out we consider the money we wasted on the solar panels to be just that, wasted. I do not know how they come up with the 12 cents a kilowatt hour figure. It is a big lie. But don't take my word for it... go spend a few thousand of your own hard earned dollars on solar panels and see how it turns out for you. Without a huge government subsidy, it is a guaranteed loser. And don't even get me started on the giant bird killing windmills. They are the most disgusting waste of tax payer dollars in the history of the country.
“Without a huge government subsidy, it (solar) is a guaranteed loser.”
That has been the case for a long while, but the technology (Panels and batteries) have been steadily improving.
At some point along the improvement curve, solar becomes cost effective for a particular application. Initially, it was only cost effective in extreme off the grid niches, like powering satellites. Now it is pretty effective for for low power off the grid applications like emergency power on sailboats, mobile traffic signs, LED lights and things.
But if the cost effectiveness continues to improve (like a slower version of Moore’s Law for computer chip advances), it eventually becomes competitive with mainstream sources for grid generation - and then becomes compellingly more cost effective.
So can solar get so much better, and if so, when?
Theoretically, it can. Einstein actually was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on photovoltaics, and he projected the solar would become a game-changing energy source, based on his calculations. The efficiency of solar cells has continued to improve, and the lifecycle costs per kilowatt hour has continued to decline.
Folks in the business anticipate that they will be able to continue these technical gains without any revolutionary breakthroughs - to make it a competitive source of electricity (without subsidies) this decade. They argue that the latest versions entering production are already there. But in five or ten years, they will be compelling.
Unless other sources (like frackking) reduce their costs as quickly, solar will start displacing other sources. Investment analysts are actually anticipating this. It is a tidal wave that threatens to sweep away Saudi wealth in the next decade, if they fail to diversify.
For a long time, folks anticipated computers would able to do face and speech recognition, but they repeatedly fell short of forecasts. Now that RAM and processing chips have become cheap and powerful enough, voice recognition is taking over telemarketing, and Facebook’s automated facial recognition is better than most humans. Solar keeps getting better and cheaper too.
Anyhow, here are a couple of articles from Bloomberg with good info. The first one talks some about the low solar prices from renewable energy auctions. The second article is a comprehensive analysis from Bloomberg New Energy Finance.