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Old 17-03-2011, 09:53 AM
casstony
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Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: Warragul, Vic
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Solar cost to rival coal in 10 years

By extrapolating current trends this author suggests that solar cells will be sufficiently efficient and cheap that they can compete outright with coal in 10 years.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/bl...res-2011-03-15


"In 14 and a half seconds, the sun provides as much energy to Earth as humanity uses in a day."

"What’s driving these changes? There are two factors. First, solar cell manufacturers are learning – much as computer chip manufacturers keep learning – how to reduce the cost to fabricate solar.
Second, the efficiency of solar cells – the fraction of the sun’s energy that strikes them that they capture – is continually improving. In the lab, researchers have achieved solar efficiencies of as high as 41 percent, an unheard of efficiency 30 years ago. Inexpensive thin-film methods have achieved laboratory efficiencies as high as 20 percent, still twice as high as most of the solar systems in deployment today"

"The cost of solar, in the average location in the U.S., will cross the current average retail electricity price of 12 cents per kilowatt hour in around 2020"
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