Solar Power Costs

For thousands of years solar power technology has been around in one way or another yet it is fair to say that even though quite a few of the modern solar devices are now decades old, they have still not met the promises expected of them. The reason for this is twofold – their efficiency and the costs.

Only a relatively small portion of the 1,000 watts per square meter of sunlight power which falls on the earth’s surface at the equator is able to be converted to usable electricity. Internal losses are responsible for part of that shortfall. Not all of the photons hitting a solar panel will manage to knock loose an electron and only some of them that do will travel along the module and into the device prior to being recaptured.

This is known as carrier lifetime and basically the longer the electrons are roaming around loose, there is more chance that they will flow out of the module to an outlet. The majority of modules only achieve around 10-15% efficiency but lately several companies have been able to raise the efficiency levels of their devices to 20% or so by lengthening the carrier lifetime.

In contrast solar thermal devices make use of salt water heated by sunlight in panels. They generate steam which is, in turn, changed into electricity and the efficiency can be as high as 30%. However, these devices are expensive; they also come with an element of risk as if the water escapes, huge amounts of damage can be caused because of its temperature.

Putting aside efficiency issues, the costs of this kind of equipment are quite high.

The majority of different kinds of solar panels are expensive. For example, a 30-watt module would be somewhere in the region of $250 with a 195-watt panel running to around $1,000. So on these figures, a modest home installation would cost between $10,000 and $16,000. In addition to this, taking into account the cost of other components as well as batteries, the final price could be double or even three times the above mentioned figures.

Luckily manufacturers have responded well to the way in which oil and natural gas prices have risen. A great deal of money has been spent on research and as the solar energy market technology has matured, new ways of increasing efficiency and keeping costs down have been found. This has resulted with the overall cost being much lower than previously, all things considered, including inflation.

The cost of photovoltaic (PV) cells has dropped by around 15% each year for the past ten years so given that the panels are expected to last twenty years or so, the initial investment will eventually be paid back and clean power will have been provided throughout this period of time.

Naturally, improvements continue to be found. For example, ST Microelectronics, a main player in the European chip making market has now come up with prototype solar cells which if all goes according to plan will work out cheaper than the panels being used today.

Organic compound solar panels have already found their niche in applications such as keyboards and monitors. This enables a computer to be folded or rolled up and put under your arm like a newspaper. The costs are expensive but nonetheless they are dropping each day. There is also a French-Italian company who is planning to produce an organic cell in the near future. The cell is estimated to provide electricity at a cost of only 20 cents per watt, which is extremely cheap compared to the $4 – $8 per watt cost of ordinary solar power.

The price of water heating by the use of solar power has varying costs as well.

During the 1920s some areas used huge storage tanks to heat water by solar and store it to supply homes, but due to the decreasing costs of electricity and oil, solar was no longer considered to be a cost effective option.

However, as with most things the old ideas soon become new ones again and it probably won’t be long before such methods provide a competitive alternative if the speculations of current research turn out as expected. Only a small improvement would be necessary for these new applications as far as cost and efficiency are concerned to allow them to successfully compete with the continually rising prices of oil and electricity from gas and coal fired plants.