Solar Joins the Right Price energy Club

Solar parity is here.

Honest. That's what a new study from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario says.

Kingston

"Given the state of the art in the technology and favourable financing terms it is clear that Pv has already obtained grid parity in definite locations," say K. Brawker, M.J.M. Pathak and J.M. Pearce in the report, "A retell of Solar Photovoltaic Levelized Cost of Electricity."

That and technological innovation, which is driving up solar theory efficiencies, could open new markets and spur important improvement of projects focused on harvesting the sun's energy. In California's San Joaquin Valley, we're already looking the results with about 40 projects in the works in Fresno County and at least as many in around counties.

Ferocious cost reductions

Sami Grover, from treehugger.com, put it this way: "With the solar industry delivering ferocious cost reductions, falling as much as 11 percent in just six months, it's puny wonder that some predict that solar will be economy than coal in the very near future."

A cleantechnica.com editor says the findings by Queen's University don't even take into inventory health, energy protection and environmental costs of fossil fuels "and it Still finds that solar has reached grid parity in many places."

The recent Durban climate Summit clarified the dangers of allowing pollution to continue without restraint. The cost and potential damage of unparalleled production of greenhouse gases is impossible to determine. But one thing's for certain, it will be huge.

The rapid innovation of solar technology offers a way to cut into reliance on fossil fuels. Either it will make a variation is anybody's guess.

Solar interest high

A solar explore symposium at the University of California, Merced, Dec. 9, 2011, draws students and researchers from Uc Merced's program, which is fast becoming a leader in solar research, and University of California campuses of Berkeley, Davis, Santa Barbara and San Diego as well as other universities. All description that their programs are working hard to heighten the efficiency of solar cells.

At the symposium, Sarah Kurtz, interim director of the National center for Photovoltaics and important scientist at the National Renewable energy Laboratory, tells my co-worker Sandy Nax that costs are dropping "spectacularly."

Nax also reports in a recent post that the industry is addition at a robust rate with photovoltaic shipments doubling every two years.

Gaining efficiency

While many photovoltaic cells on the store range between 12 and 20 percent efficient, moves are being made to growth that estimate significantly. However, those technologies also cost more. "The challenge is to make high efficiency with low cost and high reliability," Kurtz says.

Some in our sun-drenched valley are involved about looking solar panels everywhere, especially on prime farmland. Nax tells me that efficiencies sell out solar's footprint and likely will heighten its image, especially amongst involved farmers.

That and estimated per watt equipment costs will go a long way toward influencing standards that comprise photovoltaic panels as part of nearly every newly constructed building or major retrofit and remodel. Toss in escalating electricity rates, and solar may come to be as base as flat-screen television sets in American households.

But rather than contribution entertainment, this electronic gadget will create a new era of distributed energy.

Nothing's easy

There will be challenges. For instance, what happens when the sun falls below the horizon? Cheap solar provides options that weren't otherwise available. Maybe production of hydrogen will come to be more unabridged that Either can be used in fuel cells or in other applications.

Political leaders also will have to knuckle under and institute more laws like California's Global Warming Solutions Act, which seeks to sell out the state's greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels, and the requirement that utilities get a third of their energy from renewable sources by 2020. Otherwise, the incentive by the secret sector to start figuring out cleaner alternatives might not great sufficient to look after unabridged change.

It can be done. Even at Durban, which drew representatives from 190 countries, leaders in the final hours of the climate Summit put together what some media sources call a road map to a legally binding climate treaty by 2020.

We'll see.

Solar Joins the Right Price energy Club