Your chart significantly overstates the degree to which energy is getting cheaper, by focusing on a particular component which has gotten cheaper faster than the overall system. After a PV panel is manufactured, it still needs to be transported somewhere, mounted, and attached to inverters and other supporting equipment; the price of these things is going down, but not nearly as quickly, and not in an exponential-to-zero way.
In general it’s true that the energy cost doesn’t fall as fast as the chart the amount of installed solar power seems to rise exponentially at 28% per year. The effect I’m talking about will happen as a larger share of the power gets produced by solar.
As far as driving the other costs to zero, one idea is to put the solar cells into surfaces that get installed anyway. That’s what Solar City is doing with their new rooftop tiles. Those also have the advantage that they have lower transport costs than traditional rooftop tiles and outperform them in durability.
In related news China build it’s first solar cell expressway. It’s way to expensive at current prices but as the technology advances it might get cheap enough to be practical and maybe as they thinking about building up the technology they also manage to produce tiles that are less prone to potholes then the asphalt roads we have currently similarly to how Solar Cities rooftop tiles outperform conventional tiles in many regards.
Your chart significantly overstates the degree to which energy is getting cheaper, by focusing on a particular component which has gotten cheaper faster than the overall system. After a PV panel is manufactured, it still needs to be transported somewhere, mounted, and attached to inverters and other supporting equipment; the price of these things is going down, but not nearly as quickly, and not in an exponential-to-zero way.
In general it’s true that the energy cost doesn’t fall as fast as the chart the amount of installed solar power seems to rise exponentially at 28% per year. The effect I’m talking about will happen as a larger share of the power gets produced by solar.
As far as driving the other costs to zero, one idea is to put the solar cells into surfaces that get installed anyway. That’s what Solar City is doing with their new rooftop tiles. Those also have the advantage that they have lower transport costs than traditional rooftop tiles and outperform them in durability.
In related news China build it’s first solar cell expressway. It’s way to expensive at current prices but as the technology advances it might get cheap enough to be practical and maybe as they thinking about building up the technology they also manage to produce tiles that are less prone to potholes then the asphalt roads we have currently similarly to how Solar Cities rooftop tiles outperform conventional tiles in many regards.