Third world solar

[thewalrus]

Obviously electricity sucks in much of the "third world". I've been working on some solar power projects lately and thought I'd share one very useful link from a market research company in Germany.

Check the drop in price (Euro/watt) for solar panels over the past year, click any of the four charts:

http://www.pvxchange.com/en/index.php/preisindex_2.html

Solar panels are about 60% of the installed cost of an off grid (battery based) solar power system. Right now you can buy 210W panels in the US for under $400 a piece, that's half the price they were a year ago.

[JamesInTheWorld]

I like burning coal, its as easy as flipping a switch



~James

[kilroy]

shit's in german, yo. care to tell an anglo what it means?

[ktrout]

Wow, it's great that panels are getting that cheap. I hate hearing about projects proposing to scrape a big patch of desert clean when they can be installed at point of use.

[vagabond]

Wow, it's great that panels are getting that cheap. I hate hearing about projects proposing to scrape a big patch of desert clean when they can be installed at point of use.

Like the grandiose Saharan solar power scheme?

[ktrout]

Wow, it's great that panels are getting that cheap. I hate hearing about projects proposing to scrape a big patch of desert clean when they can be installed at point of use.

Like the grandiose Saharan solar power scheme?

I haven't heard of that. I know a lot of people want to build them in California and Nevada's deserts. Uh, guys, plants and animals live there and people like to visit.

[thewalrus]

Wow, it's great that panels are getting that cheap. I hate hearing about projects proposing to scrape a big patch of desert clean when they can be installed at point of use.

On the very large scale it's more economical to install them on a big patch of empty desert. Rooftop installation (for example, covering the roof of a Californian Home Depot with 240W panels) is more labor intensive and costly per square meter of panel mounted than doing a massive greenfield ground mount installation on a patch of empty, flat desert. Set up one team doing concrete foundations, a second team bolting together the mounts, and a third team putting the panels on racks. There are also economies of scale in panel purchase (ten 40' connexes full of those 240W panels will be cheaper than one 20'), and in the DC to AC inverters.

I wouldn't propose paving over Joshua Tree national park and covering it with panels but there -are- some truly desolate parts of the world that won't be terribly affected by the installation of a 200MW solar farm. Parts of the western end of the Taklamakan desert, for example. At this point anything China does to produce power has to be better than the alternative, burning coal....