The newest Gold Rush will have us mining for sunshine. The Deutsche Bank, a global banking and financial services company, and the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), the nation’s primary laboratory for research on renewable energy development, have both released studies showing that the price of solar energy is dropping. As a result, the reports predict, in the coming years solar energy will become the primary source of power across the globe.
The Deutsche Bank report, Let the Second Gold Rush Begin, anticipates that solar electricity will be as cheap or cheaper than energy from fossil fuels in 47 states by 2016. The cost of solar energy already matches that of conventional electricity in 10 states. Globally, solar energy is currently at or below the average cost of electricity in 19 markets, with more markets expected to reach grid parity—where the cost of electricity is at or below conventional source rates—this year, as system prices continue to decline.
Photovoltaic System Pricing Trends, the report released by the NREL, specifies how much those system prices have declined. Nationally, solar equipment prices dropped between 12 and 15 percent in 2013. This caused the median cost for 10-kilowatt solar power systems—generally what residential homes and small commercial buildings used—to decrease by 60 cents per watt from 2012 to 2013. Prices are expected to drop 3 to 12 percent further in 2014, and continue a downward trend for the foreseeable future.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Sunshot Initiative, which helped fund the NREL report, aims to drop the cost of solar technologies 75 percent by 2020, through funding research and development at certain universities and national laboratories. The International Energy Agency, which promotes global energy technology cooperation, also predicts that solar energy will be the world’s largest single source of electricity by 2050.
Keep up with the NREL and find out more about Sunshot Initiative.
