I’m optimistic these challenges will be addressed, especially for small-scale solar (homestead), but on the large-scale there are already problems, as noted by the NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/30/business/energy-environment/30water.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss

When up and running they said that they should be able to print enough panels every two months to equal the power output of a coal power station. With power produced at a cost of 50c (AUS) per watt.

This printable solar PV is getting close to being seriously competetive.

I would took with a BIG grain of salt everything
Nanosolar or its CEO Martin Roscheisen says about
their panels, production or prices.
I.e. I don’t believe a word before I have myself
purchased one of their panels from an honest retailer
(whenever they will be available, if ever?),
and measured its performance with my own multimeter.

See e.g.
http://greenlight.greentechmedia.com/2009/03/16/will-the-real-cigs-vendors-please-stand-up-1224/
and some of the comments at:
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/feeding-in-renewable-energy-breakthroughs-5556.html

Sometimes I think the whole CIGS-hype is yet another ponzi-scheme with venture money.

Notwithstanding, I likewise believe that eventually
Solar Energy will be very cheap, although probably
not with the products of the guys currently making
the loudest claims.

Check this list
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/150-solar-startups-part-1–5286.html
for a comprehensive survey of start-ups in this field.

You can see how wide those margins are and how fast this might all happen. We’ll see, but I’ve basically stopped worrying not out of optimism, but out of willingness to concede that further analysis is likely to make a more accurate guess about *when* the problem goes away, but not going to change the conclusion that it *is* going to go away.

It might be 5 years, it might be 20, but it’s not going to be never, and that’s the critical bit in terms of understanding future scenarios from my perspective.

1. We need to be very careful with PV industry manufacturing cost estimates. In order to drive up capital many times they are a tad over-optimistic. In Nanosolar’s case for example, they still have considerable work to do on encapsulation. In general it is quite challenging to ramp up lab scale to MW scale (to say nothing of GW) production. That said – many more “conventional” thin film technologies (e.g. amorphous silicon) should be able to easily produce solar PV at costs <$1/W using proven technology once they scale to true mass production .

2. As the demand for solar anywhere near $1/W at the GW level will be ~800X the supply in the US alone — we will not be able to buy the cells at that cost but for whatever the demand bids it up to. You can see this effect now with First Solar’s cells being sold significantly higher than their production costs.

In general I would agree with the conclusions: coal is on the way out – the cost savings are clear with larger plants and better technologies in solar. Direct drive solar is interesting — although I would be tempted to target thermal processing first because of the efficiency advantages.

I would like to see a bit more sophisticated analysis comparing PV direct drive to more complex systems with storage or coupled to cogen….I think the economics may work out even better as you could maintain production around the clock – which should increase your ROI.

That said, it’s good that there’s competition between similar technologies, and also different technologies. The one-size-fits-all, fossil-fuel-or-nothing mentality is so outdated!

And, while we’re at it, does converting at least some of our gadgets to solar kindly force some redesign of the gadgets themselves? Like 12-volt freezers or something like that? That kind of redesign, brought about because no high-voltage energy transport is needed, would in itself change quite a few things, I’d like to guess.