Comments on: Price, Dollar Per Watt for Large Solar Photovoltaic Projects

By: SolarByTheWatt_com

SolarByTheWatt_com — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 04:21:40 +0000

We are adding more links to projects that we hear about where we can easily tell the amount of money spent and the peak capacity.
http://buildingctgreen.com/AuggieVGreenBlog/?p=462
This project is owned by the watch manufacturer Timex. It cost them $2.5 million for 244 kW capacity. That is about $10.25 per watt. Obviously smaller projects cost more. It is possible the characteristics of the specific solar photovoltaic projects to influence the price per watt. We are not surprised we find such great differences in prices between projects – from about $ per watt in some projects in Europe to above $10 per watt here in the states. Especially for smaller projects cost upwards of $8 per watt is not uncommon and some installation companies mention about ball park figures up to about $15 per watt for a complete system when it goes about smaller systems like residential ones.

By: SolarByTheWatt_com

SolarByTheWatt_com — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 04:21:19 +0000

There were a couple of stories in the online editions of different newspapers on this project. None of them is mentioning a dollar mount of the investment.
It is an interesting pattern that we are noticing while trying to gather and match size (capacity, peak power in MW) of the projects and the amount of capital involved in building the power plant, so we can figure out cost per watt – and that is, it has been much easier to find cost data for the European projects and much harder for the US based ones.
It is possible that because the European ones are getting government subsidies there to be some requirement for them to disclose these numbers.
Anyway for many of the large US projects only the size (MW) is available not the money spent on building them.
Here is a link to a version if the story that at least mentions an estimate by an analyst:
http://uk.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUKN0744128520090407
$70 – $90 million for 17 MW makes about $4.12 to $5.30 per watt.

By: SolarByTheWatt_com

SolarByTheWatt_com — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 04:20:56 +0000

This is a comment by SolarByTheWatt.com ourselves. We are finding more info on the finances of large scale projects and we do not want to re-edit the article. Eventually if we find a lot more info along the way or if the readers point us to such info we can publish more articles on this. For now will will add more findings here in the comments:
This article in the Indian online publication Financial Express
http://www.financialexpress.com/news/qatar-to-build-500-m-solar-power-plant/437936/
talks about a 100MW project that is expected to cost USD 500 million. That makes for 5 US dollar per watt peak.
One would think the Gulf nations with them being cash rich and having very favorable solar insolation they would really be very interested in building large scale solar – especially if the whole world at some point will pool away from oil which on its part is the greatest benefactor for the region.