There has been a huge interest to our analysis till now on cost per watt of components (panels, modules etc.) as well as of whole projects and the reflection of that on economic efficiency (return on investment) from solar photovoltaic projects. Such articles include: Price, Dollar Per Watt for Large Solar Photovoltaic Projects , Lowest Solar Panel Prices Per Watt 2009-02-24 and Economics of Solar Power. Our Lowest Solar Panel Prices Per Watt series will continue when we have a good update on the contenders in the top list. Notice that differently from many popular low price listings like that we do not charge the participants any fee. We have heard that some other lists not only get paid by the companies who get on the list but also at the moment if there is a company that has lower price they will to get listed because the spaces have already been taken and paid. What do you think about a top list like that. Well whatever you think – just know for a company to get to our list we have to find their product on the Internet through searching or the company has to send us links to their online store, we verify that there is believable evidence that the products truly can be purchased at that price and then we list the company without them having to pay and yes, what a concept, if there is a new company with lower prices we will list them before the other ones. Non non-sense rules with places already taken.

Again – expect more issues in our series on cheapest price dollar per watt peak for solar panels and modules. We plan to add analysis for other components like inverters, mounting hardware and wiring too.

We will try expand by braking down the list or at least explicitly emphasizing on the specific type of the panel (or comprising cell) when we talk about price per watt since the kind of technology used is defining with the price per watt.

The continuing growth, despite the global crisis,  in the renewable energy businesses drives a lot of interest to our studies on large projects like Price, Dollar Per Watt for Large Solar Photovoltaic Projects . In many countries through feed-in-tariffs (FIT’s) and subsidies for the capital expenses in vesting in the solar power generation has become a very profitable business and there are growing number of large scale projects getting to the drawing board. We are working and planning to release very soon an analysis on what countries offer best investing environment for building a solar power station. The most important factors that we are after are solar insolation (a natural phenomenon – so not much related to current business environment), feed-in-tariffs, cost of construction, other possible factors like subsidies for building, tax environment. Our Economics of Solar Power and Solar Energy Land Area Efficiency or How Many Acres per MW, kWp per Acre have been under the radar for investors who plan new large projects. We were worried that having to use Euro as part of the cost analysis would be a problem but some of the readers have thanked us for this. We did actually do calculations in US dollar too, so, we home there was  no confusion.

Interest towards information on off grid systems especially for remote installation like vacation homes, cabins, lake houses, hinting cabins has also grown. There sees to be growing interest in solar photovoltaic systems with batteries able to provide independent power supply in places where grid power is impossible or difficult to get.

The awareness of the benefits of using power has grown and we can tell there is a lot of interest towards the solar energy systems because of benefits different, or in addition to economic efficiency. We are planning an article on the benefits of solar beyond money, or at least beyond the purchase/acquisition price – revenue ratio. Some of the positives  that are not directly related to economic efficiency do indirectly give economic benefits to their owners or to the economy and the society.

Another area of interest has been the breakdown of price for solar photovoltaic (PV) systems. We talks about price per watt for components (solar panels for example) and for whole projects. It will be interesting to see how the total cost spent on a project are broken down by materials (components) and services (incl. labor).

Analysis on strategic issued of the governments like the role of renewables to replace at least partially the use of nonrenewable, toxic and imported fuels has drawn a lot of interest too. We plan to expand the analysis in that area too.

In addition to the free entry we offer of vendors on our cheapest solar panels per watt list we also have one of the most comprehensive free directories if the renewable energy business out there. Renewable Energy Directory. We build the directory based on our findings for popular and relevant websites and we include the websites and companies who simply contact us and want to be included in it. We do not ask for money to do that because we think this limits free and open competition.

We receive a lot of questions and comments through our Contact Us form. We do not publish those unless requested by the authors. Please feel free to comment through the Comment forms on most of our articles and other pages. Also please let us know if you want messages from you (that are not sent through the Comment forms) to be posted on the site and what credits and back links to include with them.

We want to jump here directly to a graph comparing the different levels of electricity capacity currently generated from oil, coal, natural gas and the rest (nuclear, hydro etc) with the capacity wind power fields, farms need, the cost of investment needed and the land area used.

The assumptions are $1.3 per installed watt – much less than solar for now. And 3.8 acres per 1.5MW turbine – this is only the land used by the actual turbines and utility roads etc. not the actual land required for the field in which land can be used for agriculture or other purposes.

Click here or on the image to see full resolution graph.

The highest level displayed is not that important because it already includes renewable energy and nuclear (the argument about how clean it is and it’s safety are a subject of a separate discussion). Natural gas though not renewable is clean and still in abundant quantities in reserves.  The more important part of the analysis is the lower levels – oil and coal.  Look at how affordable the numbers look. Compare to the money currently the government is spending on trying to jump-start the economy anyway.

The scale is also not impossible to achieve quickly. Wind as solar is an accelerating, fast growing industry.  Just to create the correct impression here of how quickly the first level – oil can be covered – it requires about 56 GW of wind power. Only in 2007 the newly installed wind power is 5.3 GW (see resources used at the bottom). So even at the same rate of investment, construction we only need 10 years to replace oil used for electricity. This is not counting the potential of solar, other renewables and the potential for the very likely accelerated addition of new wind capacity every year.

Resources Used

US Department of Energy
Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE)
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/windandhydro/pdfs/43025.pdf

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Can Solar Energy Completely Replace Fossil Fuel and Other Sources?

Solar Energy Land Area Efficiency or How Many Acres per MW, kWp per Acre

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