Solar Power Cheap & Green

Solar energy has already reached electric grid parity in a number of places around the world. Self consumption is slowly becoming a small but important growth driver of solar demand, as many high electric cost regions on earth find that installing solar panels make a huge amount of economic sense. Solar energy costs will continue to decline each year, as efficiency of increasing scale, R&D and new innovations make solar energy the only major energy source with a sharp decline in costs. All other forms of energy are increasing in price, though we expect the trend to turn as solar energy destroys the demand for other energy forms. Coal and oil are the most threatened as solar power is used not only for generating energy, but also for transportation. Solar power cells are finding increasing application in vehicles such as using solar cells on top of cars (Ford) and solar power is also used to power electric cars (Tesla).

Lux research has already predicted 4c/Kwh in solar energy cost by 2020, which makes it competitive with all the other energy forms, even without considering the negative environment affects of the fossil fuel energy forms. With global warming concerns growing, solar energy is going to have an unbeatable advantage over all the other forms. Solar energy is booming even now with costs at around 15c/KwH. BNEF is predicting almost 47 GW of solar power in 2014 and other agencies too are raising forecasts, as solar demand becomes broader based with each passing year.

China is seeing a huge boom in solar power, with the Big 5 Chinese government utilities becoming the biggest solar power owners in just a couple of years. The Chinese manufacturers were always the biggest and now they have also started becoming the biggest installers and owners of solar energy as well.