Jul 23, 2006 01:36 pm
PV prices going down?
The Solar American Initiative (SAI) is a broad national program designed to encourage competition throughout the solar industry by lowering the cost of photovoltaic units and fostering innovation of new technologies.
I would say that that have not been doing to good of a job lately.
I wonder if the U.S. government was to increase SAI's funding from $80,000,000 to say $148,000,000 would that make a difference in the price of PV module as we see them advertised at such places as the Alt-E Store?
I guess we will see...
I am going to play around with that number a little. $148,000,000. Could you build a residential PV system with as little as say $40,000? Most of you would say sure, maybe even a heck yeah! Some might say they could build a really nice off grid system with that kind of money, I know I could! Well with $148,000,000 we could build 3,700 such systems. I bet there is even a few of us, that do not require a lot, that could purchase a piece of land, build a home with an off grid PV system to power it with as little as $40,000. I have seen one acre of land go for as little as $4,000. I have read about nice homes being built for as little as $10,000. That leaves $26,000 for all the amenities and an off grid PV system. Go figure.
I don't know why, but this all reminds of that scene in Cicel B. DeMilles - the Ten Commandments, where Rameses (Yul Brynner) is "weighing" the tactics used by Moses's (Charlton Heston) in an attempt to minusulate Moses in front of Sethi (Sir Cedric Hardwicke). Anyway, my point is maybe that money should be place where it could make a bigger difference. So far I have only seen PV prices, as advertised to the general public, go up for the past four years. In the beginning, advertised PV prices were comparatively high mainly because one did not get very much for their money i.e. no frames, warranties or J-boxes and low output. That changed. The prices were relatively the same but output increased and we got frames, J-boxes and 25 year warranties for our money. Now today all we have are higher prices and we are being told that it is all because production cannot keep up with demand. Who's fault is that I wonder?
Comments welcomed.