TAKING SOLAR TO SCALE

BLOGPOST, Wed 10 August 2011 16:39, Marty Pickett

Solar is the world's largest energy source, and solar photovoltaic (PV) technologies offer the most commercially feasible way of converting sunlight to usable electricity. These technologies need to play a major role in a future electricity system that is low-carbon, low cost, and highly reliable. However, costs must drop significantly in order to enable widespread adoption.

Last year, I blogged about a design charrette that Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) had recently led, funded in part by the Dutch Postcode Lottery, focused on helping drive down the cost of solar energy. In spite of a 33% drop in solar panel prices in 2009 and further reductions since then, the installed cost of solar PV (without subsidies) is too expensive to be cost-competitive with other sources of electricity in most markets. During RMI's charrette, various industry leaders explored ways to reduce the cost of the solar "balance of system"—everything other than the module itself, including mounting and racking components, inverters, wiring, installation labor, financing and contractual costs, permitting, and interconnection. Reducing the overall cost is necessary to have solar energy adopted globally at a scale that will dramatically shift the proportion of renewable energy.

We are excited about the progress that has been made over the past year. Our report from the charrette can be downloaded here. The report makes clear that, by taking a whole-system approach—one that spans the entire value chain and involves industry-wide collaboration—significant opportunities exist to achieve cost-competitive solar in the next three to five years with current technologies, offering a turning point in framing the solar challenge. Lots of conversation about balance of system cost reduction is taking place among solar industry leaders, and the U.S. Department of Energy, which turned its attention to solar balance of system costs after our charrette, asked RMI to help facilitate one of its workshops as part of the DoE's "SunShot" program. DoE has issued several funding opportunities intended to support cost reduction and process innovation across different types of PV. Three of these funding opportunities—representing $87M in federal investment over three years—are explicitly targeted at balance of system technologies and processes, representing a high-priority effort to push toward implementation of RMI's charrette recommendations, where DoE staff were key participants and DoE was an important sponsor.

It was exciting that last year's Green Challenge winner was Scot Frank's SolSource, an innovation that affordably captures clean solar energy for cooking, electricity, and heat for millions in developing countries. I can't wait to hear about the finalists for this year's competition, innovations to be chosen from over 700 entries! I'm delighted to be on the 2011 jury to again be part of the rewarding Green Challenge and celebrate its fifth successful year. 

Marty Pickett