greenfuelconversion.com

Cost of Solar Panels to Fall

Posted on 12/2/2009 at 4:50:13 PM

The use of photovoltaic solar panel for electricity production is set to become cheaper, not because of any change in technology but rather the lifetime of existing panel makes them more economical. Allowing the cost of use per year to decrease.
Solar panels were believed to have a working lifetime of around 20 years. However, 90% of the solar panels that were installed 10 years ago are still working well and are expected to go on working for another twenty years. In addition to the longer than expected life time of solar panels, in Europe there are incentive programmes which have brought down the cost by 30%. The measure of how viable solar panels are is measured by the grid parity condition. This is when the cost of owning solar panels is equal to the cost of buying the electricity from the power companies.
In the UK we have long way to go before that happen because of the poor weather but solar power is becoming more important in generating clean electricity.