Thursday, September 1, 2011

Solar Power to Undercut Coal?

An interesting article here http://my.enewsplus.co.uk/cm/public/enews/index.php?enewsid=4&templateid=90&ticketid=PD4OJR2LIN&mm=3963 from the All Energy Team

Australia's reluctance to embrace solar power could well change dramatically over the next 20 years even without a carbon tax. Due to the massive leaps that China is making at the moment in production and the reduction in cost of solar panels, it might not be too long before the price per kWh of solar electricity is lower than that of coal-fired power stations. Yes, admittedly, there remains some serious work to do to be able to replace coal-fired power as a reliable source of base-load power - i.e. there needs to be some serious energy storage facilities built - but it's an interesting thought that coal-fired power could soon be considered the expensive option.

Roll on that day we say. Whatever the case maybe for base-load coal-fired power, there is a certain elegance to achieving our energy requirements through nothing more than pure sunlight instead of setting fire to things.

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