Judging by recent events of the past week, the forecast for solar power is looking bright in the years ahead. Earlier this week, German chancellor Angela Merkel announced that Germany will close its 17 nuclear power plants by 2022 and double the amount of electricity from renewable sources to 35% this decade. Shares of renewable energy companies jumped on the news, which was prompted both by the Fukushima Daichi plant disaster in Japan and by the recent political successes of the German Green party.
The global research director for General Electric Co., Mr. Mark Little, opined last week that recent improvements in solar technology could lower the cost of solar power to levels below those of electricity generated by fossil fuels and nuclear reactors in as little as three to five years. GE already announced in April that it had improved the efficiency of its thin-film solar panels to 12.8 percent; the panels will be manufactured at a plant scheduled to open in 2013. Bloomberg New Energy Finance has also reported that the cost of producing the primary component of solar panels, solar cells, has fallen 21 percent this year alone; the cost of solar power in the sunniest parts of California, Italy and Turkey is already roughly on par with rates for conventional power.
Meanwhile, in what could signal a reversal from previous plans to rely increasingly on nuclear power, Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan pledged that Japan will derive 20% of its power from renewable resources by the next decade. According to Prime Minister Kan, the Japanese objective is to reduce the costs of generating solar power by two-thirds by 2020 and by five-sixths by 2030.
Finally, India recently announced that it awarded a contract to an Indian and German development group to construct what will be the country’s largest solar photovoltaic plant. The 75-megawatt facility, to be constructed in the state of Maharashtra, is scheduled to be completed in February 2012.
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