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buybuydandavis comments on Why could you be optimistic that the Singularity is Near? - Less Wrong Discussion

22 Post author: gwern 14 July 2012 11:33PM

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Comment author: buybuydandavis 16 July 2012 01:47:56AM 4 points [-]

The continuation of the solar cell and battery cost curves are pretty darn impressive. Costs halving about once a decade, for several decades, is pretty darn impressive. One more decade until solar is cheaper than coal is today,

Do you have a cost curve for the price of watts delivered to the grid, instead of solar cell costs?

Going on the wikipedia price per watt: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_per_watt

Solar panels are currently selling for as low as US$0.70c a watt (7-April-2012) in industrial quantities, but the balance of system costs put the systems closer to $4 a watt.

So even if the panels were free, it's still $3.30 per watt to actually make it happen.

Comment author: CarlShulman 16 July 2012 04:21:34PM 1 point [-]

BOS costs have so far kept rough pace with cell costs, and the DOE has fairly credible roadmaps and prototypes for further reductions, as with cells. Part of these are regulatory costs (pointless permitting demands and the like) which can be relaxed, and have been in places like Germany.

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