PV solar panel prices on the way down

According to the Worldwatch Institute, the independent research organization working towards an environmentally sustainable and socially just society, we can expect the cost of PV solar panels to reduce by 40% over the next three years.

Global production of solar photovoltaic (PV) cells has risen sixfold since 2000 and grew 41 percent in 2006 alone.

This growth, while dramatic, has been constrained by a shortage of manufacturing capacity for purified polysilicon, the same material that goes into semiconductor chips. But this situation is expected to be reversed in the next two years as more than a dozen companies in Europe, China, Japan, and the United States bring on unprecedented levels of production capacity.

Acccording to Janet Sawin, a senior researcher at Worldwatch. “We are now seeing two major trends that will accelerate the growth of PV: the development of advanced technologies, and the emergence of China as a low-cost producer.”

"The conventional energy industry will be surprised by how quickly solar PV becomes mainstream—cheap enough to provide carbon-free electricity on rooftops, while also meeting the energy needs of hundreds of millions of poor people who currently lack electricity," Sawin says.

Bring it on we say.