In 2010, we will cross the threshold of 10 gigawatts of photovoltaic solar installed globally in a single year -- a record-setting and once-inconceivable number.
Rewind to ten years ago: the total amount of photovoltaics installed in the year 2000 was 170 megawatts. Since then, the solar photovoltaic industry has grown at a 51 percent annual growth rate, and 170 megawatts is now the size of a healthy utility installation or a small solar factory. As Andrew Beebe mentions below, Suntech has a single building with a one-gigawatt capacity.
Photovoltaic module pricing has made radical progress, as well, moving from $300 per watt in 1956, to $50 per watt in the 1970s, to $10 per watt in the 1990s, to $2 per watt today. It's not exactly Moore's law, but it is that drop in pricing, chicken-or-egg with policy and technology, that is driving this industry. Pricing of $1 per watt is not that far off.
Ten gigawatts is a significant milestone for the PV industry, but it warrants some perspective:
That's the total power that five or six nuclear power plants generate -- and there are about one hundred nuclear plants in the U.S alone.
Source: greentechsolar Read full article here.
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