Cost goals for silicon solar arrays for large scale terrestrial applications—Update 1974

Abstract It cannot be expected that photovoltaic solar energy conversion can find large scale terrestrial application, unless the photovoltaic systems can deliver energy at prices competitive to other sources. Since the solar arrays are the highest cost items in the systems, it is important to know the price level at which they would make the system competitive, so that the development effort can be directed towards this ‘cost goal’. This paper outlines the methodology for such cost analyses, and carries them through for 4 typical systems. It is seem that the ‘cost goal’ depend sensitively on the amount of available solar energy, the price of competitive energy, and on the costs of associated subsystems, such as storage and power conditioning, and on encapsulation and installation. It is seen that a large market is available for a cost goal in the $15 to $45/m2 range. Knowing the cost goals, the economic impacts of potential large scale introduction of photovoltaic solar energy utilization can be analyzed, as done in a few examples.