(H/T: Business Insider)
I have said often that I am not against Solar Energy – I bought a solar hot water heater and solar hot air solar collectors (home heating). But I paid a pretty penny for them and once the subsidies dried up, so did the companies that could no longer service the companies. BI pulls from another source for this chart – Catherine Wood of AllianceBernstein:
The coming of grid parity keeps receding into the distance like a desert mirage. Over the last six years, executives at solar energy firms and their consultants have projected repeatedly that solar energy will reach grid parity—become cost competitive with other power sources—in three to five years—only to push its expected time of arrival further into the future…
…To understand the concept of grid parity, imagine you’re an electric power company executive poised to invest in new generating capacity. You can invest in any technology you want, using any kind of fuel. All you care about is whether the net cash flow from selling the electricity would provide a reasonable return on invested capital. Your first order of business would be to see what price you’d have to charge for the electricity you produce to justify the investment.
Today, you’d need to charge $375 per megawatt hour to justify investment in new solar equipment—nearly four times the average US retail price of electricity. That’s why solar energy requires steep subsidies.
