Though the price to install new solar panels has been trending downward for a while, it’s officially reached a new milestone: “offensively cheap.”
Provocative new reporting by the Financial Times highlighted the new paradigm around photovoltaics, which are disrupting traditional energy networks with a near-infinite supply, resulting in shockingly low prices.
As Dave Jones, co-founder of the energy research firm Ember, told the FT, solar panels used to run between $5 and $6 per watt of generation capacity. That was 26 years ago. Today, Jones says solar panels sell for just 12 cents per watt — a price he says is “offensively cheap” considering the alternatives.
The FT characterizes that jaw-dropping price decrease as “entirely the result” of a massive rise in Chinese solar panel production, which is making renewable energy available to rich and developing countries alike for bottom-barrel prices.
