Published Feb. 5, 2011
President Obama’s focus on cleaner-energy development in his State of the Union speech has been followed by announcements of new initiatives aimed at promoting the development of solar and other forms of renewable electricity.
The Department of Energy has announced a “SunShot” program aimed at reducing the installed cost of utility-scale solar photovoltaic electricity to $1 a watt by 2020. The current cost varies depending on the type of PV technology used and its location, but typical large-scale solar photovoltaic installations in very sunny locations are reported to cost about $4 per watt of peak generating capacity.
The “sun shot” name is a takeoff on the “moon shot” term that became attached to President John F. Kennedy’s goal of placing a U.S. astronaut on the moon during the 1960s, an ambition fostered by fear that the Soviet Union, which launched a space satellite called Sputnik in 1957, was overtaking this country in space technology.
Both Mr. Obama and Secretary of Energy Steven Chu have referred to the United States as facing a new “Sputnik moment,” with the U.S. lagging countries such as Germany, Japan, Italy and Spain in solar installations, and falling behind China in renewable-energy equipment manufacturing.
The “sun shot” goal is to make the cost of unsubsidized solar PV electricity competitive with the cost of other forms of energy generation. The target is a wholesale unsubsidized cost of about 5 or 6 cents per kilowatt-hour, the Department of Energy said.
Comparisons of solar and other forms of renewable energy with the costs of conventional energy generation are specious because all energy production is heavily subsidized both directly and indirectly. In addition, the costs of power generated by coal, natural gas and nuclear fuels vary widely, and the value of the electricity produced changes with supply and demand.
However, the Energy Department target, if met, would place unsubsidized solar PV squarely with the lowest-priced wholesale electricity available, while retaining its significant environmental advantages.
At the price of $1 per watt at utility scale, solar PV systems “could be broadly deployed across the country,” the Energy Department said in an understatement.
“America is in a world race to produce cost-effective, quality photovoltaics. The SunShot initiative will spur American innovations to reduce the costs of solar energy and re-establish U.S. global leadership in this growing industry,” said Mr. Chu in a news release. “These efforts will boost our economic competitiveness, rebuild our manufacturing industry and help reach the president’s goal of doubling our clean energy in the next 25 years.”
As part of the initiative, the Department of Energy announced that it is awarding $27 million in projects to support the development, commercialization and manufacturing of advanced solar energy technologies.
The SunShot program, the department said, will work to bring down the full cost of solar – including the costs of solar cells and installation - by focusing on four main elements:
Technologies for solar cells and arrays that convert sunlight to energy;Electronics that optimize the performance of the installation;Improvements in the efficiency of solar manufacturing processes;Installation, design and permitting for solar energy systems.A group of solar installation companies, including SunRun, Verengo Solar Plus, groSolar, Sullivan Solar Power and many others, recently proposed actions that would cut the cost of permits for residential solar installations, including the use of a standard online application form that could be used nationwide.
SolarTech, a consortium of solar-related companies and organizations, has been among the participants in discussions with the Energy Department on how best to reduce the costs of solar PV installations.
"Eliminating solar soft costs and delays is mission-critical for the SunShot to reach escape velocity. Variable costs related to permitting, inspection and interconnection are killing our industry's ability to achieve speed and scale," said Doug Payne, executive director of SolarTech. “We applaud the Sunshot initiative on its own merits. Going further, we would like to see it married with a Great Solar Race speed limit of 1GW/hour -- a real-time national reporting metric that tracks aggregated, hourly grid connection of all forms of renewable energy."
One of the companies working with SolarTech to reduce the “soft costs” of going solar is Sungevity, a provider of residential solar installations.
“As a leading innovator in the solar space, we support today's announcement by Secretary Chu and the proactive leadership of the administration on this issue. These efforts will help take the regulatory handbrake off of solar so that we can create American jobs and provide clean, reliable solar power to more American families. Combining these efforts with American ingenuity, software smarts like those of our company and technological innovations, we can regain competitiveness in the global solar market,” said Danny Kennedy, founder of Sungevity.
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