Did you read the article? The panels already got cheaper, but the cost of installing and using them didn't, and are making up a bigger and bigger part of the total cost for PV systems. At some point, making the panels even cheaper doesn't make the cost of the energy so much cheaper:
I did read the article. The problem is, panels got cheaper, but they are nowhere near cheap enough.
Note that installation costs can be dwarfed by panel costs if you are in a third world country, where wages are lower.
I agree about the rest of the infrastructure required. Batteries, charge controllers and inverters are very expensive still. More appliances need to use DC, so that we can use less inverters.
This is how you optimise software as well. Find the function that is the bottleneck and optimise it. After doing that, some other function will be the bottle neck. Rinse and repeat.
We seem to be in the first iteration of optimisation right now (from what I understand of the article).
Comments
Did you read the article? The panels already got cheaper, but the cost of installing and using them didn't, and are making up a bigger and bigger part of the total cost for PV systems. At some point, making the panels even cheaper doesn't make the cost of the energy so much cheaper:
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I did read the article. The problem is, panels got cheaper, but they are nowhere near cheap enough.
Note that installation costs can be dwarfed by panel costs if you are in a third world country, where wages are lower.
I agree about the rest of the infrastructure required. Batteries, charge controllers and inverters are very expensive still. More appliances need to use DC, so that we can use less inverters.
This is how you optimise software as well. Find the function that is the bottleneck and optimise it. After doing that, some other function will be the bottle neck. Rinse and repeat.
We seem to be in the first iteration of optimisation right now (from what I understand of the article).