Are Solar Panels Cheaper Than They Were 10 Years Ago

Just a few years ago panels were five times as expensive as they are today.

Are solar panels cheaper than they were 10 years ago.

When it was first introduced solar power was so expensive that it was a punchline in the energy business. Solar power has gotten dramatically cheaper in the past 10 years and is absolutely expected to continue to get cheaper. Changes in solar panel cost over time can be explained by swanson s law which states that the price of solar pv modules decreases by about 20 percent for every doubling in global solar capacity. For years wind and solar power were derided as boondoggles.

This trend of lower costs and better interconnection shows no sign of slowing. The reason for the falling price is written in little letters on the back of the panels going up on john s roof. The price decreases over the past ten years are a major reason why homeowners are increasingly interested in installing solar panels. Install your solar panels now especially because tax credits do expire.

Today the cost of solar panels is roughly 100 times cheaper than it was in the mid 1970s certified solar installation companies are plentiful and utility companies all over the country work with homeowners to make solar installation easy. Since then prices have fallen and today solar power is cheaper than coal. In that sense he says solar panels haven t changed much in ten years and today they look more or less the same they still have 72 crystalline based cells glued to glass bolted to a frame. They were too expensive the argument went to build without government handouts.

Solar panel technology has been around in some form for a long time bell labs invented the first useful solar cell more than 60 years ago and scientists have known for centuries that the sun. Today s solar panels cost 10 percent less than they did last year a trend that has borne out since the 1980s according to oxford university researchers. Today renewable energy is so cheap that the handouts. In fact it s expected to steadily drop in price through the year 2050.