United States Embraces Solar Power
Climate change – countries across the globe are facing such a serious problem, even in the United States. That is basically the reason why thousands of people really wanted to push that the state would go solar. However, solar power has been difficult to use and expensive as well. Although it is renewable energy and unsubsidized, it is unreliable because it depends on the sun and other fuel to sustain its power. Hence, America’s energy community preferred to use reliable energy sources such as the traditional coals and natural gas.
But here’s the great news! For the last five years, solar prices has dramatically and significantly lowered. In fact, it is now declining towards almost having the same prices with natural gas all over United States. According to Lazard, a financial advisory firm, its latest calculations on renewable energy using common levelized cost of energy metric yields that it can now compete with coals, fossil fuels, natural gas and nuclear. Lazard concludes, “Over the last five years, wind and solar PV have become increasingly cost-competitive with conventional generation technologies, on an unsubsidized basis.”
There are various factors around the world that affect the decline of solar prices in America. China, for example, pushed through the manufacture of solar panels in their country and helped drop the prices of solar faster than that of fossil fuels in the global energy economy. Thus, more solar panels are produced at a faster pace. As law of demand implies, the more the demand, the more the supply is; and the more the supply, the lesser the price becomes.
Lawrence Berkely National Laboratory, US Department of Energy, conducted a study and published Tracking the Sun VII, a Historical Summary of the Installed Price of Photovoltaics in the United States from 1998 to 2013 and initial data of 2014. In this 7th edition annual report, the National Laboratory examined more than 300,000 Photovoltaic systems in the United States. According to the LBNL study, year after year the installed prices of solar continue to decline in 2013 by 12% to 15% depending on the sizes of the system.
Now, solar power is being used in many places in the United States. Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) president and CEO Phone Resch said, “This report highlights yet another reason why solar energy has become such a remarkable American success story. Today, solar provides 143,000 good-paying jobs nationwide, pumps nearly $15 billion a year into the U.S. economy, and is helping to significantly reduce pollution. There are now more than half a million American homes, businesses, and schools with installed solar, and this is good news for freedom of energy choice as well as for our environment.”
Although solar power still remains not fully reliable as a sustainable energy source, it is continually subject to more advancement. Now that it has been the one of the cheapest alternatives to address power generation needs, we will find out where solar power would take us for the next years and the decades to come.