I'm amazed that prices have fallen that far. So many are so bleak about global warming, but with things like this keeping up, with battery tech continuing to improve, I can imagine a world where we see those emissions rates plummet. From wikipedia: What we need, more than anything, is for solar panels, installation, and so on, to be cheaper and easier for a person to install and maintain than to pay ~5 years of power bills.Though prices for solar panels have fallen—from $4 per watt in 2008 to around 65 cents today
Coal power plants are generally one of the least expensive sources of electricity by this measure, at a construction cost around $2.10 a watt.
Solar panels are currently selling for as low as US$0.70 per watt (7-April-2012) in industrial quantities; the balance of system costs (inverters, racks, wiring, marketing) made the median price in 2011 of large (>100 kW) systems $2.60/watt in Germany and $4.87/watt in the US
Large wind turbines cost about $2 a watt.[5] Natural gas-fired peaking power plants are around $1 per watt ($1,000/kW) of electrical capacity.[6]
Yeah. We are at a point where the installation costs are becoming the big factor in reducing the price. OTOH, I don't know any real way to reduce those much because you are going to need someone with electrical knowledge to hook those things up...I mean, unless you want a lot of fires and electrocutions and such. What we also need is a way to spread solar power to renters - both apartment and house renters.