Solar module prices reached a new low this week, says Leen van Bellen, business development manager Europe for Search4Solar, a European purchasing and selling platform for solar products. He tells pv magazine that prices will remain low in the short term.
You aren’t wrong, but you are assuming that the grid is required. Solar panels can be installed at the point of use, and then the grid doesn’t come into it at all.
That’s the worst way to do solar, though. It doesn’t get to take advantage of economies of scale in installation and inverters. Some levelized cost of energy studies put it just as expensive as nuclear.
Solar gets its cheapness when it’s in fields or on top of large, flat commercial/industrial buildings.
Do commercial/industrial buildings not require power then?
There’s often enough space on those buildings for excess power. Not all those buildings have particularly intensive energy needs. Many are just warehouses.