$1/ watt is the manufacturing cost. Its not what the cells sell for. In order to pay for the expensive plants and give the investors a return, they need to sell for $2 or $3/watt.

Another thing that nobody seems to talk about is that PV needs to track the sun, just like any other cost effective solar power system. So the cells are only half the total cost.

The kicker on the tracking issue is that if the cells are only 10% efficient, it takes HUGE areas to make a decent amount of power. The solar stirling systems are 25% efficient, so they only need 40% of the area that the PV systems need.

Then there is the issue of the inverter. PV cells put out variable voltage DC power, not AC. Inverters add a lot of cost and decrease the system efficiency.

I think solar stirling makes a lot more sense than PV, but yet it doesn’t seem to attract nearly the investment dollars. Maybe that is because solar stirling is cheap enough that it pays to implement it and sell power rather than a product and thus big power companies are investing in the companies directly ?

:scratches head:

Laurie
ecoki.com