Solar Panels Are Up and Coming

I follow grist.org on twitter, and last week they kept mentioning this article: “Why you’ll soon have solar panels, in 3 easy graphs.”  So I finally decided to see what all the hype was about.  The graphs are very easy to understand and quite convincing!  If you don’t feel like clicking over yourself, they show:

1. prices are falling
2. production is rising
3. solar will be cheaper than coal in less than 6 years, but a new coal plant takes 6-8 years to start generating electricity

 

Three cheers for solar!  Now if we could just get this information out to everyone so they can get to work on this and stop pretending clean coal exists.

If I had a house I’d be researching solar panels right away, but sadly I’m still renting so I just focus on using less electricity (which is certainly easier to do in a smaller space, I paid $11 for my 100% renewable electricity last month!).  Have you looked into solar panels?  When is the tipping point for you in terms of affordability?  If you’re qualms have more to do with aesthetics, Grist has another article on the pretty colors solar panels now come in, so no excuses there!