Solar prices reaching grid parity

My dream come true!

Sweet!

I hope what you say comes to pass, however I am still waiting for my flying car promised in Popular Mechanics when I was a kid.

Solar power is sexy.

i can breathe easy . ifinally!

very good news I think a china company is planning on opening a solar panel planet here in eugene oregon which would be great for the economy

With expanded production bringing down panel prices, a green energy outfitter claims price parity with grid power is near.

HOUSTON -- The dream of every green energy acolyte is that there will come a time when it is no stranger for homes to have solar panels than to have air conditioning units.

John Berger, chief executive of Standard Renewable Energy, thinks that in the next decade the U.S. could get well down the road to making that a reality.

Houston-based Standard Renewable got 75% of its $35 million in revenue this year from installing solar systems. Just 10 months ago it was buying solar panels from the likes of Kyocera ( KYO - news - people ), BP ( BP - news - people ), SunPower ( SPWR - news - people ) and First Solar ( FSLR - news - people ) for $4 per watt. Today, prices have plunged to $1.90 a watt.

It's not for lack of demand. What's brought prices down is a surge in worldwide manufacturing capacity. New plants have opened across China. Factories are even coming to the U.S.

As a result, insists Berger, solar power is starting to look affordable and even competitive with grid power. To the educated observer, this may sound implausible. But Berger says Standard has installed residential solar systems for as little as $4 per watt.

Berger's bean counters have extrapolated that price for 31 metropolitan areas, factoring in average sunshine and cloud cover, applying the federal government's 30% investment tax credit, and assuming that a homeowner can finance a system at the going mortgage rate of around 5%. Amortized over 20 years, the effective rate that a homeowner would pay for electricity in the New York metro area is 12.7 cents per kilowatt/hour. In Dallas it's 11 cents/kwh, and in Las Vegas, just 9.3 cents.