Applying Moore's Law to Solar PV

Recently came across an article in Scientific American that asks an intriguing question: does Moore's Law apply to solar photovoltaics? This law which is normally applied to computer industry, posits that the computing power one can buy for a given amount of money will double every 18 months. Applied to solar PV, it would mean that the cost for the power [kW] one can produce from PV cells will drop by 50% every 18 months or so. According to this article: "The National Renewable Energy Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy has watched solar photovoltaic price trends since 1980. They’ve seen the price per Watt of solar modules (not counting installation) drop from $22 dollars in 1980 down to under $3 today."

The article shows a plot of cost of solar PV over time on a log scale that supports this claim:

Again, according to the author of this article: "There are two factors. First, solar cell manufacturers are learning – much as computer chip manufacturers keep learning – how to reduce the cost to fabricate solar. Second, the efficiency of solar cells – the fraction of the sun’s energy that strikes them that they capture – is continually improving. In the lab, researchers have achieved solar efficiencies of as high as 41 percent, an unheard of efficiency 30 years ago. Inexpensive thin-film methods have achieved laboratory efficiencies as high as 20 percent, still twice as high as most of the solar systems in deployment today."

So, what does this mean to a typical consumer? If the trends projected by this article hold in the marketplace, the cost of solar PV-based electricity will fall below the typical retail electricity rate of 12cents/kWh by 2020. That would be great news for reducing our dependence on foreign oil and reducing our carbon footprint.