Given those challenges and costs, it is therefore necessary to drive the cost per kilowatt-hour down.
Solyndra investor David Prend, of Rockport Capital Partners, said Gronet's cylindrical-design innovation "is huge, because it lowers the cost per kilowatt hour" of electricity for customers.
Although he refuses to reveal figures, Mr Ghosn says the cost per kilowatt-hour (kWh) of battery capacity for Renault-Nissan cars has fallen by half in four years.
We divided that number by a company's average output in kilowatts to come up with a cost per nuclear kilowatt.
Transferring power to Japan would cost two yen per kilowatt-hour, making the total cheaper than the roughly nine yen per kilowatt-hour the country pays for nuclear power, he says.
Excluding government subsidies, the cost of producing wind energy fell from 9 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2009 to 8 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2012.
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SunPower's five-year growth plan will lower the cost of solar power to 12 to 18 cents per kilowatt-hour, positioning solar energy as a key peaking energy resource to meet our growing power demands.
Mr. Son estimates that Mongolian wind power would cost around three to four yen (four to five cents) per kilowatt-hour, if land for wind farms could be leased virtually free.
Onshore wind, another potential disruptive technology, is already cost competitive in many part of the world at 9-10 cents per kilowatt-hour, says Petros Paranikas, a BCG partner and co-author or the report.
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The cost of producing solar electricity by large solar power plants plummeted from 31 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2009 to 14 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2012.
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Thanks to such advances, the cost of a fuel cell has already fallen from the stratosphere to only a few thousand dollars per kilowatt of generating capacity.
Prices paid for renewable energy ranged between 5.4 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2003 to and 13.3 cents in 2011, with an average cost 11.9 cents.
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