But what will cheap solar do to lower emissions in the important transportation sector?
Both acts would, of course, slow progress and delay the arrival of cheap solar power and electric cars.
Like ARPA-E, EERE is now cooperatively negotiating research milestones into its funding opportunities with its National Lab, industry, and University research partners so that its investments are geared toward technology outcomes (e.g. cheap solar panels, high performance vehicle batteries, etc.).
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Like, say, bringing a trade case so that cheap imported solar panels will be available so that installing solar panels is cheaper for example.
Solar will be as cheap as fossil fuels before long, both PV and solar thermal.
The funding is part of an initiative called SunShot, which was launched in early 2011 to make solar electricity cheap to produce and therefore competitive against energy from coal or natural gas power plants.
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That is not great compared with the 20% and more achieved by a silicon-based solar cell, the 40% managed by a solar-thermal turbine, or even the 18-20% of one of the new generation of cheap and cheerful thin-film solar cells.
Assume that the solar boosters are correct: solar PV is going to be cheap enough to install without subsidy real soon now.
The bankruptcy is a milestone because, until now, China's larger struggling solar companies have been kept afloat by cheap credit and indirect state support.
Its calculations do demonstrate that power generation projects that use solar panels and geothermal technologies will be cheap enough to start to replace coal by 2030.
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They added that panel prices will stabilize, offering the remaining solar companies a chance to compete with fewer cheap products.
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Its technology is less efficient than CIGS and crystalline silicon, but First Solar can make it in huge volumes for cheap.
Applied Materials (nasdaq: AMAT - news - people ), are working to improve another thin-film technology that is extremely cheap but so inefficient it can't yet match First Solar in cost per kwh.
The floral patterns could lead to longer-lived supercapacitors and lithium-ion batteries, and the germanium sulfide is both cheap and clean enough that it could lead to very efficient solar cells that are more environmentally responsible.
The sudden drop in wholesale power prices triggered by cheap natural gas prices is undercutting the economics of wind power and solar photovoltaic projects.
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Federal research dollars for study of solar power dwindled after the Carter administration, and oil became cheap and plentiful again.
The big reason, according to Bachman: Cheap panel prices offered by Asian manufacturers like Suntech Power, Sharp, Trina Solar, Yingli Green Energy and Kyocera Solar.
One producer of crystalline polysilicon cells for photovoltaic modules, JA Solar (JASO, 6.45) , looks dirt-cheap even after bouncing 197% from its bottom.
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