• Public

  • Public
  • Network
  • Groups
  • Featured
  • Popular
  • People

In 1975, Maycock plotted the cost of PV as a function of experience (Maycock and Wakefield, 1975) (see Chapter 4) and that concept has been used in PV ever since. It has had a clear policy implication: R&D is insufficient. Policymakers could “buy down” the cost of PV in the same way that Texas Instruments’ electronic products had used “forward pricing”—take losses early to scale up manufacturing and achieve cost reductions and profits later. The “Block Buy” programs from 1975 to 1985 implemented this concept (Christensen, 1985). The learning curve was also a justification for the over $200 billion spent on PV subsidies in Germany (Unnerstal, 2017). Remarkably, over forty years later we are still on Maycock’s figure. By 2018 the industry had accumulated 500 GW of production volume and cells were selling for $0.20 per W, which is $0.06 per W in 1975 dollars, or $56 per kW. PV has traveled down the most optimistic of Maycock’s learning curve projections, as we are now at the far edge of his Nemet, Gregory F.. How Solar Energy Became Cheap (p. 48). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.