Charles F Gay is President, Applied Solar, the solar energy business focused arm of the $8 billion Applied Materials Santa headquartered in Santa Clara, California. Dr. Gay talks about the trends that could help increase adoption of solar energy technology in India. Excerpts:
Q: How much will solar energy cost?
A: It takes about 70 watts of electricity to power a rural home. With this people will be able to run lights five hours a night, TV and fans. One 70-watt solar panel, a truck battery, a controller (to regulate the charge going in and out of the battery) and sometimes an invertor is all you need. The average selling price of a solar panel is less than $2 per watt.
Q: That’s very expensive for a rural household. Also 70 watt would barely light a bulb.
Actually, there’s a whole lot you can do with it. With 70 watts solar panel you could run 3-4 energy efficient lights for 6 hours a night, a TV set for 3-4 hours a night and a fan. Even if you put a 70 watt solar panel where there is just five hours of sunlight you get 350 watt hour of energy to run the house. At $2 per watt, that’s $140 for solar panel and equal amount for the other stuff — charge controller, wiring, fuses, invertor and switches. So, for less than $300 I meet electricity needs of a typical rural home where there was no electricity at all previously.
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But what about long term viability of solar power, beyond the models?
…Solar panels come with 25 year warranty that they will generate at least 80% of what they did 25 years ago when you use it in the future. That’s a significant accomplishments that solar industry has been able to do. Government policy should ensure stable, long term predictability of the market.
