Now back to First Solar which has been in a dealmaking and capacity expansion frenzy of late. The most interesting and little reported fact of all their publicity lately has  been that "... manufacturing costs are at an extremely competitive $1.19 per watt"

That's a very big deal, because as I posted last year on solar costs in response to a piece published in the Economist, the lowest reported manufacturing costs were then $ 2.70 per watt. Still, whilst this may be helping First Solar's margins, we are still not seeing a fall in the retail cost across the industry - essential to achieving grid parity, i.e. where the cost of distributed home solar power equals that of retail electricity. That is born out by the Solar Buzz index here, which shows the retail cost of modules per watt peak and no change to speak of  over the previous 12 months. Indeed, it is even more expensive than 3-4 years ago. Confusingly however, I believe the index was recalculated over the last year as these figures back then were an average $1 higher.

So all in all, one must have great patience in waiting for the solar breakthrough.

Installation costs are certainly not going to come down soon because it is so labour intensive. All that really counts to the owner is the fully installed cost per watt and the annual yield  in % that it generates. Efficiencies may be rising, still incrementally by 1 % a year or so. But this does not feed through to a greatly increased load factor, still only 10% in the world's solar market leader, Germany. Last year, Germany produced 0.3% of its electricity from solar pv, so there's still a very long way to go there, let alone for everyone else . . . !