(Well capacity is an easier target to beat in cost terms than load factor and you could probably do that now with onshore wind - more below). Apparently, The project, known as Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal, is " . . .hiring engineers and targeting investment financing at advanced solar thermal power, wind power technologies, enhanced geothermal systems and other new technologies" and " . . . working with its philanthropic arm Google.org, the company said it plans to spend tens of millions of dollars in 2008 on research and development and related efforts in renewable energy".

So here are a few observations;

i) As I wrote earlier in the year here, Google's founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page's much heralded investment in Nanosolar two years ago is not anything like the success hoped for. Nanosolar must be pretty annoyed not to be included - anywhere - in this latest press release. I think that speaks volumes about the lessons learnt and the desire to diversify out of the non-falling costs of advanced solar pv story.
ii) Spending "Tens of millions of dollars in 2008" is not very much and will be way, way, short of the money they will need to spend on a gigawatt of off the shelf renewable electricity capacity - which would cost by my estimate;

$1.2 billion for onshore wind
$2 billion for offshore wind
$3 billion for geothermal
$5 billion for photovoltaic solar
$4 billion on concentrated solar power
$3 billion on hydropower

iii) Even then, that's nothing like enough money to change the dynamics or to "google" alternative energy. The metrics for the financial success of this ambitious project are just three;

a) the installed cost per watt
b) the levelized cost of those power stations output over 15 years (the typical length of  a power purchase agreement)
c) the payback period in years

As I said earlier, the capacity cost of onshore wind is almost certainly cheaper than coal. But the real test is over a given period of time. That's why they need to think of it as a forward purchase of electricity in total gigawatt hours - relative to US coal. Frankly, a tough order, compared to fully amortised coal. Which makes me think Google might be looking for a spectacular breakthrough, rather than the lowest cost application of the lowest cost renewable energy technology. If that's the case then Google must absolutely stay way clear of anyone who says something like " . . . just invest enough in my technology to generate a big enough production run and I will easily reduce costs" which has been the graveyard of many investors.

Ok, I've said enough. Except that the odds of Google creating 1 gigawatt of "baseload" renewable electricity ideal for Google's server farms, rather than just setting up a low output gigawatt of intermittent power at lower cost are very slim for the next few years. And we are a long way from this 9 minute, entertaining and rather preposterous film on on youtube - Googlezon !

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 . . . !