Suntech Power predicts that the cost of building large-scale solar PV plants could match the cost of coal-fired generation in China by 2016, a development that will “completely transform” the energy market in the world’s second-biggest economy.
Eric Luo, the CEO of Suntech, which was recently bought out by Shunfeng Photovoltaic International, says that solar PV is rapidly catching up to the cost of coal-fired generation. (China is the world’s largest consumer of coal.)
“The levelized cost of generation is still coming down,” Luo said in a telephone interview this week.
“We are not far away from the cost of production for conventional energy. We are sure that by 2016, or at the latest, 2017, the levelized cost of solar PV will be the same as coal-fired generation in China,” he said.