Talk:Swanson's law

March 2015
The $0.36/W figure is predicted for 2017 rather than 2014. Both the text and figure should be updated. http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/solar-cost-reduction-drivers-in-2017

Zero Marginal Cost
Should we (not) discuss 'zero marginal cost' and the search for new technologies (a paradox of capitalism, according to Jeremy Rifkin) to (a) increase productivity (b) reduce their marginal costs and (c) put out newer, cheaper products, (d) bring in new customers, and (e) bring home new profits for their investors? See Jeremy Rifkin and Digital economy and Google. MaynardClark (talk) 20:52, 6 August 2015 (UTC) 69.171.176.216 (talk) 15:34, 2 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Zero marginal costs is a different issue, which is out of scope for the topic of an experience curve for PV. Zero marginal costs in the electricity market means that a "market only" revenue stream will not be able refinance the investment into a wind or solar park. Even if the LCOE is lower than the average (baseload) market price for electricity, these non dispatchable units won't be able to survive only with an energy only market: if there is something to sell, the price is determined by the next neighbor who has the same technology (= zero marginal costs of the marginal plant = market price) and if the market price is high enough, there is almost nothing to sell. As you can't easily store electricity at low costs (in the agricultural business you can deal with non-dispatchable, weather dependent yields) because of cheaply to construct granaries, there is a need have an financial instrument which reduces the risk (see CAPM: high risk = high interests rates for credits and equity capital) for repaying the CAPEX. Else you (= we as a society) pay more money to financial services, than for the hardware. But this topic is not relevant for the Swanson's law background. --Gunnar (talk) 21:31, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

Halving time
Costs don't drop 50% every ten years, the doubling period is less than 5. https://rsenergy.net/2018/01/22/a-brief-history-of-solar-panel-prices/ says went down 85% from 2008-2018, and https://twitter.com/garrett_hering/status/1042804466578120706 has the average utility-scale contract price dropping 50% from 2017-2018. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.58.139.44 (talk) 17:14, 20 September 2018 (UTC)