Subsidies are not sustainable: Severin Borenstein on Photo Voltaics

Severin Borensteina, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and director of the UC Energy Institute, has done serious work on the market cost of electricity generated with Solar Voltaic technology. His conclusion is that PV technology will not penetrate the market to any measure for some time to come, if ever.

Borenstein Makes a powerful case against PV subsidies. Birenstein says, “We are throwing money away by installing the current solar PV technology.” He found that the installation and operation cost of a a 10 kilowatt PV installation over several decades would run from $86,000 to $91,000, and that the value of the power produced would run from $19,000 to $51,000. Check out this News story and see if its account of the economics of solar makes sense without subsidies. Do the subsidies make sense? Not according to Professor Borenstein!