EGWAC Factor & the Rise of Solar PV and CSP Technologies Globally from 2018 to 2030

The past decade was the take-off time for solar power technology and it is believed that this will continue in the forthcoming decade. This is only thanks to drastic cost reduction in the price of solar-based generated electricity such as Solar PV and Concentrated Solar Power (CSP). 

The global weighted average LCOE for solar PV can be expected to continue its downward trend to reach USD 0.040/kWh by 2030. It is estimated a 58% reduction from 2018, according to IRENA.

The cost reduction is not limited to solar PV. Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) is an emerging technology which is transformed sunlight into heat or electricity. The technology is including parabolic trough,

fresnel collector 

solar dish

solar power tower.

But, what is Estimated Global Weighted Average Cost (EGWAC)?

Weighted Average is a method of computing a kind of arithmetic mean of a set of numbers in which some elements of the set carry more importance (weight) than others. Then, GWAC or the global weighted average cost of electricity for solar PV is the weighted average of a solar system’s component costs.

At the end of 2018, the cumulative capacity of CSP reached 5.5 GW. it is close to 1% of the total installed capacity of solar power capacity in the world. Cost-competitiveness of the Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE) generation from CSP compared to fossil-fired electricity generation made it become popular recently. According to IRENA, by 2030, the central LCOE value of CSP plants in G20 countries is likely to decline by 35% to USD 0.086 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) from a central estimate of USD 0.132/kWh in 2018.

In general, due to gained popularity and drastic price drops of Solar Power, the past decade was the take-off time for solar power technologies and the forthcoming decade is probably the solar decade.

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Source:@irenaimages & @Solar_Edition

Photo:@Solar_Edition

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