Solar cost trends

Good friend Dr. Chris Wedding forwards an excellent analysis of solar industry and the growth of solar.  Growth of solar to me is not how much upside there is for the investor but how cheap the energy use is for the consumer (see graph below). The article is more directed towards ROI for investors.

Enjoy the article here.

Ofcourse the recent allocation of $1B by Mr. Bill Gates and his co-directors (including Alibaba founder Jack Ma, Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani, venture capitalists John Doerr and Vinod Khosla, former energy hedge fund manager John Arnold, and SAP cofounder Hasso Plattner) towards clean energy has been in the news with Breakthrough Energy Ventures. Energy investments have not been successful because the standard model of Silicon Valley mindset based investment returns do not occur in the short timeframes nor the standard software style business models apply.  I was delighted to read the following from John Arnold:

"“Being a 20-year fund with patient capital that’s not needing short-term gains allows us to have a longer-term outlook as well as fund technologies that don’t fit into the traditional VC model as it exists today,” says Arnold."

Read the complete article at Quartz here.