Solar panel prices to slide into next year
A steep fall in the price of solar panels has chipped away at manufacturers' profits this year, and relief is unlikely to come soon, as many in the industry believe pressure will intensify and push prices even lower into 2010 and perhaps even 2011. (...)[S]olar companies worldwide -- including heavyweights like China's Suntech Power Holdings Co Ltd, U.S.-based First Solar Inc and Germany's Q-Cells AG -- have been forced to cut the price of their panels, hampering and in some cases erasing profits. (...) After peaking at $4.20 a watt in 2008, prices for solar panels have dived as much as 50 percent to about $2.40 a watt for European and U.S. companies that make silicon-based panels and $2.00 a watt for Chinese suppliers, Chase said. Prices on lower-cost thin film panels are between $1.00 and $2.00 a watt. The bottom-out price "could be as low as $1.50 for crystalline silicon, which would be a shockingly low price". Lower prices are good news for solar customers as the cost of the renewable energy source reaches toward that of power created from dirtier sources such as natural gas and coal. Still, the drastic pace of the tumble has sent many companies scrambling.