Good longread.
What I'd like to have a better understanding of, and I'm hoping to crowdsource here, is exactly how the solar panel cost has come down so precipitously. Part of it is simply manufacture scaling - almost everything is much cheaper in large quantities. But part of it must be a thousand incremental tech advances. Things like the reduced kerf diamond wire saw.
Also of note: I think monocrystalline has won completely? People experimented with all sorts of alternate chemistries and technologies, like ion deposition and the extremely poisonous CIGS, but good old "Czochralski process + slice thinly" has won despite being energy intensive itself.
Perovskites remain an unknown quantity.
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