Global solar PV industry has been advancing very fast. According to the International Renewable Energy Agency, global accumulated PV installation reached 480-gigawatt (GW) in 2018. It was reported that the cost of PV cells was around $10/watt when global capacity reached 100-megawatt(MW) in 1992

Use the learning curve to calculate the cost for PV in 2018. Assume a learning rate of 0.8(Double production bring down the cost to 80% of original level). Compare your results with what reported by Bloomberg New Energy Finance at $0.3/watts in 2018. [Hint: you can take the first 100MW as the initial unit; 1GW = 1000MW;Yx=aXb, whereYxisthe cost of the Xth unit, a is the cost of initial unit, and X is the accumulated units, andb=log(learning rate)/log2].

How does the calculated market learning rate compared to the assumed 0.8 learning rate?