Note that the article is about big solar, not home solar. Big sites with lots of sun and no clouds are very cost-effective. Mojave is filling up with solar panels. Random house roofs, not so much.
The head of Applied Materials solar operations had a useful way of looking at costs. He'd draw a latitude line on a map, saying that below this line (Northern hemisphere) solar could beat out other sources of power without subsidies. About ten years ago, that line ran through Spain and Southern California. As the costs decline, it moves north. This is more useful than looking at costs over all locations. Solar is a location-specific thing. SF's BART system once looked into solar panels at stations, and decided that only one station in the whole system (Contra Costa) got enough sun to justify it.
Tesla is making noises about "solar shingles" for residential installations. The idea is to replace the roof, rather than sit on top of it. Others make those now; CertainTeed Products, for one. Dow Chemical just exited that business. Solar shingles work, but high installation cost and lower efficiency make it unproductive.
>Note that the article is about big solar, not home solar.
The article mentions "residential systems" twice as points of comparison. It also references the 5% reduced costs in home installs in the subtitle of the article.
The head of Applied Materials solar operations had a useful way of looking at costs. He'd draw a latitude line on a map, saying that below this line (Northern hemisphere) solar could beat out other sources of power without subsidies. About ten years ago, that line ran through Spain and Southern California. As the costs decline, it moves north. This is more useful than looking at costs over all locations. Solar is a location-specific thing. SF's BART system once looked into solar panels at stations, and decided that only one station in the whole system (Contra Costa) got enough sun to justify it.
Tesla is making noises about "solar shingles" for residential installations. The idea is to replace the roof, rather than sit on top of it. Others make those now; CertainTeed Products, for one. Dow Chemical just exited that business. Solar shingles work, but high installation cost and lower efficiency make it unproductive.