This is 300W, works out to be 0.75 cents/Watt, which seems decent? Also, they show videos of heavy equipment driving on it. Which means they can be laid flat on the ground, with very little support structure. They can be laid out on parking lots. There must be reasons why this isn't widespread yet. I wonder what those are.
0.75 cents per watt would be two dollars and twenty-five cents for 300 watts. this costs 225 dollars, 100× that much, and almost 10× the price of conventional solar cells in the international wholesale market. you can see those are 8 cents a watt in the thread you linked, less than half the price of a year ago
solar cells that can survive being driven over do exist, but they only survive a few months of being driven over, which is why they aren't widespread. a much more sensible way to put solar panels in parking lots is to mount them above head height, which is relatively cheap in non-snowy areas. this has four big benefits over putting them on the ground:
- they last 60 years instead of 60 days
- they produce power even when cars are in the lot
- they provide shade to people and cars
- they can be angled toward the sun, increasing yield
This is 300W, works out to be 0.75 cents/Watt, which seems decent? Also, they show videos of heavy equipment driving on it. Which means they can be laid flat on the ground, with very little support structure. They can be laid out on parking lots. There must be reasons why this isn't widespread yet. I wonder what those are.
(edit) This post says panels are 15 - 20c/Watt: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40703758