Solar photovoltaic system costs have fallen steadily for decades and they are projected to fall even farther over the next 10 years. Meanwhile, projected costs for construction of new nuclear plants have risen steadily over the last decade, and they continue to rise.

PV system today costs just fifty percent of what it did in 1998. Breakthroughs in technology and manufacturing combined with an increase in demand and production have caused the price of solar power to decline steadily.

It is true that solar electricity enjoys tax benefits which, at the moment, help lower costs to customers.  However, since the late 1990s the trend of cost decline in solar technology has been so great that solar electricity is fully expected to be cost competitive without subsidies within the decade.

Nuclear plants likewise benefit from various subsidies — and have so benefitted throughout their history.  Yet at the same time, estimated costs for building new nuclear power plants have ballooned.

According to a new study by two researchers at Duke University, the result of these trends: “In the past year, the lines have crossed in North Carolina,” says study authors John Blackburn and Sam Cunningham. “Electricity from new solar installations is now cheaper than electricity from proposed new nuclear plants.”

Utilities like to argue that solar PV and wind are not a substitute for baseload power from coal and nuclear plants because “the sun doesn’t shine all the time and the wind doesn’t blow all the time.” That argument, and indeed the distinction between intermittent sources and baseload sources, is rapidly becoming obsolete.

The report is significant not only because it shows solar to be a cheaper source of energy than nuclear. The results are also important because, despite the Senate’s failure to pass a climate and energy bill this year, taxpayers now bear the burden of putting carbon into the atmosphere through a variety of hidden charges – or externalities, as economists call them. Fossil fuels currently account for 70 percent of the electricity generated in the U.S. annually. (Nuclear generates 20 percent.)

Having dropped below nuclear power, solar power is now one of the least expensive energy sources in America.

To read the full report click on this link