
First Ideas about Lighting with Solar Power 51
tions of large-scale PV implementation expressed at that meeting
of some 150 American experts were already so realistic. Those
pioneers—among them, Paul Rappaport, who later became the
founder of what is now the prestigious National Renewable Energy
Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Co.; Karl B
¨
oer; and Joseph Loferski—
already understood several important things: in particular, that
future cost decreases are dependent on production volumes.
The Cherry Hill workshop projected that for solar cells
US$0.50/Watt could be achieved at a manufacturing volume of
500,000 kW (0.5 GW), and US$0.10/Watt at 50 million kW ...