People over estimate the cost of silver in a panel. It is hard to even get the true ounces in a panel, but if we divide total GWs by 250W to get the average sized panel it would be around 8.2g per panel. Other figures have it at around 20g per panel. If we assume it is 14g per panel that doesn't contribute much to the cost really. Even if silver was $100 it would only increase the average panel cost by $34 US. Or around 22%.
There was extreme solar demand even when that same panel was 200% higher than now, so I think it won't impact demand for solar much at all even with high inflation and $100 silver. People that need solar panels need them, nothing really competes with what they offer besides wind power, which has many disadvantages compared to solar.
People need to understand that a lot of silver and gold, likely 50%-75% of the worlds real reserves is stored in vaults of the people behind the system that we all operate in. The rothschild's (or whoever). The people behind the central banks of the world need actual real assets to be able to claim they are wealthy independent of whatever "fiat system" they are operating in. Many of those families have wealth going back 300 years and they know how temporary fake money is, they've seen cycles most only read about, they know how fragile their wealth could be if not properly maintained with real assets. People think land is stable but it isn't, government changes can remove your paper title assets, even in democracies.
So a lot of the worlds real wealth assets are funneled into their vaults through whatever means is necessary and will unlikely see the light of day until the "economic reset" that is rolled out. So that they can position themselves at the top of the economic food chain, again. They mostly hoard gold but they have silver, diamonds, art, things of dense value. I have an "out there" theory on where perhaps 2-4 billion ounces of silver have been used by governments and elites in their bunker designs but it requires a lot of knowledge to understand it so I won't go into it here.
There's only about 3.7 to 5.5x silver out there now compared to gold. The rest has been destroyed or is unrecoverable in millions of dumps around the world. A lot of that existing silver is tied up in long life electronic products and things like solar panels.
MKR Price at posting:
27.0¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
