Loading ...It was a significant element of the cost of a panel before the rise. The substitute process is already proven. If silver goes to $200 I suspect that batteries will become uneconomical too. $500? Definitely.
Back when we had the REE price explosion all the pundits were saying how China controlled the market, that there were no alternatives to rare earths for TV LEDs, magnets or polishing agents and everyone was held hostage. Fast forward a year and OLEDs, organic light emitting diodes, were taking over the TV sphere, an alternative to polishing glass without cerium oxide was around (now, you can hardly give cerium away, it is more of a contaminant than a resource) and prices had fallen back. But the damage had been done. The Chinese now seem reluctant to use prices for the magnet metals as a weapon, as they know that there are DC and AC motors that don’t use magnets. The only real Tesla models made had Tesla motors which had no magnets. Price Nd/Pr/Dy magnet car motors out of reach and the Chinese lose a whole industry, with only miniature speakers and military applications remaining.
Conductivity of copper 5.96
Conductivity of silver. 6.30
Density of copper 8.935
Density of silver 10.49
So copper has a 10% advantage of conductivity per weight over silver.