Just as
four years ago I projected solar growth ten years ahead,
a quarter century ago I projected Internet growth ten years into the future:
Graph:
A Naive Projection of the Growth of the Internet,
John S. Quarterman, Matrix News 2.2, MIDS, February 1992.
From 7.7 million Internet users in 1992, I projected the exponential
growth of the previous few years ahead a decade, to about
3.8 billion people in 2002.
How close was that estimate? Continue reading
This month’s eia report confirms that solar did exactly what
former FERC Chair Jon Wellinghoff predicted:
“That’s what is happening in solar. It could double every two years.”
Wellinghoff’s further prediction remains on the money:
“…at its present growth rate, solar will overtake wind in about ten years. It is going to be the dominant player.”
Because of exponential growth like compound interest caused by ever-falling
solar PV costs,
solar will win like the Internet did.
U.S. Energy Information Administration (eia) wrote 22 April 2014,
Solar-electric Generating Capacity Increases Drastically in the Last Four Years,
U.S. solar capacity increased significantly in the last 4 years. In
2010, the total solar capacity was 2,326 MW which accounted for a
comparatively small fraction (0.22%) of the total U.S. electric
generating. capacity. By February 2014, this capacity increased 418%
to 12,057 MW, a 9,731 MW gain, and now accounts for almost 1.13% of
total U.S. capacity. Reported planned solar capacity additions
indicate continued growth
12,057 / 2,326 = 5.18 times, which is more than 2 * 2 = 4,
ergo Wellinghoff was right. Continue reading
Tom Fanning is getting support for his idea of utility-owned
rooftop solar.
Can we see that tiger team report, Tom?
And FPL, how about you get on with this, instead of
trying to gouge an unneeded yard-wide methane pipeline through here?
Sun, wind, and water can power each U.S. state,
so how about FPL in the Sunshine State and Southern Company in the southeast
get out in front and lead?
Jeff McMahon wrote for Forbes yesterday,
Steven Chu Solves Utility Companies’ Death Spiral,
Utility companies have been looking for new regulations and higher
connection charges to save them from a “death spiral”
spurred by a surge in rooftop solar installations. Instead, says
former Energy Secretary Steven Chu, they should get into the rooftop
solar business.
And the same is true in Georgia, despite Georgia Power and Southern Company.
John Downey wrote for
Charlotte Business Journal 23 October 2013,
Study: Solar benefits outweigh costs in NC
An independent study published by a nationally known energy
consultant asserts that adding 500 megawatts of solar generation in
North Carolina would save utility ratepayers about $26 million
annually.It notes the gains from solar projects — such as lower
transmission and distribution costs, avoided emissions, lower losses
of electricity in transmission.
The study calculates that such benefits
outweigh the costs by 30 percent to 40 percent.
Update 2017-04-25:
Energy NC seems to have removed or moved its copy of that report,
but fortunately SEIA lists it
on
a backup website, and I’ve linked it into the quotation above, plus a copy on the LAKE website.
SEIA also lists many other studies for other states, such as
one for Virginia which is on the
MDV-SEIA website, and now also has
a copy on the LAKE website.
For Georgia SEIA lists the testimony of GSEIA before the Georgia Public Service Commission in 2013.
For Florida SEIA lists only a very old (2003) study with a broken link,
which can be found as a google book, but now would mostly be worthwhile as a museum piece.
Duke’s own actions in Florida in 2016 and 2017 indicate
Duke Energy knows the sun is rising even on the Sunshine State.
The study considered two intertwined solar methods: Continue reading
Remember BITNET, FidoNet, or UUCP?
Nope, the Internet overtook all of those.
And in 20 years that’s how young people will remember coal and natural gas plants,
although the waste-disposal costs of nukes will be with us for ten thousand years.
Solar power is going to overtake all other power sources within a decade.
Here’s why I think that.
Jerry Grillo quoted me in Georgia Trend July 2013,
Sun Dancing: As Georgia’s solar capacity shoots skyward, a new state utility is proposed,
“Solar power is the fastest-growing industry in the world, and
it’s growing along in the same way the Internet did,” says
John S. Quarterman, a Harvard-educated author and Internet pioneer
who launched the first commercial online newsletter, among other
things, and who lives in rural Lowndes County.“Think back 20 years to 1993. How many people had heard of the
Internet? And look at how far we’ve come. What I’m seeing with solar
energy is the same kind of exponential growth. It’s clean energy
that works, and it generates jobs.”
Here are 1992 ten-year graphs of Internet
growth from that newsletter, Matrix News,
using Continue reading
“Everybody’s roof is out there,” for solar power,
so natural gas or oil pipelines are a waste of time.
Solar prices dropping exponentially drive solar deployment up like compound interest, eventually onto everybody’s rooftops,
where eventually means in about a decade,
after which we’ll be ramping down natural gas like we’re already ramping down coal.
It’s time for Georgia Power and Southern Company and all of Georgia’s EMCs
to get on with solar and stop wasting resources on dead ends,
especially that bad idea of fifty years ago, nuclear power.
Herman K. Trabish wrote for Green Tech Media yesterday,
FERC Chair Jon Wellinghoff: Solar ‘Is Going to Overtake Everything’:
One of the country’s top regulators explains why he is so bullish on solar.
“Solar is growing so fast it is going to overtake
everything,” Wellinghoff told GTM last week in a sideline
conversation at the National Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas.If a single drop of water on the pitcher’s mound at Dodger Stadium
is doubled every minute, Wellinghoff said, a person chained to the
highest seat would be in danger of drowning in an hour.“That’s what is happening in solar. It could double every two
years,” he said.Indeed, as GTM Research’s MJ Shiao recently pointed out, in the next
2 1/2 years the U.S. will Continue reading
Net metering actually shortchanges rooftop solar generators,
discovered Austin Energy by running the numbers.
And here in Georgia we can’t even get net metering:
maybe we should.
In Austin, Texas it’s called the
Value of Solar tariff,
and it’s an odd tariff that actually pays the solar generator.
Chris Warren wrote for Oxford American 7 June 2013,
The Revolution Will Be Solarized,
To come up with a true value of solar to the utility, Austin Energy
formulated numerical values for all of the benefits yielded by each
kilowatt-hour of distributed generation. These included not only the
actual electricity produced but also the elimination of line losses
as well as costs the utility could avoid by not building, or even
delaying, construction on more generation. “If you put off a
billion-dollar decision for one year, that’s at five percent
interest,” said [Karl] Rabago. “It’s a big savings in cash each
year.”In the end, Austin Energy determined Continue reading
The hydropower assets of the Tennessee Valley Authority
would give Southern Company a way to avoid doing distributed solar for a while.
Will SO CEO Tom Fanning and Georgia Power CEO Paul Bowers
bit the bullet and go straight for distributed solar instead of
helping Duke privatize TVA for a short-term stopgap that would
set both of them farther behind the disruptive solar curve?
Blue line: SCTY; red line: SO, chart by
Google Finance.
May 16th:
Goldman Sachs invested $500 million in SCTY.
May 22nd:
SO stockholder meeting.
May 24th:
S&P downgrades SO.
Wes Patoka wrote for Motley Fool 24 May 2013,
Who Benefits the Most if the TVA Is Privatized,
Why is great big Southern Company afraid of tiny SolarCity?
Look at these 2.6KW of solar panels on a house in Bedford, Massachusetts.
Think about much more sun in Georgia, financed by Google and
Goldman Sachs,
turning into
votes for solar power.
Big coal and nuclear boondoggles already
don’t look so attractive anymore to investors.
By Giles Parkinson wrote for Reneweconomy on 9 October 2012,
SolarCity’s big challenge: Prove that energy bills can fall,
SolarCity sees the traditional utilities as their biggest
competition. “We compete with them on price, predictability of
price and the ease by which customers can switch to electricity
generated by solar systems,” it says.“We have disrupted the industry status quo by providing
renewable energy directly to customers for less than they are
currently paying for utility-generated energy. Unlike utilities, we
sell energy with a predictable cost structure that does not rely on
limited fossil fuels and is insulated from rising retail electricity
prices. As retail prices for electricity increase and distributed
solar energy costs decline, our market opportunity will grow
exponentially.”
Bloomberg New Energy Finance analyst Anthony Kim said the SolarCity
filing could be a “game-changing moment for the solar
industry” because it shows “how plummeting component
costs benefit a company operating on the downstream side of the
solar business.”
That article was posted before SolarCity’s stock went public, and
before
Goldman Sachs invested half a billion dollars in SolarCity.
Six months later, we know Southern Company and Georgia Power
are paying attention, because both SO CEO Tom Fanning and
Georgia Power CEO Paul Bowers said so at the
Southern Company stockholder meeting.
-jsq
When Goldman Sachs gets in, you know there’s money in solar.
They’re certainly not investing half a billion dollars for your health.
Of course, if you’re in Georgia, you won’t be getting any of this
110 MW of SolarCity solar on your roof, because of that
antique 1973 Territorial Electric Service Act
that
Georgia Power and Southern Company keep propping up.
Maybe we should
do something about that.
-jsq
SAN MATEO, Calif., and NEW YORK, May 16, 2013—SolarCity
(Nasdaq: SCTY), a leading provider of clean energy, today announced
a lease financing agreement with Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) to fund
more than $500 million in solar power projects; an estimated 110
megawatts in generation capacity for homeowners and businesses.The financing makes it possible for homeowners, businesses,
government and other non-profit organizations to install solar
panels with no upfront cost and pay less for clean electricity than
they currently pay for utility bills. The agreement was initiated in
2012 and expanded per
