{"id":11967,"date":"2015-01-01T14:21:47","date_gmt":"2015-01-01T19:21:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=11967"},"modified":"2015-01-01T14:29:35","modified_gmt":"2015-01-01T19:29:35","slug":"solar-boom-charts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2015\/01\/solar-boom-charts.html","title":{"rendered":"Solar boom charts"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nWhen a power source grows 66% a year on average\r\npeople start taking notice.\r\nFew had heard of\r\n\r\nthe Internet in 1993<\/a>:\r\nnow it’s in your pocket.\r\nIn less than a decade, by 2023,\r\n\r\nsolar power will generate more energy than any other U.S. source<\/a>.\r\nTo keep Georgia from being left behind, this is the year to\r\n\r\nchange a 1973 law<\/a>.\r\n

\r\nIf charts like this one aren’t familiar yet,\r\nthey will be in the next year or two:\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nTim McDonnell, Mother Jones, 7 November 2014,\r\n\r\nHere Comes the Sun: America’s Solar Boom, in Charts:\r\nIt’s been a bit player, but solar power is about to shine.<\/a>\r\n

\r\nAt 66% more per year, solar power’s current 1% of U.S. electricity\r\nnext year will be 1.66%, then 2.76%, then\r\n\r\n 4.57%, then 7.59%, then 12.6%, then 20.1%, and that’s only up to the year 2020.\r\nKeep going: 34.73%, 57.65%, and that’s 2022.\r\n\r\n\r\nAs figures from eia and FERC continue to demonstrate<\/a>,\r\nsolar power deployment continues to more than double every two years,\r\nAs I and shortly afterwards former FERC Chair Jon Wellinghoff\r\npredicted.\r\nProjecting that forward means solar will produce most of U.S.\r\npower within ten years.\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nBut what about storage, say all the critics?\r\nWell,\r\n\r\nSouthern Company has two major utility-scale storage research projects<\/a>\r\nand\r\nHarvard researchers have come up with a metal-free battery<\/a>.\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nMeanwhile, we don’t even need storage improvements if we get on with\r\na smart grid to distribute power among offshore wind and onshore solar,\r\n\r\nwith less natural gas than we have right now as backup<\/a>,\r\nphasing into nothing but sun, wind, and water power,\r\naccording to\r\n\r\na study by Stanford researchers<\/a>.\r\n

\r\nSo there’s no excuse for Georgia Power’s nuclear boondoggle\r\nthat hasn’t\r\neven had a schedule for the past two years<\/a>,\r\nor\r\nan environmentally damaging and hazardous fracked methane pipeline<\/a>\r\n\r\n<\/a>,\r\nnow that solar power is faster and far cheaper to install,\r\ndoesn’t destroy fields, forests, wetlands, or people’s homes,\r\ndoesn’t risk schools or taxes, doesn’t\r\ncause sinkholes<\/a>,\r\ndoesn’t require water for\r\ntesting or cooling, and does reduce electric bills and\r\n\r\nbrings jobs<\/a> right\r\n\r\nhere where we need them<\/a>.\r\n

\r\nThe sun is rising.\r\n\r\nLet’s change that 1973 law<\/a> so the sun can rise on Georgia.\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When a power source grows 66% a year on average people start taking notice. Few had heard of the Internet in 1993: now it’s in your pocket. In less than a decade, by 2023, solar power will generate more energy than any other U.S. source. To keep Georgia from being left behind, this is the […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[14,8,18,19,20,6124,6687,24,36],"tags":[2092,8704,8701,8708,1300,8709,8702,8710,12,7,562,6076,6597,8714,108,6966,4604,6,8716],"class_list":["post-11967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-georgia","category-georgia-power","category-history","category-law","category-natural-gas-2","category-pipeline-2","category-solar","category-wind","tag-battery","tag-economy","tag-georgia","tag-georgia-power","tag-harvard","tag-history","tag-lake","tag-law","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-natural-gas","tag-pipeline","tag-sabal-trail-transmission","tag-solar","tag-southern-company","tag-spectra-energy","tag-storage","tag-valdosta","tag-wind"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-371","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11967"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11977,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11967\/revisions\/11977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}