{"id":18129,"date":"2017-02-20T11:19:12","date_gmt":"2017-02-20T16:19:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=18129"},"modified":"2017-08-04T09:00:39","modified_gmt":"2017-08-04T13:00:39","slug":"u-s-electric-power-source-projections-solar-still-most-by-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2017\/02\/u-s-electric-power-source-projections-solar-still-most-by-2023.html","title":{"rendered":"U.S. electric power source projections: solar still most by 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nAccording to FERC’s own figures from 2012 and 2016,\r\n\r\nmy solar projections from 2013<\/a> (and former FERC Chair Jon Wellinghoff’s<\/a>) were pretty good,\r\nand more U.S. electricity will still come from solar power by 2023.\r\n\r\n\"LAKE<\/a>\r\nSince coal and nuclear are already crashing, and natural gas isn’t\r\nincreasing even as fast as formerly projected, solar could win even faster.\r\n

\r\nI constructed\r\n\r\ntable below<\/a> from the 2012 and 2016 summaries of total U.S. electric\r\npower generation from all sources, by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).\r\n

\r\nLook at the 2012 column:\r\nonly coal and natural gas generated more than 25% of total U.S. electricity.\r\n

\r\n\r\nBut in 2016 it’s only natural gas, because coal’s growth rate actually\r\nturned negative: utilities are shutting down coal plants, not building them.\r\nBack in 2013 I did not predict that to happen so quickly.\r\n

\r\nNow look at\r\n the growth rates,\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nboth\r\n\r\n my 2013 projections (see also the graph on the right) and my corrected 2017 projections.\r\nOnly wind (and waste heat<\/a>) is higher than 5%, plus solar alone at more than 50%\r\nnew installed capacity per year.\r\nAccording to FERC’s 2016 figures (the “actual:” numbers in the 2016 columns),\r\nmy 2013 solar projection was a little high by deployed utility-scale solar power,\r\nbut was actually low as a proportion in 2016, because coal and nuclear are already crashing.\r\nSure, one new nuclear power plant opened in 2016, but more than one closed.\r\n

\r\nAnd remember, utility-scale solar power, which is all FERC records in its Energy Infrastructure Updates,\r\nisn’t the whole story.\r\nFERC recorded 7.748 GW of new solar power in 2016,\r\nbut SEIA added in rooftop and community solar power for a total of 14.6 GW\r\nof new solar power in 2016.\r\n

\r\nYou don’t see rooftop coal, or nuclear, or natural gas.\r\nYou don’t any of those installed in 9-month or less timeframes, as for solar power: they all require multi-year permitting processes because they’re so\r\nenvironmentally destructive.\r\nSo it’s very unlikely there are any significant additions to coal, nuclear, or\r\nnatural gas U.S. energy generation beyond what FERC reported.\r\n

\r\nSolar power has what we could call the personal computer or mobile phone advantage:\r\nanybody can own one.\r\nPractically by definition, you’ll never see that advantage for utility-scale\r\npower generation.\r\n

\r\nLooking that the 2021 and 2023 projections in the\r\ntable<\/a>,\r\nof course they’re naive projections, simply taking the old 2013\r\nrate and the new 2017 corrected rate and projecting them forward.\r\nThe 2013 rate I made by comparing FERC’s 2012 total figures to previous years.\r\nThe 2017 rate I made by comparing FERC’s 2016 total figures to its 2012 total figures.\r\n

\r\nBy 2021 coal won’t even account for 25% of U.S. electricity generation,\r\nand it didn’t even in FERC’s actual 2016 figures.\r\nIn 2021 natural gas will account for a higher proportion because of coal’s\r\ncapitulation,\r\neven though it’s actually growing slower than my 2013 projection.\r\n

\r\nAlso in 2021, solar and wind will both be greater than 10% of U.S. generation,\r\nalthough wind will not yet reach that by the corrected projection.\r\nSince in 2016 according to SEIA solar actually beat wind for new installed\r\ncapacity, I wonder if wind is already having trouble competing with solar power.\r\n

\r\nIn 2023, by either my old or new projections, solar power will generate\r\nmore U.S. electricity than anything else.\r\nWind doesn’t grow nearly as fast by the corrected 2017 factor.\r\nMaybe 2016 was a glitch for wind, or maybe there’s something deeper going on.\r\n

\r\nFor how naive these projections are, look at the Total row.\r\nU.S. electricty demand is unlikely to increase by 20% by 2021\r\n(only four years from now) and it’s even less likely to increase by\r\n52% by 2023 (only seven years from now).\r\nWhat that actually probably means is that coal and nuclear will crash faster\r\nand natural gas will follow them down, leaving solar and wind power as the\r\nmain sources of U.S. electricity.\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nThese projections and this table are just to illustrate some basic points.\r\nOther people are doing much more sophisticated projections,\r\nsuch as\r\n\r\nStanford Professor Mark Z. Jacobson and his research team<\/a>,\r\nwhich graphically show fossil fuels and nuclear crashing while solar and wind win.\r\n

\r\nGoldman Sachs \r\nalready called this a year ago<\/a>, and many other big financial institutions\r\npredicted even earlier that solar and wind will win.\r\nThis economic sea change is driven by solar prices dropping faster than Moore’s Law<\/a>,\r\nwhich is accelerated by economies of scale as solar deployment increases.\r\nEconomics are driving politics.\r\nEven Georgia in 2015 revised its antique law<\/a>\r\nso third party power-purchase-agreements are now possible,\r\nand Georgia has become the fastest-growing U.S. solar market.\r\n

LAKE Solar Table 2017<\/a><\/H2>\r\n