{"id":5257,"date":"2013-08-22T13:02:52","date_gmt":"2013-08-22T17:02:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=5257"},"modified":"2013-08-22T13:08:37","modified_gmt":"2013-08-22T17:08:37","slug":"solar-will-overtake-everything-ferc-chair-jon-wellinghof","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/08\/solar-will-overtake-everything-ferc-chair-jon-wellinghof.html","title":{"rendered":"Solar will overtake everything –FERC Chair Jon Wellinghof"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\n“Everybody’s roof is out there,” for solar power,\r\nso natural gas or oil pipelines are a waste of time.\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nSolar prices dropping exponentially drive solar deployment up like compound interest, eventually onto everybody’s rooftops,\r\nwhere eventually means in about a decade,\r\nafter which we’ll be ramping down natural gas like we’re already ramping down coal.\r\nIt’s time for Georgia Power and Southern Company and all of Georgia’s EMCs\r\nto get on with solar and stop wasting resources on dead ends,\r\nespecially that bad idea of fifty years ago, nuclear power.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nHerman K. Trabish wrote for Green Tech Media yesterday,\r\n\r\nFERC Chair Jon Wellinghoff: Solar \u2018Is Going to Overtake Everything\u2019:\r\nOne of the country\u2019s top regulators explains why he is so bullish on solar.<\/a>\r\n

\r\n

\r\n“Solar is growing so fast it is going to overtake\r\neverything,” Wellinghoff told GTM last week in a sideline\r\nconversation at the National Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nIf a single drop of water on the pitcher’s mound at Dodger Stadium\r\nis doubled every minute, Wellinghoff said, a person chained to the\r\nhighest seat would be in danger of drowning in an hour.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n“That’s what is happening in solar. It could double every two\r\nyears,” he said.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nIndeed, as GTM Research’s MJ Shiao recently pointed out, in the next\r\n2 1\/2 years the U.S. will double its entire cumulative capacity of\r\ndistributed solar — repeating in the span of a few short years\r\nwhat it originally took four decades to deploy.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n
\r\nChart: GTM Research\/SEIA U.S. Solar Market Insight\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nGeothermal, wind, and other resources will supplement solar,\r\nWellinghoff said. “But at its present growth rate, solar will\r\novertake wind in about ten years. It is going to be the dominant\r\nplayer. Everybody’s roof is out there.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nAbout ten years?\r\nThat’s\r\n\r\none year longer than my estimate<\/a>.\r\n

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

\r\nThis is not rocket science:\r\nmost people understand compound interest.\r\n

\r\nAnd solar will overtake natural gas a few years later,\r\nin total deployed megawatts.\r\nThis is why it’s foolish\r\n\r\nto tear up Lowndes County for a natural gas pipeline from Alabama to Florida<\/a>\r\nwhen we could be deploying solar panels on every rooftop.\r\nThis is why\r\n\r\nLNG stations are a dead end<\/a>:\r\nelectric cars powered by solar panels are the wave of the future.\r\n

\r\n

\r\nAnd those other resources have not seen declining prices like solar\r\nhas. “Solar PV is $0.70 or $0.80 per watt to manufacture.\r\nResidential rooftop is $4 to $5 per watt. But they are going to\r\ndrive that down to $2 and then to $1 per watt.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nThat’s \r\nMoore’s Law for solar power<\/a>.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nThe article discusses grid improvements,\r\n(you remember,\r\nwhat Southern Company could be doing better than anybody else<\/a>)\r\nand this:\r\n

\r\n

\r\nThe\r\n\r\nnet metering controversy<\/a> this has caused at utilities like Xcel\r\nand Arizona Public Service, he said, can only be resolved by\r\n“the fully allocated, fully analyzed cost and benefit study of\r\ndistributed resources.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nThere is value in distributed solar, Wellinghoff said, “that\r\ncan be captured and realized by the distribution utility that is not\r\nbeing paid to PV system owners because they have not been analyzed,\r\nquantified, and monetized.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\nThe Crossborder Energy study<\/a> in California concluded the benefits of\r\nDG are near retail rates, he noted. “If utilities say that\r\nstudy is wrong, let’s get their studies and the studies from the\r\nsolar side, and let’s have a hearing, let’s have full discovery, and\r\nlet’s have a fully litigated process. That’s what regulatory\r\ncommissions at the federal and state levels are for, to put all that\r\ndata on the table and see what the accurate answers are.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nWell, yeah, that study is wrong, according to Austin Energy, which\r\nconcluded\r\ndistributed solar is worth 3 cents extra<\/a>.\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nIt’s time for Georgia’s electric utilities to move out of the early 20th century\r\ninto the bright 21st century sunshine.\r\n

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