{"id":5413,"date":"2013-08-29T12:56:16","date_gmt":"2013-08-29T16:56:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=5413"},"modified":"2013-08-29T12:59:58","modified_gmt":"2013-08-29T16:59:58","slug":"bloomberg-illustrates-63-solar-growth-in-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/08\/bloomberg-illustrates-63-solar-growth-in-2012.html","title":{"rendered":"Bloomberg illustrates 63% solar growth in 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nA graph Bloomberg New Energy Finance posted illustrates\r\nthe recent 60%+ growth deployed solar capacity, but\r\nBNEF fails to project solar’s compound interest growth forward.\r\n

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

\r\nLook at the solar numbers in that graph:\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
2008<\/th>2009<\/th>2010<\/th>2011<\/th> 2012<\/th>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
1.6<\/td>\r\n2.0<\/td>\r\n2.9<\/td>\r\n4.9<\/td>\r\n8.0<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
Change<\/th>\r\n25%<\/td>\r\n45%<\/td>\r\n69%<\/td>\r\n63%<\/td>\r\n<\/table>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nThen look at that last row I added, which is each year’s\r\npercentage increase over the previous year, as in\r\n8.0 for 2012 divided by 4.9 for 2011 = 1.63 or 63%.\r\nSlightly more for the previous year, and less in years before that.\r\nIn other words, the annual compound growth rate for solar is\r\naround the 65% rate reported \r\n\r\nby the solar industry<\/a>.\r\n

\r\nAnd slightly higher than the 60.9% FERC rate I used in my prediction of\r\nnine (9) years for solar to pass wind in about 9 years,\r\nand natural gas in about a decade.\r\nSooner if we get rid of some barriers by for example fixing\r\n\r\nthat antiquated 1973 Georgia law<\/a>\r\nthat impedes private financing and investment for solar power in Georgia.\r\n

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

\r\nWhat does BNEF make of these numbers?\r\nThey don’t get it.\r\nThey convert that exponential compound growth rate back to more\r\nlinear in their\r\nprojections of\r\n\r\n“Additions to Power Generation Capacity 2013 to 2030”<\/a>:\r\n

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

\r\nThis leads BNEF to conclude (according to\r\n\r\nJoshua S. Hill in CLeantechnica 25 April 2013<\/a>):\r\n

\r\n

\r\nIn terms of existing power generation capacity by 2030, analysts\r\nbelieve that renewable technologies will account for 50%, up from\r\n28% currently running in 2012. Looking specifically at power\r\nproduced, renewables’ share will increase from 22% in 2012 to 37% in\r\n2030.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nBNEF also projects not much decrease in coal until 2030, which may be true\r\nworldwide, but is not likely going to be the case in the U.S.\r\nWe can ignore that BNEF lumps biomass and geothermal in with renewables\r\n(geothermal mostly is, biomass is not) because even in BNEF’s projections\r\nthose account for little of either the installed capacity or its increase.\r\n

\r\nThe big increases come from wind and solar.\r\nIndeed.\r\nBut BNEF is way low on wind and solar, and very far low on solar PV.\r\nThat’s like assuming in 1993 that the Internet would scale linearly to 2003.\r\nWhich as we all know is not what happened: it scaled up exponentially\r\nlike compound interest.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nNow BNEF is projecting for global power production, not just U.S.,\r\nso I’ll cut them some slack.\r\nHowever, if the U.S. keeps on with that FERC solar compound growth rate,\r\nit will catch up and pass current solar leaders such as Germany.\r\nThat plus \r\nJapan is finally serious about solar<\/a>\r\nand\r\n\r\nChina leads the world in solar and wind investment<\/a>.\r\nThe world will switch to renewable solar and wind,\r\nand it will do it quickly.\r\nProbably much faster than BNEF thinks.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A graph Bloomberg New Energy Finance posted illustrates the recent 60%+ growth deployed solar capacity, but BNEF fails to project solar’s compound interest growth forward. Look at the solar numbers in that graph: 2008200920102011 2012 1.6 2.0 2.9 4.9 8.0 Change 25% 45% 69% 63% Then look at that last row I added, which is […]","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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[216,14,19,132,6124,104,559,23,24,36],"tags":[6141,8753,6865,8704,6864,8701,8709,8741,8702,12,7,562,8737,8782,6895,8713,8714,6,8716],"class_list":["post-5413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coal","category-economy","category-history","category-internet-access-speed","category-natural-gas-2","category-nuclear","category-oil","category-renewable-energy","category-solar","category-wind","tag-bloomberg-new-energy-finance","tag-coal","tag-compound-interest","tag-economy","tag-exponential","tag-georgia","tag-history","tag-internet-access-speed","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-natural-gas","tag-nuclear","tag-oil","tag-projections","tag-renewable-energy","tag-solar","tag-valdosta","tag-wind"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-1pj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5413","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=5413"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5419,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5413\/revisions\/5419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}