{"id":7,"date":"2013-03-28T10:11:35","date_gmt":"2013-03-28T14:11:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/03\/us-installed-33-gigawatts-of-solar-in-2012-on-target.html"},"modified":"2013-03-28T10:11:35","modified_gmt":"2013-03-28T14:11:35","slug":"us-installed-33-gigawatts-of-solar-in-2012-on-target","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/03\/us-installed-33-gigawatts-of-solar-in-2012-on-target.html","title":{"rendered":"U.S. installed 3.3 Gigawatts of solar in 2012, on target"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\nMoore&#8217;s law continues to drive solar costs down and installations up.\nAccording to SEIA,\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.seia.org\/research-resources\/solar-industry-data\">\nU.S. Market Installs 3,300 Megawatts in 2012; Driven by Record Fourth Quarter<\/a>,\n<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\n2012 was a historic year for the U.S. solar industry. There were\n3,313 megawatts (MW) of photovoltaic (PV) capacity installed\nthroughout the year, which represents 76% growth over 2011&#8217;s record\ndeployment totals. The fourth quarter of 2012 was also the largest\nquarter on record as 1,300 MW came online, driven in part by\nunprecedented installation levels in the residential and utility\nmarkets. SEIA and GTM Research forecast that the market will\ncontinue to grow at a steady clip with over 4,200 MW of PV and 940\nMW of concentrating solar power (CSP) expected to come online in\n2013. (All data from SEIA\/GTM Research &ldquo;U.S. Solar Market\nInsight 2012 Year-In-Review&rdquo; unless otherwise noted.)\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.seia.org\/research-resources\/solar-industry-data\">\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border:none;\"  width=\"500\" height=\"420\" src=\"http:\/\/www.seia.org\/sites\/default\/files\/smi_figure_21.jpg\"><\/a>\n<\/p>\n<p>\nAnd those new installations are driven by solar PV prices continually falling in\n<a href=\"\/blog\/2012\/12\/2012-solar-deployments-driven-by-moores-law-price-reductions.html\">\nMoore&#8217;s Law for solar<\/a>:\n<\/p>\n\n<!--more-->\n<blockquote>\n<H3>Falling Costs Make Solar More Affordable Than Ever<\/H3>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.seia.org\/research-resources\/solar-industry-data\">\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right;border:none;\"   width=\"222\" height=\"188\" src=\"http:\/\/www.seia.org\/sites\/default\/files\/smi_figures_26.jpg\"><\/a>\n<ul>\n<li>\nThe average cost of a completed PV system dropped by 27 percent over the past year.\n<li>\nThe average price of a\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.seia.org\/policy\/solar-technology\/photovoltaic-solar-electric\">\nsolar panel<\/a> has declined by 60 percent since the beginning of 2011.\n<li>\nWhile these price drops are beneficial for solar consumers, the sharp fall in prices, due in part by a global oversupply, has put a serious strain on\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.seia.org\/policy\/manufacturing-trade\/solar-manufacturing-incentives\">\nsolar manufacturers<\/a> worldwide.\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\nSo we&#8217;ll see a shakeout in numbers of solar companies, as has\n<a href=\"http:\/\/chartporn.org\/2012\/02\/29\/genealogy-of-car-companies\/\">\n<img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right;border:none;\"   src=\"http:\/\/chartporn.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/image71.png\"><\/a>\nalready started to happen with\n<a href=\"http:\/\/chiefio.wordpress.com\/2013\/03\/21\/stp-suntech-power-solar-bankrupt\/\">\nSTP in China going bankrupt<\/a>.\nThis is normal in a new industry.\nThere used to be dozens of car companies, too, but\n<a href=\"http:\/\/chiefio.wordpress.com\/2013\/03\/21\/stp-suntech-power-solar-bankrupt\/\">\nhttp:\/\/www.historyshots.com\/automobiles\/&#8221;>\nOlds, Buick, Cadillac, Rainier, Welch, Elmore, Oakland, Cartercar,\nChrvrolet, Scripps-Both, and many more merged into General Motors<\/a>\nand similarly a few other big car companies emerged from the pack.\nThe same thing will happen with solar companies.\nThe shakeout will take years, as usual,\nand meanwhile solar sales will continue to go up, just like\nautomobile sales did.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n<a href=\"\/blog\/2013\/01\/power-source-growth-rates-like-compound-interest.html\">\n<img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right;border:none;\"   src=\"http:\/\/farm9.staticflickr.com\/8226\/8421700685_a46c93cf27_n.jpg\"><\/a>\nAnd if solar continues to be deployed at a compound growth rate\nlike we&#8217;ve seen for the past decade or more?\n<a href=\"\/blog\/2013\/01\/power-source-growth-rates-like-compound-interest.html\">\nsolar and wind win over all other power sources in about a decade<\/a>.\nGeorgia can lag behind the pack and\n<a href=\"\/blog\/2011\/07\/google-says-delaying-solar-will-cost-us-millions-of-jobs.html\">\nlose lots of benefits<\/a>,\nor it can get on with solar and lead the country in solar power,\nfor jobs, profit, and energy independence, and for clean air and water.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n-jsq\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Moore&#8217;s law continues to drive solar costs down and installations up. According to SEIA, U.S. Market Installs 3,300 Megawatts in 2012; Driven by Record Fourth Quarter, 2012 was a historic year for the U.S. solar industry. There were 3,313 megawatts (MW) of photovoltaic (PV) capacity installed throughout the year, which represents 76% growth over 2011&#8217;s [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":1,"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":[14,2,19,21,22,32,23,24],"tags":[31,28,8704,8706,8701,8699,8709,8702,12,27,25,8711,8712,8715,29,8713,26,30,8714],"class_list":["post-7","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-government","category-history","category-planning","category-politics","category-pollution","category-renewable-energy","category-solar","tag-automobile","tag-cost","tag-economy","tag-environment","tag-georgia","tag-government","tag-history","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-megawatts","tag-moores-law","tag-planning","tag-politics","tag-pollution","tag-price","tag-renewable-energy","tag-seia","tag-shakeout","tag-solar"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}