{"id":8533,"date":"2014-04-27T14:24:51","date_gmt":"2014-04-27T18:24:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=8533"},"modified":"2014-04-27T14:55:00","modified_gmt":"2014-04-27T18:55:00","slug":"as-predicted-u-s-solar-capacity-grew-more-than-400-in-4-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2014\/04\/as-predicted-u-s-solar-capacity-grew-more-than-400-in-4-years.html","title":{"rendered":"As predicted U.S. solar capacity grew more than 400% in 4 years"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nThis month’s eia report confirms that solar did exactly what\r\n \r\nformer FERC Chair Jon Wellinghoff predicted<\/a>:\r\n“That\u2019s what is happening in solar. It could double every two years.”\r\nWellinghoff’s further prediction remains on the money:\r\n“…at its present growth rate, solar will overtake wind in about ten years. It is going to be the dominant player.”\r\nBecause of exponential growth like compound interest caused by ever-falling\r\nsolar PV costs,\r\n\r\nsolar will win like the Internet did<\/a>.\r\n\r\n

\r\nU.S. Energy Information Administration (eia) wrote 22 April 2014,\r\n\r\nSolar-electric Generating Capacity Increases Drastically in the Last Four Years<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nU.S. solar capacity increased significantly in the last 4 years. In\r\n2010, the total solar capacity was 2,326 MW which accounted for a\r\ncomparatively small fraction (0.22%) of the total U.S. electric\r\ngenerating. capacity. By February 2014, this capacity increased 418%\r\nto 12,057 MW, a 9,731 MW gain, and now accounts for almost 1.13% of\r\ntotal U.S. capacity. Reported planned solar capacity additions\r\nindicate continued growth\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n12,057 \/ 2,326 = 5.18 times, which is more than 2 * 2 = 4,\r\nergo Wellinghoff was right.\r\nSure, you can argue that most of this increase happened before he made\r\nhis prediction in August 2013,\r\nbut the 2013 numbers weren’t out then, so part of this new growth record\r\nis after anything he knew, and it turns out his doubling every two years\r\nwas conservative.\r\n

\r\n

\r\nEIA tracks three principal types of solar-electric generating\r\ncapacity:\r\n<\/p>\r\n

    \r\n
  1. \r\nResidential and commercial rooftop and other photovoltaic (PV) capacity reported by distribution utilities as net-metered.\r\n
  2. \r\nUtility level (>= 1 MW) solar photovoltaic capacity reported by generation operators.\r\n
  3. \r\nUtility level (>= 1 MW) solar thermal capacity reported by generation operators.\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

    \r\nEven that report under-represents real solar generation,\r\nbecause it doesn’t count solar power used on the customer side of the meter,\r\nwhich is where most rooftop solar power goes, including my 15 kiloWatts\r\non my farm workshop.\r\n

    \r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nThe eia report concludes:\r\n

    \r\n

    \r\nEach of the three sectors that have contributed to the significant\r\noverall solar gains also has strong near term growth prospects.\r\nCurrently, there are 6,459 MW of proposed utility scale PV and 1,841\r\nMW of proposed thermal solar. Many of the same factors driving\r\nutility-level solar are expected to push net metered capacity as\r\nwell.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

    \r\n<\/a>\r\nRemember\r\n\r\nMoore’s Law for solar power<\/a>, the observation that solar power costs\r\nkeep dropping exponentially and causing exponentially increasing\r\neployment, much like the prices of computing power (CPUs, memory, disks)\r\nkept dropping and driving up deployment of computers, smartphones, and tablets,\r\nnot to mention the Internet?\r\n\r\nAlso known as Swanson’s law<\/a>,\r\nto emphasize that it’s manufacturing capacity that is driving down solar costs,\r\n\r\nnot efficiency improvements<\/a>?\r\nThose are the factors to which eia seems to allude.\r\n

    \r\n

    \r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nIn summary, the U.S. solar capacity has moved quickly from a\r\nrelatively small contributor to the nation’s total electric capacity\r\ninto a one of comparative significance. Much like the wind sector\r\ngrowth, which grew tremendously from 6,456 MW in January 2005 to\r\n60,661 MW to January 2014, solar capacity is quite clearly up and\r\ncoming.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

    \r\nAnd if solar continues\r\n\r\ngrowing like compund interest<\/a>\r\nit will generate more power than anything else in the U.S. in less than a decade.\r\n

    \r\nWe should stop wasting money on\r\n\r\nthe nuclear boondoggle at Plant Vogtle and elsewhere<\/a>\r\nwhich is like\r\n\r\nburning $20 bills to generate electricity<\/a>.\r\nWe should stop\r\n\r\nfoolish plans to build a destructive and hazardous fracked methane pipline<\/a>\r\nthrough Alabama, south Georgia, and Florida for no local benefit.\r\n

    \r\n<\/a>\r\nWe should get on with\r\n\r\npowering the southeast and every U.S. state<\/a>\r\nand the world with sun, wind, and water.\r\nMore here<\/a>\r\non how solar power is rising on Georgia, the southeast, the U.S., and the world.\r\nAll the fossil fuel companies, and all their electric utilities, can not stop that sun from coming up.\r\n

    \r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This month’s eia report confirms that solar did exactly what former FERC Chair Jon Wellinghoff predicted: “That\u2019s what is happening in solar. It could double every two years.” Wellinghoff’s further prediction remains on the money: “…at its present growth rate, solar will overtake wind in about ten years. It is going to be the dominant […]","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":[14,19,6124,104,6687,24],"tags":[2500,7595,7597,1037,8704,7593,7600,7594,785,8701,8709,507,2498,8702,12,25,562,7601,8737,1026,6076,1131,637,7599,8714,7596,7598,3041],"class_list":["post-8533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-history","category-natural-gas-2","category-nuclear","category-pipeline-2","category-solar","tag-capacity","tag-compound-growth","tag-computers","tag-distributed","tag-economy","tag-eia","tag-energy-information-administration","tag-exponential-growth","tag-ferc","tag-georgia","tag-history","tag-internet","tag-jon-wellinghoff","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-moores-law","tag-natural-gas","tag-net-metered","tag-nuclear","tag-photovoltaic","tag-pipeline","tag-pv","tag-rooftop","tag-smart-phones","tag-solar","tag-swansons-law","tag-tablets","tag-thermal"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-2dD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8533","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=8533"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8542,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8533\/revisions\/8542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}