Graph of the Day: Why solar power is taking over the world

[jpak]

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2016/graph-of-the-day-why-solar-power-is-taking-over-the-world-94360

For anyone who is in any doubt about the incredible journey that solar power has been on over the past decade the graph below – sourced via this story on Treehugger – offers a stunning reminder.

As the graph shows, the cost of solar PV – the orange part – 40 years ago was up around $US100 per Watt, and a global total of only 2 MW was installed.

Of course the cost of the promising technology falls rapidly from there, but global solar installations – the blue bit – barely register until that magic moment somewhere between 2000 and 2005, when price per Watt reaches a tipping point and the blue bit soars to a total of just under 65,000 MW in 2015.



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[MariaThinks]

1. nice

[happyslug]

2. Sounds about right...

I did some research into Solar Panels in the 1970s, and the rule at that time period was to go with solar hot water heating instead of solar electrical panels. Solar hot Water Panels were popular in Florida at that time period, for they did not have Natural Gas Service, Oil price was high and electricity was even higher. Given it rarely froze in Florida, Solar Water heaters made sense. You had to make sure your structure could take the weight, but the water went through the panels, were heated and then flowed into a conventional hot water tank for storage. You could use a timer to cut off flow through the panels during night time (Thus no cold water going through the panels at night and into the water tank) but when the sun was out, the timer permitted water to flow.

If you had a large enough water tank, you could even run steam pipes through the water heater to act as a furnace when the house became to cold (Through in most cases, those operated NORTH of Florida and people ran glycerin, that would not freeze till way below freezing point of water, through the panels and then into the hot water tank. The heated glycerin would warm up the water and thus no need to heat the panels when temperatures reached freezing (and cut off the circulation of the Glycerin unless the temperatures of the Glycerin was above 72 degrees).

Today, Solar Hot Water Panels are still more profitable then Solar Electrical panels, but with the later you do NOT need to make sure the structure can handle the panel full of water (Water weighs a LOT and the panels are extensive copper piping set under glass, the copper piping and water in the piping weighs a LOT, a lot more then a solar ELECTRICAL panel). The huge cost of Solar Water Heaters and the costs to install them remain about the same as they were in the 1970s (The Chinese have moved into this field big time so costs of Solar Water Units are DOWN, but mostly do to China trying to capture the market, the cost of installation is about the same as it was in the 1970s).

I still like the idea of Solar WATER heaters, using glycerin to avoid freezing in winter. The price breaks as still there but it is no longer the huge difference in price between Solar Water Heaters and Solar Electrical Panels that you saw in the 1970s.

[FBaggins]

3. Taking over the world?

What percentage of global electricity generation is now solar?

[GliderGuider]

4. In 2014 solar PV supplied 0.8% of the world's electricity.

That low a percentage means PV technology is still very much in its infancy within the context of the global marketplace.

There's a problem with trying to extrapolate adoption trends from this early in a technology's life. So far PV is being enthusiastically adopted in a lot of easy-to-access market niches. What happens when all that low-hanging fruit has been picked? Could there be a technical or logistical saturation point that we haven't recognized? We don't know yet.

We're still far more in the realm of theory than practice here. It's understandable that people are enthusiastic about the uptake of solar so far, but "taking over the world" is just marketing hyperbole.

[FBaggins]

5. I think it passed 1% late last year.

Hardly "taking over the world"

[SoLeftIAmRight]

6. Many thanks

too bad about the "giggle jewels" crowd

the future is coming

[hunter]

7. Good. We can start tearing down dams and fossil fuel power stations... right?

We can ban the manufacture of new fossil fueled powered automobiles too... right?

Sorry. But all I see here is people selling and buying more shit.

I'm not a "glass half empty" kind of guy, I'm a glass full of shit pessimist.

When the fossil fuel industry is collapsing worldwide the root cause will be the collapse of this destructive civilization, not the adoption of solar or wind power.

It's not a future catastrophe either, it's happening now. Many humans, many species, dying, usually unnoticed by affluent society, well, not until there's a refugee "problem" at their favorite carnival, or pictures on the TV of children and old people dying, or the last rhinos and other interesting animals, somewhere distant.

A "renewable energy" civilization doesn't look anything like the civilization any affluent U.S. American enjoys now. Sadly, there wasn't any clean up of industry in the U.S.A. really, despite the environmentalism of the sixties and seventies; instead most the dirty business was simply exported.

The real math, the actual trends, are not encouraging. My affluent neighbors, the same neighbors who drive newer cars, are installing solar on their rooftops. It's merely a new consumer good. Hell, as my neighbors are mostly at work today, maybe those solar panels are powering my laptop and router! But we are not saving the world.

Want to make the world a better place? Teach birth control, vegetarianism, and lazy low energy non-consumer lifestyles.

[solitas777]

8. Reducing cost

I'm curious when regular people will be able to get in on this and just not large scale mega-arrays.