Solar Power Everywhere

9 Signs That Americans Will See Solar Power Everywhere Within The Decade

Rob Wile | May 7, 2013, 4:22 PM

 

Last week, Massachusetts announced it had reached its goal of obtaining 250 megawatts of power — enough to power multiple mid-sized cities — four years early.

It's another sign that, as we've recently discussed, solar is booming.

The main reason is China, which has so thoroughly flooded the global market with cheap parts that today, Europe slapped them with a new tariff.

As Bloomberg's Bruce Einhorn wrote last year, "China’s solar panel industry has become the world’s biggest thanks to a simple formula: Produce in China, sell in Europe."

But there are other signs that solar power is set to take off.

We've compiled some of them here.

In the past few years, the doubling of solar capacity has resulted in a 40% reduction in solar costs.





Mostly thanks to China.

Solar has high start-up costs, but give it enough time and it becomes the cheapest power source out there.




GWU
That's even without subsidies.
Source: GWU

Warren Buffett recently purchased the largest solar development in the world, a set of arrays in California.


Reuters

This is a man not known for making bad bets.
Source: Business Insider

Households in many countries can already get solar cheaper than the price of plugging into their local grid.




Citi

Residents of the Southwest U.S. reached this point last year.

During peak demand times in some countries, solar is most cost-effective. Here's what the demand cost curve looks like in Germany on a winter's day.




"This peak effect has resulted in some gas plants in Germany running in 2012 for no more than a handful of days, with resulting profit warnings from associated utilities," Citi writes.

Citi projects $1.3 trillion will be invested in solar by 2035.




That's third only to wind and hydro.

Arizona, Hawaii, and Nevada are the top 3 states for most solar per capita. But fourth? NEW JERSEY!

This is a state one usually does not associate with excessive (natural) sun...
Source: SEIA.org

And the amount of new solar New Jersey's largest utility, PSE and G, installed last year was third-most in the country.



Mars Inc.'s New Jersey solar array

Treehugger.com/PSEandG


The Garden State's commitment to solar was kicked off during Gov. Jon Corzine's administration, according to the New York Times. By state mandate, power providers must get 23 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2021.

Source: Solar Electric Power

As Citi notes, no source of energy reigns forever. That means that a change to our current system will come inevitably.
As some say, 

"We didn't leave the stone age because we ran out of stones."





Rob Wile
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