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California Has Become the First State To Get Over 5% of Its Power From Solar
Lucas123 writes: While the rest of the nation's solar power generation hovers around 1%, California clocked in with a record 5% of power coming from utility-grade (1MW or more) solar power sources, according to a report from Mercom Capital Group and the Energy Information Administration. That's three times the next closest state, Arizona. At the same time, 22 states have yet to deploy even one utility-grade solar power plant, according to the Solar Energy Industry Association. Meanwhile, the rest of the world saw a 14% uptick in solar power installations in 2014 for a total of 54.5GW of capacity, and that figure is expected to grow even faster in 2015. While China still leads the world in new solar capacity, Japan and the U.S. come in as a close second and third, respectively. In the U.S. distributed solar and utility-grade solar installations are soaring as the solar investment tax credit (ITC) is set to expire next year. The U.S. is expected to deploy 8.5GW of new solar capacity in 2015, according to Mercom Capital Group.
Considering the pace at which this energy was added to the grid, it is news worthy. Considering coal (and large hydro and nuclear) are all about ~9% each in California, it will only be a handful of years until solar surpasses power production from each coal, nuclear, and large hydro.
Perhaps then solar detractors will rubber neck at the remarkable progress in the industry. It will be hilarious over the coming decade as the raw economics drive us to abandon domestic resources (coal, gas) in favor of Chinese (or Malaysian) manufactured solar panels. Exporting billions of dollars to China after handing them this giant industry (inevitably one of the world's largest) on a silver platter.
I wonder how the myopic thinkers will react to this scenario. Of course, we'll have to wait a decade for them to realize what has already happened.
It is worth noting that California is the #2 electricity consuming state in the nation (behind Texas), but has the lowest per capita consumption in the country, roughly half the average per capita consumption of the entire U.S.
A complex dilemma you've painted. :)
But it's all in the (your) mind
Yes renewable energy seems to cost more than conventional fossil but then the last has hidden costs regarding the environment now and in the future.
I'm really curious why you brought up the subject of trees, do you maybe feel we need to cut down trees for large scale PV deployment?
Like yesterday I ordered PV cells covering about half my garage roof and they'll be good for some 125% of my annual consumption and that's at 52 degs. North.
A few hundred square kilometres in some nice deserts (+ a lot of transmission infrastructure) would cover the needs of the planet.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Cutting CO2 is not the entire picture, though. With that in mind, it ceases to be less "dumb" than you think. Building the PV installations in Germany creates money for Germans to spend in the German economy. It also generates experience in the sectors involved. Sending money to Spain keeps the money in Spain.
Californians, on average, use about 50% of the energy Texans do, according to the 2012 figures.