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Solar Power Capacity Installs Surpass Wind and Coal For Second Year
Lucas123 writes: Residential rooftop solar installations hit a historical high in the first quarter of 2015, garnering an 11% increase over the previous quarter and a 76% increase over the Q1, 2014. New installations of solar power capacity surpassed those of wind and coal for the second year in a row, accounting for 32% of all new electrical capacity, according to a new report by GTM Research and the Solar Energy Industries Association. Residential solar installation costs dropped to $3.46 per watt of installed capacity this quarter, which represents a 2.2% reduction over last quarter and a 10% reduction over the first quarter of 2014.
Providing a court system... stealing from other for personal gain using government force.
Providing a police system... stealing from other for personal gain using government force.
Building a road system... stealing from other for personal gain using government force.
Building tanks...stealing from other for personal gain using government force.
Building tanks and parking them immediately in the desert with no intention of using them...stealing from other for personal gain using government force.
My point... your point is not really as strong as you think it is.
You had a say in the matter. It was every election in an even numbered year since you started voting. I don't like a lot of stuff the government does using money it takes from me. But I live in a democracy, not a dictatorship of me.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Capacity installs.
Basically it's talking about new installs versus already installed capacity.
Not overall capacity or utilization in the overall power budget.
Never mind that solar installs tend to be smaller and MUCH lower capacity than a coal burning plant.
Also, there's the fact that coal provides more power in the US by more than an order of magnitude.
So yay. We went from half a percent to 0.51% total power input.
And oh darn. We maybe stayed around 20% at coal.
Basically this is a "Rah Rah" article. Kind of like a small company that puts on big, slick productions and appears bigger than they are.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Is it the 'best' way to spend our money to get carbon free electricity? That matters when you look at what needs to happen to make a real impact on a global scale. Seems like that is a question many don't like to ask.
Actually it's a question that many have asked and determined that, yes right now it is. It allows the re-use of existing infrastructure co-located directly at the energy consumer negating transmission losses. Combine it with storage which I think everyone can agree is something that is becoming mainstream and you have a system that can take a very serious dent out of the daily energy peak and cut household electricity carbon emissions (I'm so specific here because as we all know electricity is only a small portion of our footprint).
Funny side note we just installed 35kW of solar panels on the roof of our main switchroom at work to offset our huge air-conditioning bill. The panels made the switchroom cooler by keeping the sun off the roof and covers the air-conditioning energy. The punchline: I work at a natural gas power station.
> We'll see how well solar competes when it gets (almost) the same tax treatment as other power sources
You mean when we dump billions of dollars of into a military side-project and let that flow downhill into the panel prices?
Yes, I await that day.