Renewables Overtake Coal As World's Largest Source of Power Capacity (ft.com)

The world's largest source of power capacity is now renewables, as roughly half a million solar panels were installed every single day last year. In addition, two wind turbines were erected every hour in countries such as China, according to the International Energy Agency. Financial Times reports (Editor's note: may be paywalled; alternate source): Although coal and other fossil fuels remain the largest source of electricity generation, many conventional power utilities and energy groups have been confounded by the speed at which renewables have grown and the rapid drop in costs for the technologies. Average global generation costs for new onshore wind farms fell by an estimated 30 percent between 2010 and 2015 while those for big solar panel plants fell by an even steeper two-thirds, an IEA report published on Tuesday showed. The Paris-based agency thinks costs are likely to fall even further over the next five years, by 15 percent on average for wind and by a quarter for solar power. It said an unprecedented 153 gigawatts of green electricity was installed last year, mostly wind and solar projects, which has more than the total power capacity in Canada. It was also more than the amount of conventional fossil fuel or nuclear power added in 2015, leading renewables to surpass coal's cumulative share of global power capacity -- though not electricity generation. A power plant's capacity is the maximum amount of electricity it can potentially produce. The amount of energy a plant actually generates varies according to how long it produces power over a period of time. Coal power plants supplied close to 39 percent of the world's power in 2015, while renewables, including old hydropower dams, accounted for 23 percent, IEA data show. But the agency expects renewables' share of power generation to rise to 28 percent by 2021, when it predicts they will supply the equivalent of all the electricity generated today in the U.S. and E.U. combined.

Comments

Re:Let me know when ...

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Moving the goal posts.

Nope. The article's author apparently thought the offence's 35 yard line was the goal post. I was just pointing out where they ACTUALLY are. B-)

We need about another seven first-downs to get there. But we ARE on our way.

Re:Renewables will never work

[angel'o'sphere]

(*facepalm*)
AC it actually becomes very cost prohibitive very quickly over very long distances
That is wrong. 1.8k miles is not a long distance. The rest of the world has far longer transport lines and copes well with them.
and more electricity is lost due to resistance and heat.
That is wrong, too. Fatally wrong actually. AC lines lose less power than DC lines due to heat and resistance.
However AC lines lose more power in total, because of: radiation. AC lines induce power magnetically into surrounding "things" and that is the reason why they have a relatively high loss in relation to similar high voltage DC lines.
And if we talk about AC versus DC we are talking about very very high voltages starting at about 1 million volts.
All of Europe is interconnected with 380kV lines from the north sea till east siberia. And Siberia and 3rd world countries like Kasachstan have 1.1MV AC lines for interconnection/transport. Kasachstan e.g. is about 6000km wide from east to west and 3000km hight from north to south. That is roughly a quarter or a third of the USA. And that is a country you look down on ...