According to the Department of Energy, if we had solar panels on all rooftops where it is technically feasible to have them, they could provide 39% of our electricity.
U.S. technical solar energy potential
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Tag Archives: solar
100% renewable Las Vegas
The City of Las Vegas has announced it is going to 100% renewable energy by 2017, with the majority coming from large-scale, centralized solar. Obviously it is very sunny there in Nevada, but I still think this could be a watershed moment in the U.S. The skeptics won’t be convinced though until the shift is all but over.
Lester Brown on The Great Transition
Lester Brown has a new book called The Great Transition. It says the tide has turned against fossil fuels and the transition to renewables is now unstoppable.
wind and solar
Here are some fun facts on the wind and solar revolution.
Rooftop solar is growing worldwide by 50% per year. In 1985 solar cost $12 per watt, but today’s prices are closer to 36 cents per watt. Every five hours the world adds 23 MW of solar—which was the global installed capacity in 1985.
In January of 2014 Denmark got 62% of its electricity from wind. In 2013 Ireland got 17% of its electricity from wind, and Spain and Portugal both exceeded 20% from wind. Today China gets more electricity from wind (91,000 MW) than it does from nuclear reactors. The United States is second in the world in installed wind turbines, with South Dakota and Iowa obtaining over 26% of their electricity from wind…
The renewable energy revolution will enable civilization to stop the growth of highly polluting fossil fuels. It will enable society to leave the majority of the remaining reserves of fossil fuels alone and unburned. Acceleration of this revolution helps in solving many problems and is a key to restoring and maintaining the life support systems of the earth.
12-fold increase in U.S. solar capacity since 2008
This article is called Nothing Can Stop the US Solar Industry Juggernaut Now. A couple quotes:
The US solar industry has engineered a 1200% increase in utility-scale capacity since 2008, according to a new blog post from the Energy Department. When you factor in the explosive rate of growth in small-scale solar, it’s clear that the current hiccup in the price of oil is not going to stop solar energy from advancing in the US market.
The only question now is how quickly the US solar industry can meet the growth in demand, and for that we turn to a pair of newly announced SunShot programs designed to help the US solar industry churn out — and install — more product than ever before…
If you’re not familiar with the Obama Administration’s 2011 SunShot initiative, that would be a 10-year plan to bring the cost of solar energy down to parity with fossil fuels.
Logically speaking, solar energy just has to be a big part of the sustainability solution. The cynic in me would say if you express an increase from a very small number in percentage terms, it may sound impressive, but it doesn’t mean much. I am a little disappointed if grid parity is really still 10 years out. I really thought we were closer than that. I will believe we are close when I walk out of my house and see it all around me, and/or when my electric bill tells me it is mostly or entirely solar. By the way, my house is in the United States, but I am lucky enough to be on vacation in Southeast Asia at the moment, and I don’t see it here either. What I see here is living standards and health conditions close to what we take for granted in the west (my current mild stomach trouble not withstanding), but it is very clear that relatively cheap, abundant oil, gas, and coal make it possible.
solar roads
I clicked on this article from Woodhouse about new paving technologies expecting to hear about porous pavement. But it turned out to be all about paving with solar panels:
The company’s aim is to reduce carbon emissions by paving currently tarmacked surfaces with solar panels, turning a previously unproductive landmass into a renewable energy powerhouse.
The solar energy collected by the smart surface could be used to feed the grid during the day time, or even power things such as heating elements under the surface to clear ice and snow from the roads in the winter. Eventually, it might be possible to power electric cars as they drive along.
Pavement covers enormous areas in our cities, so this could be huge. On the other hand, the lack of any mention of stormwater worries me slightly. There is a lot more time and effort going into developing better materials to capture energy than to manage water, when both are important. In fact, when it gets to the point (now in some places, very soon in others) where people can make serious money installing solar panels on their rooftops and paved surfaces, that could even come into conflict with stormwater management opportunities (green roofs and porous pavement being two examples). On the other hand, my water bill has been creeping up to the point where it is not that much less than my electric and natural gas bills. So where the economic drivers have been overwhelmingly on the side of energy until recently, water may be catching up. Of course, we want to find materials and approaches that do both, so let’s get to work on that.