Photovoltaic milestone: 300 gigawatts of global installed PV capacity

[OKIsItJustMe]

https://www.solarwirtschaft.de/en/media/single-view/news/photovoltaic-milestone-300-gigawatts-of-global-installed-pv-capacity.html

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Photovoltaic milestone: 300 gigawatts of global installed PV capacity[/font]

26.01.2017
By: BSW-Solar

[font size=4]300 GWp of global installed photovoltaic capacity / Photovoltaic expansion is booming due to low prices / Solar power is already profitable without financial support in over 30 countries[/font]

[font size=3]The growth of photovoltaic technology around the world continues, and the global success story has now reached a further milestone: 300 gigawatts (GWp) of total installed solar power capacity around the world. This was announced by the German Solar Association today in Berlin, on the basis of their own calculations. In 2016 there was a global deployment of solar power systems with an additional nominal capacity of around 70 gigawatts. That amounts to a jump of around 30 percent in new deployment compared to the previous year 2015. The photovoltaic systems installed in 2016 alone generate around 90 terawatt hours of clean solar power. In mathematical terms, this new capacity would supply 25 million additional households with an annual electricity consumption of 3500 kilowatt hours.

"The utilization of solar power has really picked up momentum in many countries around the world. As the global thirst for energy increases, more and more governments and investors are committing to clean forms of energy," explains Carsten Körnig, Chief Executive Officer of the German Solar Association (BSW-Solar). China’s National Energy Agency (NEA), for example, stopped the construction of around 100 coal-fired power plants with a nominal capacity of over 100 gigawatts, while at the same time installing photovoltaic systems with a nominal capacity of around 34 gigawatt peak (GWp) in 2016. This makes the “Middle Kingdom” the largest business market for PV, followed by the United States with around 13 gigawatts and Japan with around 9 gigawatts. A strong photovoltaic market is also developing in India, where forecasts predict growth of 8 to 9 gigawatts for 2017.

"The decision for solar power has long been based on more than environmental concerns alone. Economic considerations are increasingly the primary motivation for making the decision to invest in PV," as Körnig emphasizes. "The risk of stranded investments in unprofitable coal-fired power plants is increasing, because in the future their enormous climate impact costs will inevitably be priced in to the overall economic equation. Meanwhile, solar power already provides an extremely low-cost alternative."

In a current study, the World Economic Forum (WEF) determined that in over 30 countries around the world, photovoltaic technology is already so inexpensive that it can be operated profitably without financial support. An increasing number of countries are finding that it is more economical to invest in PV and wind power plants than in coal-fired power plants. The Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, in a study conducted for Agora Energiewende, arrived at the conclusion back in 2015 that in many parts of the world solar energy will soon be the most inexpensive source of electricity.

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[NNadir]

1. We'll put this awful misrepresentation as an "alternate fact." The capacity utilization of solar...

garbage is lucky to operate at between 10 and 20% of capacity utilization, meaning that the trillions of dollars squandered on this technology amounts to the equivalent of maybe 30 to 60 gas powered plants, and, of course, the gas plants do not require redundancy and/or storage systems.

If we are overly generous but not inclined to lie, as the solar industry continuously does, we can assume that all of the solar capacity on the planet is the equivalent of sixty 1000 Megawatt plants operating near 100% capacity, if and only if they operate at 20% capacity utilization. (As a practical matter the plants operating at 20% capacity utilization are actually extremely rare.)

This means that after half a century of wild eyed cheering for this solar fantasy, and the squandering of huge sums of money on it, the solar energy production would - again generously - amount to less than 2 exajoules per year, 1.89 to be exact.

The world energy demand, by way of contrast, is on the order of 570 exajoules per year and is surely rising each year by at least 2 exajoules per year.

There is something Trumpian in "celebrating" this grotesque failure, as the text in the OP does.

The accounting of solar costs is also fraudulent. A plant that requires redundancy by its very nature can only appear to be cheap if it ignores the non-trivial costs of back up.

It is not merely regrettable, but extremely dangerous, to live in a world where deliberate fabrications - aka "lies" - are treated with any kind of respect.

In the last twenty years of insipid cheering for solar and wind energy the rate of degradation of the planetary atmosphere has reached unprecedented rates, now running at annual increases in carbon dioxide concentrations of roughly 3 ppm a year.

We need to stop lying not only to each other, but also to ourselves. Blank acceptance of lies can be and probably will be fatal.