The market for solar energy can be termed partly sunny. Residential installations seem to be doing well, stimulated by government incentives, while utility-scale farms are just beginning. Let me start with some good news:
- The world PV capacity passed 100 GW (100 nuclear power plants--but, remember that you need to divide by six to gain an equivalent electricity generated comparison) last year.
- The carbon dioxide emission reduced amounted to 53 million tons, whatever that means. Well, let me calculate. An average car emits 5.6 tons of CO2/year. Dividing appropriately, the answer is around 10 million cars. Wow! That looks significant, but there are around a billion vehicles on the road, so this savings represents one percent of all auto emissions. Transportation is about a third of all greenhouse gases, so we are now down to 0.3%, a good start.
- 30 GW of new PV capacity was made operational in 2012, with Germany at 7.6 GW, double that of China or the USA. On a sunny day in May Germany produced 22 GW of electricity from the sun, half of the world's solar total, the equivalent of 20 nuclear plants, which will all be phased out in that country by 2023.
- Panasonic reported attaining a world record silicon cell efficiency of 24.7%, which confused me because the University of South Wales reached 25% five years ago. So I Googled the subject and learned that Microengineering reached 10.7% for a single-junction microcrystalline silicon solar cell. So it all depends of exactly what kind of solar cell. Wikipedia showed the following:
- Later this year in the Mojave Dessert the largest solar power plant in the world at 277 (392 MW in two phases) megawatts (MW), costing $2.2 billion, will begin providing electricity to 140,000 California homes. But, oh oh, it has a $1.4 billion loan guarantee from the Department of Energy. This Ivanpah facility is termed solar thermal, for mirrors are used. 3.13 GV (3130 megawatts) of solar thermal capacity was added last year in America.
However:
- BrightSource, the same company that is on track in the Mojave, appears to be in trouble with their 500 MW solar thermal plant near the Nevada border, and for another 200 MW system near Blythe, California.
- Earlier this month, German companies Conergy AG and Gehrlicher Solar AG filed for insolvency, while Hawaii's own Hoku also filed for bankruptcy, owing $1 billion to creditors.
- There is very little rain and a lot of sun in Spain, but it is in big trouble with solar. Why the crash? In short, solar energy is still too expensive, and government incentives mostly cannot be justified if your entire economy is on the ropes.
- Also, there is something quite troublesome. If solar and wind facilities have been breaking installation records by larger sums every year, why has the proportion of global energy consumption from carbon-free sources remained stagnant for 20 years?
The latest Renewable Energy News, out today, also features solar energy. One article is entitled:
This subject will be the posting tomorrow.
So what is the prediction for solar? Party-cloudy, but also, partly-sunny.
-
0 comments:
Post a Comment