Could Renewables Supply 40 Percent of Global Power by 2050?
By SpiralMan
http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/11/could-renewables-supply-40-percent-of-global-power-by-2050/
The fact that this question is even being asked shows both how powerful the propaganda against solar and wind has been, but also how the reality of its unstoppable march toward cost lowering is breaking down the resistance.
And no force, neither Big Oil nor any government has been more of a problem for the advancement of solar and wind then alleged environmental campaigners who consistently understate the potential of solar.
The fact that every last one of the IPCC reports on Climate Change consistently broadcast CO2 emission scenarios that assume that there is minimal contribution from renewable energy is a testament to this campaign.
Every one of the alarmist articles about impending ecological catastrophe has accepted these IPCC assumptions of Little Solar
I have seen the same thing with Greenpeace’s annual collaborative report with the European Photoelectric Industrial Association where every year for almost 10 years they have failed to make an accurate prediction about how much solar would be installed in the years to come. For a while, no matter if they increased the predicted rate of installation, reality beat their estimates by an ever larger margin.
I call this overall dynamic whereby alleged environmentalists talk of the need for solar and wind and urgent change, yet they almost always add in the claim that “renewables will likely only make a small contribution,” Damning Solar With Faint Praise.
I could easily insinuate ulterior motives, but I won’t waste my breath right now.
Instead I will just flatly state the following:
- Solar’s price drops at least Three-fold every decade, and has been doing so since 1970, ie. For 40 years!
- This year solar power reached parity with grid-delivered retail electricity to residential and commercial users if produced on large-scales, ie not just on your family’s roof, where it costs twice as much.
- By or before 2020, Solar will be as cheap as or cheaper than Coal, Oil, Nuclear, or natural Gas (King CONG), even at point of production utility grade wholesale electricity
- Solar’s worldwide growth rate of installation last year was 92%; it has consistently exceeded a 45% annual growth rate for a decade
- At that growth rate, and with the continuing plummeting of the price of solar panels, Solar power will produce < 400% of today’s Global Power by 2050
First Solar Has Produced 1,000 MW of Solar Panels
http://www.redherring.com/Home/25943
……
The company began commercial production in early 2002. It took six years to produce the first 500 MW and eight months to produce the second.
[How many weeks to produce the third?]
……
[1,000 MW = 1 Gigawatt = baseload electricity for 1,000,000 households or full load for 200,000 heavy usage North American households.
This company a few weeks ago announced that it hit production costs of ~ <$1/Watt of panel, ie. 10c/kWh.]
Even Thin Solar Can’t Weather Silicon Glut
http://seekingalpha.com/article/128375-even-thin-solar-can-t-weather-silicon-glut-barron-s
[First Solar is one of the many Thin Film solar companies that have arisen (eg Nanosolar) or retooled (eg Sharp Electronics) in response to a shortage of Silicon wafers.
For decades, solar panels were made from excess crystalline silicon from the computer chip industry.
Starting in 2001 or so, the demand for solar had grown large enough that the leftovers from the computer industry weren’t sufficient, so prices escalated for crystalline silicon.
Silicon is the second most abundant element of the crust of the Earth (exceeded only by Oxygen).
1/4 of the Earth’s crust is Silicon.
When you are looking at sand dunes, you are looking at Silicon. So there is absolutely no shortage of Silicon.
But until just recently, there was a shortage of the processed Silicon necessary to make panels.
No longer!
The higher prices of crystalline silicon stimulated a lot of investment in new fabrication facilities, which are just coming on line this year. Already there is a glut of Silicon.
The glut is far worse than most anyone expected, driving silicon prices from $450/kilo one year ago to about $100.
First Solar panels convert 11% of the sun’s energy to electricity, vs. 20% for comparable non-thin panels [ie Silicon]. But the firm admits that its competitive advantage evaporates the closer silicon feedstock drops toward $50/kilo.
So, we can now see that there is a serious dogfight between these two different technologies, and will drive the retail price of solar panels much lower, closer and closer to the price of production, which we now know via First Solar’s announcement, and by inference that they are facing serious competition via the lowering of the price of silicon, is $1/W.
In the end, Silicon will win.
It is everywhere.
It’s made from sand.
Sand is in deserts.
Deserts are baked in intense, predictable, cloudless sunshine.
Deserts are perfect locations for solar-powered, Silicon fabrication plants to make solar panels which will be located in these same deserts.
Making panels takes very little labor, but it does require some energy. Solar panels capture 20-30 times as much energy as it takes to make them right now, but energy capture efficiencies are growing while energy to produce them is dropping all the time. (Thinner silicon wafers and concentrated solar using mirrors and lenses focused on smaller wafer squares, means even less silicon is used.)
Since the solar energy which powers these factories will effectively tend towards a cost of $0, solar panels will ultimately cost only a little bit more than the sand that they are made of.
Cost per 1W of solar panels
1970 $100.00
1980 $28.50
1990 $8.50
2000 $3.00
2010 $1.00 (equivalent to CONG retail electricity)
2020 $0.30 (cheaper than CONG wholesale electricity; these version 2.0 technologies are already visible)
2030 $0.10
2040 $0.03
2050 $0.01
Looking at that price cheapening trajectory, it is quite obvious that solar power replaces every other energy source on the planet, and enables every single human on the planet by 2050 (10B – 12B) to be affordably energized to the same level as today’s Americans.
400% of Today’s Global Power will come from Solar by 2050
RSS
Archive
Mobile
