The Solar Power Miracle Keeps On Growing

Here in Bridgeport, Emera Energy has added solar power to its natural gas facility and is currently producing an additional 246 kilowatts of power. This is just the latest example of the explosion of renewable energy in the last decade. Admittedly starting from a pretty low base, solar energy has increased 100-fold here in the United States in the last ten years. As installations increase exponentially, so does the reduction in price. Bloomberg New Energy Chief Michael Liebreich calls this the solar energy miracle and it is captured in one graph over at ThinkProgress:

Liebriech notes that every time the world’s solar power doubles, the cost of solar panels decrease by over 25%.  We are already at the point where the costs have fallen to $40 per megawatt hour and in the last decade the world’s solar capacity has increased from 5 gigawatts to over 225 gigawatts. It is expected that the US, China, and India alone will be producing over 350 gigawatts of solar power by the early 2020s. And what is called concentrated solar power, where solar energy creates steam to run turbines and which can be stored many times more cheaply that electricity, allowing energy to be produced long after the sun has gone down, is also expanding rapidly. Currently 5 gigawatts of energy is produced worldwide using this technique and the Chinese have made a large commitment to invest in this type of solar solution. You may not read much about it in the news, but the solar and renewable energy miracle is moving along at an incredible pace and its global impact will be felt far sooner than most people believe.