21GW installed PV worldwide in 2011

From the article: 21GW installed PV in 2011, but Europe isn't out of the hole yet



We hit a little speed bump in 2012 but check out 2015 projected 35 GW solar installations! That's a positive sign. Of course, I'd love to see that figure 10 times higher but I'm just impatient to get the heck off of fossil fuels.
:woohoo:

and I wouldn't worry overmuch about the slope of the red line. That's not installations in Europe... it's installations as a percentage of total world installations. It could just mean that they expect things to ramp up faster in China, the U.S.(etc) than in Europe. That's consistent with other expectations - particularly in the short term as some FITs change.

Europe has already done a lot on the solar front and is beginning to ramp up wind power installations, hopefully also wave power where appropriate. I meant no disrespect to the overall importance of Europe. I expect significant demand for solar to continue from Europe in future, perhaps the red line is a representation of the shifting investment into wind power, etc.

With the exception of the expected 1% decline in 2012, I'm jumping for joy over that chart!

just to meet future demand over the next 40 years. That would not replace ANY current fossil fuel usage. We would continue to wreck the ecosphere, we just wouldn't increase the rate at which we are wrecking it.

Nevertheless, this is but one year's installations and the slope of the line is attractive.

Solar power is never going to be at the front of the list, but it can play a MUCH larger role than it currently plays... and do so economically if advances continue (as there is every reason to expect they will).

World energy use in 2010: over 5% growth
...http://peakoil.com/consumption/world-energy-use-in-2010-over-5-growth/

The United States Energy Information Administration regularly publishes a report on world consumption for most types of primary energy resources. According to IEA total world energy supply was 102,569 TWh (1990); 117,687 TWh (2000); 133,602 TWh (2005) and 143,851 TWh (2008).
...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption
... this 143,851 Terrawatt hour figure includes oil, coal, renewables, etc., it's the total energy usage worldwide for 2008.


If I cheat a bit, use 2008 figure of 143,851 Terrawatt hours and then calculate 5% of that, we should reach a number we can shoot for as far as new renewable energy installs.

1 TerraWatt hour = 1,000 GigaWatt hours = 1,000,000 MegaWatt hours = 1,000,000,000 kiloWatt hours
5% of 143,851 = 7192.55 TerraWatt hours, equals 7,192,550 GigaWatt hours worth of new renewables installed each year to keep up with increased demand alone.

For instance, taking the 2011 figure of 21 GW installed, assume a median peak sunlight of 4 hours daily, you get 21 x 4 GW per day (84 GWh per day). With 365 days per year (assuming no downtime for maintenance or whatnot), 84 x 365 gives us 30,660 GigaWatt hours a year. That's not bad but nowhere near where we need to be in order to just break even on energy growth.

To find the number to shoot for we need to divide 7,192,550 GigaWatt hours by 4 hours then divide by 365: 4,926.4 GigaWatts installed each year.

We've got a *lot* of work ahead of us!

PS, what if we installed that solar in the desert where it would average 7 hours of peak sunlight a day? Only 2815 GigaWatts need be installed each year.

This is why I am a proponent of placing wind turbines where they get the best winds and placing solar where it would get the best sun.

Coal accounts for 26.8% of total world energy usage so if we channel that 2815 GigaWatts of renewable energy installs toward ridding the world of coal use we could do it in 14 years (assuming no growth in coal usage in the interim), (coal accounted for 38,497 TWh of world energy usage in 2008).