Solar Cost Less than Half of What EIA Projected
30 Jun, 2015
Skeptics of renewables sometimes cite data from EIA (The US Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration) or from the IEA (the OECD’s International Energy Agency). The IEA has a long history of underestimating solar and wind that I think is starting to be understood. The US…
R e a d M o r eSolar: The First 1% Was the Hardest
18 Jun, 2015
Solar power now provides roughly 1% of the world’s electricity. It took 40 years to reach that milestone. But, as they say in tech, the first 1% is the hardest. You can see why in this chart below. As solar prices drop, installation rate rises.…
R e a d M o r eWhat’s the EROI of Solar?
4 Jun, 2015
There’s a graph making rounds lately showing the comparative EROIs of different electricity production methods. (EROI is Energy Return On Investment – how much energy we get back if we spend 1 unit of energy. For solar this means – how much more energy does…
R e a d M o r eTesla Battery Economics: On the Path to Disruption
30 Apr, 2015
Update: The Tesla battery is better than I thought for homes. And at utility scale, it’s deeply disruptive. Elon Musk announced Tesla’s home / business battery today. tl;dr: It’ll get enthusiastic early adopters to buy. The economics are almost there to make it cost effective for a wide market.…
R e a d M o r eChina Isn’t the Reason Solar is Cheap. Innovation Is.
28 Apr, 2015
“The only reason solar is so cheap is because China is dumping cells.” I hear this a lot. So let me correct it. Here is the price, as of February 2015, of solar modules, per watt sold in Europe. SE Asia (Malaysia, mostly) is cheapest.…
R e a d M o r eSolar + Wind, More Than the Sum of Their Parts
28 Apr, 2015
David Roberts has an amazing first post in his new job at Vox, on why a solar future is inevitable. Clearly I’m bullish on solar. My own reasons are that: 1. Solar is plunging in price far faster than any other energy source. 2. Solar…
R e a d M o r eWhy Energy Storage is About to Get Big – and Cheap
14 Apr, 2015
tl;dr: Storage of electricity in large quantities is reaching an inflection point, poised to give a big boost to renewables, to disrupt business models across the electrical industry, and to tap into a market that will eventually top many of tens of billions of dollars…
R e a d M o r eHow Much Land Would it Take to Power the US via Solar?
8 Apr, 2015
I’ve seen some pieces in the media lately questioning this, so allow me to point to some facts based on real-world data. tl;dr: We’ll probably never power the world entirely on solar, but if we did, it would take a rather small fraction of the…
R e a d M o r e2014 Was a Good Year: Better Than You Remember
21 Dec, 2014
Eric Garner. Michael Brown. The Sony hack and surrender to fear. 2014 seems to be ending on a crappy note. My twitter feed is full of people expressing good riddance to the year. 2014 was better than that. I want to take a moment to…
R e a d M o r eThe Learning Curve for Energy Storage
30 Sep, 2014
Energy storage prices are dropping fast. If you follow me, you’ve seen me write about this before. Energy storage prices have in fact been dropping exponentially for at least 25 years. Here’s a new piece of analysis – a model that uses a 20% learning…
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