When are people ever going to START doing something?

[Sunking]

This statement is obviously a lie or you are very uniformed. You excluded the increased contribution of solar and wind. Wind and solar combined contributed gained at least 5% market share. You will stop at nothing to discredit solar.

You are Nucking Futs and refuse to accept facts. Learn to read Data and Graphs. Lay off the Kool-Aid and burn your Green Mafia membership card.

[DanKegel]

The EIA appears to have started tracking distributed solar recently, see
http://www.eia.gov/electricity/month...?t=epmt_1_01_a
which estimates total solar generation for 2015 (well, for year ending Oct 2015) as 37gwh.
Wind was much bigger, 181GWH.

http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy16osti/64720.pdf

is another source. The chart on page 28 shows solar was 0.5% in 2013, 0.8% in 2014.
Page 29 shows growth rates - wind is growing slowly, but solar's growing quite rapidly, doubling every 18 months or so. If it keeps up that pace, solar could catch up to wind in five years.

[J.P.M.]

The EIA appears to have started trucking distributed solar recently, see
http://www.eia.gov/electricity/month...?t=epmt_1_01_a
which estimates total solar generation for 2015 (well, for year ending Oct 2015) as 37gwh.
Wind was much bigger, 181GWH.

http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy16osti/64720.pdf

is another source. The chart on page 28 shows solar was 0.5% in 2013, 0.8% in 2014.
Page 29 shows growth rates - wind is growing slowly, but solar's growing quite rapidly, doubling every 18 months or so. If it keeps up that pace, solar could catch up to wind in five years.

While solar generation does seem to be increasing with recent years' healthy yr./yr. % increases, and I hope that continues in a sane fashion, I'd make some observations:

1.) Depending on how the #'s are read and perhaps more importantly how they are interpreted and spun, solar is still only something like 0.8% of the total generation at present.
2.) If the recent trend of yr./yr. increases continue, solar might be something like ~ 20-30% of the mix in 10 or so years. Seems unlikely, but stranger things have happened.
3.) Baring any quantum change in plant efficiency, that'll take a lot of real estate and perhaps some perceived negative impact on the environment. The tree huggers may be looking at a Hobson's choice. If so, I'll bet on hypocrisy and ignorant self interest winning out.

[DanKegel]

1) yep, solar is about 0.8% of our electrical energy as of 2015
2) yep
3) we can compute the amount of real estate needed. http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/pdf/epm.pdf says we generate 4,114,760 + 11,856 thousand megawatt hours / year. http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy13osti/56290.pdf says utility-scale PV land use is 3.4 acres/GWh/yr. So total area required (not counting storage facilities -- maybe those can sit under the panels, ha) is 4.1 x 10^6 GW/yr / (3.4 acres/GWh/yr) = 1.2 x 10^6 acres. / 640 acres/square mile = 1875 square miles, about the size of Anchorage, Alaska. Doesn't sound too bad when put that way. (Unless I misplaced a few decimal points!) Of course, siting large PV farms isn't easy, but at least sheer area isn't the problem. And you might even be able to do dual solar/agricultural farms, see eg http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...6403211501103X

So I think getting to, oh, 30% solar is all about political will at this point. Beyond that will require lots of progress in storage and/or load management. Happily, storage technology appears to be ready for the kind of jumpstarting solar was ten years ago, I'm mildly optimistic it'll turn out to be practical. (Much more optimistic than about carbon sequestration, which seems almost as much a fantasy as fusion power to me at the moment.)

[ulrich]

You are Nucking Futs and refuse to accept facts. Learn to read Data and Graphs. Lay off the Kool-Aid and burn your Green Mafia membership card.

Pot, Kettle?

From your reference (emphasis mine):
"On an annual average basis, coal haslost generation share to natural gas and, to a lesser extent, renewables."

Admittedly, the share of solar in particular is small, but it is not zero.

The growth (at least through 2014) is also impressive (I wasn't aware the growth rate was this steep until I looked at the data due to this thread) - here are the numbers the EIA gives (in million Kilowatthours - don't know why they don't call them Gigawatthours)
2011 - 1727.283
2012 - 4164.04
2013 - 8724.482
2014 - 17304.137
Solar Net Generation Chart.JPG
(data available here: http://www.eia.gov/opendata/qb.cfm?sdid=TOTAL.SOEGPUS.A)

I doubt the growth will continue at this rate, but it does imply to me that the picture can change quite considerably in the next few years.

[Sunking]

At .5% is a fart in a hurricane. Sure your graph looks impressive until you scale it to size all generation and then it vanishes. Its a drop in the bucket.

[veritass]

Pot, Kettle?

From your reference (emphasis mine):
"On an annual average basis, coal haslost generation share to natural gas and, to a lesser extent, renewables."

Admittedly, the share of solar in particular is small, but it is not zero.

The growth (at least through 2014) is also impressive (I wasn't aware the growth rate was this steep until I looked at the data due to this thread) - here are the numbers the EIA gives (in million Kilowatthours - don't know why they don't call them Gigawatthours)
2011 - 1727.283
2012 - 4164.04
2013 - 8724.482
2014 - 17304.137
[ATTACH=CONFIG]n300088[/ATTACH]
(data available here: http://www.eia.gov/opendata/qb.cfm?sdid=TOTAL.SOEGPUS.A)

I doubt the growth will continue at this rate, but it does imply to me that the picture can change quite considerably in the next few years.

Exponential grow makes sense when solar costs are falling over 10% a year. The rates of solar installations is increasing per year. The second derivative is the key to understanding solar.

[ulrich]

At .5% is a fart in a hurricane. Sure your graph looks impressive until you scale it to size all generation and then it vanishes. Its a drop in the bucket.

One last response on this theme, and I hope you take it with the good-natured intent in which I write it...

You're quick to take others to task over imprecision, so I think it's fair to note that you choose two idiomatic expressions "fart in a hurricane" and "drop in the bucket" which are entirely different orders of magnitude of "small", and I would argue nowhere close to the actual scale of solar electricity production vs. total electricity production.

Here's my analysis:
Per the NOAA, the kinetic energy imparted by a hurricane is approximately 1.3 x 10^17 joules (per day, but lets posit one day for the purposes of this argument) (http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/D7.html)
Per this (http://jenab6.livejournal.com/5725.html) analysis, a fart has .00018 Joules of kinetic energy.

Thus, a fart in a hurricane is approximately 1.38 x 10 ^ -19 % - this is indisputably much smaller than 0.5%

Let's take a drop in a bucket
Per this (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drop_(unit)) reference, drop size can vary a lot, but the maximum size an IV unit can deliver is 0.1 mL
A typical bucket is around 5 gallons, or about 20L.
Therefore, a drop in a bucket is approximately 0.0005%, or approximately 1,000 times smaller than the percentage of solar electricity generation.

Continuing on the drop in a bucket analogy, using the actual scale of 0.5%, the solar generation would be the equivalent of 100 mL, or about 3 1oz shot glasses full of water.

Point being - it's small, but not non-existent, and not completely inconsequential.

(Also note per Dan Kegel's references above, in 2015, the number may be closer to 1%)

[veritass]

One last response on this theme, and I hope you take it with the good-natured intent in which I write it...

You're quick to take others to task over imprecision, so I think it's fair to note that you choose two idiomatic expressions "fart in a hurricane" and "drop in the bucket" which are entirely different orders of magnitude of "small", and I would argue nowhere close to the actual scale of solar electricity production vs. total electricity production.

Here's my analysis:
Per the NOAA, the kinetic energy imparted by a hurricane is approximately 1.3 x 10^17 joules (per day, but lets posit one day for the purposes of this argument) (http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/D7.html)
Per this (http://jenab6.livejournal.com/5725.html) analysis, a fart has .00018 Joules of kinetic energy.

Thus, a fart in a hurricane is approximately 1.38 x 10 ^ -19 % - this is indisputably much smaller than 0.5%

Let's take a drop in a bucket
Per this (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drop_(unit)) reference, drop size can vary a lot, but the maximum size an IV unit can deliver is 0.1 mL
A typical bucket is around 5 gallons, or about 20L.
Therefore, a drop in a bucket is approximately 0.0005%, or approximately 1,000 times smaller than the percentage of solar electricity generation.

Continuing on the drop in a bucket analogy, using the actual scale of 0.5%, the solar generation would be the equivalent of 100 mL, or about 3 1oz shot glasses full of water.

Point being - it's small, but not non-existent, and not completely inconsequential.

(Also note per Dan Kegel's references above, in 2015, the number may be closer to 1%)

great analysis and argument.

[SunEagle]

great analysis and argument.

Sad to say but how ever it is explained the numbers come to say that solar power generation is still a very very small percentage of the total. And it will take many years and billions of dollars to get that % to anywhere near 30%.

[J.P.M.]

Re: All this business about farts.

I once saw a piece in the "Journal of Irreproducible Results " that equated the energy contained in a flea fart to that of an electron-volt.

Also, Further to Ulrich's post and perhaps adding some reinforcement, Living Large had some scholarly insight almost in the nature of a technical note, as to flea fart /human beer fart approx. constants of proportionality, along with some practical and useful mention of magnitude increase for Guinness vs. domestic beer.

Armed with all of the above, someone might be able to construct a probability density distribution on the chances of fart survival vs. hurricane magnitude against fart origin.

Perhaps that would alleviate or at least address some of Ulrich's well brought up and very valid concerns about precision, at least for farts.

Who knows, might even be a valid topic for a Master's thesis for some bio-mechanical engineering grad student.

[SunSolarPro]

Who knows, might even be a valid topic for a Master's thesis for some bio-mechanical engineering grad student.

Somewhere around the world, someone would be studying that. I'm pretty sure...

[J.P.M.]

Somewhere around the world, someone would be studying that. I'm pretty sure...

Somewhat along those lines, the journal I referenced had a rather short paper dealing with the question of the possible deleterious effects of peroxide on human brain cells, but that work was done many years ago. Advances in chemistry have probably made the paper anachronistic.

[SunSolarPro]

Somewhat along those lines, the journal I referenced had a rather short paper dealing with the question of the possible deleterious effects of peroxide on human brain cells, but that work was done many years ago. Advances in chemistry have probably made the paper anachronistic.

I'm so sorry but then I had an image of a man farting again and again with researchers just to study the possible effects of human fart. Gosh.

[J.P.M.]

I'm so sorry but then I had an image of a man farting again and again with researchers just to study the possible effects of human fart. Gosh.

Resulting in more global warming and more dead brain cells, both of which are becoming more apparent and harder to deny.