Milestone: 1000 Gigawatts of solar installed....

[woodgeek]

And 1 million gigawatt hours of energy produced in 2021.

Humans have installed 1 terawatt of solar capacity, generated over 1 petawatt of solar electricity in 2021

The homo sapien species has installed its first terawatt of hardware on Earth to generate electricity directly from its local star.

pv-magazine-usa.com

Global figures. About 120 kWh/yr per person on earth, or 330 Wh/day.person. Or 14W/person continuous.

Annual rate of growth over the last few years: 20-25%. Or doubling every 3 years.

Remember: solar is a joke and will never work. And its too expensive.

 

[woodgeek]

In terms of primary energy, 1 gigwatt hour is 588 barrels of oil, or 79 metric tonnes of oil.

So the energy produced by solar in 2021 corresponds to 588 million barrels of oil. Or 79 million metric tonnes. Or 24.7 billion US gallons of crude.

If we used it to displace oil used in propulsion using ICE engines, we need to compare efficiencies of ICE vs EV powertrains. The latter are more than 2-2.5X as efficient, so we would have displaced at least 1200 million barrels of oil per year, or 50 billion US gallons of gasoline. This would be about 3% of global oil demand. Or more like 5% of the oil currently used for light transportation worldwide.

 

[EbS-P]

So just the US peak consumption has been 720 giggawatt hours. For perspective. At least this happens during the summer (what happens when we all switch to heatpumps??).

Electricity demand in Lower 48 states reached a high of 720 gigawatthours on August 12 - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)

www.eia.gov

Evan

 

[woodgeek]

So just the US peak consumption has been 720 giggawatt hours. For perspective. At least this happens during the summer (what happens when we all switch to heatpumps??).

Electricity demand in Lower 48 states reached a high of 720 gigawatthours on August 12 - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)

www.eia.gov

Evan

Demand in that case will be higher in winter than in summer. And utilities will have to predict that peak, have generation ready and operate it. IOW, exactly the same as their current business model, but with higher capacity and a different mix of generation.

The coming age of cheap solar is an age of abundance.

The US had a 'abundance mindset' until about 1970 (and the oil shocks). Prior to that, energy was cheap, new sources and applications were always coming along (bigger engines, faster trains, jet aircraft). After that, all new tech and development has been energy constrained. A lot of wistfulness for 'the good old days' were for the joys of that bygone age of abundance that ended 50 years ago.

Cheap limitless renewable power... abundance is gonna be BACK.

 

[woodgeek]

Electricity demand in Lower 48 states reached a high of 720 gigawatthours on August 12 - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)

www.eia.gov

Looks like total US electrical energy usage in 2021 was about 4 million gigawatt hours. So that means that the annual energy harvest of the global solar capacity is enough to run 25% of the entire US grid.

 

[vbu]

But how much oil was used to produce this solar output? Both in production of the panels, and the maintenance for them?
I used to work in the offshore wind mill industry. I used to work on a ship where we prepared the seabed for the windmills to be placed upon, by making 'pancakes' of granite rock on the seabed. We'd spend about 6 months preparing one offshore farm, and burned 300.000 gallons of diesel oil every two weeks. That is just to prepare the seabed for installation. Then there's the transport to site, the jack up vessels to install them, the pipelayers, and then us again to cover up the electrical lines. Millions and millions and millions of gallons of oil are burned before the first kwh is produced.
After the windmill park is in operation, there are still several work ships in there every single day to perform maintenance on the turbines, also burning through thousands of gallons of oil every day. Then at the end of their life they have to be taken down and disposed of.
Sure, I'm sure when you do the calculations it generated more than it cost in oil over its entire life, but it's not near as green as everyone thinks.

 

[woodgeek]

But how much oil was used to produce this solar output? Both in production of the panels, and the maintenance for them?
I used to work in the offshore wind mill industry. I used to work on a ship where we prepared the seabed for the windmills to be placed upon, by making 'pancakes' of granite rock on the seabed. We'd spend about 6 months preparing one offshore farm, and burned 300.000 gallons of diesel oil every two weeks. That is just to prepare the seabed for installation. Then there's the transport to site, the jack up vessels to install them, the pipelayers, and then us again to cover up the electrical lines. Millions and millions and millions of gallons of oil are burned before the first kwh is produced.
After the windmill park is in operation, there are still several work ships in there every single day to perform maintenance on the turbines, also burning through thousands of gallons of oil every day. Then at the end of their life they have to be taken down and disposed of.
Sure, I'm sure when you do the calculations it generated more than it cost in oil over its entire life, but it's not near as green as everyone thinks.

Fair question. The embodied carbon on solar installs is generally lower than for offshore wind.

Discussed in this old thread: https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads...ar-pv-is-now-a-net-good-for-the-earth.159423/

Summary: Renewable energy equipment and install is indeed powered by fossil energy. While no one doubts that there is a net energy return over the life of the project, it does take some time for the system to 'pay back' its carbon emissions. For solar PV, this time is currently between 1-2 years (varying with the quality of the site), and decreasing over time as PV production becomes more efficient (to make it cheaper).

An ironic consequence of this is that if the payback was 2 years, and you doubled the installed base every 2 years (growing capacity exponentially) the entire enterprise would be NET ZERO carbon benefit until it stopped growing... every gram of CO2 saved would be offset by the needs of making new panels.

In practice, since the doubling time is 3 years, and the payback is (say) 18 mos, then the net carbon gain is only half of what it would be if the PV was not made with fossil energy. So my guess is that on a CO2 basis, the answer to your question now is 'about half', but improving with time. And a much smaller problem in a future 'steady state' renewable energy system.

 

[woodgeek]

Looked up historical data:

Global capacity passed 100 GW in 2012, so a factor of 10x in 10 years. And it passed a measly 10 GW in 2009, so that factor of 10x only took 3 years.

Current growth rate is still around 10x in 10 years, same trend as the last ten years. Will we get to 10,000 GW in 2031? Enough to run the US grid 2.5x over?

 

[EbS-P]

Looked up historical data:

Global capacity passed 100 GW in 2012, so a factor of 10x in 10 years. And it passed a measly 10 GW in 2009, so that factor of 10x only took 3 years.

Current growth rate is still around 10x in 10 years, same trend as the last ten years. Will we get to 10,000 GW in 2031? Enough to run the US grid 2.5x over?

Depends on what China does. One of those graphs show that most PV growth will be there. I think 10x seems high based on the graph in the posted link. A lot can happen in 10 years.