Dreaming Big

I threw mine first. NO! I threw mine first.
NO NO NO! I threw mine first!

The recently announced goal of 200 GW of PE in Germany will be sufficient to replace all the lost nuclear power with some spare left over to displace a quarter of their current coal power. Efficiency measures, LEDs and heat pumps specifically, will push another quarter of the coal off the grid by the time Germany reaches 100 GW ten-ish years from now.

The German example has lead the world to install around 100 GW of PE over the last half a dozen years. They've shown how to drive installation costs down below $2/Watt. They've said to the sun-baked world... Look here, if you can reach our costs with your sunshine you can make electricity for around 7 cent/kWh from your roof! Vat is nicht to love? It's not at all hard to imagine costs coming down to $1/Watt in the next few years for installs in China and India.

These low costs will drive installation rates well in excess of 100 GW/year only a few years from now. Those GW will be displacing coal, nukes, gas, diesel and wind plants. China will likely get up to a rate of 200 MW per week by next year. The US will reach this installation rate once we work our policy issues out. And so on with Brazil, Russia, India, South Africa, Pakistan, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and on and on.

The big dream goal is to reach an installation rate of 300 GW per year by 2025. This is from the current rate of ~35 GW/year in 2012. The 300 GW goal appears to be solidly possible considering the industry has grown 10 fold over the last 5 years. The guantlet has been thrown. It's a big guantlet.