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2,000 MW Of Solar Reached In Australia
Declining PV prices, incentives, and the fear of losing incentives have caused a surge in solar installations in Australia. The result has been that the country has reached 2,000 MW of installed solar PV.
Australia solar roofs via Shutterstock
In July, there were about 1,700 MW of solar PV on an estimated 750,000 homes. This figure was about 10% of the total number of homes in the country. Currently, however, Australia’s main power source is still coal. Queensland and NSW are two of the areas with the most solar PV.
(For the sake of comparison, note that Germany installed 1,000 MW of solar in just September of 2012!)
As indicated by this long write-up on CleanTechnica awhile back, the way forward in Australia is not entirely clear: “Those on the inside of the PV industry can smell economic parity; we can see it and taste it in many parts of the world, including Australia’s retail market and we know how fast it is going to accelerate. It won’t come without bumps and wobbles and it isn’t a silver bullet. But it is grossly underestimated and with their own confirmation bias I suspect the deniers are failing to open up to what’s really going on around them.”
Australia’s solar power future is likely to be very bright, with 15 GW of concentrated solar power potential alone.
2012-11-13 08:20:37
Source: http://cleantechnica.com/2012/11/13/2000-mw-of-solar-reached-in-australia/
Source:
These ‘feel good’ articles on photovoltaic electric installations are next to useless. The defining characteristic of power production is how much energy does it produce and what is its reliability. These articles only quote power in Watts (an instantaneous measurement) and say nothing about the availability of the power over time. To properly evaluate an installation, it must be know how much energy (measured in Joules or Watt-Hours) is produced and the distribution over time when the energy can be used.
The valuable product of a power installation is the energy. A photovoltaic cell converts light (when there is enough of it) into a voltage potential. The power produced is about one Watt per square foot at 1.5 volts. If daylight is available for 16 hours a day, the cell will produce 16 Watt Hours of energy, but nothing at night. Sixteen Watt-Hours at 1.5 Volts is next to useless without a power converter.
The article never mentions the cost of the cells, converters, energy to construct, or duty cycle of the energy produced. The installation has a negative impact (except to make people ‘feel’ good) until the value of the energy reaches the value of the money expended to build it. Only after reaching break even on the investment can it be claimed the solar power installation has been worthwhile.
Just call it what it is without all the denier mumbo jumbo.
Roof top solar is useless
There, one line and it’s done.