Official Projections for Solar Adoption May be Much Too Conservative

January 30th, 2016

Awake Goy

Official Projections for Solar Adoption May be Much Too Conservative

January 29th, 2016

Disclosure: I sell solar power systems in New Zealand.

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Via: FastCompany:

If solar power prices fall in line with other technologies, we could see continued price-drops of 10% a year. That’s according to an historical analysis of 53 technologies that finds a distinct pattern in how major innovations perform over time.

If so, the world could generate at least 20% of its electricity from the sun by 2027, researchers say, and thus allow us to move more swiftly away from fossil fuels than some official projections have indicated.

Mathematicians at the Oxford Martin School, in the U.K., base their forecast on Moore’s Lawâ€”the famous 1975 prophecy that computing speed doubles every 18 months because of the increased capacity of integrated circuits.

For the study, Doyne Farmer and FranÃ§ois Lafond pretended they knew nothing about the actual progress of technology, putting “themselves in the past” as it were. They then predicted how each of the technologiesâ€”from transistors to televisions to various chemicalsâ€”would play out, while normalizing out different rates of technological improvement and volatility.

“In contrast, the [high renewable] scenario of the International Energy Agency, which is presumably based on expert analysis, assumes that PV will generate 16% of total electricity in 2050,” Farmer says in a press lease. “Thus, even in their optimistic forecast, they assume PV will take 25 years longer than the historical trend suggests, to hit what is a lower target.”

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