

How We'll Power The U.S. In 2035 - spidaman
http://www.fastcompany.com/1750005/what-will-our-energy-future-look-like

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1053r
Anyone who thinks that solar will only double in install base by 2035 hasn't
been paying attention. If it is, as the article says, up to 2% now, then by
2035 it should be up to a very large percentage of our current output.

The total amount of solar installed grew by 100% in 2010
[http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/14/us-energy-solar-
id...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/14/us-energy-solar-
idUSTRE71D4WJ20110214)

The historical rate of growth for solar has been more like 33%.
[http://solarisforever.com/category/compound-average-
growth-r...](http://solarisforever.com/category/compound-average-growth-rate/)

Therefore, one has to ask, what is going to change? There are billions of
dollars invested in scaling as quickly as possible. Are we going to run out of
silicon? Unlikely. Are we going to run out of rare earths? Nope. Are we going
to run out of space or demand? Perhaps, but not for a long time. I'll leave it
as an exercise to the reader to google for the sources to back those
statements up so that I can make my ultimate point in a reasonable amount of
text.

33% growth is doubling in a bit over 2 years. 10 doublings is a factor of
1024. So it is pretty reasonable to think that solar output will be well over
100% of our current output by 2035, and perhaps as much as 2000%.

~~~
r00fus
Solar isn't a baseload power supply so it can't replace other fuel sources
(nuclear, coal) without serious improvement in batteries or an electric car
revolution with V2G (vehicle to grid) support.

However, wind and solar while not baseload will be critical to our
infrastructure and ability to deal with power spikes. Much like hybrid cars
today, making a fossil-fuel generator that is specced to your high end of
demand is inefficient; you can get by with a lower baseload and very powerful
"on-demand" power (solar/wind+batteries).

------
joejohnson
That first graph is almost pointless, I think. The energy densities of the
different fuels being compared are vastly different. Therefore, measuring them
against each other by mass is irrelevant.

