Talk:Solar power by country

Error in figure 1 and caption?

Something doesn't add up in figure 1 and its caption:

"Growth rate of photovoltaic installations, as a percentage of total 2004 energy use. By 2007 less than 0.011% of energy came from photovoltaics - at a 40% annual increase this would reach almost 30% by 2030, or by 2015 at a 200% annual increase."

Starting from a total PV energy production of 15 TW*0.011%=1.76 GW, a 40% annual increase would give a total PV energy production after 20 years of 1.76 GW*1.4^20=1.47 TW. This is 1.47/15=9.8% of the total consumption (assuming consumption doesn't increase), not 30% as claimed by the caption/figure. Or am I missing something/doing the calculation wrong??

O. Prytz (talk) 05:39, 7 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Contradiction

These two statements appear mutually contradictory.

"The world's largest solar power plant is located in the Mojave Desert. Solel[11], an Israeli company, operates the plant, which consists of 1000 acres (4 km²) of solar reflectors."

"The 10 megawatt Bavaria Solarpark in Germany is the world's largest solar electric system, covering 25 hectares (62 acres) with 57,600 photovoltaic panels. [4]"

Perhaps the author can resolve this.

Ordinary Person 09:21, 22 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The second is a large photovoltaic plant. The first is a much much larger solar trough plant. Article sorted out. Rmhermen 17:32, 7 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Serpa

2007.03.29 - Serpa is now fully functional

PV or Solar Power?

This article is not clear whether it talks about PV only, or Solar power as a whole. Jdpipe 00:34, 8 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"But as all industrialised nations share a need for electricity, it is clear that solar power will increasingly be used to supply a cheap, reliable electricity supply."

Solar pv use is certainly on the rise, but solar pv can hardly be called cheap. It is positively high priced, can only compete with grid electricity when doing so on a skewed playing field, ie with one or more of the following situations:

grid connection not present
govt or someone else pays for part of your system, and you only consider your part of the cost
someone pays you to generate and use electricity - bizarre as this sounds, it is now standard practice in Britain.

The non-expert reader seeing the sentence quoted would think solar pv cheap, but its anything but. Tabby 12:59, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I took out "cheap" and some other stuff, but put "economic". The conditions that make it economic can be discussed if you like, and if you have a good source, but obviously the solar power is economic for some reason, and not necessarily limited to the reasons you suggest. Even in the US where energy is subsidized by the government supporting the energy companies, and where many of the costs of fossil fuel are externalized, there is a new capital business investing in solar capacity because the economics makes sense.

Am I missing something? Isn't the title of the article Deployment of Solar Power to energy grids? To me this means all types of solar power, not just pv. 199.125.109.104 06:22, 14 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Feel free to add any other solar technology you know about that puts energy into the grid. I know there's a big solar thermal plant in southern california; are there more? Dicklyon 07:27, 14 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Summary table

I moved the summary table over from PV. It would be good to replace the off grid data by CSP data.

Also a global list of solar power stations should pulled from PV and the CSP and hybrid added in.--Oldboltonian 20:11, 27 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to know the rationale for having a Total/capita column on the PV Capacity table. I also suggest putting a kWh output total on the table. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.229.196.79 (talk) 03:47, 7 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]