Sunday, February 28, 2016

Solar power - Growth in production

In the last 3 to 5 years the cost of production of solar energy has come at par with traditional sources of energy. It is the reason why we are now able to see the exponential rise in solar energy production across the globe. 

The world leader in solar power production is Germany. Germany has installed around 39 gigawatts of solar power. During the year 2010,2011 and 2012 -- Germany annually installed 7 Gigawatts of solar power per annum. 

However recent data indicates that China has just surpassed Germany with an installed solar power capacity of 43.2 gigawatts. In 2011 China added 2.5 GW, in 2012 5 GW, in 2013 9.5 GW, in 2014 10.56 GW and in 2015 15.13 GW of solar power capacity was installed in China. 

In India where the installed solar power capacity was only 160 MW in 2010, today we have over 5 GW of Solar Power. In the last one year approximately 2.5 GW of solar power installation has been done in India and this will go up. 

So since the time prices of solar panels came to a reasonable level, countries around the world including India are tapping into the the vast amounts of available solar energy. India in particular gets tremendous amount of sunlight and in the future will be one of the biggest producers of solar power. 

This above numbers tell us why the prices of crude oil has come down. India gets far greater amounts of sunlight than Germany. India should produce more solar power than Germany.With development of cheaper and better energy storage technologies like ultra capacitors, people would start moving off grid, they would generate their own electricity. 

Solar power can potentially save our planet from all the pollution that is generated by combustion of fossil fuels. One just hopes that the exponential growth in production of solar power and installation of solar power plants across the world continues, along with increase in utilization of more energy efficient electrical appliances. 


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