{"id":6355,"date":"2015-06-16T07:44:34","date_gmt":"2015-06-16T07:44:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6355"},"modified":"2015-06-16T07:44:34","modified_gmt":"2015-06-16T07:44:34","slug":"sun-sun-everywhere-but","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2015\/06\/16\/sun-sun-everywhere-but\/","title":{"rendered":"Sun, Sun, Everywhere, but ..."},"content":{"rendered":"

I wrote back in May<\/a> about \u00a0the growth of renewables in electricity generation. It was a positive picture. \u00a0Today's post is a somewhat more sober one.<\/p>\n

A recent BP report<\/a> says that world-wide solar energy generation grew by 38% last year. \u00a0However, solar and wind still made up less than 3% of global energy demand. \u00a0At present growth rates, this will reach 8% by 2015, or so BP says. \u00a0As costs (particularly of solar) continue to fall, however, this will probably help boost the growth rate. \u00a0Even so, it will be a while before unsubsidised solar will be competitive with gas \u2014 although if you factor in gas's externalities, that might\u00a0be much sooner. \u00a0But nobody will be doing that any time soon.<\/p>\n

The problems of intermittency<\/a> loom large: no solar power at night or when it's cloudy; no wind power when there's no wind \u2014 or too much of it. \u00a0Better storage, and, say, a pan-European \/ North African smart energy grid are needed. \u00a0No sign of those either.<\/p>\n

Although we remain pleased with the output and reliability of the power station on our roof \u2014 Semington A<\/a> \u2014 we have no illusions about our ultimate reliance on the grid for most of the energy we use at home \u2013 that is, on coal and gas generation. \u00a0This must be the case for most schools that have solar PV on their roofs. \u00a0Still, such\u00a0schools have an in-built opportunity to monitor power generation and use, involving students in data gathering and reporting. \u00a0I hope that all such opportunities are seized and used well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wrote back in May about \u00a0the growth of renewables in electricity generation. It was a positive picture. \u00a0Today's post is a somewhat more sober one. A recent BP report says that world-wide solar energy generation grew by 38% last...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6355\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}