Are we underestimating the growth of solar power?

June 26, 2012

Electricity from solar power is only a small fraction of electricity generated in the United States and across the globe.  In 2011 the total installed capacity of solar power was around 55 terawatt-hours, and the United States alone needed more than 100 times that much electricity in 2011.

Looking at things from the other side, and we see that there is an enormous amount of room and potential for renewable energy sources to expand and grow as their portion of energy generation in the world.

Taking a look at the graph below, we clearly see an exponential pattern in the growth of solar power consumption:

Predicting the future obviously not easy, however, a clear correlation like the one above can give us a statistically significant guess towards an estimate of the solar power growth of the future…and it is looking large.