2014 EIA solar data

[pleppik]

The EIA has published data for U.S. electricity generation for 2014: http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/

For those interested in solar power, here are the highlights:

• PV power generation grew 95% from 2013 to 2014 (almost doubled). This was the first year since 2007 that PV generation didn't at least double.
• All solar generation (PV plus solar thermal) in 2014 grew 103%. I think there was a big concentrating solar plant which came online in late 2013 or early 2014, so the solar thermal number grew a lot after doing not much of anything for many years.
• In 2014, solar energy was 0.45% of all U.S. electric generation, up from 0.22% in 2013. This is the third year in a row where the percentage of U.S. electricity from solar more than doubled.

As an aside, I read somewhere recently that the EIA statistics don't include any off-grid applications, nor do they include PV generation from grid-tied systems which is consumed on-site. I don't know if this is true or not (I have an email in to the EIA asking about this and will update this thread if I get an answer), but if it is true then the estimates of PV generation in the EIA statistics are likely to be several percent too low.

[solar pete]

Hi pleppik

Good find mate, it will be cool if you let us know of the response to your question, cheers

[bcroe]

The EIA has published data for U.S. electricity generation for 2014:

As an aside, I read somewhere recently that the EIA statistics don't include any off-grid applications, nor do they include PV generation from grid-tied systems which is consumed on-site. I don't know if this is true or not (I have an email in to the EIA asking about this and will update this thread if I get an answer), but if it is true then the estimates of PV generation in the EIA statistics are likely to be several percent too low.

Perhaps the off grid and consumed on site grid tie are not included, because there isn't a
way to measure & gather that info. Only a fraction of my generation actually gets to the grid.
Bruce Roe

[pleppik]

Here's the response I got from the EIA:

EIA does not attempt to calculate the amount of electricity generated by “off-grid” electric generators, except that we do report generation in communities, such as in Alaska and Hawaii, that are not connected to a regional transmission system, but only if the combined capacity of the power plant is 1 MW or greater. We also do not calculate or include the amount of electricity generated by customer-cited, net-metered generators, in the electricity generation data that we publish in our Electric Power Monthly.

The generation and fuel consumption data presented in the Electric Power Monthly are only from facilities with a combined generation capacity of 1 MW or greater; they may or may not supply power to a regional grid (as noted above). See the information in the FAQ at: http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=767&t=3

We report the capacity of distributed and dispersed generators, and for net metered systems (along with their calculated “displaced energy”), in Tables 4.8 and 4.9 of our Electric Power Annual: http://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/ . See the footnotes for those tables; the data source is the EIA-861 survey; see: http://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/eia861/

So the answer is that the official statistics only include utility-scale solar power plants (1MW and above), and do not include any generation from net-metered installations. So no residential solar, community solar gardens, or even commercial solar installations are included unless they are both over 1MW and sell power directly to the utility.

All the statistics I've seen show that there's a substantial amount of PV capacity that's in residential and smaller commercial installations. So it's likely that the official statistics are understating the amount of solar power being generated and used in the U.S. by a large margin.

I'm going to see if I can dig up some credible statistics that would let me estimate how much of our electricity is really coming from solar. EIA does have some statistics for net metering, but they're from 2013 and only count capacity not production. I don't think I'll try to tackle off-grid, though: you have to draw the line somewhere, and trying to find statistics on every solar-powered crosswalk sign and wireless repeater may be a rabbit hole too far even for me.

[J.P.M.]

So far, so good. Looks to me like that data is not much use in finding how much of the electricity requirements in the U.S. at least are met by residential installations of the type talked about on this forum.

[Amy@altE]

I don't think I'll try to tackle off-grid, though: you have to draw the line somewhere, and trying to find statistics on every solar-powered crosswalk sign and wireless repeater may be a rabbit hole too far even for me.

Plus a lot of the off-gridders don't want to be found, that's why they went off-grid.

[SunEagle]

Plus a lot of the off-gridders don't want to be found, that's why they went off-grid.

What about all the people that just turned off all their lights. Shouldn't they get credit for lowering the CO2 emissions.

[pleppik]

What about all the people that just turned off all their lights. Shouldn't they get credit for lowering the CO2 emissions.

Sure. It's just a lot harder to track than MW-scale power plants.

The energy intensity of our economy has gone down a lot since the 1970's, meaning that we're using much less energy per dollar of inflation-adjusted GDP. That's good all around. http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=10191

[pleppik]

I'm going to see if I can dig up some credible statistics that would let me estimate how much of our electricity is really coming from solar.

With a little digging, I think I have enough to at least make some estimates on how much power all our solar installations are contributing to the total. I'm not claiming great scientific precision here, but I think this is at least in the ballpark.

Executive Summary: My best guess is that in 2014, net-metered PV systems generated 0.2% of U.S. electricity usage, up from 0.1% in 2013. This makes the total solar power generation 0.65% of electricity usage in 2014, and 0.33% in 2013.

How I got these numbers: Digging around in the EIA database, I found that the EIA publishes annual statistics for the installed capacity of net-metered PV, as well as the installed capacity of utility PV installations. Unfortunately, the available statistics for these numbers are older than for the generation numbers I already mentioned. The most recent data for net metering systems is from 2013, and the most recent data for utility-scale solar capacity is from 2012. So I had to do some extrapolation and make some assumptions.

Production Factor: In 2012 (the most recent year where I could get both capacity and production data), utility solar capacity was 3,170 MW and production was 4,327 GWh. So the average production factor in 2012 for utility solar was 1.36 GWh/MW.

2013 Net Metering Production: In 2013, the EIA data shows a total of 5,101 MW of net-metered PV capacity installed. I made the assumption that these smaller systems are likely to be less optimal than a utility-scale installation (i.e. not as well sited, less maintained, etc.), so I assumed that net metered systems will have a production factor only 0.6 as good as a utility system. 0.6 is a total wild guess, and I intentionally chose it to be on the low side. So based on that, in 2013 the 5,101 MW of net-metered capacity would have generated 4,178 GWh, which is 0.1027% of U.S. consumption.

2014 Net Metering Production: Net metering capacity for 2014 isn't available yet, so I assumed that non-utility PV grew at the same rate as the published utility PV production (95% from 2013). That would give 8,166 GWh of net-metered production in 2014, or 0.1995% of U.S. consumption.

So there you go; the rest is just adding the numbers together and rounding things off a little.

[SunEagle]

With a little digging, I think I have enough to at least make some estimates on how much power all our solar installations are contributing to the total. I'm not claiming great scientific precision here, but I think this is at least in the ballpark.

Executive Summary: My best guess is that in 2014, net-metered PV systems generated 0.2% of U.S. electricity usage, up from 0.1% in 2013. This makes the total solar power generation 0.65% of electricity usage in 2014, and 0.33% in 2013.

How I got these numbers: Digging around in the EIA database, I found that the EIA publishes annual statistics for the installed capacity of net-metered PV, as well as the installed capacity of utility PV installations. Unfortunately, the available statistics for these numbers are older than for the generation numbers I already mentioned. The most recent data for net metering systems is from 2013, and the most recent data for utility-scale solar capacity is from 2012. So I had to do some extrapolation and make some assumptions.

Production Factor: In 2012 (the most recent year where I could get both capacity and production data), utility solar capacity was 3,170 MW and production was 4,327 MWh. So the average production factor in 2012 for utility solar was 1.36 MWh/MW.

2013 Net Metering Production: In 2013, the EIA data shows a total of 5,101 MW of net-metered PV capacity installed. I made the assumption that these smaller systems are likely to be less optimal than a utility-scale installation (i.e. not as well sited, less maintained, etc.), so I assumed that net metered systems will have a production factor only 0.6 as good as a utility system. 0.6 is a total wild guess, and I intentionally chose it to be on the low side. So based on that, in 2013 the 5,101 MW of net-metered capacity would have generated 4,178 MWh, which is 0.1027% of U.S. consumption.

2014 Net Metering Production: Net metering capacity for 2014 isn't available yet, so I assumed that non-utility PV grew at the same rate as the published utility PV production (95% from 2013). That would give 8,166 MWh of net-metered production in 2014, or 0.1995% of U.S. consumption.

So there you go; the rest is just adding the numbers together and rounding things off a little.

Overall solar is still a very small percentage of US power generation even if it keeps doubling the next 10 years which I doubt.

[pleppik]

Overall solar is still a very small percentage of US power generation even if it keeps doubling the next 10 years which I doubt.

Well, if solar power doubles each year for the next 10 years, in 2024 photovoltaic power produced in the U.S. will be somewhere around 663% of consumption. So, yeah, that does sound farfetched.

[J.P.M.]

Shouldn't some of those MWh be GWh ? Just sayin'.

[pleppik]

Shouldn't some of those MWh be GWh ? Just sayin'.

Oops, fixed.

But really, what's a factor of a thousand between friends?

[J.P.M.]

Oops, fixed.

But really, what's a factor of a thousand between friends?

So there you go, like you wrote, just adding numbers together and rounding things off a little.