Of course the graph is misleading, it really isn't showing anything of much significance, if you include the necessary caveats that are part and parcel of solar power. And you could have made it look quite different by using an x-axis beginning with ~2007 (when the giant subsidies started) and ending in 2022, last full year, and would improve the visual resolution over that period. And put 183GW at a position to create a square format graph.
Nuclear capacity has grown less than forecast due to political interference in the economics of nuclear especially including incredibly subsidized, low grade wind & solar, being dumped on the grid willy-nilly, by political mandate.
And solar is more than just non-dispatchable. It's also unreliable, seasonal and intermittent. With an extremely low EROI and extremely high resource input. Which makes its capacity, I will be more precise to keep you happy, CLOSE to useless. The value GWh of annual production is a far more legitimate and meaningful metric, although it is still far from apples to apples in comparison to rational hydro, fossil, nuclear & geothermal electricity sources.
Undoubtedly you are well aware of what I am talking about. I'm just adding this caveat for the many folks who see that type of misleading hype and think "solar will save the world" from the energy/climate change conundrum. It won't, in fact it is mostly worthless, with some exceptions.
You appear to have a few unstated premises (and a straw man or two) that you are using to interpret the chart and it's key takeaways, which your comments make some suggestion to.
Beyond that, a more accurate understanding of how power systems actually function and the economic realities that drive investment may serve you well. On the topic of what technology is best to "save the world", no technology is perfect and all.have challenges. The recent winter storm in the US with significant outages from many technologies shows the challenge of reliable power in adverse conditions.
If one considers emissions regulations to be a marginal cost of production (it is in terms of fines or necessary technology improvements in order to adhere) then it will indeed impact max production.
Your graph on solar PV growth is misleading. You can make any changing variable look like that by adjusting the scaling.
And measuring growth by capacity is also very misleading. Capacity of a non-dispatchable, unreliable, seasonal electricity source is worthless. At the very minimum the relevant variable is annual change in generation TWh/yr as in this graph:
Using that metric Nuclear max growth in per capita generation per decade is 10X the fastest solar PV growth and 4X the fastest wind growth of any country:
How the graph is presented doesn't change the values in the underlying data, and the resulting message, which is that solar forecasts have consistently been incorrect. Perhaps the underlying models used need to be updated.
As you correctly identified, other technologies are different and one is able to compare them to solar. However I don't think that was the key message of the chart.
The scale is linear on both the x and y axis, with the y axis starting at zero. This literally has none of the common scaling manipulation one might see.
I didn't say it did. If he started his graph @ ~2007 when the giant solar subsidies started and ended it in the last full year, 2022, and expanded the x-axis appropriately to see the yearly data accurately, and compressed the y-axis so the 183 GW capacity value would fit into a standard format square graph size, then it would not look steep at all, and would be easier to visualize the data.
The graph is, literally, a graph of actual installed capacity vs. forecast installed solar capacity. It's not in any way misleading.
Using the same metric, you'd likely find that nuclear capacity has grown by less than forecast over the same timeframe given unexpected shut-ins.
And, no, capacity of a non-dispatchable energy source is not useless. It's just not dispatchable.
Thanks for reading
Of course the graph is misleading, it really isn't showing anything of much significance, if you include the necessary caveats that are part and parcel of solar power. And you could have made it look quite different by using an x-axis beginning with ~2007 (when the giant subsidies started) and ending in 2022, last full year, and would improve the visual resolution over that period. And put 183GW at a position to create a square format graph.
Nuclear capacity has grown less than forecast due to political interference in the economics of nuclear especially including incredibly subsidized, low grade wind & solar, being dumped on the grid willy-nilly, by political mandate.
And solar is more than just non-dispatchable. It's also unreliable, seasonal and intermittent. With an extremely low EROI and extremely high resource input. Which makes its capacity, I will be more precise to keep you happy, CLOSE to useless. The value GWh of annual production is a far more legitimate and meaningful metric, although it is still far from apples to apples in comparison to rational hydro, fossil, nuclear & geothermal electricity sources.
Undoubtedly you are well aware of what I am talking about. I'm just adding this caveat for the many folks who see that type of misleading hype and think "solar will save the world" from the energy/climate change conundrum. It won't, in fact it is mostly worthless, with some exceptions.
You appear to have a few unstated premises (and a straw man or two) that you are using to interpret the chart and it's key takeaways, which your comments make some suggestion to.
Beyond that, a more accurate understanding of how power systems actually function and the economic realities that drive investment may serve you well. On the topic of what technology is best to "save the world", no technology is perfect and all.have challenges. The recent winter storm in the US with significant outages from many technologies shows the challenge of reliable power in adverse conditions.
If one considers emissions regulations to be a marginal cost of production (it is in terms of fines or necessary technology improvements in order to adhere) then it will indeed impact max production.
Has anyone seen a similar graph that shows the accuracy of IEA's previous forecasts on gas/LNG?
Your graph on solar PV growth is misleading. You can make any changing variable look like that by adjusting the scaling.
And measuring growth by capacity is also very misleading. Capacity of a non-dispatchable, unreliable, seasonal electricity source is worthless. At the very minimum the relevant variable is annual change in generation TWh/yr as in this graph:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-change-solar?tab=chart&country=IND~CHN~AUS~ESP~USA~OWID_WRL
Using that metric Nuclear max growth in per capita generation per decade is 10X the fastest solar PV growth and 4X the fastest wind growth of any country:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/nuclear-electricity-per-capita?tab=chart
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-electricity-per-capita?tab=chart
That is in an Apples (nuclear) to Rotten Oranges (solar) comparison.
How the graph is presented doesn't change the values in the underlying data, and the resulting message, which is that solar forecasts have consistently been incorrect. Perhaps the underlying models used need to be updated.
As you correctly identified, other technologies are different and one is able to compare them to solar. However I don't think that was the key message of the chart.
The scale is linear on both the x and y axis, with the y axis starting at zero. This literally has none of the common scaling manipulation one might see.
I didn't say it did. If he started his graph @ ~2007 when the giant solar subsidies started and ended it in the last full year, 2022, and expanded the x-axis appropriately to see the yearly data accurately, and compressed the y-axis so the 183 GW capacity value would fit into a standard format square graph size, then it would not look steep at all, and would be easier to visualize the data.
Ummm. Yeah, you kinda did.
No, I actually didn't. Reading comprehension, reading comprehension.
"You can make any changing variable look like that by adjusting the scaling."
You suggest the scaling makes it misleading. You wrote it. Reading comprehension....