John Brown stan account: Like if you just do a simple google search for how much generating capacity the US has, you get 1.3 million megawatts. If both that number and this chart are correct, it would imply we added one half of all our existing capacity in the last year, and I know that's not correct.

Always struggle getting a sense of scale with these figures. How much generating capacity does the US currently have? Every time I look it up, I get answers that are hard to make sense of.

Contender for favorite chart of all time: Predictions vs. Reality for solar energy.

Like if you just do a simple google search for how much generating capacity the US has, you get 1.3 million megawatts. If both that number and this chart are correct, it would imply we added one half of all our existing capacity in the last year, and I know that's not correct.

I think that chart is the global total, not just the US

Yep, think you're right

This is what the US total installed capacity looks like over time

Chart from this trade association, the full report is pretty interesting www.seia.org/solar-indust...

Solar Industry Research Data | SEIAwww.seia.org Solar industry research data for the United States. Information and graphs about the growth of the solar energy industry.

25% growth is bonkers. That's a 3 year doubling time. We can replace our entire grid with solar in 8 years at that rate

(I know we can't actually do that for technical reasons, but it's still cool)

It’s nice to finally have a hockey stick graph for something good.

I wonder how many of those are replacements for previously existing panels?

The issue (mostly) is that this graph is global, not national. I would guess not a ton because it only started ramping up recently and I can't imagine panels depreciate that fast, but who knows

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