Let's move on to solar photovoltaics, which along with wind is one of the wind and solar PV of the two technologies which are seeing very rapid growth worldwide and are most likely to take the lead and be the dominant renewable energy technologies going forward. But where are they now and what are some of their future prospects? Well, right now, 2019, they supply just under three percent global electricity. Three percent doesn't sound like much, but a few things to keep in mind. Global electricity production is very big, so three percent of a big number is also a big number. Equally important, that's three percent up from, we'll call it roughly zero, maybe 10,15 years ago. Almost all of that has occurred in the last 10 years. Very rapid growth, as shown here, where global solar PV capacity has gone up about 30-folds roughly as in the last 10 years and it continuing to grow very rapidly as you can see here. China accounts for the biggest single piece by country. But US, Japan, Germany, India, and many other countries as well. But just notice the acceleration, the very rapid growth in solar PV global capacity, over 600 gigawatts by the end of 2019. Another way to think about global PV penetration or the current market is percent of electricity. If you look by country, what percent of that country's electricity comes from PV solar photovoltaics. The world leader by country is Honduras, at roughly 15 percent. This is in 2019. But several other countries are over eight percent including Israel, Germany, Chile, and right around eight percentage is Australia and Greece as well about the same level. But that's by country. Another way to look at this would be if looking at smaller geographic areas. Several US states have numbers that exceed those by country numbers. Let's look for example at the US State of California, where in 2019, solar, which is mostly solar PV, though there's a little bit or another technology in there. But solar as a percent of total generation in the state was at roughly 20 percent in 2019. Notice the utility scale solar only. What does that mean? Well, of that 20 percent, 13 percent were big solar PV plants called utility scale, but the remaining, roughly seven percent were rooftop or distributed systems. A contrasting reshow in essence, is if you look at the US state of Hawaii, where just under 13 percent of all electricity across the state of Hawaii which encompasses multiple islands was solar. But of that, only about 2-2.5 percent was utility-scale, the rest was rooftop. As you can see, the ratio of utility scale to rooftop varies, but in Hawaii, in Massachusetts and in Vermont, and in California, rooftop systems are significant. The overall point is the solar PV industry is [inaudible] going in two directions. There are so-called distributed rooftop systems and a distinct market would be large-scale utility systems. Now why are we seeing this very rapid growth from a very small base? Well, policy matters, public preference matters, carbon goals, all of that's relevant. But what really important here is cost. Solar PV is to the point now where it is cost competitive, where it can be the lowest cost option for new electricity generation. Shown here is how the costs have come down at an amazing pace over the last 10 years depending which numbers, what time period you look at and how you measure cost. Roughly will cause 70-80 percent cost reduction over the last 10 years. For example, the levelized cost, which is an all end indicator that captures capital and operating costs, have gone from 38 US cents per kilowatt hour in 2010, down to on average of 6.87 cents per kilowatt hour in 2019. That's a global average. The costs vary within that. But that gives you a sense of the trends and how quickly the cost of solar PV have come down to where they are today. Another way to look at these costs would be in comparison to other alternatives. These data are for the US only. Let me explain what this graph is showing. We saw it earlier, but it's important to understand some of the subtleties of what this graph indicates. The thick black dash lines are what it cost to generate electricity from natural gas and that number on this graph is only for the natural gas itself. It does not account for the cost of the power plant. Notice, how it goes up and down. In general, natural gas prices have come down over the last 12 years, other than different time periods, 2013-2015 where they drifted up. But you can see that then coming down pretty much from 2015-2020. But each circle here, each yellow circle indicates a signed contract, virtual photovoltaic system. Notice how those costs have come down dramatically. The dash yellow line is the median of those power purchase agreement prices. Notice the crossover point was 2017, 2018, right around here, about 2017. Basically what that means is, on average solar costs less. Solar electricity producing solar PV costs less than electricity from induced natural gas on a per kilowatt-hour or per megawatt hour basis. That's supporting the point that PV has become or is at the point now where it's cost competitive. Or on average, I would say less expensive than electricity from natural gas on a per kilowatt hour basis. We're going to stop [inaudible] there and then pick up next video and talk about where PVS appear to be going in the future or its future prospects.
