MaRS Blog - Innovation and Commercialization in Canada » Blog Archive » Here comes the sun…

"Here comes the sun" The Beatles!

http://blog.marsdd.com/2009/01/27/here-comes-the-sun/ : "The worldwide volume of photovoltaic installations (PV) in 2007 was 2.6GW. Of this, the German market made up 1,100 MW (41 per cent) - by far the biggest market in the world. Spain was the second largest market with 19 per cent of the volume. The US had about 10% and the rest was spread around on a number of countries with about one or two per cent of the market.The worldwide volume of photovoltaic installations (PV) in 2007 was 2.6GW. Of this, the German market made up 1,100 MW (41 per cent) - by far the biggest market in the world. Spain was the second largest market with 19 per cent of the volume. The US had about 10% and the rest was spread around on a number of countries with about one or two per cent of the market."
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"In total, Germany had 430,000 PV systems producing 3.8 GW in 2007 - almost all of which has been built after 2003."


This is against:
"55 GW - tech peak daily electrical power consumption of Great Britain in November 2008.[4] "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(power)

so much more to be done:http://www.abcarticledirectory.com/Article/Solar-Power--Basic-Principles/194070

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/10/AR2008101002450.html

along with tidal, wind, nuclear, fuel cells, hydrogen and general conservation by better usage and better design!

Chris Pattens Book "What Next" quotes:

"fill the tank of one SUV with biofuel and you use up the same amount of grain as it would take to feed an avg african family for a year"!!!!!!

...and we havent even got to the issue of water scarcity http://www.who.int/features/factfiles/water/water_facts/en/index.html and the huge rise in population and impact of climate change:
"The food required to give us our 3000 calories a day needs 3500 litres of water to produce it" (ref: UNDP UN development program)