GreenTech Media
For years we’ve likened the energy sector to the computing world, holding up Moore’s law as a guiding example proving that renewables will achieve grid parity.
Today, as panel costs have dropped 90 percent and adoption is at an all-time high, the analogy between the two seems even more fitting. Just like the massive mainframe disruption spawned by personal computing, distributed generation has already begun to challenge the centralized solar model favored by utilities, with no end in sight.
At an industry level, the evidence of a new distributed era is all around us. Fuel cells like Bloom Energy’s are enabling the C&I transformation to self-made energy. Combined natural gas power plants are on the rise, and microgrids are popping up in states across the nation.
The change may feel sudden, but for most of us, it’s been a long time coming. 2009 marked the beginning of utility-scale’s heyday. Investors interested in deploying capital looked at smaller 1-megawatt to 3-megawatt projects and realized that utility-scale solar had the same diligence cost.
