Solar Power Technologies Growth in the United States, an Integrated Four Pillars Perspective

Abstract

This paper examines solar power technologies growth in the United States (U.S.) considering the four pillars of the energy system: socio-cultural, policy, science & technology, and markets & companies. The study analyzed the growing use of Photovoltaic panels (PV) technology. The First Solar company was analyzed as a case study to understand the impact of the different energy pillars and challenges on PV technology in the U.S. As a general observation, it was found that solar power in the U.S. is an incredibly fast-growing technology. Solar power does however still only make up a relatively small fraction of the total power consumption in the U.S. - in 2020 of approximately 1.32%. Considering these two observations, solar power in the U.S. is currently in the middle of being a niche-technology and forming its own energy regime. The possibilities for solar power to grow further into a solid regime in the U.S. are supported by developments concerning the four pillars of the energy system. For the science and technology pillar we will focus on main technological developments and R&D. The markets-companies pillar will be discussed by considering the characteristics of main company First Solar and market developments. The social and cultural pillar will be explored by looking at the role of citizens, NGOs, and relevant cultural perspectives. For the policy pillar, we will focus on federal policy, some main policy instruments and implementation problems. Eventually this study explores two different scenarios of solar energy in the U.S: a business-as-usual scenario and a maximally optimistic scenario. In the first scenario solar power production will increase to about 5% by 2031 of the total power demand in the U.S. In the optimistic scenario it will be around 17% of the total power production in the U.S, an increase by a factor 3.4, depending on developments in the four pillars.