In 2017 more solar photovoltaic (PV) electricity generating capacity was installed than the net additions of coal, gas and nuclear combined.[1] The remarkable growth of the solar industry (from about 1 GW deployments in 2004 to almost 100 GW in 2017) was not predicted.[2] What could the geothermal industry learn from this success with the hope of duplicating it? In the 1980s, solar thermal electricity far exceeded solar PV. The Solar Energy Generating Systems (SEGS) were commissioned in California between 1984 and 1990 with a total generating capacity of 354 MW, which was more than the global installed solar PV capacity at that time. Now, the global solar PV capacity is over 400 GW, compared with about 5 GW of solar thermal capacity. While there are many factors that have contributed (that will be discussed in the full paper), the success of solar PV has come largely from two factors: 1) Grass roots support for it: many environmentalists have seen solar PV as a way that individuals can participate in a renewable electricity revolution and have lobbied for government support to facilitate that happening in a big way. And 2) The modularity of PV allowed it to be tested in small size systems. The learning from those small systems (e.g. 1 kW) enabled the technology to evolve quickly and with less cost, compared with the solar thermal systems that have typically needed to be at least one thousand times bigger, requiring much larger (high-risk and high-cost) projects during the early development. Suggestions of how these lessons can be applied (with modification) to geothermal will be discussed. [1] Renewables 2018 Global Status Report, page 18. [2] See, for example, Haegel, et al, Terawatt-scale photovoltaics: Trajectories and challenges, Science, Vol 356(6334), pp. 141-143, 2017, second figure.

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