The week in green numbers… solar forecasts, India blackouts

30: The Australian dollar amount per megawatt-hour cost that this week’s BREE Australian Energy Technology Assessment (AETA) report estimated that solar PV could fall to by 2050 – from a mid-point price now of $224/MWh.

81: The per cent jump in profit that US thin-film maker First Solar said it had recorded after recognising revenue for selling solar farms built using its PV modules.

600,000,000: The number of people in India some news reports suggested were left without power after parts of the country’s massive electricity grid collapsed Tuesday. “Almost certainly an overestimate,” says Technology Review‘s Kevin Bullis, “if only because hundreds of millions of people in India didn’t have grid power to start with.”

41,800,000: The number of people affected by a total of 3,000 power outages in the US in 2011, compared to 2008, when 2,169 power outages affected 25 million people.

285,000: The total number of acres – comprised of 17 sites on public land – identified by the US government as most suitable for utility-scale solar projects, with the combined potential to produce nearly 5,900 megawatts of energy, enough to power 1.8 million homes, according to the US Interior Department.

532,000,000: The kilowatt hours of energy that social media giant Facebook said its data centers and operations had used last year, emitting 285,000 metric tonnes of CO2e.

2,871: The MW amount of renewable electricity generation capacity that has been installed in California since 2003 – about 11 per cent of which came online during the first half of this year alone, according to a just-released state report. Another 2,740MW are scheduled to come online by the end of 2012.