Size matters: Installed maximal unit size predicts market life cycles of electricity generation technologies and systems

The electricity generation technologies and systems are complex and change in very dynamic fashions, with a multitude of energy sources and prime movers. Since an important concept in generator design is the “economies of scale”, we discover that the installed maximal unit size (capacity) of the generators is a key “envelope-pushing” characteristic with logistical behaviors. The logistical wavelet analysis of the max unit sizes for different fuels and prime movers, and the cumulative capacities, reveals universal quantitative features in the aggregate evolution of the power industry. We extract the transition times of the max sizes (spanning 10–90% of the saturation limits) for different technologies and systems, and discover that the max size saturation in the 90–99% range precedes the saturation of cumulative capacities of the corresponding systems in the US. While these universal laws are still empirical, they give us a simple yet elegant framework to examine the evolution of the power industry and markets in predictive, not just descriptive, terms. Such laws give us a quantitative tool to spot trends and predict future development, invaluable in planning and resource allocation based on intrinsic technology and system market life cycles.