8 ms·

Solar is winning the energy race

107 points by doener 7mo ago

mytailorisrich 7mo ago
Thank you, China. One question I have with solar is: what is the reasonable maximum it can produce as a proportion of each country's needs? Solar is the most guaranteed to be intermittent electricity source around, and can have high seasonality, too.
- metalman 7mo ago
  I live off grid, right on the 45'th parallel, and experience 4 full seasons. The solar array and battery bank I have is built from self sourced miss matched panels, and used batteries, it provides power for my house and a significant portion of my business (welding power is from an engine driven welder). In 10 years it has not just amortised it's costs, it has made me money, and qualifies as a tax right off. My up time is better than the grid. The simple fact is that solar plus batteries is a complete solution for 90% + of the worlds population. One of my side projects was to remove the alternator from the "truckasaurus" and mount solar pv as the only electrical power for starting, lights, etc. It was marginal, but I ran it that way as my only vehicle ,year round, for years. Relevant?, yes! as my experience has shown me where the margin realy is, and there has been a great deal of technological improvements and cost reductions since I built my system.
  - cbmuser 7mo ago
    »In 10 years it has not just amortised it's costs, it has made me money, and qualifies as a tax right off.« Great, so basically the tax payer is subsidizing your energy consumption. Sounds like a fair system.
    - kaibee 7mo ago
      > Great, so basically the tax payer is subsidizing your energy consumption. > Sounds like a fair system. Yes, people voted for tax credits for solar/renewables. It is a fair system. You know what isn't a fair system? Fossil fuel externalities causing childhood asthma and rising sea levels requiring rebuilding coastal infrastructure globally.
    - usrusr 7mo ago
      Tax payer is funding a lot of resilience stuff. At least in places where resilience exists at all. GP is where emergency services will charge their radios once their generator fuel runs out. Or whoever the local community improvises as substitute to emergency services, if there aren't any. As a tax payer who doesn't have the opportunity to do anything like that I really don't mind subsidizing.
  - broken-kebab 7mo ago
    I have my quite positive experience with solar too. But "90% population" claim is unrealistic. For starters, solar needs batteries to be truly effective. Batteries need rare-earth metals which is a narrow bottleneck. It's fine to buy 4 batteris for yourself but procuring a million will raise prices and probably break backs of many projects. A trillion, and you probably igniting wars for resources. Also we can't multiply a homesteader's optimum a million times and expect it to be close to what a million people industrial city really needs. At a large enough scale everything gets different.
    - hnmullany 7mo ago
      Battery chemistries for grid storage are moving toward commodity elements and rapidly reducing reliance on rare earths. Sodium and Iron/Air batteries can take over fairly easily.
    - 3eb7988a1663 7mo ago
      Yet the US government just asked for $200 billion to materialize out of thin air to support a needless conflict. Even if it cost a trillion dollars, that is decades of long term energy independence.
- doener 7mo ago
  I think the key is to combine it with a strong, digitalized grid and a lot of BESS—a technology which is now getting progressively cheaper, just like PV. https://about.bnef.com/insights/clean-transport/new-record-lows-for-battery-prices/ https://about.bnef.com/insights/clean-transport/new-record-l... I believe it is realistic to expect that, in combination with other renewable energy sources such as wind (which, for example, generates more energy at night than during the day), biomass, and hydropower—along with the high level of grid integration currently taking place in Europe—the share of renewable energy could reach 100 percent in 10 or 15 years. Provided there is the political will to do so.
  - Moldoteck 7mo ago
    ren will not reach 100% in EU because of necessary grid costs and plain data that shows there are continental weather patterns that VRE+bess alone cant solve. Hydro is already mostly tapped and Norway+Sweden dont want interconnect expansion
- defrost 7mo ago
  From the article: Researchers at the Lappeenranta-Lahti University of Technology in Finland have worked out what a globally cost-effective energy supply could look like. Based on their model, 76% of the world's energy would come from solar. Wind power would make up an additional 20%, with the rest coming from hydro, biomass and geothermal energy.
  - mytailorisrich 7mo ago
    Yes, that does not really answer my question, though. A global average is somewhat interesting but with solar the situation is bound to vary widly by location. Also, does 'solar' then include battery storage?
    - defrost 7mo ago
      Australia isn't Norway, there are variations in land area, latitude coverage, existing legacy infrastructure, etc. - I'm not writing a country by country break down for you - the IEA has pages per major countries that show progress and plans. Solar includes energy storage - be that thermal, battery, hydro, etc.
    - pydry 7mo ago
      Areas where solar is much less productive (e.g. Norway, Canada) tend to have lower population density, more abundant hydropower potential (which also means storage capacity) and more wind potential. So, the ratio of solar, wind and hydro would be different under a 100% green energy scenario for them. They often have grid interconnects to countries where solar does produce a lot, too.
  - red75prime 7mo ago
    The heat and electricity energy storage need to grow to 46000 TWh [1]. The current value is about 10 TWh. [1] https://uk.eragroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Global_system_renewable_energy_LUT_2019_summary.pdf https://uk.eragroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Global_sy...
    - 7mo ago
- mmooss 7mo ago
  Connect enough grids and the sun is always shining.
  - cbmuser 7mo ago
    Yeah, just build a 300 GW transmission line from the US to Europe. It will basically costs nothing.
    - DamonHD 7mo ago
      https://www.earth.org.uk/note-on-EU-US-supergrid-interconnector.html https://www.earth.org.uk/note-on-EU-US-supergrid-interconnec...
    - izacus 7mo ago
      And it absolutely won't be used by MAGA and Putinist crazies as a tool of extortion.
  - Moldoteck 7mo ago
    that's delusional if you look at EU generation data unless you suggest US-EU-Russia cable Edit for downvotes, check https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&interval=day https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&... winter data and navigate through countries and tell me how sun's always shining in EU in winter and what capacity factor it can get in certain timeframes
- awongh 7mo ago
  There must be some kind of calculation generally based on latitude? A sub-question that I would be curious about is how much climate in that region then affects the total possible solar energy. How much is the variance from a naive calculation just based on latitude? One other second-order effect is: developed economies are heavily weighted towards places that are cold / farther north than less developed places (as a very general rule). And, a lot of people don't realize how much less energy efficient it is per-capita to make a space human comfortable year round in a "cold" climate vs a warm one. -That's a new way of comparing economies where the price and stability of energy is better in a warm, more equator proximate location.
  - mytailorisrich 7mo ago
    > There must be some kind of calculation generally based on latitude? I am suspecting the same. Thanks for the reply, not sure why my comment seems to have ruffled some feathers...
  - 3eb7988a1663 7mo ago
    You can look at maps of solar insolation[0] - these give you typical levels of solar input. There is of course weather variations, but the long-term trends should be consistent. One thing that can catch me is how much more north Europe is than basically all of the USA. The general solar insolation is worse, yet they are still doing a healthy business of solar. The panels are so cheap that even if you are in a crummy environment, you can just add more. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_irradiance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_irradiance
    - mytailorisrich 7mo ago
      Yes, Europe is very North. Also comparing with China: Beijing is the same latitude as Madrid.
- patall 7mo ago
  It depends on how much generation you expect to 'waste'. Many plans are targetting a lot more generation than demand, with numbers sometimes stated as 300% generation potential for solar plus wind.
cbmuser 7mo ago
[flagged]
- adjejmxbdjdn 7mo ago
  That’s a lot of text, none of which even attempts to refute the factual claim that solar’s generation share has increased from 1% in 2015 to 10% in 2025. Also, talking of subsidies, the reason renewables like solar need subsidies is because its fossil fuel competitors not only get heavy subsidies, they get massive states to enter trillion dollar wars to secure fossil fuels. They get a tiny fraction of the costs that governments all over the world are paying for fossil fuels and solar alone is already grown to double digit market share in about a decade from basically nothing.
  - casey2 7mo ago
    [flagged]
- micwag 7mo ago
  > Germany has still over 100 active coal-fired power plants No, Germany has 97 coal BLOCKS in its power plants (down from 150 in 5 years), but those are NOT all active. Also Germany's coal consumption is at an all time low, down a third in only 5 years.
  - Moldoteck 7mo ago
    fyi it's mostly because of becoming net importer and deindustrialization. Amount of low carbon TWh is unchanged since 2015
- mixermachine 7mo ago
  The article states the same solar production numbers as your comment. I agree that the headline is overly positive but the ramp up of solar can't really be denied. Change at this scale is sadly slow in this rather conservative sector. The biggest thing is truly that solar has now reached a price tag where it just makes sense to replace other sources. You don't need to think about the environment any more to prefer it.
tiku 7mo ago
[flagged]
- Moldoteck 7mo ago
  it's winning regardless - every kwh of solar is a kwh less of fossils. You can achieve even deeper decarbonization with nuclear but the perfect shouldnt be the enemy of good. There are countries where nuclear is politically hard and changing ppl's opinions is hard too. So it's either ren+ some fossil firming or just fossils
  - don_esteban 7mo ago
    Another advantage of solar that it is decentralized and difficult/too costly to shut off by a country bombing you (Ukraine benefits from this) (unlike a big centralized power plant). I think the biggest potential is in the 3rd world countries for which hydrocarbon import is a big drain on their convertible monetary reserves (especially now with the rising oil prices). A farmer with enough free land and significant diesel bills for his farm machinery would also benefit from having his own solar farm and electric machinery. Two future developments might be especially useful: 1) extremely cheap (sodium?) batteries (not necessarily ultra compact/light per kwh, just cheap). Moving in that direction but significant price reduction is still needed. 2) an ultra-cheap PV foil you can just roll out and not care too much about the longevity (not sure how feasible, but would be awesome and really handy in many situations)
    - Moldoteck 7mo ago
      full decentralization is not a feature but a bug imo - you spend a lot on transmission. Germany now spends 10x more than france on transmission and curtailment and has highest prices in EU. It's the best to have a hybrid - centralized pp and centralized solar/wind parks but distributed evenly across country. Ukraine had also massive loss of ren power because most solar+wind was in south (because of better weather) and destroyed by russia or captured. Electric machinery is good but crazy expensive, esp in farming sector. Eastern EU still buys bellorusian tractors because of their price... PV is already sufficiently cheap, the problem is new units start competing with existing units so gains are getting smaller unless you have lots of hydro or bess Agree about huge sums being spent on fossils, it's a strong grip and getting off isnt cheap either becaus of necessary grid upgrades
foragerdev 7mo ago
Solar is not less than revolution in Pakistan. Almost every home and factory has solar installed on their roofs. More affluent houses have almost gone off grid; others are selling back to grid and others who can't afford has their own small scale 12V solar panels to run fans in the scorching summer of Pakistan to save electricity bills. It is all done by people independently without much support from the government as ROI (if you are using full potential of your installed capacity, it can be as low as 1 year and afterwords it will be free) is much better on solar than paying the grid. I myself has got one my roof, 6KW with 5Kwh battery backup costing me 700K roughly 2500$. Now, I can use AC without thinking of electricity bills and the most importantly I do not have to face inconvenience of grid being not available in some cases for 24 hours. Now Pakistan is facing energy crises not because it does not have enough, because it has too much as people are generating their own and due to nature of the contracts with electricity producing companies' government has to pay them according to their installed capacity not by generated. According to a government report in 2021, 116,816Gwh was consumed commercially and in 2024 it stands at 111,110Gwh and in 25 and 26 in would be even lower. Isn't it insane?
- wartywhoa23 7mo ago
  > Every home and factory has solar installed on their roofs. Looking at Karachi's 2025 satellite imagery in Google Earth, I find this utterly overstated. Maybe 5% of houses have them on their rooves at best. And that is in the largest city in Pakistan, where people ostensibly have much more money to throw at solar panels than in rural areas.
  - GaggiX 7mo ago
    I'm not from Pakistan but Karachi is the only vertical city in Pakistan, most people lives in apartment buildings, I would suggest looking at other cities like Lahore.
  - foragerdev 7mo ago
    Sorry, I fixed it to "Almost every". I agree, "Every" is overstated. I have never been to Karachi, what I know about Karachi, Karachi weather is not as harsh as Punjab or away from coastline so, you might survive (If you are used to living without AC) there without AC. And further, its hugely densely populate area so a lot of people might not have roof to install it. And Karachi gets people from the whole country and most of the people are living there temporarily, they might not want to commit on installing solar system on a rented house. That might be reason, but numbers speak themselves. Source: [https://www.ceicdata.com/en/pakistan/electricity-generation-and-consumption/electricity-consumption-total https://www.ceicdata.com/en/pakistan/electricity-generation-...]
kwakubiney 7mo ago
Might be a noob question, but why can't EVs have solar panels on them directly so they can get charged just by moving around? Or why can't we have SVs(Solar Vehicles)? Why do we have to use solar panels on EV stations rather than just having them on the vehicles themselves?
- arjonagelhout 7mo ago
  There was a production car planned called the Lightyear One [0], originating from a Dutch student team, but if I recall correctly it was quite difficult and expensive to manufacture. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightyear_0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightyear_0
  - embedding-shape 7mo ago
    > but if I recall correctly it was quite difficult and expensive to manufacture More importantly, seems they stopped manufacture it because they made a new version, that was supposed to be available in 2025, but I don't think I've seen it anywhere. > However, in January 2023 Lightyear announced that it was halting production of the 0 model, redirecting their efforts towards production of Lightyear 2; Atlas Technologies B.V., the subsidiary responsible for the manufacture of the Lightyear 0, would be allowed to go bankrupt. As of 2023, the replacement, Lightyear 2, is slated to be US$40,000 and available in both Europe and North America, and to start production in 2025.
- defrost 7mo ago
  You absolutely can .. but in order to be self sustaining vehicles need to look somewhat like the builds that appear in Australian multi day solar races - ultra lightweight, extreme streamlining, zero driver comfort, no extras like cargo space and automatic rear doors, etc. Maybe in time efficiencies will get there. * https://worldsolarchallenge.org/ https://worldsolarchallenge.org/ * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4K0FD9Hh6XY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4K0FD9Hh6XY * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_lVdrHnbYo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_lVdrHnbYo Addendum: addressing the [dead] comment below > With 100% efficiency the area of the car is too small to produce enough electricity to drive. is false - Australia has been racing solar powered cars for a good many years now, clearly they generate sufficient power to drive, just not especially fast, with any reserve energy, or at night, with any real comfort, etc.
didgetmaster 7mo ago
I am confused. The article claims that solar is the best, cheapest source of power. It also claims that the Trump administration is undermining it in the US by cutting federal subsidies. If solar truly is the cheapest, why does it need any help from any government? It would seem to me that it should flourish in any capitalist society where money naturally flows towards the cheapest solution that actually works.
- hnmullany 7mo ago
  Solar still makes sense economically in the US without explicit subsidies - that's why it is still getting built. But the Trump admin is also with-holding permits and cancelling long distance transmission that would allow it to reach non-local markets. The fossil fuel industry is also sponsoring astro-turf campaigns on the local level to ban new deployments.
  - belorn 7mo ago
    Long distance transmission is part of the cost of production when the location of the production is non-local to the consumption. With-holding permits is stupid, as are bans on new deployments, but neither are subsidies. You can cut subsidies to zero and at the same time give out all the permits people requests.
- defrost 7mo ago
  The USofA is a broligarchy not a capitalist society, so there's that. Trump has his thumb on the scales, cancelling wind farms in progress via executive order, not cancelling the federal subsidies for fossil fuels, etc. There are always transition overheads to breach - in China the government there subsidised the non existant EV industry into being, now that's going gang busters the government support has dropped back to near zero.
  - sheikhnbake 7mo ago
    Broligarchy is the natural end stage of unfettered capitalism. We've arguably never been more capitalist.
bmitch3020 7mo ago
I really appreciate the Technology Connections take on renewable energy from solar and batteries including a recyclable component. With fossil fuels, the power plant has to be built, and then the fuel is constantly shipped in, which requires constant extraction. While solar panels and batteries can not only consume their fuel for effectively free, but at the end of their life, the materials in them can be recycled without needing massive mines for fresh glass, aluminum, lithium, silicon, etc.
casey2 7mo ago
Are dw writers ok? 2000 people died due to the nuclear accident at Fukushima?
- Gud 7mo ago
  There is a lot of FUD regarding nuclear power in Germany, don't be surprised.
- zapperdulchen 7mo ago
  "There have been no deaths or cases of radiation sickness from the nuclear accident, but over 100,000 people were evacuated from their homes as a preventative measure. Official figures show that there have been 2313 disaster-related deaths among evacuees from Fukushima prefecture." https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/fukushima-daiichi-accident https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-sec...
ZeroGravitas 7mo ago
In a race metaphor I'd say it is a car that has a higher top speed, is already travelling faster than competitors but is still accelerating. However it is still laps behind some competitors that had a head start. Is that "winning"? I'd say no, but is it going to win? Yes, obviously.
spwa4 7mo ago
The problem solar will create is that solar doesn't work for highrises. It works for suburbs. Electricity companies will be forced (more and more) to tax suburbs for nothing (for the sun, Louis XVI-style) to keep reasonable energy prices in cities. Unless of course, cities think ahead for once and city hall gets large solar collectors (at least the physical area) along power lines NOW.
- defrost 7mo ago
  Coal fired power stations work for high rises and for the suburbs. Battery backed wind and solar farms work for high rises and for the suburbs (see, for example: South Australia).
- mixermachine 7mo ago
  This seems quite strange to claim. Basically every city in the developed world already has power plants on the outside and a lot of wires to get the electricity in
cmxch 7mo ago
Only if you front load a lot of regulatory and fictitious “externality” costs onto the alternatives.
tsoukase 7mo ago
I try to be optimistic but don't extrapolate prematurely. The problem is not solar but storage and is not solved yet. I suppose the time will come that we will have to sacrifice part of the cheap solar energy to produce efuels or similar for our winters, transportation etc
- KevinMS 7mo ago
  almost nobody seems to get this. even if you replace conventional generators with solar, you still have to keep them around (and pay to keep them there) for when the sun is not shining, since there's currently no way to buffer the solar power.
mancerayder 7mo ago
I'd love for solar on my house. Unfortunately I live in a wooded valley in the northeast, first, and second, it's extremely expensive in the United States. That means that you can only take advantage of it outside of winter months (since the house will only get a few hours of direct sunlight), and that you need to pay a lot of money to get the panels and the electricals updated for that minimal benefit. I would have loved it, but I think there's a reason why places like Pakistan has them on every roof, and in the US we're not going in that direction.

107 points by doener 7mo ago

Thank you, China. One question I have with solar is: what is the reasonable maximum it can produce as a proportion of each country's needs? Solar is the most guaranteed to be intermittent electricity source around, and can have high seasonality, too.

metalman 7mo ago
I live off grid, right on the 45'th parallel, and experience 4 full seasons. The solar array and battery bank I have is built from self sourced miss matched panels, and used batteries, it provides power for my house and a significant portion of my business (welding power is from an engine driven welder). In 10 years it has not just amortised it's costs, it has made me money, and qualifies as a tax right off. My up time is better than the grid. The simple fact is that solar plus batteries is a complete solution for 90% + of the worlds population. One of my side projects was to remove the alternator from the "truckasaurus" and mount solar pv as the only electrical power for starting, lights, etc. It was marginal, but I ran it that way as my only vehicle ,year round, for years. Relevant?, yes! as my experience has shown me where the margin realy is, and there has been a great deal of technological improvements and cost reductions since I built my system.
- cbmuser 7mo ago
  »In 10 years it has not just amortised it's costs, it has made me money, and qualifies as a tax right off.« Great, so basically the tax payer is subsidizing your energy consumption. Sounds like a fair system.
  - kaibee 7mo ago
    > Great, so basically the tax payer is subsidizing your energy consumption. > Sounds like a fair system. Yes, people voted for tax credits for solar/renewables. It is a fair system. You know what isn't a fair system? Fossil fuel externalities causing childhood asthma and rising sea levels requiring rebuilding coastal infrastructure globally.
  - usrusr 7mo ago
    Tax payer is funding a lot of resilience stuff. At least in places where resilience exists at all. GP is where emergency services will charge their radios once their generator fuel runs out. Or whoever the local community improvises as substitute to emergency services, if there aren't any. As a tax payer who doesn't have the opportunity to do anything like that I really don't mind subsidizing.
- broken-kebab 7mo ago
  I have my quite positive experience with solar too. But "90% population" claim is unrealistic. For starters, solar needs batteries to be truly effective. Batteries need rare-earth metals which is a narrow bottleneck. It's fine to buy 4 batteris for yourself but procuring a million will raise prices and probably break backs of many projects. A trillion, and you probably igniting wars for resources. Also we can't multiply a homesteader's optimum a million times and expect it to be close to what a million people industrial city really needs. At a large enough scale everything gets different.
  - hnmullany 7mo ago
    Battery chemistries for grid storage are moving toward commodity elements and rapidly reducing reliance on rare earths. Sodium and Iron/Air batteries can take over fairly easily.
  - 3eb7988a1663 7mo ago
    Yet the US government just asked for $200 billion to materialize out of thin air to support a needless conflict. Even if it cost a trillion dollars, that is decades of long term energy independence.
doener 7mo ago
I think the key is to combine it with a strong, digitalized grid and a lot of BESS—a technology which is now getting progressively cheaper, just like PV. https://about.bnef.com/insights/clean-transport/new-record-lows-for-battery-prices/ https://about.bnef.com/insights/clean-transport/new-record-l... I believe it is realistic to expect that, in combination with other renewable energy sources such as wind (which, for example, generates more energy at night than during the day), biomass, and hydropower—along with the high level of grid integration currently taking place in Europe—the share of renewable energy could reach 100 percent in 10 or 15 years. Provided there is the political will to do so.
- Moldoteck 7mo ago
  ren will not reach 100% in EU because of necessary grid costs and plain data that shows there are continental weather patterns that VRE+bess alone cant solve. Hydro is already mostly tapped and Norway+Sweden dont want interconnect expansion
defrost 7mo ago
From the article: Researchers at the Lappeenranta-Lahti University of Technology in Finland have worked out what a globally cost-effective energy supply could look like. Based on their model, 76% of the world's energy would come from solar. Wind power would make up an additional 20%, with the rest coming from hydro, biomass and geothermal energy.
- mytailorisrich 7mo ago
  Yes, that does not really answer my question, though. A global average is somewhat interesting but with solar the situation is bound to vary widly by location. Also, does 'solar' then include battery storage?
  - defrost 7mo ago
    Australia isn't Norway, there are variations in land area, latitude coverage, existing legacy infrastructure, etc. - I'm not writing a country by country break down for you - the IEA has pages per major countries that show progress and plans. Solar includes energy storage - be that thermal, battery, hydro, etc.
  - pydry 7mo ago
    Areas where solar is much less productive (e.g. Norway, Canada) tend to have lower population density, more abundant hydropower potential (which also means storage capacity) and more wind potential. So, the ratio of solar, wind and hydro would be different under a 100% green energy scenario for them. They often have grid interconnects to countries where solar does produce a lot, too.
- red75prime 7mo ago
  The heat and electricity energy storage need to grow to 46000 TWh [1]. The current value is about 10 TWh. [1] https://uk.eragroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Global_system_renewable_energy_LUT_2019_summary.pdf https://uk.eragroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Global_sy...
  - 7mo ago
mmooss 7mo ago
Connect enough grids and the sun is always shining.
- cbmuser 7mo ago
  Yeah, just build a 300 GW transmission line from the US to Europe. It will basically costs nothing.
  - DamonHD 7mo ago
    https://www.earth.org.uk/note-on-EU-US-supergrid-interconnector.html https://www.earth.org.uk/note-on-EU-US-supergrid-interconnec...
  - izacus 7mo ago
    And it absolutely won't be used by MAGA and Putinist crazies as a tool of extortion.
- Moldoteck 7mo ago
  that's delusional if you look at EU generation data unless you suggest US-EU-Russia cable Edit for downvotes, check https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&interval=day https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&... winter data and navigate through countries and tell me how sun's always shining in EU in winter and what capacity factor it can get in certain timeframes
awongh 7mo ago
There must be some kind of calculation generally based on latitude? A sub-question that I would be curious about is how much climate in that region then affects the total possible solar energy. How much is the variance from a naive calculation just based on latitude? One other second-order effect is: developed economies are heavily weighted towards places that are cold / farther north than less developed places (as a very general rule). And, a lot of people don't realize how much less energy efficient it is per-capita to make a space human comfortable year round in a "cold" climate vs a warm one. -That's a new way of comparing economies where the price and stability of energy is better in a warm, more equator proximate location.
- mytailorisrich 7mo ago
  > There must be some kind of calculation generally based on latitude? I am suspecting the same. Thanks for the reply, not sure why my comment seems to have ruffled some feathers...
- 3eb7988a1663 7mo ago
  You can look at maps of solar insolation[0] - these give you typical levels of solar input. There is of course weather variations, but the long-term trends should be consistent. One thing that can catch me is how much more north Europe is than basically all of the USA. The general solar insolation is worse, yet they are still doing a healthy business of solar. The panels are so cheap that even if you are in a crummy environment, you can just add more. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_irradiance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_irradiance
  - mytailorisrich 7mo ago
    Yes, Europe is very North. Also comparing with China: Beijing is the same latitude as Madrid.
patall 7mo ago
It depends on how much generation you expect to 'waste'. Many plans are targetting a lot more generation than demand, with numbers sometimes stated as 300% generation potential for solar plus wind.

cbmuser 7mo ago

[flagged]

adjejmxbdjdn 7mo ago
That’s a lot of text, none of which even attempts to refute the factual claim that solar’s generation share has increased from 1% in 2015 to 10% in 2025. Also, talking of subsidies, the reason renewables like solar need subsidies is because its fossil fuel competitors not only get heavy subsidies, they get massive states to enter trillion dollar wars to secure fossil fuels. They get a tiny fraction of the costs that governments all over the world are paying for fossil fuels and solar alone is already grown to double digit market share in about a decade from basically nothing.
- casey2 7mo ago
  [flagged]
micwag 7mo ago
> Germany has still over 100 active coal-fired power plants No, Germany has 97 coal BLOCKS in its power plants (down from 150 in 5 years), but those are NOT all active. Also Germany's coal consumption is at an all time low, down a third in only 5 years.
- Moldoteck 7mo ago
  fyi it's mostly because of becoming net importer and deindustrialization. Amount of low carbon TWh is unchanged since 2015
mixermachine 7mo ago
The article states the same solar production numbers as your comment. I agree that the headline is overly positive but the ramp up of solar can't really be denied. Change at this scale is sadly slow in this rather conservative sector. The biggest thing is truly that solar has now reached a price tag where it just makes sense to replace other sources. You don't need to think about the environment any more to prefer it.

tiku 7mo ago

[flagged]

Moldoteck 7mo ago
it's winning regardless - every kwh of solar is a kwh less of fossils. You can achieve even deeper decarbonization with nuclear but the perfect shouldnt be the enemy of good. There are countries where nuclear is politically hard and changing ppl's opinions is hard too. So it's either ren+ some fossil firming or just fossils
- don_esteban 7mo ago
  Another advantage of solar that it is decentralized and difficult/too costly to shut off by a country bombing you (Ukraine benefits from this) (unlike a big centralized power plant). I think the biggest potential is in the 3rd world countries for which hydrocarbon import is a big drain on their convertible monetary reserves (especially now with the rising oil prices). A farmer with enough free land and significant diesel bills for his farm machinery would also benefit from having his own solar farm and electric machinery. Two future developments might be especially useful: 1) extremely cheap (sodium?) batteries (not necessarily ultra compact/light per kwh, just cheap). Moving in that direction but significant price reduction is still needed. 2) an ultra-cheap PV foil you can just roll out and not care too much about the longevity (not sure how feasible, but would be awesome and really handy in many situations)
  - Moldoteck 7mo ago
    full decentralization is not a feature but a bug imo - you spend a lot on transmission. Germany now spends 10x more than france on transmission and curtailment and has highest prices in EU. It's the best to have a hybrid - centralized pp and centralized solar/wind parks but distributed evenly across country. Ukraine had also massive loss of ren power because most solar+wind was in south (because of better weather) and destroyed by russia or captured. Electric machinery is good but crazy expensive, esp in farming sector. Eastern EU still buys bellorusian tractors because of their price... PV is already sufficiently cheap, the problem is new units start competing with existing units so gains are getting smaller unless you have lots of hydro or bess Agree about huge sums being spent on fossils, it's a strong grip and getting off isnt cheap either becaus of necessary grid upgrades

foragerdev 7mo ago

Solar is not less than revolution in Pakistan. Almost every home and factory has solar installed on their roofs. More affluent houses have almost gone off grid; others are selling back to grid and others who can't afford has their own small scale 12V solar panels to run fans in the scorching summer of Pakistan to save electricity bills. It is all done by people independently without much support from the government as ROI (if you are using full potential of your installed capacity, it can be as low as 1 year and afterwords it will be free) is much better on solar than paying the grid. I myself has got one my roof, 6KW with 5Kwh battery backup costing me 700K roughly 2500$. Now, I can use AC without thinking of electricity bills and the most importantly I do not have to face inconvenience of grid being not available in some cases for 24 hours. Now Pakistan is facing energy crises not because it does not have enough, because it has too much as people are generating their own and due to nature of the contracts with electricity producing companies' government has to pay them according to their installed capacity not by generated. According to a government report in 2021, 116,816Gwh was consumed commercially and in 2024 it stands at 111,110Gwh and in 25 and 26 in would be even lower. Isn't it insane?

wartywhoa23 7mo ago
> Every home and factory has solar installed on their roofs. Looking at Karachi's 2025 satellite imagery in Google Earth, I find this utterly overstated. Maybe 5% of houses have them on their rooves at best. And that is in the largest city in Pakistan, where people ostensibly have much more money to throw at solar panels than in rural areas.
- GaggiX 7mo ago
  I'm not from Pakistan but Karachi is the only vertical city in Pakistan, most people lives in apartment buildings, I would suggest looking at other cities like Lahore.
- foragerdev 7mo ago
  Sorry, I fixed it to "Almost every". I agree, "Every" is overstated. I have never been to Karachi, what I know about Karachi, Karachi weather is not as harsh as Punjab or away from coastline so, you might survive (If you are used to living without AC) there without AC. And further, its hugely densely populate area so a lot of people might not have roof to install it. And Karachi gets people from the whole country and most of the people are living there temporarily, they might not want to commit on installing solar system on a rented house. That might be reason, but numbers speak themselves. Source: [https://www.ceicdata.com/en/pakistan/electricity-generation-and-consumption/electricity-consumption-total https://www.ceicdata.com/en/pakistan/electricity-generation-...]

kwakubiney 7mo ago

Might be a noob question, but why can't EVs have solar panels on them directly so they can get charged just by moving around? Or why can't we have SVs(Solar Vehicles)? Why do we have to use solar panels on EV stations rather than just having them on the vehicles themselves?

arjonagelhout 7mo ago
There was a production car planned called the Lightyear One [0], originating from a Dutch student team, but if I recall correctly it was quite difficult and expensive to manufacture. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightyear_0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightyear_0
- embedding-shape 7mo ago
  > but if I recall correctly it was quite difficult and expensive to manufacture More importantly, seems they stopped manufacture it because they made a new version, that was supposed to be available in 2025, but I don't think I've seen it anywhere. > However, in January 2023 Lightyear announced that it was halting production of the 0 model, redirecting their efforts towards production of Lightyear 2; Atlas Technologies B.V., the subsidiary responsible for the manufacture of the Lightyear 0, would be allowed to go bankrupt. As of 2023, the replacement, Lightyear 2, is slated to be US$40,000 and available in both Europe and North America, and to start production in 2025.
defrost 7mo ago
You absolutely can .. but in order to be self sustaining vehicles need to look somewhat like the builds that appear in Australian multi day solar races - ultra lightweight, extreme streamlining, zero driver comfort, no extras like cargo space and automatic rear doors, etc. Maybe in time efficiencies will get there. * https://worldsolarchallenge.org/ https://worldsolarchallenge.org/ * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4K0FD9Hh6XY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4K0FD9Hh6XY * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_lVdrHnbYo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_lVdrHnbYo Addendum: addressing the [dead] comment below > With 100% efficiency the area of the car is too small to produce enough electricity to drive. is false - Australia has been racing solar powered cars for a good many years now, clearly they generate sufficient power to drive, just not especially fast, with any reserve energy, or at night, with any real comfort, etc.

didgetmaster 7mo ago

I am confused. The article claims that solar is the best, cheapest source of power. It also claims that the Trump administration is undermining it in the US by cutting federal subsidies. If solar truly is the cheapest, why does it need any help from any government? It would seem to me that it should flourish in any capitalist society where money naturally flows towards the cheapest solution that actually works.

hnmullany 7mo ago
Solar still makes sense economically in the US without explicit subsidies - that's why it is still getting built. But the Trump admin is also with-holding permits and cancelling long distance transmission that would allow it to reach non-local markets. The fossil fuel industry is also sponsoring astro-turf campaigns on the local level to ban new deployments.
- belorn 7mo ago
  Long distance transmission is part of the cost of production when the location of the production is non-local to the consumption. With-holding permits is stupid, as are bans on new deployments, but neither are subsidies. You can cut subsidies to zero and at the same time give out all the permits people requests.
defrost 7mo ago
The USofA is a broligarchy not a capitalist society, so there's that. Trump has his thumb on the scales, cancelling wind farms in progress via executive order, not cancelling the federal subsidies for fossil fuels, etc. There are always transition overheads to breach - in China the government there subsidised the non existant EV industry into being, now that's going gang busters the government support has dropped back to near zero.
- sheikhnbake 7mo ago
  Broligarchy is the natural end stage of unfettered capitalism. We've arguably never been more capitalist.

bmitch3020 7mo ago

I really appreciate the Technology Connections take on renewable energy from solar and batteries including a recyclable component. With fossil fuels, the power plant has to be built, and then the fuel is constantly shipped in, which requires constant extraction. While solar panels and batteries can not only consume their fuel for effectively free, but at the end of their life, the materials in them can be recycled without needing massive mines for fresh glass, aluminum, lithium, silicon, etc.

casey2 7mo ago

Are dw writers ok? 2000 people died due to the nuclear accident at Fukushima?

Gud 7mo ago
There is a lot of FUD regarding nuclear power in Germany, don't be surprised.
zapperdulchen 7mo ago
"There have been no deaths or cases of radiation sickness from the nuclear accident, but over 100,000 people were evacuated from their homes as a preventative measure. Official figures show that there have been 2313 disaster-related deaths among evacuees from Fukushima prefecture." https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/fukushima-daiichi-accident https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-sec...

ZeroGravitas 7mo ago

In a race metaphor I'd say it is a car that has a higher top speed, is already travelling faster than competitors but is still accelerating. However it is still laps behind some competitors that had a head start. Is that "winning"? I'd say no, but is it going to win? Yes, obviously.

spwa4 7mo ago

The problem solar will create is that solar doesn't work for highrises. It works for suburbs. Electricity companies will be forced (more and more) to tax suburbs for nothing (for the sun, Louis XVI-style) to keep reasonable energy prices in cities. Unless of course, cities think ahead for once and city hall gets large solar collectors (at least the physical area) along power lines NOW.

defrost 7mo ago
Coal fired power stations work for high rises and for the suburbs. Battery backed wind and solar farms work for high rises and for the suburbs (see, for example: South Australia).
mixermachine 7mo ago
This seems quite strange to claim. Basically every city in the developed world already has power plants on the outside and a lot of wires to get the electricity in

cmxch 7mo ago

Only if you front load a lot of regulatory and fictitious “externality” costs onto the alternatives.

tsoukase 7mo ago

I try to be optimistic but don't extrapolate prematurely. The problem is not solar but storage and is not solved yet. I suppose the time will come that we will have to sacrifice part of the cheap solar energy to produce efuels or similar for our winters, transportation etc

KevinMS 7mo ago
almost nobody seems to get this. even if you replace conventional generators with solar, you still have to keep them around (and pay to keep them there) for when the sun is not shining, since there's currently no way to buffer the solar power.

mancerayder 7mo ago

I'd love for solar on my house. Unfortunately I live in a wooded valley in the northeast, first, and second, it's extremely expensive in the United States. That means that you can only take advantage of it outside of winter months (since the house will only get a few hours of direct sunlight), and that you need to pay a lot of money to get the panels and the electricals updated for that minimal benefit. I would have loved it, but I think there's a reason why places like Pakistan has them on every roof, and in the US we're not going in that direction.