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'Unstoppable force' of solar power propels world to 40% clean electricity

(news.sky.com)
177 points belter | 5 comments | 08 Apr 25 10:11 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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melling ◴[08 Apr 25 13:43 UTC] No.43621706[source]▶
“ And solar was the fastest-growing electricity source for the 20th year in a row.

It now provides 7% of the world's electricity”

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nasmorn ◴[08 Apr 25 14:31 UTC] No.43622242[source]▶
Exponential growth is unintuitive. More than a full percentage point was added last year and that will continue to accelerate. Even the IAE is predicting 14% share by 2030 and they have underestimated solar for the last 10 years now
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skybrian ◴[08 Apr 25 15:07 UTC] No.43622660[source]▶
The question is when it starts looking more like an S-curve. That’s hard to predict because it depends on energy storage.
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1. piva00 ◴[08 Apr 25 15:25 UTC] No.43622906[source]▶
Since there will be so much solar installed it's quite inevitable that energy storage will be also growing on a lagging but similar exponential curve. Solar is becoming big, and if a major impediment is storage which is not a hard problem like fusion to solve, there will be tons done to bring it into reality.

Even if the current solutions are inadequate, the same was true for PV 20 years ago, it just needed investment in R&D. Investment in R&D of grid storage is at the highest in history, and growing.

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2. whimsicalism ◴[08 Apr 25 15:49 UTC] No.43623174[source]▶
the calculations i’ve seen around storage seemed to indicate that we were not going to be able to meet the demand with batteries anytime soon except with stuff like pumped storage
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3. piva00 ◴[08 Apr 25 17:06 UTC] No.43624011[source]▶
It's really hard to model unknown unknowns, most models for photovoltaic 20 years ago never predicted the current state but here we are.

Current grid storage technology is a few breakthroughs away, we just don't know when it will happen but given the amount poured into R&D for it, the willingness of governments, and technological hurdles that are orders of magnitude lower than fusion I don't see why we can't expect it to become reality in the next 10 years.

As I said, it's lagging the curve of solar adoption, China has invested a lot in solar for their own power needs as an oil-poor country, their options are renewables and uranium, with the EV industry booming in China, solar being widely adopted, I don't see why they couldn't be at the forefront of grid storage as well in a few years (5-10).

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4. whimsicalism ◴[08 Apr 25 17:51 UTC] No.43624552{3}[source]▶
Seems like we should be building fission now while waiting for those prospective battery breakthroughs - I think the gap between current storage/$ and where we need to be to build out renewable 100% is absolutely massive. We shouldn't be fully banking on it closing to achieve climate goals.
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5. tim333 ◴[08 Apr 25 21:22 UTC] No.43626619{4}[source]▶
There are potential solutions without needing much cheaper batteries. If you over provide solar by 2x or 4x it may be good enough to cover much of the winter with batteries only needed for a short period overnight. Also the excess may get used for things like making hydrogen or aluminium.