Utility-Scale Outshining Rooftop Solar As Global Solar Market Explodes

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Final Up to date on: sixteenth Could 2025, 07:31 pm

Diving into the Snapshot of Global PV Markets report from the Worldwide Vitality Company’s Photovoltaic Energy Programs Program (IEA PVPS) earlier in the present day, I discovered a handful of fascinating highlights. A couple of extra had been buried towards the tip.

We’ve already reported on the truth that solar energy now dominates new energy capability — 92.5% of recent energy capability was from renewables in 2024, and 77.3% of that was solar PV. Nonetheless, new energy capability will not be the identical as electrical energy era. How about share of electrical energy era?

Nicely, as you’ll be able to see on this pie chart, photo voltaic PV does certainly dominate electrical energy era from new energy capability from renewables. Sadly, the title of that chart is somewhat deceptive, as a result of it appears prefer it’s referring to electrical energy from all new energy capability. Nonetheless, it’s only for renewables. However a secret’s that photo voltaic PV nonetheless accounted for an enormous share — the bulk — of electrical energy from newly put in renewables.

“With a lower capacity factor than wind or hydro, the share of generation coming from PV is lower than capacity shares — despite this, about 60% of new generation form renewable sources was from PV,” the IEA writes.

So, sure, photo voltaic is dominating new electrical energy era.

There’s another fascinating pattern, although, that’s maybe not as catchy of a headline — however it’s what I put within the headline anyway, as a result of it’s what actually struck me as a brand new bit of data and there are some aspect factors to make about it.

Utility-scale photo voltaic and rooftop photo voltaic had been nearly evenly break up for a number of years there, however prior to now couple of years, utility-scale photo voltaic has actually grown by leaps and bounds. As a lot as rooftop solar energy has exploded, utility-scale photo voltaic has considerably outshone it.

What we’re seeing is the tip section of a superior know-how taking up the electrical energy era market. Photo voltaic PV prices have come down for many years, however now they’re so low that nothing can actually compete more often than not. Whereas the decrease prices assist rooftop photo voltaic to proceed rising, it’s actually superpowering utility-scale photo voltaic. Utility-scale photo voltaic competes on an enormous scale with different massive-scale energy initiatives, and because it has develop into unbeatable, it’s rising at an unprecedented scale.