Solar power shines brighter still
There are many gloomy stats around climate change and the impacts it will have upon our collective future. A much more positive and hopeful picture emerges, however, when we look at one of the ways in which the world is planning to address these changes: solar power.
In 2024, nearly 600GW of new solar capacity was created worldwide. To put that into more human terms, that’s enough to meet the current electricity needs of every house in the EU and the UK combined. The total amount of solar-generated electricity surpassed 2TW for the first time.
What’s most startling about the extra 600GW in 2024 is that it is 33% higher than the figure for the previous year. And 2023 marked an 83% increase on 2022.
Solar power has existed as a means of generating electricity for around 70 years. But it took 68 of those years to reach one terawatt of electricity output, and then only two years to double it. This is astounding, ‘hockey-stick’ growth.
Rising sun
Projections for coming years suggest that these increases will continue. According to the IEA, solar and distributed PV are expected to account for almost 80% of renewable electricity expansion from 2024-2030. The added capacity is predicted to reach 1TW annually by 2030.
We will need every watt of that capacity. According to common estimates, humankind currently consumes a total of around 17TWh, with the figure increasing each year by around 3-4%. (To recap on jargon: a Terawatt Hour is the amount of power that would be created by hypothetical 1TW generator in one hour).
The world’s electricity consumption figure is increasing for two reasons. First, the world is getting hotter, with more frequent, intense and widespread heatwaves, driving the demand for cooling. Second, more and more applications demand electric power, as systems running on gas, biofuels or oil are replaced with more modern, cleaner electrical alternatives.
The big switch
But what changed the picture for solar power in the early 2020s? What transformed it from an interesting but very minor contributor to national grids to the largest source of new capacity for the foreseeable future? Four things.
- Policy. Most leading governments are now seeking to incentivise the production of clean power in line with increasingly urgent net-zero commitments. This wasn’t the case before. These incentives can take the form of grants, favourable business taxes or direct intervention. The latter option has created very significant change. As most people know, China is at the forefront of solar power advancement. It has installed more than twice the new capacity for solar generation in the first half of 2025 than the rest of the world combined, with 256GW created in just six months. The effects of China’s direct action have changed the world, not least in terms of…
- Cost. In more market-driven economies, the cost of creating solar power is a more important driver to mass adoption than government incentives. Here, the key change has been the enormous increase in the mass production of solar modules. (China’s
mass adoption has eased the path for the rest of the world). Mass production has dramatically driven down the prices of components. Solar PV panel prices fell by around 90% between 2010 and 2023 (from ~$2/W to ~$0.15/W).
The cost of panels has fallen by around 20% each time global capacity has doubled.
There have been many doublings since 2010, and more are very much expected.
Complementary technologies have also fallen in price: the cost of lithium-ion batteries — key to making solar work over 24 hours, rather than just during daylight — has also reduced by around 90% in a similar period.
And, of course, renewable energy generators have the unbeatable advantage of relying on natural sources for their ‘fuel’, unlike traditional generators, which need their fuel to be drilled or dug up. The running costs are trivial in comparison. - Technology. Mass production is one of the reasons solar has become cheaper. But the underlying technologies have also become much more efficient, also making it less expensive to create power. In 2010, panel efficiency (the amount of sunlight that is converted to electricity) was around 15%; today it is approaching 25%. The development of bifacial panels (panels that can capture light from both sides) add an extra 10% to the power output of a panel. Considerable research is being poured into raising this efficiency still further.
- Reduced bottlenecks. Many of the obstacles that impeded earlier efforts to introduce solar power have been removed or mitigated. Historically, it was often difficult to acquire permission to build solar farms, and to connect their output to the grid. These were self-imposed, human problems. Weaker battery and management technology have historically meant that consistent output was difficult to achieve, as our Global SVP Edward Zhao points out in his latest blog post. Now, most of these impediments have been removed. Policy and incentives have developed and the technology in solar PV improved.
This technological leap is where Univers plays a significant part, with our EnOS™ Renewables solutions, helping to closely monitor solar plant conditions, optimise storage and power sales, and applying AI to plan for maximum efficiency. In Indonesia, for example, we have deployed cutting-edge Power Plant Controller and SCADA systems to optimize a pioneering solar-plus-BESS project, projected to generate approximately 93 GWh of renewable energy and offsetting 104,000 tons of CO₂ for the nation annually. Every customer accrues significant increases in efficiency.
The continuing rise and improvement of solar energy is one of the greatest success stories of the 21st century. However, there’s still a great deal to be done. Despite the rapid acceleration described, solar only accounts for around 7% of the world’s electricity today. But there is no reason not to be optimistic: all the conditions for increasingly rapid growth are in place.
The fact is, not only is solar power good for the planet, but it has also become the most cost-effective way to produce electricity we have. Literally everyone wins from its growth.
image credit: Photo by Mariana Proença on Unsplash
