Solar Power is On A Roll Globally says Huge New 2050 Solar Report

The Global Solar Forecast 2050 is to date the most progressive solar power report ever produced. The 38-page report forecasts all solar technologies and installations up to 2050, and predicts the switch towards carbon-neutral solar power, say researchers at Rethink Energy, a UK-based solar research and development firm.

All this is detailed in the brand new report, which includes a country-by-country breakdown of where this energy will go.

The report shows that solar is on a roll.  Today, we argue whether or not it will hit 200 GW of global installations in 2022. Solar power is growing so fast that it is bound to have growing pains.

By 2038, the report predicts it will hit five times that annual installation number, because governments, utilities and renewables firms will realise that not only is it already the cheapest way to generate electricity, and will get increasingly cheaper, but the emergence of battery energy storage makes solar a more predictable resource.

Solar Powering the Future

The solar report introduces the concept of “rooftop capacity per capita” and forecasts that countries such as Poland, Italy, China, the USA, Vietnam and even the Netherlands, will begin to chase the leader Australia in the number of rooftop solar installed per million inhabitants.

Solar may also be at the centre of the “green hydrogen” sector which could build momentum through to 2030 and then absorb a staggering amount of cheap electricity into the electrolysis process.

This will mostly be from cheap solar megaprojects in Australia, North Africa, the Middle East, and throughout China and the Americas, including irradiation hotspots like Chile.
 
The scale of the growth in annual additions could be staggering, progressing a huge 14.35% each year (Compound Annual Growth Rate) through to 2030, before falling back to the more prosaic 9.7% CAGR through to 2040.
 
The associated “growing pains” will be considerable, with problems finding and funding sufficient polysilicon, alongside heavy international competition in the solar market. New forms of solar will also emerge.
 
All of that can happen in the next 30 years, but also new superpowers in solar irradiation will erupt onto the scene, and places like Chile and Australia may build giant energy export businesses based on the power of both solar and wind.

Disruption in energy markets caused by the slowing natural gas markets means that consumers everywhere may be clamouring to put solar panels anywhere that makes commercial sense.

Look for a massive expansion in this as government pressure to make policy changes may see consumers rewarded for rooftop self-supply, smoothed by battery energy storage.

Rooftop solar power at its peak is projected to represent 59% of annual additions to capacity by 2050. Global annual solar additions could hit 617 GW in 2030, and peak at 1022 GW in 2040, before sliding back to a mostly replacement business in the run-up to 2050.

Repowering the World

The report also introduces a formula for calculating when solar repowering will happen, so gives a real insight into the relationship between module manufacture and annual additions.
 
“Today as we write this report, we understand that solar is actually rising in price day to day”, said Rethink Energy analyst Andries Wantenaar, lead author of Global Solar Forecast 2050: Country breakdowns of 22.9 TW of solar by 2050.

“But this is only due to the cramped supply of polysilicon, and this crisis will remain part of the pricing equation for some time to come, at least 4 or 5 years until polysilicon settles to being simply part of the supply chain once again”, he continued.
 
This report describes this process in detail, one country at a time, taking in the top 33 regions for solar output, whether that is now or at any stage during the next 30 years.