A massive increase in solar power generation capacity is already putting Australia on the fast track to a 100% renewable energy future.
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From pv magazine Australia
An academic living in cold Canberra retired his gas heaters a few years ago and installed electric heat pumps for space and water heating. His gas bill went to zero.
He also bought an electric vehicle, so his gas bill went to zero.
He installed rooftop solar panels that export enough solar electricity to the grid to pay for electricity imports at night, so his electricity bill also went to zero.
That Canberra academic will get his money back from these energy investments in about eight years.
I am that academic and I’m experiencing how rooftop solar coupled with electrification of everything provides the cheapest domestic energy in history.
Solar energy is also causing the fastest energy change in history. Along with support from wind energy, it offers unlimited, cheap, clean and reliable energy forever.
With energy storage effectively a problem solved, the required raw materials impossible to exhaust – despite some misconceptions in the community – and an Australian transition gathering pace, solar and wind are becoming a superhighway to a future of 100% renewable energy.
While the technological arguments for solar and wind power are compelling, it’s clear renewables have to overcome obstacles.
One is division over the impact of the rollout of renewable energy infrastructure. It has divided affected communities across the country and needs to be addressed. Generous compensation and effective education about large regional economic opportunities are good ways forward.
There is also the political debate about what form Australia’s energy transition even takes.
Yet, beyond those issues, solar offers unlimited energy for billions of years and provides the cheapest energy in history with zero greenhouse gases, zero smog and zero water consumption.
That explains why solar energy generation is growing tenfold each decade and, with support from wind, dominates global power station construction markets, while global nuclear electricity generation has been static for 30 years and is largely irrelevant.
In 2024, twice as much new solar generation capacity – about 560 GW – was added compared with all other systems put together. Wind, hydro, coal, gas and nuclear added up to about 280 GW.
There will be more global solar generation capacity in 2030 than everything else combined, assuming current growth rates continue.
Solar generation will pass wind and nuclear generation this year and should catch coal generation around 2031.
About 37% of Australia’s electricity already comes from solar and wind, with an additional 6% from hydroelectric power stations that were built decades ago.
More solar energy is generated per person in Australia than in any other country.
Solar is by far the best method of removing fossil fuels – which cause three-quarters of global greenhouse emissions – from the economy.
In Australia, 99% of new generation capacity installed since 2015 has been solar and wind and it is all private money.
The energy market is saying very clearly that solar and wind have won the energy race and energy policies are consistent with reaching the government target of 82% renewable electricity by 2030.
Solar on the roof coupled with energy storage in a hot water tank, an EV battery and a home battery allows a family to ride through interruptions to gas, petrol and electricity supply and that energy resilience can apply at domestic, city, state and national levels.
Balancing high levels of solar and wind energy to avoid supply interruptions is straightforward at low cost using off-the-shelf technology available from vast production lines.
New transmission brings new solar and wind power into the cities and also smooths out the vagaries of local weather by transmitting solar and wind electricity to where it is needed.
For example, if it is raining in Victoria and sunny in New South Wales, then electricity can be transmitted south.
Storage comprises batteries for short-term storage of a few hours and pumped hydro energy storage for hours to days. Together, batteries and pumped hydro solve the energy storage issues.
Pumped hydro energy storage provides about 95% of global energy storage. It typically comprises two reservoirs located a few km apart and with an altitude difference of between 500 and 1,000 meters.
On sunny or windy days renewable sources like solar or wind power are used to pump water into the uphill reservoir and during the night the water flows back downhill through the turbine to recover the stored energy.
The same water can go up and down between the reservoirs for 100 years. Global potential pumped hydro energy storage is equivalent to two trillion electric vehicle batteries.
Australia has about 300 times more pumped hydro energy storage potential than needed to support 100% renewable electricity. It already has three pumped hydro systems, with two more under construction.
Globally, the world has more than 820,000 potential pumped hydro sites, which is about 200 times more than we need to support a 100% renewable energy system.
From 2028, Snowy 2.0 will provide 85% of energy storage in the national energy market at a cost 10 times lower than equivalent batteries and with a lifetime that is five times longer.
There are those – often vested interests – who throw up arguments against solar energy, regardless of what the facts say about its merits.
Here are a few:
Most of the area in solar and wind farms remains in use for agriculture. The area withdrawn from agriculture to generate all our energy from solar and wind is very small, equating to about the size of a large living room per person.
Heat maps developed by researchers at the Australian National University show the vast number of good locations for solar and wind farms.
Hosts of solar and wind farms (and their neighbours) are generously compensated, while hosts of transmission lines are paid more than $200,000 per km.
All the solar farms, wind farms, transmission and pumped hydro are in regional areas which means that vast amounts of money and employment are flowing into regional areas.
Solar farms are usually invisible from other properties. Open cut roads, buildings, open cut coal mines and gas fields are also visible in the landscape. People in cities have a far more cluttered view from their windows than rural people.
No critical minerals are required, only substitutable minerals. Solar panels require silicon for the solar cells, glass, plastic and conductors, which are made from extremely abundant materials.
The amount of solar panel waste generated when all energy (not just electricity) comes from solar amounts to about 16 kg per person per year (mostly glass). Panel waste is a small and solvable problem.
Author: Professor Andrew Blakers AO is a professor of engineering at the Australian National University. His primary research interests are in advanced silicon solar cells – increasing efficiency and reducing costs – and detailed analysis of energy systems based on 50 to 100% wind and solar photovoltaics supported by storage.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
More articles from pv magazine
It’s great to see Australia making strides towards 100% renewable energy! The increase in solar power generation is impressive and shows a commitment to sustainability. Excited to see how this impacts the global energy landscape!
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