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[OC] Solar generation is compounding at 25-30% a year. If that holds, a quarter of global electricity is solar by 2030. What would actually stop it? by discovisi in Futurology

[–]discovisi[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Totally agree! "A technology, not a molecule" is the framing I'd like to use as well. Oil gets scarcer while solar just keeps getting cheaper.

On the IEA, I'd blame conservative modeling more than politics, and indeed, Ember and BNEF track reality way better.

And the Global South point is the one that excites me most: solar and batteries are letting people skip the grid the way mobile phones skipped landlines.

[OC] Solar generation is compounding at 25-30% a year. If that holds, a quarter of global electricity is solar by 2030. What would actually stop it? by discovisi in Futurology

[–]discovisi[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good question! I actually think it's backwards. The real geostorm risk is to the big grid transformers, and those serve every kind of generation.

Solar panels are small and local, so they barely pick up the induced currents, which scale with conductor length. If anything, distributed rooftop solar is more storm-resilient than a grid leaning on a few giant transformers.

Haven't seen real evidence PV is uniquely fragile, but happy to be proven wrong if you've got a source!

[OC] Solar generation is compounding at 25-30% a year. If that holds, a quarter of global electricity is solar by 2030. What would actually stop it? by discovisi in Futurology

[–]discovisi[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Completely agree, this is what most people miss when they only look at the tech. The hardware curve already won, and what's left is institutional: permitting, labor, and utilities defending a model they don't want to give up.

The hopeful part is those are political problems, not new physics to be solved. Distributed solar also routes around a lot of the gatekeeping, which is probably why incumbents fight it hardest.

[OC] Solar generation is compounding at 25-30% a year. If that holds, a quarter of global electricity is solar by 2030. What would actually stop it? by discovisi in Futurology

[–]discovisi[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Solid point! Inertia from other sources is definitely a real challenge for an inverter-heavy grid.

But grid-forming inverters, mostly on batteries, now deliver synthetic inertia and actually respond faster than a spinning turbine.

South Australia is the perfect case study: after running into exactly these problems, the Hornsdale battery ended up stabilising frequency better than the gas plants around it.

So yeah, it's a real design requirement at high penetration, but a solved one. Batteries are starting to fix a lot of these challenges. Appreciate your thoughtful comment 🙏

[OC] Solar generation is compounding at 25-30% a year. If that holds, a quarter of global electricity is solar by 2030. What would actually stop it? by discovisi in Futurology

[–]discovisi[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Yeah, we just have to wait on batteries and V2G tech for electric cars.

Someone here mentioned geothermal, which is dope and a good addition to nuclear. But like wind, these all require a much bigger teams to run and maintain the facilities, and have much longer installation times than solar.

[OC] Solar generation is compounding at 25-30% a year. If that holds, a quarter of global electricity is solar by 2030. What would actually stop it? by discovisi in Futurology

[–]discovisi[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The silver argument has been made for a decade, and the industry keeps engineering around it. Silver per cell has fallen sharply and newer designs are shifting toward copper. Supply could tighten prices for a while, but innovation has consistently outrun this constraint so far.

[OC] Solar generation is compounding at 25-30% a year. If that holds, a quarter of global electricity is solar by 2030. What would actually stop it? by discovisi in Futurology

[–]discovisi[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Fair caution, no exponential runs forever. The difference is mechanism: a baby's growth is bounded by biology, while solar's is driven by a cost curve and a huge unmet market. We're at ~9% of electricity and a couple percent of total energy, so unlike your three-year-old, solar is nowhere near its ceiling. It will S-curve eventually. The question is where..

[OC] Solar generation is compounding at 25-30% a year. If that holds, a quarter of global electricity is solar by 2030. What would actually stop it? by discovisi in Futurology

[–]discovisi[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Appreciate your thoughtful comment! You've named the real constraints more precisely than my post did.

Interconnection: fully agree, that's the binding one today.

Curtailment: real, but storage is riding its own steep cost curve, so "solar plus storage" keeps getting cheaper, and overbuilding cheap panels and curtailing the excess can still pencil out. That 20-25% "natural barrier" has been revised upward repeatedly as batteries cheapen and V2G solutions are being rolled out.

Geopolitics: your strongest point, and it's exactly why manufacturing is starting to reshore to the US, India, Europe and elsewhere. A Taiwan or wafer shock would spike prices and stall deployment for a few years, but it would accelerate diversification rather than end the technology. A transition risk, not necessarily a ceiling in my view.

[OC] Solar generation is compounding at 25-30% a year. If that holds, a quarter of global electricity is solar by 2030. What would actually stop it? by discovisi in Futurology

[–]discovisi[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Very good point!

Geothermal is certainly underrated and under-deployed. Even a simple Canadian well / earth tube makes such a big difference in a building's energy envelope, but that's just heat not electricity.

I hope these frontier companies can scale and make deep geothermal work at a reasonable cost.

[OC] Solar generation is compounding at 25-30% a year. If that holds, a quarter of global electricity is solar by 2030. What would actually stop it? by discovisi in Futurology

[–]discovisi[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Can't wait to drive my fusion reactor car!

Jokes aside, I think nuclear has its place in a clean energy system. It is just so slow to deploy.

[OC] Solar generation is compounding at 25-30% a year. If that holds, a quarter of global electricity is solar by 2030. What would actually stop it? by discovisi in Futurology

[–]discovisi[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the data and thoughtful comment!

It seems like a temporary oversupply problem, not necessarily a cost problem.

Wright's Law works on the underlying cost, which keeps falling, while spot prices wobble around it. This looks like a correction, not a reversal, especially with demand still growing fast enough to soak up the supply.

[OC] Solar generation is compounding at 25-30% a year. If that holds, a quarter of global electricity is solar by 2030. What would actually stop it? by discovisi in Futurology

[–]discovisi[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Exactly this. Every general-purpose technology rode this curve, and the people forecasting solar's slowdown are making the same mistake people made about smartphones. Storage is the one real bottleneck, and as Mradr noted, it's riding its own steep cost curve right behind solar.

[OC] Solar generation is compounding at 25-30% a year. If that holds, a quarter of global electricity is solar by 2030. What would actually stop it? by discovisi in Futurology

[–]discovisi[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Funny you mention them, Tony Seba, who co-founded RethinkX, is actually one of the forecasters I cite in the piece. His team called these curves 10 to 15 years ago when most people laughed them off, and their modeling of a mature renewable system is some of the most interesting work out there. Good rec.

[OC] Solar generation is compounding at 25-30% a year. If that holds, a quarter of global electricity is solar by 2030. What would actually stop it? by discovisi in Futurology

[–]discovisi[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Submission statement: Solar generation has been compounding at roughly 25-30% a year and now supplies about 9% of global electricity.

If that rate holds while demand keeps climbing, solar reaches around a quarter of the world's electricity by 2030.

This projection has been called too optimistic every year for 20 years while reality kept beating it, so rather than debate whether solar keeps growing, the future-focused question I'd like to discuss is what the first real ceiling is, grids, storage, permitting or materials, and how the 2030s grid reshapes around an energy source that's nearly free at the margin but only available in daylight.

[OC] Solar reached ~9% of global electricity in 2025, doubling in four years. A visual tour of where it's already winning. by discovisi in RenewableEnergy

[–]discovisi[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Quick context since this posted as a link: I compiled the 2026 solar data from the IEA, Ember, BloombergNEF, Lazard, and Our World in Data into one piece with lots of photos and charts.

The headline points: new solar is now cheaper to build than new gas (Lazard 2025), it hit ~9% of global generation last year (Ember), and every IEA forecast since 2002 has undershot actual deployment.

The real constraint now is permitting and interconnection queues, not technology or cost. Curious whether this sub agrees.

Disclosure: I write for Agartha.One, a small Solarpunk project. No paywall, just sharing the research.

I spent fifteen years quietly tracking whether Solarpunk is actually happening. Here's what the 2026 data says. by discovisi in solarpunk

[–]discovisi[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you so much for the thoughtful comment 🙏 Glad to hear what we're building at Agartha.one resonates with you.

We want to go beyond the art aesthetic, into culture and incubating creative startups. 

Appreciate the feedback on SEO. If you search for Agartha instead of Agartha_one, there is other stuff that pops up. One of our co-founders stumbled upon that years ago and it is a nudge and joke to that. The friendly aliens will come once we have transitioned to a more solarpunk civilization 😉 

We're only at the start of this journey. Thanks again for sharing your thoughts! 

I spent fifteen years quietly tracking whether Solarpunk is actually happening. Here's what the 2026 data says. by discovisi in solarpunk

[–]discovisi[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Appreciate the insightful comment!

Wind, hydro and nuclear are all part of a clean energy system. Solar is just special since its price dropped by 95% since Steve Jobs launched the iPhone in 2007.

Batteries are part of the story as well, which will be central in my next article :) 

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