Solar power is already providing the “cheapest electricity in history” and is expected to play a pivotal role in the global transition away from fossil fuels.
The technology accounted for two-thirds of the world’s new electricity capacity and two-fifths of new generation in 2024, according to the thinktank Ember.
Yet, this rapid expansion has triggered a backlash, with numerous campaigns springing up to oppose new solar projects from the UK to Australia.
These groups frequently draw on misinformation, spread by right-leaning media outlets, anti-renewable energy groups and predominantly right-wing political parties.
Increasingly, these narratives are having real-world consequences, with governments restricting or even banning the installation of solar panels across swathes of land.
Here, Carbon Brief factchecks 16 of the most common myths about solar power.
This is because the exact times of sunrise and sunset are known, meaning it is possible to reliably forecast accurate electricity generation each day.
I did this, predicting solar production, as a job. The article is wrong on at least this part. Cloud coverage, morning mist, etc all play a huge role. You can expect 300MW of solar production, and receive only 20MW, simply because air temperature unexpectedly dropped below the dew point. And vise-versa.
We used to track every cloud in western europe, paying a small fortune to satelite image providers to get the 5 minute delay images instead of the 15 minute delay data. We had ground-to-air infrared imagers to track clouds at night, in preparation for morning demand surge.
The unpredictability of the weather is a huge huge problem, where a procent increase in prediction accuracy has a huge impact on grid stability.
Super interesting field of study, but I’d advise anyone to not enter it as it’s a horrible politicized environment to work in - ideology takes preference over good engineering.
Once the solar equipment has been installed, it will – unlike imported fossil fuels – continue to generate electricity until the end of its life, without ongoing ties to China.
This is incorrect as well. Most chinese transformers phone home to CH. If you own a Huawei, Goodwe, etc transfo make sure to firewall them to disconnect them from their cloud platform!
In conclusion: this source seems to be faulty propaganda.
