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.
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.
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.