For decades, many countries around the world have been struggling to get reliable access to electricity. For the 660 million people who are still without electricity and the many more with unreliable and unaffordable access to electricity, the glut of solar PV panels produced by China is a real blessing.
Building and maintaining a traditional electric grid to reach every single village or human settlement is massively expensive, especially for poor nations, Corruption and poor practices make access to electricity difficult, unrealiable and expensive, even in large urban areas where demand is increasing fast. But all this is changing with solar photovoltaic panels as the the technology is now incredibly cheap and easy to install by electricians, reliable…
Here are some quick news I gathered in the previous months :
Pakistan
Home to almost 250 million people, Pakistan has undergone a massive solar boom in the last few years. To a recent report by Ember, “The country imported 17 GW of solar panels in 2024 to meet this growing consumer demand, double the amount imported the year before. ” 17 GW of panels in just one year is enormous when one considers that France has installed 25 GW in approximately 20 years…
As a result of this staggering growth, solar pv is now the third electricity source, accounting for 14 percent of all electricity consumed in Pakistan, more than tripling its share in just three years. According to the local newspaper The Nation, ” Pakistan had become the sixth-largest solar market in the world due to its fast shift towards renewable energy.”
Iran
With a population of 88 million people, Iran is also going all in on solar, with close to 30 GW of capacity of new solar pv capacity permits earlier this year as The Tehran Times reported. This is done by the local government to close the electricity supply-demand gap and clean the air. This might be just the beginning as there are plans for a total of 50 GW in the coming years.
Africa
With 600 million people still without access to electricity, many an African nation might do for electricity what it did years ago with telephone and mobiles : skip the old technology and leapfrog to the 21st century altogether.
Solar seems a perfect fit as the continent receives the highest levels of solar irradiance, making photovoltaic’s potential almost unlimited as the African Development Bank notes. As CNN reported, the entire continent had a mere 21.5 GW of installed capacity last year. But this might change very fast as the continent imported 15 GW worth of solar PV panels last year alone.
And if solar PV panels kits and full installations may not become mainstream as fast as people want and need, in the meantime, solar lamps and gadgets help fill the gap. The Rocky Mountain Institute published an interesting report on this very topic.
This solar boom might not bust anytime soon as China is producing more and more panels and photovoltaic is just the perfect solution to help people access electricity, and with it, all the amenities of modern life. Be sure that I will keep on writing on this. So for this and for much more, stay tuned !
