“By the end of the year, wind and solar energy combined are projected to account for about half of China’s total installed power capacity, while coal’s share falls to around one-third, according to the China Electricity Council.”

Solar alone set to overtake next year.

https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/china-solar-power-capacity-coal-first-time-b2912940.html

This, amid other reports of places where renewables are occasionally accounting for all generated electricity. (Makes the US position all the more painful, though the courts have reinstated some renewables projects)

3 hours ago, swansont said:

(Makes the US position all the more painful, though the courts have reinstated some renewables projects)

Not only US, Europe's push for solar also faltered, to some degree due to immense price pressure from China, but also other systemic issues. On the adoption side, once China became dominant, folks were hesitant to buy in and issued tariffs to protect their own companies, raising adoption prices in Western markets. While it might have been strategically prudent, it slowed the building of solar capacity.

1 hour ago, CharonY said:

Not only US, Europe's push for solar also faltered, to some degree due to immense price pressure from China, but also other systemic issues. On the adoption side, once China became dominant, folks were hesitant to buy in and issued tariffs to protect their own companies, raising adoption prices in Western markets. While it might have been strategically prudent, it slowed the building of solar capacity.

It’s true that new EU solar has contracted slightly, but it still installed ~65GW of capacity each of the last 3 years. More of a flattening as compared to the US. ~400 GW of installed capacity at end of ‘25, while the US was at ~240GW at the end of ‘24, yet the US uses about twice as much. So the EU is pretty far ahead in this.

https://www.solarpowereurope.org/press-releases/new-report-eu-hits-2025-solar-target-but-market-contraction-puts-2030-goal-at-risk

2 hours ago, swansont said:

It’s true that new EU solar has contracted slightly, but it still installed ~65GW of capacity each of the last 3 years. More of a flattening as compared to the US. ~400 GW of installed capacity at end of ‘25, while the US was at ~240GW at the end of ‘24, yet the US uses about twice as much. So the EU is pretty far ahead in this.

https://www.solarpowereurope.org/press-releases/new-report-eu-hits-2025-solar-target-but-market-contraction-puts-2030-goal-at-risk

Oh yes, I didn't meant that Europe is regressing (compared to the US). Rather, as you mentioned, there was a bit of a slowdown and that in spite of significant reduction in cost over the last years.

47 minutes ago, CharonY said:

Oh yes, I didn't meant that Europe is regressing (compared to the US). Rather, as you mentioned, there was a bit of a slowdown and that in spite of significant reduction in cost over the last years.

I think,in some countries there has been a problem in building enough grid for the increased electricity use.

Would that account for (some of?) the slowdown?

Edited February 4Feb 4 by geordief

1 hour ago, geordief said:

I think,in some countries there has been a problem in building enough grid for the increased electricity use.

Would that account for (some of?) the slowdown?

I suspect that most places there was lack of confidence that the RE buildout would happen any time soon, even as recently as a decade ago and that flowed through as reluctance to pre-invest in the transmission and storage (pumped hydro probably looked best, with hydrogen hype in there too), that have lead-in times as long as that.

There have also been persistent spoiling efforts from the doubt, deny, delay side of politics including supporting 'local' politically partisan opposition to building the infrastructure a high RE grid requires )to be sure their claims it can't work turn out true?) - denial has been well supported and the surprise is that RE has forged ahead despite it.

And few 'serious, credible' pundits predicted the rise of batteries.

Only 8 years ago Australia got a 'big Tesla battery' to widespread derision at around the same time as a commitment to a large pumped hydro project. Seems like the global consensus was batteries would never get cheap enough or scale large enough to be significant.

The pumped hydro (Snowy 2.0) is delayed, hugely over budget and still in construction but batteries, big and small, are proliferating across Australia and the world - mega battery factories that make more storage than that pumped hydro project each year have been built from ground up, are in production and their products in service since then.

Batteries may not ever achieve the per MWh costs of pumped hydro but their versatility and stackability and the other (voltage and frequency regulation) services are unrivalled. Short build times make them an interim 'quick fix' that is turning into a more permanent fix. Can provide system strength too, as 'grid forming' inverters capable of spinning inertia emulation become the norm.

China, as a developing nation with large population still in poverty, had until 2060 before international agreements required declining emissions. Whether that was a wise agreement is a real question - I suspect for 'leaders' around the world there wasn't much real expectation built in and agreements for doing the least were considered a win and more aggressive targets a lose. In Australia the potential for China remaining a long term FF buyer probably played a part in willingness to agree. But they do appear to be exceeding their targets as well as indirectly helping a lot of other nations reach theirs.

I note that here in Australia RE has been above 50% of electricity over the past quarter year, with lower wholesale prices and fewer outages during heatwaves - like another tipping point has been crossed. I know our household PV and (recently upsized) batteries run our A/C into the evening without drawing on the grid at all; that experience is becoming commonplace. What works at smaller scales will work even better at larger scales.

2 hours ago, Ken Fabian said:

Only 8 years ago Australia got a 'big Tesla battery' to widespread derision at around the same time as a commitment to a large pumped hydro project. Seems like the global consensus was batteries would never get cheap enough or scale large enough to be significant.

I imagine part of the reluctance towards batteries is the perception that they are a fire hazard and that installing them would be tantamount to installing a bomb in their homes. This is not an unjustified view as there have been recall ads for solar batteries in recent times, as well as the numerous houses on the news that have burned down due to e-scooter batteries catching fire in garages.

9 hours ago, KJW said:

I imagine part of the reluctance towards batteries is the perception that they are a fire hazard and that installing them would be tantamount to installing a bomb in their homes. This is not an unjustified view as there have been recall ads for solar batteries in recent times, as well as the numerous houses on the news that have burned down due to e-scooter batteries catching fire in garages.

I had a recent experience of seeing a lithium battery ignite whilst being solar charged. It is unstoppable and the jet is ferocious.

Sodium-ion batteries are being geared up for mass production this year; thermal runaway is much harder to induce in these, I've read.

Edited February 5Feb 5 by StringJunky

18 hours ago, geordief said:

I think,in some countries there has been a problem in building enough grid for the increased electricity use.

Would that account for (some of?) the slowdown?

Increased use is largely untethered to the means of production, AFAICT - grid problems would affect any source in the same location. And solar/wind supplanting e.g. coal doesn’t increase load on the grid.

In addition, rooftop solar reduces load on the grid.

25 minutes ago, swansont said:

Increased use is largely untethered to the means of production, AFAICT - grid problems would affect any source in the same location. And solar/wind supplanting e.g. coal doesn’t increase load on the grid.

In addition, rooftop solar reduces load on the grid.

Does this article explain the problem?

Netherlands' renewables drive putting pressure on its pow...

Homes asked to use less electricity as network is overloaded by the rush to wind and solar power.

The decentralisation of the grid putting extra load on the outermost parts of the grid that previously did not carry as much current.

I think there are multiple factors that one has to keep in mind. One is that the the adoption in Europe pre 2018 was fairly slow, in part caused by cost. After 2018 tariffs on Chinese solar were reduced contributing to massive acceleration. Another jump happened due to the energy crisis caused by Russia.

A number of factors, including incentives phasing out have contributed to a slow down. But as noted, there have been quite a few criticisms how the rollout has lacked strategic investment in infrastructure. I think some reports have characterized that as a blind spot in the market approach to incentivize renewables.

In contrast, from what I understand, China's rollout has been more deliberate with high levels of investment in grid, in parallel to incentives for the solar industry as a whole package. That being said, they came at other costs including the reliance on coal energy to enable the increase in the production of photovoltaic units, and so on.

The position of solar energy in Europe is quite different from that of China.

The Uk position is yet different again.

Most of China's population lives South of the 35th parallel.

Most of Europe's population lives north of the 45th parallel.

By comparison New York is about the 40th parallel.

As to strategic investment in infrastructure, what does that mean ?

China's electricity system is much newer than Europe's as a result of the recent expansion in development that must eventually slow.

Also the balance between 'grid' investment (by the generators and distributors) and the user's investment is also different. I don't yet see the word battery being mentioned.

I think it is vital not to oversimplify the subject.

Edited February 5Feb 5 by studiot

17 minutes ago, studiot said:

As to strategic investment in infrastructure, what does that mean ?

From what I remember, they strategically built infrastructure in parallel with building photovoltaic production and installation. They have specific challenges, including vast distances to cover. In one article they described the challenges that the most attractive area for renewable energy production (including solar) was in the West, whereas much of the energy consumption is in the East. From a quick google:

So apparently they had a strategy of mixed large-scale production in the West and a scattering of decentralized grids elsewhere. They also upgraded their electrical system which was optimized for one-way delivery (as in the article regarding the Netherlands) to facilitate easier two-way generation, to account for the decentralized delivery. Likewise (and I don't know the specifics), they also upgraded much of their coal-power to be more flexible in power generation and they have heavily invested AI-based energy use forecasting to create a flexible energy generation model. Something similar is planned in Canada, where e.g. SMRs are used to supplement power needs.

I think the broader point here is that there was a long-term plan in the background, that informed more than a decade in strategic investment to build this infrastructure up.

Economic paper have also focused on how China built up market forces to incentivize this development (including certification programs for renewables, encouraging trans-provincial development and certificate trading. A lot of these things have actually been also been proposed and implemented in the West, but there have been policy changes that seem to complicate things.

The final bit, and this is likely less acceptable in the more free-market oriented areas, is massive investments in innovation where they create a kind of artificial competing market (I think I read the term deathmatch or similar) to basically make the best case for massive state funding (which is one of the reasons for tariffs on Chinese PV). That being said, this situation seems to have led to overproduction (one of the dangers of this model).

But again, the broader point is that renewable energy use was on the agenda for China for quite a while and they managed to continuously build on it from multiple angles over more than a decade.

4 hours ago, geordief said:

Does this article explain the problem?

It might, but it’s paywalled so I don’t know what the explanation is.

edit:

But electrical generation in the EU has been falling slightly (through 2023, at least), so it seems that it’s not increased demand causing this, it’s location and other issues

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Electricity_production,_consumption_and_market_overview

6 minutes ago, CharonY said:

I think the broader point here is that there was a long-term plan in the background, that informed more than a decade in strategic investment to build this infrastructure up.

Indeed I agree that Europe does not have a long tern plan, the UK even less so.

But I also note that China's economics was not disrupted by the Ukraine war like Europe's has been.

6 minutes ago, studiot said:

But I also note that China's economics was not disrupted by the Ukraine war like Europe's has been.

Yes, though the Ukraine war did cause a surge in private PV installation, as energy prices shot up across much of Europe. Effects such as those likely make it harder to predict the effect on the broader energy grid and given the cost, could partially explain the hesitancy in converting/expanding the grid to accommodate broader solar use.

1 hour ago, swansont said:

It might, but it’s paywalled

Sorry,I didn't realize the BBC was pay walled in USA..

https://www.reddit.com/r/bbc/comments/1pp3781/why_is_bbc_only_charging_american_customers_but/

There was this in it:

"The problem is "grid congestion", says Kees-Jan Rameau, chief executive of Dutch energy producer and supplier Eneco, 70% of whose electricity generation is now solar and wind.

"Grid congestion is like a traffic jam on the power grid. It's caused by either too much power demand in a certain area, or too much power supply put onto the grid, more than the grid can handle."

He explains that the problem is that the grid "was designed in the days when we had just a few very large, mainly gas-fired power plants".

"So we built a grid with very big power lines close to those power plants, and increasingly smaller power lines as you got more towards the households."

Edited February 5Feb 5 by geordief

28 minutes ago, geordief said:

Sorry,I didn't realize the BBC was pay walled in USA..

https://www.reddit.com/r/bbc/comments/1pp3781/why_is_bbc_only_charging_american_customers_but/

There was this in it:

"The problem is "grid congestion", says Kees-Jan Rameau, chief executive of Dutch energy producer and supplier Eneco, 70% of whose electricity generation is now solar and wind.

"Grid congestion is like a traffic jam on the power grid. It's caused by either too much power demand in a certain area, or too much power supply put onto the grid, more than the grid can handle."

He explains that the problem is that the grid "was designed in the days when we had just a few very large, mainly gas-fired power plants".

"So we built a grid with very big power lines close to those power plants, and increasingly smaller power lines as you got more towards the households."

Thanks.

So it’s a location issue, not a size of demand issue. i.e. any power plant situated where the solar is would face the same problem.

@KJW I see no great fears of rechargeable batteries in homes - no more than flammable Ford Pintos stopped car sales. I think the heightened fire risk is more from the proliferation, from the numbers of chargers and devices themselves as much as the batteries. Shavers, toothbrushes, phones, headphones, laptops, phones, vacuums, power tools, bikes, scooters, toys and many more. And the greater risk is from low budget makers, sometimes with counterfeit components, including batteries (which are inclined to have overstated capacity as well). The most common sort of fires may be from improper disposal of small batteries - landfill sites and garbage trucks.

Setting and enforcing standards is the solution and recalls can work as reassuring evidence that they are enforced as much as create fears of batteries in general. I do think the doubt, deny, delay opponents of decarbonising are inclined to manufacture and exaggerate alarmist fears out of battery fires - and pay little attention to the many other sources of fire risks.

I do recall solar battery recalls - not a proliferation of battery recalls, just very specific ones and not recently. People with other brands of batteries found that reassuring.

Solar batteries are being installed at prodigious rates on Australian home and LFP types, with lower fire risk than previous types, have emerged as dominant. But I admit I am somewhat cynical about policy that makes decarbonising with RE a "you care, you do it, at your own expense" with "Don't care? Don't have to" kind of policy; it seems like it is an alternative to requiring it of companies participating in electricity markets so that everyone's electricity is decarbonised, like decarbonising should be a 'free' choice by consumers but not a requirement for energy producers.

Yet individual systems on rooftops is cost effective at the household scale, which makes me think it must be more cost effective at large scale; rather than fire fears holding them back some of the reluctance may be from the rate of improvement, where delaying a bit can wring some more profit out of existing generation and maybe get the same things or better cheaper. But there is no doubt things have changed at the grid level. No-one is investing in coal plants, there is very little investment in gas plants and the market advantage of gas 'filling the unfilled demand' and setting power prices by it is rapidly diminishing.

I know that what we have on our home works and continues to work well and is paying for itself in power cost savings and can be installed a lot cheaper now than what it cost us.

I also note that Australia's home PV, with or without batteries gets installed at a fraction of what US users pay; according to Saul Griffiths in an interview with David Roberts (Volts substack) installing 15 KW PV in Australia at the same time as 15 KW in San Francisco, around 5 to 6 times more expensive in the latter. (may vary widely depending where?). Australia's permitting is simple and quick too. Not so quick for the big grid batteries - and yes, the objections often focus of fire risks. But a lot of the objectors are opposing them out of deep rooted partisan climate science denial that has morphed into renewable energy denial.