This year, the world is set to add 600 GW of new solar PV capacity to the global energy mix. That’s more than ten times the rate of development in 2016. The International Energy Agency (IEA) forecasts that, globally, we will add over 5,500 GW of renewable energy by 2030, and that new solar capacity added between now and 2030 will account for 80% of this growth by the end of this decade.
Looking at our current position and the rapidly declining costs of solar tech, it’s easy to get excited about the future. But between 2025 and 2030, we still need to bridge a 3,300 GW gap in capacity, considering that globally, we currently have just over 2,200 GW of installed solar PV capacity.
Given the scale of utility-scale solar projects, they can take months – or even years – to move through feasibility assessments, design, environmental authorisations, and investor approvals.
Let’s explore what would make it possible to bridge this 3,300 GW gap.
But, first – why solar energy, and not other sources?
In the last 15 years, the cost of utility-scale solar has dropped by 90%, from $0.40 per kWh to less than $0.04. Solar is already more cost-effective than coal. All within a 5-year window, solar will surpass nuclear, wind, hydro, and gas in electricity generation. By 2032, solar could outproduce coal-fired plants altogether. The production costs of coal, oil and gas have all remained quite volatile, with many fluctuations over recent years, yet they have never trended downwards. Considering the declining costs of solar and the availability of this resource makes it, likely, the most viable sector to develop.
So what are the bottlenecks?
Over the next five years, $27 billion will be spent on designing utility-scale solar projects. This translates to roughly 250,000 work years – requiring 50,000 engineers to keep pace. Yet, despite this massive investment of time and resources, every megawatt of solar is typically designed only once due to the complexity and challenge of producing further design iterations. This leaves little room for optimisation or value engineering.
With 50,000 engineers working on traditional designs, human error alone could drive up construction costs and impact long-term performance.
Like with every utility-scale solar project, there will be inevitable changes to project parameters and equipment selection, and extensive redesign work becomes a given. This can add months to the timeline.
The bottom line – traditional design of utility-scale takes a lot of time, costs a lot of money, and even with the top energy engineers – human error always leads to impacted costs and energy yields.
Bringing utility-scale solar over the line.
A project might pencil out perfectly on paper, but if it takes too long to move from concept to construction, it risks missing the window of viability. Equipment prices shift, supply chains fluctuate, and policies evolve, delays can mean lost opportunities, higher costs, and suboptimal energy generation.
When we use AUTOPV, our computational design software, during the feasibility or design stages, it enables us to explore multiple design iterations for the same site – which can be produced in a matter of hours.
We recently used AUTOPV to design eight iterations for a 214 MW solar PV project to evaluate the impact of minor configuration changes, like the width of corridors or the placement of string inverters, on the overall design outcome. The result was quite staggering. Within those eight designs, we identified a configuration that could save $1M in cable costs alone, or alternatively, it could optimise for an additional $50,000 of annual revenue due to lower DC losses. We produced these eight designs in a morning using AUTOPV, including constructible AutoCAD drawings with exact cable routings and inverter placements for each iteration.
This design automation may be exactly what the utility-scale solar sector needs more agility during the feasibility stages, but even beyond feasibility, AUTOPV allows us to produce detailed design iterations so that engineers do not spend months re-routing and redrawing cables every time equipment selection or site configuration changes.
A project timeline has the potential to be reduced by over a year when this type of design automation is used.
Why a five-year timeline?
In five years, we will land in 2030 – which holds a lot of significance in terms of global sustainability goals (specifically SDG 7: Affordable and Clean Energy), and many countries’ energy targets.
If we are to add another 3300 GW of utility-scale solar capacity between now and 2030, we put ourselves in a much better position to fill the global energy gap, and meet SDG 7.1 (universal access) and SDG 7.2 targets (renewable energy mix).
In January of this year, 12 African countries declared their commitment to Mission 300, an initiative which aims to extend electricity access to 300 million people in Africa by 2030. With this declaration, these African countries have set out specific policy measures and plans to address constraints across their energy sectors, including introducing more renewables into their energy mix.
Australia has legislated a commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 43% from 2005 levels by 2030, with a long-term goal of net-zero emissions by 2050.
Germany aims to generate 65% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2045.
India aims to generate 40% of its electricity from non-fossil fuel sources by 2030 and achieve 500 GW of installed electricity capacity from non-fossil fuel sources by 2030.
2030 seems to be a year that, universally, we like – so with five years to go, let’s see if we can meet the 5500 GW target with faster design and more scalable utility-solar.
Paul Nel
CEO - 7 Second Solar
