Energy infrastructure • Renewables
Global Solar Power
Utility-scale solar farms worldwide, from operating installations to announced projects. Solar is the fastest-growing power source globally, with installed capacity expanding rapidly across every continent. Together with wind, solar generation is central to the green energy transition and the electrification of industry and transport.
Source: Global Energy Monitor — Global Solar Power Tracker, CC BY 4.0
Loading solar power data…
Behind the dots
The constraint moved from panels to absorption
Solar added a record 647 GW in 2025, roughly four gigawatts for every one of wind, and its generation passed wind's for the first time; China installed 378 GW of it[2]. Panels are no longer the scarce input anywhere. What is scarce is the system's ability to absorb midday energy.
The absorption problem shows up as prices and curtailment. Spain's day-ahead market spent 798 hours of 2025 at or below zero, and the negative hours got deeper[4]. California curtailed on pace with its record, yet the share of solar curtailed actually fell, from 13 to 11.5 percent, because batteries began soaking up the midday surplus[3]: the first hard evidence that storage, not less solar, is the fix. And where grids and tariffs fail entirely, the buildout simply goes around them: Pakistan imported about 17 GW of panels in 2024, the world's third-largest importer, mostly unpermitted rooftop capacity fleeing grid prices[5].
◐ inferred The dots on this map are utility-scale projects, and their economics now hinge less on the resource than on what surrounds them: storage co-location, transmission, and tariff design. Where those lag, the price of the midday hour, not the cost of the panel, decides the project.
Sources (5)
- [1] Global Energy Monitor, Global Solar Power Tracker (CC BY 4.0): utility-scale solar locations.
- [2] Ember, Global Electricity Review 2026: record 647 GW of solar added in 2025 (China 378 GW); solar generation passed wind for the first time.
- [3] US EIA, Today in Energy (2025): California curtailments on pace with the 2024 record; pv magazine USA (July 2025): curtailment share fell from 13% to 11.5% as batteries absorbed the midday surplus.
- [4] KYOS (OMIE data): 798 hours at or below zero EUR/MWh on the Spanish day-ahead market in 2025, with the negative hours deepening.
- [5] Ember data via CNN (May 2025): Pakistan imported ~17 GW of solar panels in 2024, the world's third-largest importer, largely unpermitted rooftop.
Project locations from GEM (CC BY 4.0). Installation and generation figures from Ember's Global Electricity Review 2026; California curtailment from EIA and pv magazine USA; Spanish negative-price hours from OMIE data as aggregated by KYOS; Pakistan import figures are Ember data as reported. The closing read is this analyst's inference.