There will be roughly 390 gigawatts of solar PV plants spread across the globe, according to estimates from GTM Research. there are 391.5 gigawatts of nuclear plants operating around the world.
Nuclear generates 2,476,671 gigawatt-hours of electricity every year, accounting for roughly 11 percent of global generation. Solar only accounts for 375,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity yearly, or about 1.8 percent of global generation.
Solar will equal nuclear capacity but nuclear will still generate 6.6 times more electricity than solar.
By 2022, solar global capacity will likely reach 871 gigawatts. It would still be generating one third of the electricity of nuclear.
There is also the issue that solar power is generated during the day and there is very little energy storage attached to the grid. This means that a lot of the solar power that is generated is not actually used. The power runs meters backwards but then it burns off as heat at the neareast distribution node.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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