Inside Pakistan’s rooftop solar blitz -> In the first nine months of 2024, the country imported 17GW of solar panels from China. That makes it the third-biggest market for Chinese panels globally. - ThreadSky

nickhedley.bsky.social • 115 days ago

Inside Pakistan’s rooftop solar blitz

-> In the first nine months of 2024, the country imported 17GW of solar panels from China. That makes it the third-biggest market for Chinese panels globally.

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nazishmunch.bsky.social•114 days ago

I was there in Sept and it’s visibly striking. One issue, corruption often means that the solar panels installed can’t be used for months for lack of meter. Still, despite that, on the upside, as they wait, people in that situation told me the shade on the roof is already something positive so 🤷

cynan.bsky.social•115 days ago

good writeup. there’s some further delving into it here - marginal role of net metering quite interesting

https://www.brecorder.com/authors/102270/engr-syed-faizan-ali-shah

nickhedley.bsky.social•114 days ago

Thanks!

simonma.bsky.social•115 days ago

Just for comparison, Germany has roughly 100 GW of solar in total installed over 2 decades.

17 GW are more than 1/6th of this, and this is just what was imported within 9 months. That's a huge number.

jayhay.bsky.social•114 days ago

I guess early adopters helped China ramp up manufacturing capacities.

simonma.bsky.social•114 days ago

Indeed. The early German installations had been relatively expensive compared to what you pay now, but these installations gave it a kick and started mass production, which was necessary to bring costs down.

In the early days the silicon used for panels was the waste from chip production.

simonma.bsky.social•114 days ago

Now silicon for panels is mass produced in the quality necessary for solar panels (chips demand a higher quality), it has become inexpensive and it's produced in huge scale. At the same time the cells only have now just 1/8th of the thickness they had 20 years ago, reducing the need for raw material

simonma.bsky.social•114 days ago

Since you not just get 8 times the cells out of a waver, you achieve almost twice the efficiency per cell now.

jayhay.bsky.social•114 days ago

Economies of scale are a human superpower.

I wish humans would have started earlier, but let's try our best now.

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