Batteries are now cheap enough to unleash solar’s full potential, getting as close as 97% of the way to delivering constant electricity supply 24 hours across 365 days cost-effectively in the sunniest places ($104/MWh)
Solar electricity every hour of every day is here and it changes everything
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This new report unpacks the concept of 24-hour electricity supply with solar generation — how solar panels, paired with batteries, can deliver clean, reliable electricity around the clock. It compares cities across the world, showing how close they can get to solar electricity 24 hours across 365 days (24/365 solar generation), and at what price. Focused on project-level applications like industrial users and utility developers, the report shows how batteries are now cheap enough to unlock solar power’s full potential.
24-hour solar generation enables this by combining solar panels with sufficient storage to deliver a stable, clean power supply, even in areas without grid access or where the grid is congested or unreliable. While this may not solve every challenge at the grid level, since not all places are as sunny and the electricity demand varies hourly and seasonally, it provides a pathway for solar to become the backbone of a clean power system in sunny regions and to play a much bigger role in less sunny regions.
This report explores how close we are to achieving constant, 24-hour solar electricity across 365 days in different cities around the world, and what it would cost to get there.
[Full pdf](https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2025/06/Ember-24-Hour-Solar-Electricity-June-2025-6.pdf)
Glad people are starting to notice. All of the necessary tech is there. Its just about scaling now.
LOL!
Do your math with the greed of power industry and corrupt politicians…
And what happens when those batteries start failing….
This doesn’t take into account that currently there is an overproduction of batteries by China because internal producers are having a price war in China right now. The batteries are sold at a loss so this production chain itself isn’t actually profitable (yet).
You can’t just scale up right now and expect everything to fall into place. That said it should be stable and settled down at a lower price sometime between 2030-2035.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/sundler:
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This new report unpacks the concept of 24-hour electricity supply with solar generation — how solar panels, paired with batteries, can deliver clean, reliable electricity around the clock. It compares cities across the world, showing how close they can get to solar electricity 24 hours across 365 days (24/365 solar generation), and at what price. Focused on project-level applications like industrial users and utility developers, the report shows how batteries are now cheap enough to unlock solar power’s full potential.
24-hour solar generation enables this by combining solar panels with sufficient storage to deliver a stable, clean power supply, even in areas without grid access or where the grid is congested or unreliable. While this may not solve every challenge at the grid level, since not all places are as sunny and the electricity demand varies hourly and seasonally, it provides a pathway for solar to become the backbone of a clean power system in sunny regions and to play a much bigger role in less sunny regions.
This report explores how close we are to achieving constant, 24-hour solar electricity across 365 days in different cities around the world, and what it would cost to get there.
[Full pdf](https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2025/06/Ember-24-Hour-Solar-Electricity-June-2025-6.pdf)
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Please reply to OP’s comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1loezs4/batteries_are_now_cheap_enough_to_unleash_solars/n0mcpnn/
Battery might be cheap but labor cost and other hardware cost makes it too high for home installation.
Rondo brick batteries would be cheaper and easier to make/mine while being greener.
Regardless, Wright’s Law on scales of economy should make batteries far cheaper in the future, especially with cheaper low density grid batteries.
[It’s Bonkers that it’s gotten so cheap that they are making batteries as rolling stock.](https://www.hoppecke.com/en/applications/rail/rail-batteries/?phaina-interviewID=xBD7zlMs8VB3JeuRhnsTr) Trains hauling massive batteries and connecting them from one grid where power is going to the negatives in price to load shed. Then physically moving the power in kilometer long trains to where it’s expensive, picking up drained batteries for the return trip.
That is how cheap batteries have gotten. The price of transmission lines is the bottle neck. Solar can go in the negatives making a demand for storage that meets that cost. So massive and expensive batteries that can charge quickly will be very much in demand.
What is long overdue is having massive batteries attached to large infrastructure or campuses. In places like Texas that are seeing floors in the adoption of solar, because the power is as cheap as the rest of the solar/wind already on the grid in a given moment, this arbitrage could save a lot of money.
It’s funny, we have a technology that could almost solve climate change, save millions of lives, finish oil wars…
But of course, let’s focus on how profitable it is.