Monday, 30 September 2024.
According to the International Energy Agency, in 2023 solar photovoltaics accounted for three-quarters of renewable capacity additions worldwide: China leading the way with 100 GW added in 2022, the European Union accelerating with 38 GW, India with 18 GW , Brazil doubling its capacity between 2021 and 2022 to 11 GW, and the United States creating financial and fiscal stimuli.
As solar energy is only produced when the sun is shining, it is worth understanding the sun dynamics across the globe.
Equator is the region on Earth where the length of day/night is practically the same throughout the year. Moving away from the Equator, the duration changes. It also changes depending on the season, the day lengthening in summer and decreasing in winter.
In the extreme, this ends up creating interesting situations such as the “Midnight Sun” or the “Polar Night” from the hemispherical positions known as Polar Circles. Geographical opposites, in the north the Arctic Circle crosses countries such as Canada, Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Russian Federation, while the Antarctic crosses only uninhabited regions at the South Pole.
To put it in a more applied way, for example in the height of summer, if you are on the line of the Polar Circle and take a step towards the Pole, the sun will never set over the horizon. It would be the “Midnight Sun” situation. If you step towards the Equator, you will see a brief moment of the sun disappearing over the horizon, a minimal night. In winter the effect would be the opposite, the “Polar Night.
The European Union has already adopted summer time for a long time, having re-discussed the issue in 2019, before the acceleration of photovoltaic solar energy. Click on the image below to read more about it. The image appears in the publication “Technical assistance with the public consultation on EU summertime arrangements” from May 2019, available below for download.
That said and understood, it is clear that the length of the day is to the generation of solar energy what the efficient use of land is to agriculture.
There are other points about photovoltaic solar energy generation. We will discuss them in tomorrow's article.
