I don't think most of us in North America are aware of just how rapid this change is happening with solar.
https://twitter.com/user/status/1835711497340702893
One of the biggest difficulties in assessing solar penetration is that if it's not grid tied it's almost impossible to see. Rooftop and factory installations are especially difficult to count in emerging economies because there's little to no paper trail. Look at Pakistan. The whole entire grid is only 50GW capacity and electricity is incredibly expensive as it's based on imported fossil fuels. In the first 6 months of 2024 alone, Pakistan imported 13 GW of panels and are buying up cheap lead acid batteries. For many of these consumers, they're simply skipping fossil fuel based grid electricity and creating their own electricity with solar panels.
In Africa, they skipped landlines and went straight to cell phones. Could Pakistan do the same with electricity?
Solar Panels hit a wholesale price of $0.095/Watt. My 11 kW system cost me $26,000 CAD all in back in 2023. That means the panels for those in China would cost less than $1,100 USD today. That's insane.
An interesting wrinkle is that we're now realizing that installed capacity is likely way underestimated and it can have a really big impact. We estimate GDP partially based on electricity consumption in many nations (including China). If much of the consumption is invisible, it becomes that much less reliable of a number