page_title: Renewable energy
section_title: Solar energy
hierarchical_section_title: Renewable energy / Mainstream technologies / Solar energy
caption_attribution_description: English: Nine million cadmium telluride solar modules now cover part of Carrizo Plain in southern California. The modules are part of Topaz Solar Farm, one of the largest photovoltaic power plants in the world. At 9.5 square miles (25.6 square kilometers), the facility is about one-third the size of Manhattan island, or the equivalent of 4,600 football fields. Construction at Topaz began in 2011. The plant was mostly complete by November 2014, when it was turned on and began to generate electricity. By February 2015, all construction activity ended and plant operator BHE Renewable was set to announce that the project was officially complete. When operating at full capacity, the 550-megawatt plant produces enough electricity to power about 180,000 homes. According to BHE estimates, that is enough to displace about 407,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, the equivalent of taking 77,000 cars off the road. From the ground level, the scope of the facility is difficult to comprehend. Visitors to Topaz describe rows of solar panels that seem to stretch endlessly into the horizon. This satellite image, captured on January 2, 2015, by the Operational Land Imager on Landsat 8, helps put the facility into perspective. Solar arrays appear gray and charcoal. The surrounding farmland and grasslands appear brown and green. The power plant is situated within a plain flanked by the Caliente Range to the west and the Temblor Range to the east. Topaz’s solar modules are mounted together on panels supported by steel columns; the structure holds the modules about 5 feet (1.5 meters) above the ground. Rows of panels are laid in a way that form large geometric shapes that are defined in part by the presence of access roads, stream beds, and preexisting infrastructure. The northernmost portions of the solar farm, which are close to a transmission line, were built first. Mid American Renewables and Gunther Portfolio have published interesting aerial video and photographs that show additional views of the plant at various stages of construction.
context_page_description: Renewable energy is energy that is collected from renewable resources, which are naturally replenished on a human timescale, such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, waves, and geothermal heat. Renewable energy often provides energy in four important areas: electricity generation, air and water heating/cooling, transportation, and rural energy services.
  Based on REN21's 2017 report, renewables contributed 19.3% to humans' global energy consumption and 24.5% to their generation of electricity in 2015 and 2016, respectively. This energy consumption is divided as 8.9% coming from traditional biomass, 4.2% as heat energy, 3.9% from hydroelectricity and the remaining 2.2% is electricity from wind, solar, geothermal, and other forms of biomass. Worldwide investments in renewable technologies amounted to more than US$286 billion in 2015. In 2017, worldwide investments in renewable energy amounted to US$279.8 billion with China accounting for US$126.6 billion or 45% of the global investments, the United States for US$40.5 billion and Europe for US$40.9 billion.
context_section_description: At the end of 2019, global installed solar capacity was 586 GW.
  Solar energy, radiant light and heat from the sun, is harnessed using a range of ever-evolving technologies such as solar heating, photovoltaics, concentrated solar power (CSP), concentrator photovoltaics (CPV), solar architecture and artificial photosynthesis. Solar technologies are broadly characterized as either passive solar or active solar depending on the way they capture, convert, and distribute solar energy. Passive solar techniques include orienting a building to the Sun, selecting materials with favorable thermal mass or light dispersing properties, and designing spaces that naturally circulate air. Active solar technologies encompass solar thermal energy, using solar collectors for heating, and solar power, converting sunlight into electricity either directly using photovoltaics (PV), or indirectly using concentrated solar power (CSP).
  A photovoltaic system converts light into electrical direct current (DC) by taking advantage of the photoelectric effect. Solar PV has turned into a multi-billion, fast-growing industry, continues to improve its cost-effectiveness, and has the most potential of any renewable technologies together with CSP. Concentrated solar power (CSP) systems use lenses or mirrors and tracking systems to focus a large area of sunlight into a small beam. Commercial concentrated solar power plants were first developed in the 1980s. CSP-Stirling has by far the highest efficiency among all solar energy technologies.
  In 2011, the International Energy Agency said that "the development of affordable, inexhaustible and clean solar energy technologies will have huge longer-term benefits. It will increase countries' energy security through reliance on an indigenous, inexhaustible and mostly import-independent resource, enhance sustainability, reduce pollution, lower the costs of mitigating climate change, and keep fossil fuel prices lower than otherwise. These advantages are global. Hence the additional costs of the incentives for early deployment should be considered learning investments; they must be wisely spent and need to be widely shared". Italy has the largest proportion of solar electricity in the world; in 2015, solar supplied 7.7% of electricity demand in Italy. In 2017, after another year of rapid growth, solar generated approximately 2% of global power, or 460 TWh.
caption: Satellite image of the 550-megawatt Topaz Solar Farm in California, US
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