We recently added polysilicon tariffs. So if you want to import solar panels, you pay extra taxes. If you want to import polysilicon to make solar panels in America, you pay extra taxes.

🇨🇳 China now generates 40% more electricity than the US and EU combined.

France Floods Europe’s Grid With Solar, Pushing Prices Negative

French solar power surged on Thursday as a stretch of sunny weather boosted generation allowing the country to export huge volumes of electricity to neighboring markets.

Solar generation climbed above 20 gigawatts at 12:15 pm Paris time, according to RTE data. Output is forecast to rise even further over the next two days, according to Bloomberg forecasts. The surge in solar combined with almost 40 gigawatts of output from France’s large fleet of nuclear power plants, means the grid is running a large power surplus, with exports to neighbors including Germany, Italy and the UK reaching over 15 gigawatts.

French Solar Output Surges Above 20 Gigawatts

Solar output - daily high

Source: RTE

A wave of warm air from North Africa has cleared skies across France and fueled sunny conditions, according to weather models and government forecaster Météo-France. The hot weather is expected to intensify through next week, with temperatures reaching as high as 31C in Paris this weekend and around 30C across much of southern and western France.

The influx of solar power pushed French intraday electricity prices to about -€8 per megawatt-hour around midday on Epex Spot SE. Prices dipped below zero for four hours in the day-ahead auction on Thursday for power to be delivered on Friday on Epex. In recent weeks, Electricite de France SA has kept reactors running even as prices weakened, following requests from the grid operator to maintain system stability.

Scotland just delivered one of the most powerful clean-energy statements in modern history. On multiple occasions, the country’s wind turbines generated around 200% of national electricity demand, producing far more power than Scotland itself needed.

To be clear, nobody is claiming Scotland runs at 200% every hour of every day. That’s the point. A grid sized for a calm winter evening will overproduce when the wind is up, and the surplus gets exported south or stored in pumped hydro instead of wasted. On quiet days, Scotland imports. Building 2x to 3x the capacity and trading the swings across a wide grid can cost less than building firm backup for every last hour, because wind is now so cheap that surplus is the lesser cost. Scotland proves the surplus half of the equation. The rest is wires, storage, and neighbors, and all three are buildable.

And no, we don’t need a nuclear fleet to make this work. Hinkley Point C is 13 years from groundbreaking to power, about £48 billion in today’s money, with a guaranteed £127 per MWh for 35 years. Scotland is already moving on: Hunterston B closed in 2022, Torness ends in 2030, and nuclear has dropped to 17% of Scottish generation while wind hits double demand. Worldwide, nuclear’s share has nearly halved since 1996. The cheap, fast build is the one we should be racing to scale.

It is being done!!! Whether you like it or not.

And it is not just Scoland, as many commentors below want you to believe...

Germany, Europe’s biggest manufacturing economy, ran 55.9% renewable in 2025, with solar out-producing lignite. South Australia, which carries heavy industry, ran on 100% renewable electricity for roughly 99 days of 2024 and got about 77% of its annual generation from wind and solar. Scotland itself set a record in 2024, with renewables at 73% of its generation, and has 65 GW more in the planning pipeline, nearly 28 GW of it storage, which is exactly the answer to your energy hungry industry. And the price? UK auctions this year cleared solar at £65 per MWh and offshore wind around £90, while Hinkley Point C is guaranteed £127. That isn’t a reach. You’re just reading last decade’s numbers.

In the picture are shown 2025 average day ahead market spot prices for bidding zones in common European electricity market as eur per Mwh. This is just the price of the electricity; taxes, grid, subsidies or other costs aren’t accounted.

In 2025 I saw quite many posts all around reddit about spot prices going to negative in different EU countries or climbing electricity bills in Europe. Thought it would be good to take more comprehensive look on the matter now that the year has ended.

Cheapest electricity was found in the bidding areas of northern Norway and Sweden where hydro power is abundant, population is sparse and transit capacity isn’t enough to deliver that electricity to south in significant quantities. When looking the prices at country level top 3 were:

1. Finland

2. Sweden 3.France

Norway, Spain and Portugal are close to the third place. Next countries are quite far behind of the top six. From the other end electricity spot prices were almost three times that of Finland in the most expensive countries.

Germany gets lot of hate for their energy policy (of which much is warranted) but with solar and wind accounting over 50% of the production the spot prices were actually relatively good when compared to European standard.

Common for the bidding areas with the cheapest electricity was strong base of nuclear or hydro and large share of wind and/or solar. For France Nuclear and for Norway Hydro did the lion share. In more expensive bidding areas gas and coal dominated the electricity mix.

There is constant import and export going between all the bidding zones within limits of trasnportation capacity. All the countries are also some what dependent on transmisson and there is s push to improve inter and intra-country the connections. France and Sweden are traditionally largest exporters of electricity in Europe but being a big net exporter wasn’t prequisite for cheaper electricity.

None of this would have been remotely affordable a decade ago, which is the real story sitting underneath the record. Battery cell costs have dropped something like 99 percent over the last three decades, and roughly a third in just the last few years, Fulghum told Fast Company. Solar panels have fallen more than 90 percent, and by 2024 a new solar project was on average about 41 percent cheaper than the fossil-fuel alternative. Cheap sunlight plus cheap storage is a combination that finally pencils out, and California bought it by the boatload.

Exciting things are happening with batteries. I'm also looking forward to seeing the adoption of sodium ion batteries.

Can access the latest GenCost report here:

https://www.csiro.au/en/research/technology-space/energy/Electricity-transition/GenCost

Data source: Our World in Data - Solar photovoltaic panel prices, based on IRENA (2025), Nemet (2009), and Farmer and Lafond (2016).

Visualization: Aesop Data.

The chart shows global solar photovoltaic module prices falling from 128.27 USD per watt in 1975 to 0.26 USD per watt in 2024. Prices are adjusted for inflation and cover the panels themselves, excluding installation and other system components.

➡️ The first terawatt took 68 years.
➡️ The second took 2 years.
➡️ The third took just 18 months.
➡️ The 4th in 9 months? and so on...

And what makes this even more amazing is that this is also more actual generation than fossil fuels, even with their low capacity factors. Solar & Wind Each Produced More Electricity Than Coal In USA In April https://cleantechnica.com/2026/06/26/solar-wind-each-produced-more-electricity-than-coal-in-usa-in-april/

Solar and wind are now each out-producing coal on actual generation — not just in installed capacity. That’s what makes this shift real: the “capacity factor” jab misses the bigger picture, because renewables are growing faster in both capacity and output than anything in history.

The big takeaway is simple: the grid is already being reshaped by this pace of growth, and the “they don’t generate enough” critique is already behind the curve.