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Photovoltaics continues to increase its capacity at a rapid pace, and 2024 was another record year for solar PV deployment. Meanwhile, despite recent hurdles to widespread adoption in some countries, EV adoption grew by 25% last year. Assuming an energy demand of 10 kWh/day for each new EV, the 17 million new vehicles sold in 2024 would have added another 50-70 GW of new PV generation worldwide. Electric vehicle (EV) sales are approaching a quarter of all vehicle sales. In China, the EV sales share could reach 50% this year. China is the world’s largest EV market and also the world’s largest EV manufacturer. The impending saturation of the domestic market suggests a flood of competitively priced Chinese EV exports, leading to rapid growth in global EV sales. EV sales grew by 25% in 2024 compared to 2023, to exceed the 17 million passenger and light-duty vehicle EVs sold last year. Assuming electricity demand per vehicle averages 10 kWh/day, this implies electricity demand growth of around 60 TWh per year. Fossil fuel generation has stagnated since 2021. Virtually all additional electricity demand is thus met by new solar and wind power. Most of todays vehicles, the vast majority of which are gasoline-powered, will be retired by 2040. We can confidently expect that the majority of new vehicle sales in the 2030s will be electric, meaning continued growth in demand for solar and wind power. Roughly speaking, full electrification of the land vehicle fleet in an advanced economy adds 40% to electricity demand. This new demand will come from solar and wind power. As ZareAfifi, de Castro, and Kurtz have recently discussed, daytime EV charging is a powerful game-changer, leveraging flexible EV charging to keep solar value on the grid and align EV charging loads with solar generation. If PV consumption increases at a faster rate than complementary storage solutions on the grid, their marginal value on the grid declines, reducing their economic attractiveness due to a growing misalignment between new solar generation and electricity loads. EVs are “batteries on wheels” that can be charged during daylight hours with solar electricity and discharged to the grid at any time, offering short-duration energy storage to meet nighttime demand. Thus, the timing of EV charging is key. Widespread deployment of slow-charging infrastructure in residential and non-residential settings, such as workplaces where cars are parked for several hours on weekdays, could make daytime charging more economically and practically attractive. Time-of-use tariffs that reflect daylight hours are aligned with the availability of the cleanest, most cost-competitive electricity, taking advantage of solar PV at its peak production. At current rates, by the end of the decade, cumulative installed capacity of solar PV will be greater than the sum of all other electricity generation technologies combined. As PV adoption grows, curtailment of solar electricity at peak production hours becomes an issue, and new large loads that adjust to solar resource availability, such as daytime EV charging, are welcome. |
