Solar supplied 10% of global power in H1 2026

At noon, solar panels are taking up a share that power grids can no longer ignore. In the first half of 2026, they supplied 10% of global electricity, according to the Ember institute. But the same generation falls to 0% at night: the sun is advancing quickly, while available electricity is not yet keeping pace.

The gap is visible across the hours of the day. Between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., solar accounts for 25% of the global electricity mix. In Chile, it rises to 71% at noon, then drops back to 0% from 9 p.m. In Germany, it reaches 55% of the mix around noon. The more solar markets mature, the more visible this alternation becomes.

Growth remains considerable. In the first half of 2023, solar accounted for just 5.6% of total electricity generation; over the same period in 2026, it reached 1,564 TWh, compared with 769 TWh three years earlier. Ember also says its generation increased 7 times faster than total electricity generation over the past ten years, with an increase of 27% per year.

The missing mechanism is straightforward: generate electricity during the day, store some of it in batteries, then deliver it when the panels stop producing. In 2025, Chile and Bulgaria installed storage capacity equivalent to 75% of the capacity of their new solar power plants, allowing them to shift some of this energy between 7 p.m. and 11 p.m. Long-duration storage batteries could also help during cloudy days, although wind power often generates more in bad weather.

So what does this mean in practice? Solar growth is not yet enough to sharply reduce the use of fossil fuels to generate electricity at night. For grids and countries adding large amounts of solar PV, the next lever is therefore storage: not generating more at noon, but making that electricity available when demand continues after sunset. Chile and Bulgaria’s results already point to a path forward, while the scale of long-duration batteries required remains to be determined.