Sunny Latin America is expanding its use of solar panels, reports Dialogue Earth:
Distributed energy refers to a range of technologies that generate electricity at or near the place of use…
Latin America and the Caribbean has seen a huge expansion of distributed energy, driven mostly by Brazil, Mexico, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Chile and Colombia. The region went from just one gigawatt installed capacity of distributed systems in 2017 to 31.8 GW by 2023, the year with the latest available data….Virtually all of these installations use solar panels…. The region has long been established as a clean electricity leader thanks to its hydropower resources, and the International Energy Agency estimates the growth in its renewables will continue, with their share of the electricity supply projected to increase from just over 60% today to 80% by 2050.
South American countries have greater hydropower potential per capita than the U.S., as reflected in their higher renewable freshwater resources per capita. Most South American nations already generate more hydropower per capita than the U.S. as a result. In South America, there are five rivers that have a lot more water flow than the Mississippi River, the river that flows the most water in the United States (the Amazon, Orinoco, Negro, Madeira, and Rio de la Plata each have more water than the Mississippi). Brazil alone has more hydropower capacity than the U.S., which has far more people.
Many areas of Latin America are sunny. Chile’s capital Santiago has about 2800 hours of sunshine per year, while Brazil’s capital Brasilia has about 2400 hours of sunshine per year, Mexico City gets about 2600 hours of sunshine, and Argentina’s capital Buenos Aires has about 2500 hours of sunshine.
By contrast, northern European countries are not very sunny. Brussels has only about 1500 hours of sunshine per year, Berlin and London have only about 1600 hours of sunshine per year, Paris has only about 1700 hours, and Moscow about 1900 hours. Solar power is less practical in much of Europe, and provides less steady power, because solar panels generate no energy when there is no sunshine.
