Solar overtakes nuclear power worldwide for the first time

> From March 2025 through June 2026, either solar or wind individually generated more electricity than nuclear every month. In March, April and May 2026, both technologies independently surpassed nuclear generation.

> Global solar capacity increased by 510 GW to 2,383 GW, up 27% year on year, while wind added a record 159 GW to reach 1,291 GW, an increase of 14%. By comparison, installed nuclear capacity rose by just 1.5 GW to 399.5 GW, while operating nuclear capacity declined by 0.5 GW to 368.6 GW.

> More recent data from IEA PVPS indicate that global PV additions reached around 690 GW in 2025, about 180 GW more than the figure used by WNISR. This suggests the gap between solar and nuclear capacity – and their respective growth rates – was even wider than indicated in the report.

> The report identifies falling battery costs as a potential enabler of continued PV expansion, particularly as grids contend with growing volumes of variable renewable generation and periods of low or negative electricity prices. Grid-scale battery deployment accelerated sharply in 2025, with 104 GW and 257 GWh connected during the year. More than 78% of cumulative battery energy storage system (BESS) capacity was installed between 2023 and 2025.

Not surprised, we stopped building more than a handful of reactors 50 years ago. The fact that it took so long to surpass in any metric just goes to show how good nuclear power really is.

Always good to see the future arriving, but the job is not done yet by far. We need to be sure not to take our foot off the gas (figuratively of course).

We need to accelerate clean energy generation even more so we can replace not just dirty electricity sources but dirty energy sources entirely, and produce synthetic petrochemical feedstocks. Modernity runs on hydrocarbons-as-chemicals, not just hydrocarbons-as-fuels, so despite electrolysis and synthesis being hugely energy inefficient, there is literally no alternative. We just have to brute force it at petascale.

It is a shame that nuclear power has stagnated - we could have been moving towards fossil fuel free grid half a century ago. We've lost decades of progress there. But it's a good thing that solar power is coming into its own more and more.

Late is better than never.

You know what I call solar--fusion power. There's a giant fusion reactor running for free. We simply need to extract the useful energy. Want to build a terrestrial fusion reactor? A conventional nuclear reactor? You still need to extract useful energy and deal with excess heat. The way I see it, from an economic perspective, long-term, solar wins. Of course, this is just my long-view

On a monthly basis. News articles about solar power tend to quote maximum capacity, confusing the issue. This is about energy rather than power, aggregated over a month, so it's a somewhat more meaningful statement.

We're getting to a point where we can stop boiling water for electricity.

What a time to be alive.

In order for renewables like solar and wind energy to truly take the burden off a grid, we have to have large capacity energy storage solutions that balance the grid over a 8+ hour period. That way we can handle peak demand of the grid during high load which often happens when there's little light and on hot days when the wind doesn't generate nearly as much electricity.

80% of global energy consumption is still fossil fuels (oil/coal/gas), however.