Couple of years ago I was trying to come up with a small framework I can use to analyze & understand anything that comes my way, be it world policy, family issues, work projects, politics or anything else. Eventually settled on two simple questions:
1. Is the picture being presented complete? (This is to help us get past arguments that focus too much on small slivers of data and/or anecdotal evidence.)
2. Whatever solution being proposed, will it scale? (This is to ensure that we are not beguiled by very nice-sounding solutions that cost too much or too complicated to implement and so won't work when scaled up.)
You can find the full post titled Simple Questions here.
There can always be exceptions. Perhaps in some situations it is impossible to get the full picture OR scaling is not that important OR we need to do small scale solutions now and focus on big scale solutions later, etc. But asking these two questions should help us cut through clutter on any domain we are interested in learning about.
Many articles, substack posts, papers I have been reading recently, with these two framework questions in mind, seems to point to solar power evolving into a comprehensive solution for power delivery in many remote parts of the world. As you may know, if we can somehow harvest all the energy that reaches planet earth from sun for one hour, it is adequate to cover all our power needs for a whole year! Though this is not practical, it goes to show that there is enough energy available if we can make use of it efficiently. This means the solution will scale if needed. This is getting demonstrated in parts of Africa really well!
- Solar panel costs (measured as $/watt) have plummeted more than 99% over the past 50 years. In other words, if you'd have spent $10,000 in 1975 to buy panels to power a home, panels providing same amount of power cost much less than $100 now!
- Pay as you go models that allow people who are not wealthy to get solar power, paying monthly installments. After 5, 6 years, they do get full ownership.
- Mpesa (in Kenya) and other money exchange models that work via feature phones and SMS text messages, make it easy for customers in remote locations to make payments.
- Solar panels installed in remote locations now come with microchips embedded that allows the service provider to turn off the service remotely if the monthly payments are not coming in, obviating the need for a truck roll. If payment resumes, service can be turned on again easily and remotely.
- Mobile phone adoption skyrocketed in India couple of decades ago, since there was huge void that required filling as landlines were not easy to get and didn't work well. Similarly, solar adoption is taking off in Africa since "building power plants & running wires to individual homes miles and miles away" model wasn't working for decades, leaving a big void.
- Western companies trying to buy green credits and even PE (Private Equity) companies trying to turn a profit, are investing in this area now, reducing the costs further!
Model seems to be replicable in most parts of the world and so can scale. This understanding appears correct since I see writeups explaining how renewable energy creation costs are now equal to or even below traditional power production and so are starting to compete on cost, powerful big countries like China, India as well as smaller countries around the world are leveraging these trends to implement solar projects in massive scales, and so on. China's manufacturing prowess cratering panel costs alone is a significant contribution towards green energy adoption around the world!
I did read an odd article in the Financial Express. It discussed how the Pakistani power grid is not supplying power reliably, that is pushing anyone who can afford to buy solar panels to switch to solar for their electricity needs. This leaves only the poor who couldn't afford on the grid. They don't pay their dues properly that puts the grid in death spiral! While this is sad, even that article talked about customers buying panels fully first. Instead, if this "pay as you go" model gets implemented in Pakistan, it will work even for the poor. It may play the death knell for their power grid but will at least provide reliable power to everyone. Hopefully the resulting improvement in the economy, will eventually help the grid as well. 
Just to be clear, the overall share of power generation using solar is still too small compared to the role of fossil fuels as seen in this chart below. You can visit the https://ourworldindata.org/ site that has a lot of interesting data that is easy to explore in many domains, including this one. Still, it is good to see this uptick at least in the rural electrification projects, particularly since this model will scale.
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