Research assessing the demand-constrained solar potential of 38 European countries finds the continent could feasibly deploy around 614 GW of solar, before storage or flexibility measures are added.
Europe’s national power system could deploy 614 GW of solar, equivalent to around 678 TWh of electricity annually, without any hour of overproduction, according to new research.
The research paper Assessment of Solar Energy Capacity Across Europe: Comparative Analysis of Production and Consumption Data, published in the journal Land, quantifies how much solar 38 European countries could realistically absorb when generation is matched to demand on an hour-to-hour basis.
The paper’s author, Hassan Gholami, a senior consultant at Norway’s Multiconsult and researcher at the University of Stavanger, utilized hourly electricity consumption data from the ENTSO-E transparency platform together with PVsyst generation simulations for each of the 38 countries studied.
This analysis allowed for an assessment of the maximum feasible solar capacity, defined as the largest PV fleet whose output never exceeds national electricity demand in any hour of the year. “This contrasts with prior studies that have generally relied on annual or seasonal averages, which tend to overestimate integration potential by overlooking intra-day variability and curtailment risk,” the research paper says.
