Energy · Photovoltaic Capacity

Global Solar Installed Capacity

From backyard experiment to the fastest-growing energy source in history.

• Over 1,000× in 25 years
• 2025 added 514 GW, more than 2018’s total
• Driven by Swanson’s Law, China, policy
• Cheapest power in many markets

Global solar capacity has grown from under 2 GW in 2000 to roughly 2,400 GW by the end of 2025. That is well over a thousand-fold in twenty-five years, doubling roughly every 27 months across the whole span. 2025 alone set the record: about 514 GW added, more than the entire installed base as recently as 2018. Every figure is IRENA’s, on one consistent basis, from their July 2026 yearbook, which revises the March release it supersedes; the series is total solar, which in practice means photovoltaics — 2,388 GW of the 2,397 — plus a small sliver of concentrated solar power. The drivers are no mystery: Swanson’s Law pushed module prices down about 20% for every doubling of cumulative production, China scaled manufacturing from megawatts to terawatts, and policy did the early heavy lifting. Solar is now the cheapest electricity in many markets (where resources and financing are favourable) and the dominant new energy addition globally. One honest note: capacity is nameplate, not output. A gigawatt of panels delivers far less than a gigawatt of gas around the clock, which is why grid storage is the other half of this story.

Source: IRENA Renewable Energy Statistics 2026

Download the data: solar_capacity.csv · solar_capacity.json

All curves · The chart is drawn in your browser and needs JavaScript. Every number it plots is in the table above.