2026年全球太阳能报告：基于373GW数据的洞察

GlobalSolar Report Insights from 373GW of Data Introduction Contents Executive Summary Chapter 1:Asset Health Dispatch Chapter 2:Optimizing Performance with Robotics Chapter 3:Risk Management and Insurance Conclusion About Raptor Maps Introduction Welcome to the 2026 edition of the Global Solar Report. Each year, RaptorMaps analyzes data on an array of topics – from asset performance anddowntime risk to labor availability and operational best practices – in This year’s Report is divided into three chapters.Chapter 1looks at thestate of solar performance, with a focus on DC health. How has DC powerloss evolved over time? How does performance change as sites age?What factors are driving these changes?Chapter 2looks at burgeoningdata on the effects of robotics on DC health. Specifically, withautonomously operating docked drones that live on site 24/7, how is theadoption of these technologies changing how owners and operatorsgather data on their assets, and what impact is that having on power ExecutiveSummary The solar industry continued to grow at a rapid pace in 2025. Globally, 380 GWdc of solar assets were brought online in just the first half of 2025, a 64% increase over the sameperiod in 2024 [1]. It is estimated that global installed solar capacity will surpass 3 TW in 2026, enough to power the entirety of the United States and Europe during peak daylight These strong growth projections come at a time in which solar is experiencing domestic political headwinds. This contradiction highlights the fact that even without governmentsubsidies, solar is established as a cost-competitive, if not cost-superior, energy investment. A recent report on the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) illustrated this sentiment, stating The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and the related data center build-out by hyperscalers have been the leading story behind the growing electricity demand in the United States.According to a Wood Mackenzie Report, as of June, 2025, utilities in the US had already committed to supplying 64 GW of new capacity just from data center needs – a 12% However, despite this projected growth, the solar industry faces bottlenecks.Labor supply continues to significantly lag behind capacity growth. Over the past 5 years in the US,solar jobs grew by 12% while installed capacity grew by 286%. As a result, solar technicians today are responsible for 70% more MW than they were in 2019, on average [5]. At the same time as labor is becoming more constrained,severe weather conditions continue to acutely threaten solar assets. In the United States, over 99% of solar farms are Collectively, the effect of these trends is thatunderperformance is still a major challenge in the industry, which is concerning given that solar farms are becoming a largerproportion of the energy mix annually. This year, the average power loss across solar assets in our data set was 5.08%, which is a slight improvement over last year (average power ExecutiveSummary This underperformance is something that affects solar farms from the moment they are commissioned. Though data shows that solar farms exhibit reduced performance as theyage,we observed 4.46% average power loss at commissioning, highlighting how important active engagement and QA/QC are throughout the construction process. Indeed, efforts are being made to combat these trends. We showed in our inaugural2025 State of Solar Robotics Report that owners and operators are investing in robotics andautomation, which is changing operational models for maintaining and managing solar assets. In that report, we noted that the majority of our survey respondents were alreadyusing at least one type of robot on their solar farm (drone, vegetation robot, construction robot, etc.), with 77% indicating that they planned to increase their investments in robotics The contents of this report take that analysis further by looking not just atwhatrobotic and automation tools are being used, but also athowthese technologies are being deployedon solar farms, and what effect they are having on performance, operational efficiency and risk management. Below, we list three main takeaways from this analysis: In 2025, average power loss was 5.08%, which was a slight decrease year-over-year, but still stubbornly high relative to the running 5 year historical average from 2020-2024 of In 2025, we analyzed 54 GW of data on sites that deployed docked drones for autonomous inspections, a 3.56x increase year-over-year. The results from this larger sample sizeof data were clear:sites that deployed this technology performed better (3% avg. power loss) relative to the larger subset of sites (5.08%). We suspect that this increase inperformance is, in part, driven through increased frequency of inspections,which yields more up-to-date data for prioritizing and driving performance-boosting actions. This Raptor Maps analyzed 57.5 GW of non-aerial thermography solar data in 2025 (i.e. wiring, substati