{
  "slug": "wildfire-smoke-solar",
  "title": "Smoke: The Solar Yield Risk the Industry Has Not Priced",
  "url": "https://solaranalytica.com/wildfire-smoke-solar",
  "summary": "Eighteen measured market-events from grid operators, fleets and peer-reviewed studies: 27% off Sydney's rooftops in a day, 13.4% off California's worst fortnight, 9.5% across Black Summer's two months. Smoke is a recurring seasonal yield factor in exactly three regions, and a forecasting problem, not a resource problem, everywhere else.",
  "license": "Free to use with attribution to Solar Analytica (solaranalytica.com). Underlying figures are named to their public sources below.",
  "csv": "https://solaranalytica.com/reports/wildfire-smoke-solar/data.csv",
  "datePublished": "2026-05-21",
  "lastReviewed": "2026-05-21",
  "sources": [
    {
      "title": "AEMO 2019-20 summer operations review (via pv magazine Australia)",
      "url": "https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2020/06/23/aemo-2019-20-operations-review-finds-black-summer-was-effectively-mitigated-but-the-challenge-mounts/"
    },
    {
      "title": "US EIA: California wildfire smoke and utility-scale solar, September 2020",
      "url": "https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=45336"
    },
    {
      "title": "Quantifying wildfire smoke on PV in Australia (iScience 2024)",
      "url": "https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10845029/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Sandia National Laboratories: wildfire smoke and PV production (Applied Energy)",
      "url": "https://www.sandia.gov/research/publications/details/evaluating-the-impact-of-wildfire-smoke-on-solar-photovoltaic-production-2023-10-15/"
    },
    {
      "title": "NREL: wildfire smoke and grid operations (fy23osti/86640)",
      "url": "https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy23osti/86640.pdf"
    },
    {
      "title": "NCAR/UCAR: California wildfire smoke dimmed solar energy in 2020",
      "url": "https://news.ucar.edu/132875/california-wildfire-smoke-dimmed-solar-energy-2020"
    },
    {
      "title": "Chen, Jones et al.: forest-fire emissions up 60% (Science 2024)",
      "url": "https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adl5889"
    },
    {
      "title": "NASA MODIS burned-area record (Boschetti, MODIS Science Team 2023)",
      "url": "https://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/sci_team/meetings/202305/presentations/boschetti.pdf"
    },
    {
      "title": "Copernicus CAMS: 2023, a year of intense global wildfire activity",
      "url": "https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/2023-year-intense-global-wildfire-activity"
    },
    {
      "title": "Canadell et al.: multi-decadal increase in Australian forest fire (Nature Communications 2021)",
      "url": "https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-27225-4"
    }
  ],
  "figures": [
    {
      "id": "smoke-event-impacts",
      "title": "Measured smoke impacts on PV output, by event window",
      "unit": "%",
      "caption": "Measured PV output reduction per smoke event, energy or output basis only. The blue reading is the season-scale number: AEMO's grid-wide 9.5% across the two Black Summer months. Sources per event in the table below.",
      "series": [
        {
          "label": "New York · 4 days",
          "value": 40
        },
        {
          "label": "Spain plant · 2 days",
          "value": 34
        },
        {
          "label": "Sydney · 1 day",
          "value": 27
        },
        {
          "label": "California · 10 days",
          "value": 20
        },
        {
          "label": "Singapore · 18 days",
          "value": 20
        },
        {
          "label": "Seoul · bad-air day",
          "value": 15.6
        },
        {
          "label": "California · 14 days",
          "value": 13.4
        },
        {
          "label": "Sydney NEM · 62 days",
          "value": 9.5
        },
        {
          "label": "US West · per day",
          "value": 8.3
        },
        {
          "label": "California · 30 days",
          "value": 7.7
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "global-fire-trends",
      "title": "The two opposite 20-year global fire trends",
      "unit": "%",
      "caption": "Global burned area fell about 27% over 20 years (MODIS) while forest-fire carbon rose 60% (Science 2024) and human exposure rose 40%. The decline is savanna conversion far from PV fleets; the smoke that reaches grids is rising.",
      "series": [
        {
          "label": "Forest-fire carbon",
          "value": 60
        },
        {
          "label": "Fire exposure",
          "value": 40
        },
        {
          "label": "Burned area, 20 yr",
          "value": -27
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}