Series

The production climate.

A solar system is a 25-year bet on the sky above it. This series takes the environmental variables between the sun and the socket, one at a time, and reads each against twenty years of NASA and NOAA record: what it does to production, how it has actually moved, and what a buyer should do about it. No forecasts without data, and every figure named to its source.

01The heat penaltyPublishedCell temperature, the coefficient, and what twenty years of warming add. The static heat tax is large; the climate drift is a decimal.02Brightening and dimmingPublishedTwo NASA instruments, 40 markets: 26 skies brightened over two decades, 14 dimmed, and every percent moves output one for one.03The variable yearsPublishedEl Niño and its siblings redistribute cloud across hemispheres. Why no year delivers the quoted yield, and what P90 protects.04Beam and diffusePublishedTwo kinds of light. The diffuse share runs 19% to 63%, and it, not the total, decides where a tracker or bifacial pays.05Rain, dust and soilingPublishedRain is free panel cleaning. Two orders of magnitude separate the markets it washes from the ones it abandons.06SmokePublishedEighteen measured events: large but short-window, structural in exactly three regions, a forecasting problem elsewhere.07WindPublishedThe free coolant. Mean wind runs 1.8 to 6.3 m/s and barely tracks heat, so it decides which hot markets get relief.08Storms and extremesPublishedAsset survival, not yield: hail threatens only a few markets, five face nothing, and the mount spec is where it's felt.09The compound trajectoryPublishedEvery variable joined, then multiplied by price: the map inverts. Dim Berlin out-earns sun-rich Riyadh per kilowatt.10State of the solar climatePublishedThe whole series in one annual reading: record heat meets solar's rise to the largest renewable. Refreshed each year.

The substrate

Built on the record, not the brochure.

Every part of this series draws on the same live data layer as our reports: NASA GISTEMP surface temperatures, MERRA-2 reanalysis, CERES satellite irradiance, NOAA ocean and circulation indices, and the retail-tariff record across 92 cities. The variables are published one at a time, as each pillar of the record is verified.

Start with part 01 All reports