Researchers Say Solar Is Getting So Good That People Could Start Quitting the Electric Grid

Researchers claim that in 2020, an astonishing 53 percent of all free-standing homes in Europe could have run entirely on their own rooftop solar panels and gotten all the energy they needed that year.

As detailed in a new study published in the journal Joule, the researchers evaluated the self-sufficiency potential for 41 million single-family buildings by studying around 4,000 that they considered representative of their regions in terms of local climate, architecture, and other factors.

From there, the researchers calculated cost-efficient ways these households could generate their own energy using rooftop solar panels alongside other measures like insulation, batteries, and small wind turbines.

All told, the findings paint a surprisingly sunny outlook. Using local rooftop solar energy alone, the researchers expect a jump to 75 percent of European homes being able to be self-sufficient by 2050.