Twenty years ago, Australia appeared set to be a global player in the solar panel manufacturing industry. Today, with panels in high demand, we hardly make any of them. Here’s how we lost our head start.
— Read on www.abc.net.au/news/science/2021-09-19/solar-panels-why-australia-stopped-making-them-china/100466342

He’s calculated roughly how big.

For Australia to produce enough energy that it won’t need coal or gas and can also meet the extra demand of mass electrification, it will need about 450GW of solar and wind generation, he says.

Of that, about 300GW would be solar, he estimates.

With about 20GW of installed solar already, it’ll need another 280GW.

“We’re going to be importing a lot of glass and a lot of panels with a little bit of silicon attached,” Professor Blakers says.

Australia will need hundreds of millions of standard-size solar panels to meet its energy needs in the next couple decades.

And that’s just domestic demand…