Solar overtakes gas in Hungary

 From Our World in Data

A decade ago, solar power was almost non-existent in Hungary. It generated just 0.2% of the country’s electricity. Nuclear, coal, and gas dominated the grid.

But in the last ten years, things have changed a lot. You can see this in the chart: solar power has boomed, and now supplies one-quarter of Hungary’s electrical power. In 2024, it overtook gas to become the second-largest source of electricity, after nuclear.

Coal power has been largely displaced, first by gas and now by solar. This has helped cut the country’s CO2 emissions by 45% since 1990.

I discuss some of the issues with increasing solar in Hungary here.   Hungary is at latitude 47 N, which means the swing between insolation in summer and winter is significant, which in turn means that Hungary requires alternative energy sources in winter.  

As part of the pan-Europe electric grid, it can buy electricity from the European grid, which has plenty of wind.  Wind tends to be negatively correlated with solar, so there is more wind in winter, when solar is low, and less wind in summer when solar is strong.  However, although solar is going to get much cheaper, the share of solar may be limited by European generation capacity between November and March.  Hungary is also installing more nuclear, but there are limits to what extent nuclear can be ramped down in summer, when there is a surplus of solar.