Solar generates more energy in US than coal for first time(theguardian.com) |
Solar generates more energy in US than coal for first time(theguardian.com) |
Coal is unpopular in all but a few areas where coal mining is still a part of the local econonmy. I used to work near a coal plant and every day I'd go out to my car and it would have little black particles all over it. Nobody likes that, no matter what the President says.
This administration swapped to actively suppressing Wind and Solar via tariffs etc, and yet the trends continued because the underlying economic reality heavily favors battery backed solar.
There's probably a delay in the effects though since projects started before they took office are probably starting to thin out and finish up. We'd have to look into the permitting of new projects or wait for to see how big the decline in new capacity turns out to be in a couple years.
I doubted what you wrote, but everything you said is correct (for the last 10 years, at least). Over the time period, natural gas increased 740 TWh/year (to 1870) and coal decreased 940 TWh/year (to 650). Electricity production is up ~7%, but that's quite low compared to the growth of everything else.
> This administration swapped to actively suppressing Wind and Solar via tariffs etc
Biden's administration put on solar tariffs, but of course I'll grant the current administration is fucking up everything else possible.
For whatever reason, there’s a strong motivation for people to dismiss the gigantic global effort to transition the energy system away from fossil fuels, and claim that all that effort isn’t really doing anything. Thankfully, this is not true — determined people can change things for the better.
For many years coal has been more expensive than solar and wind. That's why utilities are decommissioning the plants.
Because renewable energy is Communism, or something.
But seriously: $$$$. The Fossil Fuel industry, before it finally dies, will make big Tobacco look downright merciful. The owners of these companies and their media co-conspirators should be tried in the Hague for what they have done to our planet just to keep making fucking money.
Natural gas's share of electricity generation has been falling for five years straight:
https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/gas-share-in-global...
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/installed-solar-pv-capaci...
Should you live near one of those big noisy "freeway" things you may note the little black particles over everything in the surroundings but nobody likes to tear down the interstate.
Lots of urban areas in the US have been resisting, tearing down, and/or relocating major roads since the freeway revolts of the 1970s:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_revolts_in_the_United_...
First, I live 150 yards from a major freeway - I-90 in WA, it's three lanes in each direction here. There are no tiny black particles over everything in surroundings, and my outdoors AQI (from my own sensor) is normally in single digits and basically only ever gets above 50 if it's wildfire smoke or the neighbors are burning something.
But second, if we developed a reliable and cheap way to, say, teleport people over long distances, why not tear it down?
smaller stuff is more dangerous and goes deeper into your body:
- PM10: inhalable dust entering the nose and mouth.
- PM4: respirable fraction that can reach the gas-exchange region.
- PM2.5: fine particles that penetrate deep into the lungs.
- PM1: ultrafine particles with potential to translocate beyond the lungs.
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/clean-energy/renewables...
https://torkeldanielsson.se/solar-energy-forecasts/
Solar is already by far our cheapest source of energy. As solar expands, the learning rate means solar will be even cheaper. We should expect solar to be the single largest source of energy on earth by 2035.
It's easy to drag out a flat line in an exponential graph - but the line better start bending soon or we'll end up with a truly mind boggling amount of solar energy.
It'd an electric ship, which has what is basically a grid scale battery power plant on board to power it.
The problem is range. Good enough for it's intended use as a ferry in South America. But it's going to need to be towed there from Tasmania.
The US killed it.
The US and Israel attacked Iran causing chaos in oil markets and put it back on track.
https://www.imo.org/en/mediacentre/pressbriefings/pages/imo-...
+2 for EMBER for having a data source AND being able to link to the parameters that show solar overtaking coal for the month in the US.
https://ember-energy.org/data/electricity-data-explorer/?ent...
The latest 2025 summary report[0] has some great information, some top-level call-outs
- Solar power alone met 75% of the net increase in electricity demand. Together with wind, the two sources met almost all (99%) demand growth.
- For the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, and only the fifth time this century, fossil generation did not rise, recording a small fall of 38 TWh (-0.2%)
- For the first time in 100 years, renewables (33.8%, 10,730 TWh) overtook coal power (33.0%, 10,476 TWh) in the global electricity mix...
If "we need to store solar energy from summer to winter" is indeed a significant issue, maybe you could use the extra power in summertime to make natural gas [1] and then store the gas until you need it in the winter.
[1] https://www.terraformindustries.com/ is a startup working on turning solar power into natural gas
To completely decarbonise we probably will need to eventually make liquid fuels for long distance air travel. But it may make more sense to do that nearer the equator to maximise the return on the capital investment by running it constantly rather than only during the summer.
And I feel the need to say this, but this is the type of question I'd immediately turn to an LLM to answer, and I probably will ultimately, but I "still" like getting peoples' on-the-ground experience/expertise.
https://ourworldindata.org/profile/co2/united-states
Despite not being in the paris treaty, the us needs only a 10-12% reduction to meet the paris accord requirements on schedule (43% decrease by 2030).
I do fear that natural gas may end up as a Nuclear scenario where in we do not wholly embrace natural gas Fuel Cells that produce electricity with no emissions. Yes you have the fracking issue but the US owns that environmental damage within its borders instead of outsourcing mineral extraction to poorer countries. We solve the biggest issue with fossil fuels (emissions) while working on limiting environmental impacts on extraction. It’s also way less noisy than gas turbines and can be scaled to basically any size.
Bloom is the gold standard right now but I hope they get strong competition soon, I truly believe/hope that Natural Gas fuel cells are a massive piece to the future energy puzzle.
Quickly being in the next decade or two.
Arguably that CO2 stream is concentrated and a candidate for capture/sequestration, but no one is doing that in practice.
Let's not avoid assigning responsibility when it is so clear.
Oh, snap, did Turkey attack Cyprus again? :-p
What West Asian war? Isn't Iran firmly in the Middle East by any reasonable definition?
* https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/04/trump-coal-d...
Apparently, both are against the US government's policy.
It's somehow still early innings for the energy transition, and there are a lot of fun engineering problems to work on. Join us, start here: climatebase.org
> Solar generates more energy in US than coal for the last time
Then the actual title is what confused me for a second.
https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/united-states
In 2025 US produced from solar 388.82 TWh, from gas 1,807.34 TWh.
So solar has long way to grow to replace gas in US electricity production.
People at this point should realise that Trump is lying.
He also does the same with regards to Iran.
It is time to not only look at the Epstein connection, but also the corruption in that whole family dynasty. There has never been as much theft, I claim, as with that dynasty. (And Epstein plays a role because superrich partied with underage girls, and they told Trump to shut down all investigations. This is corruption in its final stage. Same here - Trump babbles about old energy but his superrich friends expand on renewables. And profit. As always.)
The reason is: when you pull electricity from the grid, the fuse would blow if you tried to pull too much current (e.g. you connect four hair dryers on the same outlet). It blows to prevent the wiring in your home from overheating and catching on fire. With balcony solar, you plug it in your home outlet which is already behind the fuse, which means the fuse cannot react and cut off power if you try to feed in more than the capacity allows. You could be maxing out on the current you are pulling from the grid, and then on top of that you would be adding your balcony solar.
Why it's allowed at all in Germany and other places is because the fuse will blow above 10A and the wiring in the house is 16A, so there was always a buffer or overcapacity in the wiring, presumably just in case. So they allowed 800W of balcony solar which is roughly 3.5A and still there is some wiggle room left.
Also why pull from the grid at all: your appliances actually just use the electricity from the grid. In Germany and I guess most of Europe they run a three phase system, so your balcony solar might not be in the same physical circuit as your appliances in use. With balcony solar your meter just offsets your consumption with whatever you are feeding it at the moment. From the grid standpoint if you are running something using 800W and feeding in 800W, it's 0.
Of course it can work without this too, but this defeats the purpose of balcony solar, which is plug it in and it works simplicity.
For example if each house in a city would have 25A fuse and all the houses would simultaneously draw 25A, or simultaneously supply 25A the grid would collapse.
Usually the Diversity Factor for apartment block electric grids is around 35%.
https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/electrical-engineering/diversi...
that obviously depends on time of use and the sun etc, but balcony solar in the USA can’t come fast enough. my electricity in NYC is almost $.40/kWh, a limited secondary source is still huge
it makes a lot of sense to me as someone who has casually researched as a way to make the load of an A/C vanish from the perspective of my utility, but i can’t see regulations catching up nationwide soon.
any real microinverters can detect the grid being down and shut off to prevent zapping people working on power lines, but the complexities of split-phase power (you can consume on one leg but backfeed on the other leg rather than consume what you generate, which is bad for billing etc) and risks of intra-circuit overload will all freak out americans.
we put outlets absolutely everywhere because of how scared we are of extension cords, there’s an education and “am i going to start an electrical file” consumer sentiment obstacle to widespread adoption in the US
> my electricity in NYC is almost $.40/kWh, a limited secondary source is still huge
This alone would be incredible from wider adoption of balcony (incredible for the consumer I mean). If you knock a few cents per kWh off, which I think you can do with daytime/early evening usage (when the panels are still producing some energy so no storage required) that would be fantastic. Baby steps to a full system that you can DIY without anyone objecting.
the less the utility recoups via billing for energy usage, the bigger the deficit to cover their fixed network costs.
they are frequently interested in having you consume energy, to help defray those costs, especially where the marginal cost of the energy is very low.
the more users who disconnect, the more the fixed costs must be recouped from a shrinking customer base, triggering more incentive to leave the network. this is called the death spiral.
In addition, things like balcony solar don't save them cost: it introduces complexity because they need to safely manage that load, they need to be able to predict and measure it; in my experience working with utilities and network operators for many years, they flat out don't want these distributed generation sources unless they have a lot of say in how they are added to the grid, and how users can be charged for the privilege of generating their own power. that is often a very significant barrier to regulatory change.
We don't need a more plug and play system. A zero agreement interconnection for whatever UL certified 300W-ish scale is fine and should be widely deployed.
There needing to be interconnection agreements with your utility and an inspection is not a blocker that needs to be removed. Most places require a licensed electrician for complex work, having the electrician fill out a form and having a utility inspection is how things should be.
Perhaps you're just responding because I brought up grid tie (fair!), but I'm wondering why not aspire to remove the blocker, which would mean de-risking the installation so that laypeople could do it without having to get an electrician involved (which is what's so amazing about balcony).
Usage varies second by second, so the grid relies on physical inertia in the form of rotating turbines. Panels have no inertia; therefore, the more you have the less stable the grid gets.
That is however something which can be fixed by grid-scale batteries. Or home systems, for that matter, if they have batteries and some equivalent of Victron’s PowerAssist.
(Which limits the rate at which power draw can change. Very useful when you use a house-sized generator; it amounts to synthetic inertia. I have a 7kW generator, but a 7kW step load would stall it.)
Even a more complex system with large centralized inverters and battery backup can be about as plug and play as a desktop computer if you use an all-in-one inverter/charger/controller.
The challenge is scale. You can't take 10kW of solar and plug it into an outlet. It requires more hardware and wiring than that.
And total US GHG emissions are currently at about the same level as they were in 1988.
https://epic.uchicago.edu/insights/china-has-quickly-and-sha...
Still, that is a good point, a lot of the emissions from manufacturing have been shifted to other countries.
This is not really the case, China is the US' #3 trading partner, and trade-corrected GHGs are also down (see the graph further down the page), actually by an slightly better percentage off-peak.
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67205
- Solar: +87 TWh/year (assuming 23% capacity factor, lower end of US range)
- Gas: +9TWh/year (6.3GW new, 4.6GW retirements, higher end of US capacity factor of 60%) https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67206
This is in the face of massive growth for grid demand for the first time in decades, so the trend will accelerate.
New gas turbine manufacturing capacity is tapped out, causing new gas CapEx to get more expensive:
https://www.woodmac.com/press-releases/gas-turbine-prices-so...
Meanwhile solar and storage are continually plummeting in price.
So the current trend of approximately all new generation being renewables is going to accelerate. And then it will start eating into older, existing generation assets, causing early retirements of existing gas generation capacity.
Most investors think that any new gas generation built today will be a stranded asset long before its end of life. That doesn't matter to the hyperscalers, who run them so poorly and hard that the turbine shafts die in a few years and can afford it, but for regular utilities, buying any new gas generation is a boondoggle meant to soak the ratepayers and capture the guaranteed profit rate.
And the numbers above ignore residential solar, which will further lessen demand for gas, and as the cost of transmission and distribution soar on the grid, residential solar becomes an always better deal, because it skips all that.
The global cost-minimum for a future grid will have gas on it for maybe 20 more years, but not much after that. We'll switch to lots of storage and tons of over-capacity of solar and wind.
https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/hungary
Gas turbine manufacturing factories are very expensive and gas turbine manufacturers have already experienced turbine market crashed in 2018. Nobody wants to sit on loans for expensive idle factories in 5 years when the AI hype stops.
https://www.primary.vc/articles/the-gas-turbine-bottleneck-r...
Per MWh costs of residential solar are usually 2x per MWh costs of utility scale solar. Utility scale solar power plants buy and install solar panels at larger scale and cheaper.
Most places can't run on residential solar + battery 365 days in year and need grid connectivity. As more homes install residential solar + battery the grid costs, which are independent of the number of hours when the grid is used, will stay the same. The amount of consumed gas will be lower. The costs of building gas power plants will stay the same (they are the backup), the costs of maintaining gas power plants will increase (more frequent ramping up and down).
"Ramping damage in gas turbines refers to the wear and tear or stress that occurs as a result of frequent changes in the operating load, also known as load cycling. Gas turbines are designed to operate efficiently at steady-state conditions, and deviations from these conditions can lead to various issues"
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jeff-shan-a8962b36_ramping-da...
Here we are reading about solar overtaking coal. Coal was producing more grid electricity than gas relatively recently, in 2015.
The rate of growth of solar-produced electricity is accelerating. Given another decade, there's every chance it can supplant gas as well.
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-...
The 10-year change 2015 to 2025 is:
- Gas: +472 TWh, +35%
- Renewables: +525 TWh, +97%
Saying that this is more gas than coal is certainly not the case borne out by the numbers, even in the US, the one place where gas is as cheap as dirt due to it being a by-product of fracking.
As to why some beings need to be whisked hither and yon with such haste, and thus spend quite a bit of time (and energy) trying to be somewhere, anywhere else, well, are they hungry ghosts? Or maybe they min/maxed for wizard and ended up with only three points in wisdom?
The only problem with this comparison is the cost of the grid, which at least in the US will dwarf the savings from doing utility scale installs.
One nice thing about residential solar is that it greatly reduces the need for transmission, while perhaps requiring some short-term enhancement on distribution. And ideally dumping a bunch of storage at grid distribution nodes in the form of a container of batteries would solve a ton of problems and reduce costs a lot. This is of course heavily resisted by utilities because in most places in the US they make their money on T&D costs, so cutting those is a threat to their existence.
This should not be surprising when one realizes that this industry is the biggest industry that humanity ever created (in terms of monetary value). Nothing ever is or was bigger than energy from fossil fuels. Predictably, those who profit from this, behave like selfish [...] and fight tooth and nail to keep their profits.
I remember this when anyone complains large scale use of solar and wind would be expensive. So is large scale use of any energy source.
But there is no reason to hang on to the old, dirty technology if there are now better alternatives. And if the economics work, the market will follow, as it seems to be doing. You can't fake lower costs.
Nuclear should have replaced coal decades ago but the economics didn't actually work, even though the environmental benefit would have been real.
Mass death of species too numerous to name, the biosphere itself, property damage from rising ocean levels, the soon to fail air currents, all the damage and death from extreme weather events, all of it. All of it could've been fucking prevented and it wasn't, because profits.
I wish I believed in hell for people like this.
"Asia" is a Greek name, fully Eurocentric.
The entire continent doesn't even make sense. Geographically, sure, culturally, absolutely not. It should either be Eurasia or probably about 5 different continents (South of Himalaya aka Indian subcontinent, North of Himalaya aka Siberia + Central Asia + China + South East Asia, South of Caucasus + Kopet Dag aka Middle East, etc).
(I live here and yet I didn't know it until this was shown as West Asia war on the news)
I was actually thinking about that and stuff like "Fertile Crescent" would be more neutral (but it risks not covering places like Arabia).
I wonder if locals have a generic name for the entire region that's more appropriate.
So a centi-millionaire would have only 10 thousand :-)
You mean a hecto-millionaire.
i do think “fully consumed or gated to never backfeed balcony solar at scale” is all i’m referring to, which i naively hope is a smaller regulatory change than backfeeding
I though the point of these systems was you plug them in to your wall socket and they lower your electricity bill. If you want to avoid tieing to the grid you can't have such a simple deployment.
Trumps first administration put in solar Tariffs with China (25%), Biden administration increased them with China (50%), 2nd Trump administration increased those and applied solar Tariffs to other countries. Though honestly I’ve largely stopped paying attention at this point.
Solar adoption increased through all of that.
From a place that embraced solar rebates, and has subsequently benefited from having in place solar battery rebates, we have a thriving industry of solar installers, electricians, and an ever increasing amount of local grid energy security in the event that storms or accidents cause supply disruptions. About 5% of households will likely not see an energy bill for the next 20 years. Another 40% have solar that covers daytime energy requirements.
The requirement for baseline coal.and gas has been decreasing - though will not completely abate.
I live in a state that produces abundant coal for power and steel. We have decreased our carbon emissions to 35% below 2005 levels.
There's 3 ways to run solar.
Grid tied, grid backed and off grid.
I live on a farm and am off grid. The solar inverter is my "utility". After the inverter I have my main breaker. The inverter makes 5 kW max at 230 volts, so my fuse is 5000/230 = 20 amps.
I'm outside the US, regulation is a suggestion here everyone ignores. So many many houses have solar panels here to offset grid costs ($0.60 per kWh).
The main way we do it is make it grid backed. This means the inverter creates power that is in no way mixed with grid power. It forms a microgrid within the home. All ac's are connected to this. This can be done in the electrical panel as its just rerouting wires to fuses.
So then you have your 20A fuse behind the inverter, and smaller fuses (which you should already have) to your house loads. Btw you guys run 110v so your fuses are probably double the rating of ours.
When you do grid backed a battery is nice, since it helps prevent using the grid when a cloud passes by, it forms a bit of buffer. A 5kWh battery already helps. At night the grid powers the loads.
Grid-tied is the one nobody here uses, so you can feed back to the grid. This involves complicated electrical stuff so you don't electrocute the line workers. Plus it gets complicated with split phases and such.
Not to mention utilities pay less than what they ask you for the same kWh.
In the case of balcony solar you can feed the inverter utility power and connect your AC to the inverter. It uses solar power first and takes the needed diff from utility.
And when we "break the rules" we consider the rules and break them in a way that minimizes our liability.
Like the reason for the certified install is to protect the line workers. I live on an island, so that's basically my neighbours. Nobody wants them dead. Likewise nobody wants to go through bureaucratic hell.
Solution: grid-backed installs that doesn't interact with the grid. Which any Juan or Pedro can do if you don't want to do it yourself. It runs around $200 to add a new "electric group" to your house.
And to be fair the standard rate is 0.38 cents per kWh and some fixed rate. But the poor they force on the pre-paid package which has no fixed rate, but runs at that higher rate.
And so when you can't afford to buy the electricity you end up in the dark without giving the utility any moral obligations.
I live in the "Caribbean Netherlands", the largest island of the 3.
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/chines...
Outside of cities, outside of grid tie, setting up your own micro-grid often can be done without any external intervention. You have to know things to do it though, I don't think it is a desirable state of things for just blind plug and play.
Can you make plug and play possible? Sure but you're just shifting the verification to a different layer and then you have to make it illegal to posses or sell any thing but the safe engineered products and you have to spend a bunch on enforcement to make sure only the safe stuff gets put in practice (not to mention replacing all the existing hardware and making it illegal to maintain)...
Modern consumer products and safety rules insulate people so much from the dangerous parts of existence that people get bothered when everything isn't like that and then want to go pet the big stripey orange and black kitty... not realizing that guardrails and safety nets aren't everywhere in existence.
And putting up those guardrails is EXPENSIVE. You want those instead of professional installation costs? Sure but the solar system you bought just got 10x as expensive as a result saving you nothing.
A house costs what... $250-500k to build these days? $10k for a major update to the build is nothing. Requiring expertise to verify dangerous things are done correctly is appropriate.
We get Chinese solar panels here. $175 and produces 550 watt.
We then get Chinese MPTT inverters, always 2 if you run your fridge on it lol. $350 ish for one. The 5kW model. It's all one and the same.
You need a minimum of 3 panels.
So for less than $1000 you have 1.5 kWh with no storage.
Connecting the panels requires some care to ensure you stay within the parameters all GPTs know. Two pictures is all it takes. The spec label of your panel and that of your inverter.
I can't stress enough how easy it is.
The output of your inverter is 1 phase power. You can route that anywhere in your house safely since houses have.. circuits. So once the circuited is moved to the inverters grid, its seperated.. at the circuit breaker.
The scariest part was driving a screw through my roof.
Is every part of the fossil fuel production chain "secure"? All oil production and processing equipment, chemicals and so forth are produced domestically?
Are they? because looking at these charts[0], although fossil fuel use as a percent of total energy may be going down, the absolute values for coal, gas and oil only go up year over year.
[0]https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/china#what-sources...
Traditional residential electric utility billing puts a lot of emphasis on usage, but when there's a lot more residential solar, that ends up not reflecting the costs very well. I think, over time, you'll see things where you pay a distribution fee per kWh in either direction, and then also pay for energy input and get paid for energy output. You might also see a demand charge that scales with your connection size or your maximum load/generation. If you don't have local generation with export, everything kind of mushes into the usage charge, especially if it's tiered... but when you exporting with net metering, you pay the same bill for exporting 950kWh and importing 1000kWh as someone who imports 100kWh and exports 50kWh, but one customer is using the grid a lot more than the other.
You see something like that with California's NEM 3.0 tarrif setting export price to the 'avoided cost' instead of offsetting import one for one. Under NEM 3.0, the utility is disincentivizing using production credits as long term storage. They prefer you use or store your energy onsite; if you can export while costs are high, that's nice too.
Here in California, PG&E has a "base service fee" of $24/month. That you owe even if they sell you no (as in ZERO) electricity:
https://www.pge.com/en/account/billing-and-assistance/base-s...
The grid costs a significant amount of money to build and maintain, and maintaining the available capacity to serve you electricity even if you only use it a couple months of the year (or even a couple days of the year) still costs money.
If you don't want to be connected to it at all - then I mostly feel you shouldn't be mandated to be.
We don't need to solve that problem in advance.
The system we have now is imperfect. The system we will have in 10 or 20 or 100 years surely will be imperfect, as well.
We must not let perfect be the enemy of good: If we do, then we'll never get anything done at all.
https://www.pew.org/en/research-and-analysis/reports/2025/02...
On the other hand, the apparent cause suggests the trend will continue.
On the other other hand, perhaps China will suddenly decide to build 100 GW of data centers meaning they ramp all the existing coal plants up to 100% load.
I'm mostly hopeful, but not absolutely so.
That happens today. It will happen tomorrow. It's imperfect. This imperfect nature doesn't mean that progress must cease, or that all things must be forever maximalized in search of perfection.
Gas has a 6-month shelf-life, and is attached to a whole geopolitically volatile military-industrial complex. Meanwhile an EV + solar can be actually self-sufficient and last for a decade or two. A realistic Mad Max would have been EV battles over solar panels.
It's sort of a circular issue, it's madly expensive because we haven't built a lot and aren't super good at it, and we don't get much of it built because we aren't great at it and it always is ludicrously expensive.
The US has a uniquely underdeveloped maritime sector, we don't build a lot of the massive turbines you use offshore. You drive through central and west texas, it feels like there might be more wind turbines than people. We've kind of already made the decision based on what works.
Offshore wind is the perfect NIMBY solution.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S277273782...
https://www.blackridgeresearch.com/blog/list-top-global-oilf...
Another way to do it would be guaranteed buys for electrifying military etc and grants for projects using US made cells instead of foreign ones that could also effectively subsidize local production.
It's like a lot of things done by this administration they do it such hamfisted and obvious ways that they don't accomplish their nominal goals. See a lot of the court cases where they've been blocked in implementation because they said the quiet part out loud. eg: it's usually REALLY hard to prove malicious prosecution but they keep saying out loud "we're prosecuting this person in retaliation for their protected activities".
https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/solar-pv-manu...
There has always been a massive thumb on the scale in the form of tax breaks, direct subsidies (billions a year alone on this), land leasing, etc for fossil fuels and their use. Favorable public policy. And what the IMF calls implicit subsidies - the cost of impact on the climate/environment and people's health.
When a refinery is pumping out pollution and everyone in the area is getting sicker than people in similar areas - that costs us as insurance ratepayers and taxpayers.
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/5-hidden-ways-the-g...
https://www.imf.org/en/topics/climate-change/energy-subsidie...
...to name a few. A simple google search will turn up dozens more.
And yet what is the first critique of solar and wind by right wingers? "It's only cheaper because of all my tax dollars going to subsidizing them."
Federal, state, and local subsidies for green energy and EVs are a drop in the bucket.
If you were feeling generous you could credit then with the entire existence of modern EVs given their support of the nascent industry for decades in California.
But sure, let's focus on the mote in Democrat eyes and ignore the insanity across the aisle. That's what got us into this situation, so why stop now.
"How The CIA Secretly Bought Soviet Titanium To Build The SR-71 Blackbird"
https://simpleflying.com/how-cia-secretly-bought-soviet-tita...
Also the "we're bad at this because we don't do the so we can't do this" is throwing away a great project and solution because of a temporary problem. Once we start doing it in significant numbers we'll rapidly get better at doing it too.
https://globalwindatlas.info/en/
Like for many kind of technology the are both advantages and disadvantages to offshore wind farms.
"Advantages:
Offshore wind speeds tend to be faster than on land.1 Small increases in wind speed yield large increases in energy production: a turbine in a 15-mph wind can generate twice as much energy as a turbine in a 12-mph wind. Faster wind speeds offshore mean much more energy can be generated.
Offshore wind speeds tend to be steadier than on land.1 A steadier supply of wind means a more reliable source of energy.
Many coastal areas have very high energy needs. Half of the United States’ population lives in coastal areas,1 with concentrations in major coastal cities. Building offshore wind farms in these areas can help to meet those energy needs from nearby sources.
Offshore wind farms have many of the same advantages as land-based wind farms – they provide renewable energy; they do not consume water; they provide a domestic energy source; they create jobs; and they do not emit environmental pollutants or greenhouse gases.2
Offshore wind farms can be expensive and difficult to build and maintain. In particular:
It is very hard to build robust and secure wind farms in water deeper than around 200 feet (~60 m), or over half a football field’s length. Although coastal waters off the east coast of the U.S. are relatively shallow, almost all of the potential wind energy resources off the west coast are in waters exceeding this depth.3 Floating wind turbines are beginning to overcome this challenge.
Wave action, and even very high winds, particularly during heavy storms or hurricanes, can damage wind turbines.1
The production and installation of power cables under the Effects of offshore wind farms on marine animals and birds are not fully understood.4
Offshore wind farms built within view of the coastline (up to 26 miles offshore, depending on viewing conditions5) may be unpopular among local residents, and may affect tourism and property values.3
https://profession.americangeosciences.org/society/intersect...
But the realities of the idea - the engineering - is problematic.
The ocean is a harsh environment and maintaining something deliberately put out of the way in a harsher environment is far more expensive.
https://profession.americangeosciences.org/society/intersect...
The biggest is Hywind Tampen, Max. water depth 300 m
NOK 8 billion ($730 million; $8.3m/MW)
Sodium seems to be actually hitting real commercial production volumes (ex - GM just announced a sodium ramp up days ago, CATL has been producing them for a while). I expect we'll see sodium mature a good bit over the next decade (right now - it's just not quite as good as LFP, but it has a lot of promise in temperature extremes and cheap input materials)
So sure - storage is an issue. But it's not THE issue anymore. It costs surprisingly little to get enough LFP storage to cover an entire house at modest usage for days at a time (ex - under 10k for 42.9KWh of storage, UL approved https://signaturesolar.com/eg4-wallmount-all-weather-lithium...)
So yes - storage remains something to consider. But I think pretending that storage is a constraint that should stop PV rollout is... cough... bullshit cough...
Let industry that needs it pull from existing generation at night, convert residential to solar as fast as possible. Subsidize residential battery rollout the same way we do for insulation and other efficiency improving home improvements (which to be clear - we were doing prior to the current admin).
China isn't fucking around on the solar front, and the continued excuses in US from entrenched interests tangled up in the oil industry are criminal.
No cooling means the sodium batteries are easier/cheaper to maintain (no mechanical failures). Maybe not as energy dense, but you could still come out ahead long term when accounting for Capex+Opex.
The chemistry definitely seems to be better than LFP long term, but higher manufacturing costs and low scale means it's just not as available.
CATL is predicting that they'll hit price parity for sodium against LFP this year, commercial scaling still needs to happen, though.
Meanwhile, manufacturers can pick up prismatic LFP from all sorts of places, at great prices (ex - https://www.18650batterystore.com/collections/lifepo4-prisma...)
There's always gaps between theoretical and practical, but to see China investing so hard in the future while the US digs in it's heels is infuriating.
Chinese solar exports double in a month to hit record high amid energy crisis - https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/chinese-solar-export... - April 23rd, 2026
https://ember-energy.org/data/chinas-solar-pv-export-explore...
https://ember-energy.org/data/china-cleantech-exports-data-e...
And we shouldn't imply that this policy represents any sort of national consensus -- it's pure corruption plain and simple.
They were interesting but the whole concept just has problems and has for over a decade at this point despite commercialisation efforts.
Same story with iron: it's out there, but the scale on LFP and likely Sodium is going to shoot right past it.
The entire CAISO is a power laundering scheme to allow california to have publicly have huge amounts of solar power that overproduces enormously (including strongly negative power prices for a good chink of day) and still import dirty base load power quietly.
If storage was simple to solve, it would be solved. Chemical storage simply doesn't exist at the required scale and we don't like to build the one thing that we could, right this second - pumped storage.
We are already massively overbuilding solar. We would be well serv d to stop building panels and start building pump storage and transmission lines to distribute the stuff we've already got, but nobody makes a political career announcing a new transmission line.
https://cleantechnica.com/2026/05/30/california-lowest-whole...
When the sun sets, batteries rise: 24/7 solar in California - https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2026/02/17/when-the-sun-sets-bat... - February 17th, 2026
Natural gas use for electricity in California falls as solar generation rises - https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=66704 - November 24th, 2025
California's solar and battery combo packs a transformational punch - https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/californias-sola... - October 3rd, 2025
California solar curtailment down 12% on back of batteries - https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2025/07/22/california-solar-curt... - July 22nd, 2025 ("For the first five months of 2025, CAISO data showed solar electricity curtailment declined by 12% as a share of generation, falling from 13% to 11.5%, even as solar output grew 18% year over year. During this period, however, curtailment still rose 4.1% in absolute terms, with March showing a 28% increase, matching the prior year’s peak.")
Batteries Taking Charge of the California Grid - https://blog.gridstatus.io/caiso-batteries-apr-2024/ - May 6th, 2024
Batteries are scaling up faster than ever in the US, enabling record solar growth to continue and reducing fossil fuel use. - https://ember-energy.org/chapter/the-rise-of-batteries-plus-...
> In 2024, California and Nevada led the nation in solar power, becoming the first states to surpass 30% annual solar share, with California hitting 32% and Nevada 31% – the highest shares of any state. But the transition is uneven – while some states are surging ahead, others are just beginning to see significant growth.
> Batteries are essential for the rise of solar, allowing solar to meet growing demand and displacing gas and coal generation. Across the US, the growth of batteries is accelerating alongside solar, with 1 MW of storage being added for every 3 MW of solar added in 2024.
California Energy Storage System Survey - https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/califo...
They typically generate 10-25% of their maximum output on the cloudiest of days. Most cloudy days are not maximally cloudy.
We don't need solar panels everywhere to get even close to ~100% renewables (with nuclear, wind, new geothermal, and hydro). The areas where you put them are distributed enough that it would be exceptionally rare to ever encounter a meaningful need to ration.
So, storage is an issue, but not as big of an issue as most people think, and we do not generate anywhere near enough solar energy for it to be a reasonable concern yet...
There's also more solutions than just conventional batteries. There's pumped hydro, etc...
If you're at higher latitudes, this is notably less of a drop-off than you see between high/low season.
My friends with residential solar see <10% overall output in January vs July. (~60% drop from fewer sunshine hours, ~80% drop from decreased solar irradiance.)
Many pure-numbers theoretical comparisons also make the assumption that you can consume all the power that the cells generate, which is not always the case. In an off-grid installation with a battery, for example, you might not be able to consume everything, depending on the month of the year. Practical example: my installation gets some of peak usage numbers in March/April, because that's when it's still cold and I use the power for heating. The cells are cold, I need the power, and there is some sunshine, all this combines. It's not obvious.
If the energy is for heating then there is always the option of storing the energy as heat. Which is much simpler than storing electricity.
Cooling takes more energy than warming, so the summer daytime use is higher. Summer = warm evenings. I'm from Indiana - it was almost always cooler at 10am than 7pm, even in the winter. It takes time to heat up or cool down. I'll also mention that nights and weekends use less power because business and industry tend to shut down during these times.
Which would somewhat logically mean that despite the efficiency being worse during winter, it isn't as much of a strain because power demands are less.
Does that mean that it is untenable?
So yes batteries are going to continue to grow rapidly, but it’s a smaller role than it might seem.
Similarly people respond to price changes, that’s the foundation for how capitalism functions. You don’t need to care, but many people will choose to save money when possible.
The "base load" question may still be appropriate for deep winter, high (or low) latitudes, etc, but renewables are getting there pretty fast.
The people who echo that sentiment without educating themselves are giving them a helping hand.
The former, even a few years ago, I agree. The latter, people were arguing about a year or two ago. (Though your point remains as the trend was clear).
This argument is almost closed at this point, with PV + batteries being quite price competitive. We're no longer in 2018.
From the Goog:
Starting up a coal-fired power station depends heavily on the plant's current temperature, taking anywhere from 2 to 48 hours to reach full operational capacity. Because of massive metal boilers and turbines, the heating process must be slow to prevent severe thermal fatigue and equipment damage. [1, 2] The startup time is broken down by the plant's previous state:
• Hot Start (less than 8 hours offline): 2 to 4 hours. The boiler and equipment are still warm, allowing for a relatively quick resumption of steam production.
• Warm Start (8 to 120 hours offline): 4 to 8 hours.
• Cold Start (More than 120 hours offline): 12 to 48 hours. The plant must be heated from room temperature, which involves initially burning expensive natural gas or diesel just to safely warm the furnace and metal pipes before coal can be introduced. [1, 3, 5]
[1] https://www.quora.com/Why-its-not-that-easy-to-start-operati...
[2] https://www.quora.com/How-long-does-it-take-for-a-thermal-po...
[3] https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2015-11/documents/ma...
[4] https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-minimum-time-required-by-s...
[5] https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/inflexible-fossil-fuels/
It's OK. Winter happens every year.
When the market needs that power, then the market will have to pay for it.
Instead, that money should go into geothermal which can provide clean baseload power and provide a path for the oil industry to pivot their work to. Everybody wins, except for the coal mine owners and their workers.
The workers should be trained to likewise pivot to geothermal and other renewables. The mine owners can get fucked.
The price of energy sets a floor on the price of all manufactured goods. By kneecapping the cheapest sources of energy, the regime kneecaps all domestic manufacturers.
China's aggressive buildout of cost effective energy production isn't because they're 'woke,' it's because it makes them more competitive. Every product they export at low prices is in part due to the their extremely cheap energy.
It's like the regime looked at the UK's collapsing manufacturing industry due to their high energy costs and said "I want that for us!"
They all have a relatively generous (I think - I'm not especially familiar with policies anywhere else) grid policy where they sell back any over-production in the summer. (They switch between summer/winter rates, so in the summer they buy/sell at ~35c/kWh and in the winter they buy/sell at ~8c/kWh. These rates are only effective as long as you don't have a net-surplus of generation in the year, so it doesn't make sense economically to oversize the system for more winter generation, as then you'll be generating more in the summer than you can use or sell back.)
It's better to overbuild the dc-to-ac ratio moderately and just accept that on a summer noon you'll be dumping or curtailing, and still get useful percentages in the winter. I'm in the fortunate position of having an essentially infinite dump load (water pumping and heating) that would effectively turn most of my solar into real usage, but even most people can preheat a hot water tank and things like that. With electric cars it's even better.
> many, many, many required MWh
Many MW, few MWh.
https://www.bluettipower.com/products/sodium-ion-battery-pio...
Ex - the closest I can find is something like: https://batteryfinds.com/product/3-1v-210ah-sodium-ionna-ion...
but just compare against LFP: https://www.18650batterystore.com/products/eve-mb31-grade-a-...
So...
LFP: 4.0KWh @ $275.00 Sodium: 2.6KWh @ $568.00
Right now, it's older generations of the chemistry, and you end up paying twice as much for half the power. So yeah... unless you really need the temperature extremes, it makes a lot more sense to stick with LFP.
But CATL at least is claiming they have cells in the pipeline for this year that get NA+ down to comparable $/KWh as LFP, and then yes - I'd much prefer to use the newer chemistry.
If sodium follows the same trend as LFP did, they'll get much cheaper at scale, and performance will go up markedly over the next 15 years. I won't be at all surprised to see them end up completely dominating the space in the long run, but we're not yet at the spot where they're better than LFP (at its most mature).
Are heat pumps common for factories and offices, which account for a lot of energy usage during the week?
Anywhere they aren't common, cooling generally is going to require more traditional methods and the energy cost is greater than just heating. If it were the other way around, poor folks would use a window air conditioner to heat. Cooling pretty much always creates warming - which is the reason it is vented outside.
The energy use I linked to doesn't actually consider where the energy comes from - just the use itself. These methods aren't going to use more or less energy depending on where the energy comes from. Heat pumps would make less usage due to efficiency.