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US electricity demand surged in 2025 – solar handled 61% of it

electrek.co

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Re: US electricity demand surged in 2025 – solar handled 61% of it

#11

Post by taminka »

danmaz74 wrote: post #4
Kon5ole wrote: post #3

Solar can be deployed by hundreds of thousands of individual efforts and financing at the same time, with almost no bureaucracy. It starts to produce electricity basically the same day. I can't imagine anything being able to compete with that for speed and scale - or costs, for that matter. Once deployed it's basically free.

The issue is that works perfectly well when solar is a small % of the grid, but when that number grows, then you need grid scale solutions and coordination for things to continue working well. And that requires both technical skill and political will.

i wonder if ppl's electricity consumption habits will change in response to this, idk like turning the heat way up during the day or using high power appliances more during the day

Re: US electricity demand surged in 2025 – solar handled 61% of it

#12

Post by DrewADesign »

Fronzie wrote: post #7
danmaz74 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that works perfectly well when solar is a small % of the grid, but when that number grows, then you need grid scale solutions and coordination for things to continue working well. And that requires both technical skill and political will.

(Home) batteries are quickly becoming cheap and per-hour electricity rates can be implemented at a reasonable time. With that, the grid owner can influence the grid stability without having to build capacity or generation itself.

My goal is to do wholly owned solar and batteries at home, only using the grid as backup, if I move out of the city. But I think the big problem with this new demand is that it’s for data centers. I can’t see that working for them.

Re: US electricity demand surged in 2025 – solar handled 61% of it

#13

Post by JuniperMesos »

consp wrote: post #10
danmaz74 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that works perfectly well when solar is a small % of the grid, but when that number grows, then you need grid scale solutions and coordination for things to continue working well. And that requires both technical skill and political will.

We see that quite often here in the summer as the energy price sometimes drops to minus 60ct/kWh (more often it hovers around -5 to -10). It is pretty much "please use everything now" to avoid grid issues. It often happens on very clear days with lots of wind.

Mine bitcoin, run LLM inference, smelt aluminum, make synthetic fossil fuels from atmospheric CO2.

Re: US electricity demand surged in 2025 – solar handled 61% of it

#14

Post by mschuster91 »

taminka wrote: post #11
danmaz74 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that works perfectly well when solar is a small % of the grid, but when that number grows, then you need grid scale solutions and coordination for things to continue working well. And that requires both technical skill and political will.

i wonder if ppl's electricity consumption habits will change in response to this, idk like turning the heat way up during the day or using high power appliances more during the day

> idk like turning the heat way up during the day

That is something you can reasonably do, but it's only useful in winter.

> or using high power appliances more during the day

Well, given that people have to work during the day, I doubt that that will work out on a large enough scale. And even if you'd pre-program a laundry machine to run at noon, the laundry would sit and get smelly during summer until you'd get home.

The only change in patterns we will see is more base load during the night from EVs trickle-charging as more and more enter the market.

Re: US electricity demand surged in 2025 – solar handled 61% of it

#16

Post by anovikov »

mcny wrote: post #6
MonkeyClub wrote: post #2

Curiously, TFA doesn't raise the question of why demand surged, it spends its 8 microparagraphs only praising solar.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say it has some thing to do with those data centers and LLM stuff.

So the increase was 3.1% and it was "fourth largest in the last decade", which means, "barely above average growth rate". Considering that economy growth rate was the fastest in a decade except 2021 which was a covid recovery year, it doesn't really show anything abnormal at all.

Re: US electricity demand surged in 2025 – solar handled 61% of it

#17

Post by fgkramer »

taminka wrote: post #11
danmaz74 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that works perfectly well when solar is a small % of the grid, but when that number grows, then you need grid scale solutions and coordination for things to continue working well. And that requires both technical skill and political will.

i wonder if ppl's electricity consumption habits will change in response to this, idk like turning the heat way up during the day or using high power appliances more during the day

This is already a reality with smart chargers in the UK. Your electric car can be charged when the electricity rates are lower (night usually)

Re: US electricity demand surged in 2025 – solar handled 61% of it

#18

Post by chii »

JuniperMesos wrote: post #13
consp wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We see that quite often here in the summer as the energy price sometimes drops to minus 60ct/kWh (more often it hovers around -5 to -10). It is pretty much "please use everything now" to avoid grid issues. It often happens on very clear days with lots of wind.

Mine bitcoin, run LLM inference, smelt aluminum, make synthetic fossil fuels from atmospheric CO2.

> make synthetic fossil fuels from atmospheric CO2.

that would actually be my preferred solution (if only it was less energy inefficient, sigh).

Re: US electricity demand surged in 2025 – solar handled 61% of it

#19

Post by infecto »

danmaz74 wrote: post #4
Kon5ole wrote: post #3

Solar can be deployed by hundreds of thousands of individual efforts and financing at the same time, with almost no bureaucracy. It starts to produce electricity basically the same day. I can't imagine anything being able to compete with that for speed and scale - or costs, for that matter. Once deployed it's basically free.

The issue is that works perfectly well when solar is a small % of the grid, but when that number grows, then you need grid scale solutions and coordination for things to continue working well. And that requires both technical skill and political will.

The bigger issue, at least in the US, is that there is a huge lack of supply in the equipment to connect to the grid at the moment. Backlogs are still 1-3 years after order, not terrible but still an issue deploying.

Re: US electricity demand surged in 2025 – solar handled 61% of it

#20

Post by infecto »

mschuster91 wrote: post #14
taminka wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i wonder if ppl's electricity consumption habits will change in response to this, idk like turning the heat way up during the day or using high power appliances more during the day

> idk like turning the heat way up during the day That is something you can reasonably do, but it's only useful in winter. > or using high power appliances more during the day Well, given that people have to work during the day, I doubt that that will work out on a large enough scale. And even if you'd pre-program a laundry machine to run at noon, the laundry would sit and get smelly during summer until you'd get hom…

At least in the US there is a push to make electric appliances smarter already. So for example, the electric hot water heater responding to the strain on the grid. The same could happen for AC, heat, EVs and other higher load appliances. At scale that can help out the grid immensely either in times of peak load or dip in demand.
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