Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

electrek.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 346 posts

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

#61

Post by bob1029 »

reactordev wrote: post #42
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.

This isn’t remotely true. Solar / wind / nuclear / coal / gas / any electrical source including from neighboring grids can be inbound or outbound from your grid using, the grid. There are capacitors and transformers, relays and transmission lines. Any energy source can provide power. Solar used to give money back to its owners by selling power back to the grid but they killed that initiative quickly and will just use…

> Any energy source can provide power.

Not all prime movers are the same with regard to grid dynamics and their impact.

Solar, wind, etc., almost universally rely on some form of inverter. This implies the need for solid state synthetic inertia to provide frequency response service to the grid.

Nuclear, coal, gas, hydropower, geothermal, etc., rely on synchronous machines to talk to the grid. The frequency response capability is built in and physically ideal.

Both can work, but one is more complicated. There are also factors like fault current handling that HN might think is trivial or to be glossed over, but without the ability to eat 10x+ rated load for a brief duration, faults on the grid cannot be addressed and the entire system would collapse into pointlessness. A tree crashing into a power line should result in the power line and tree being fully vaporized if nothing upstream were present to stop the flow of current. A gigantic mass of spinning metal in a turbine hall can eat this up like it's nothing. Semiconductors on a PCB in someone's shed are a different story.

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

#62

Post by energy123 »

idiotsecant wrote: post #35
mschuster91 wrote: post #15

[flagged]

It's so frustrating discussing topics you know about on HN because you get so many software developers, which naturally know everything, that make comments like this. Solar does not 'just work' - in the US it's a crisis in the making. Power prices in several areas of the grid routinely go negative because the grid is a zero sum game - there is very little storage so what goes in must exactly match what goes out or gr…

> Solar with storage is an amazing resource. Without storage it's counterproductive if it's grid tied.

Solar creates the economic incentive for storage. Without solar coming first, storage cannot occur.

You can see this in California. In the beginning, it made sense to install only solar, because energy developers are compensated at the margin. Once the grid is saturated with solar, then the marginal economics changes in response to the duck curve, and storage starts to make economic sense.

If you block solar, you block storage. To believe otherwise is to be ignorant of the temporal aspect of the economics.

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

#63

Post by evolve2k »

elzbardico wrote: post #32
evolve2k wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar is highly distributed. At the most basic level with a solar & battery system the production and consumption and CONTROL are all yours. You own it and it's literally on your property. Refinements on ways to sell it to neighbours / recharge various EV's / use it for new purposes are all up to you. There are lots of analogies to self hosting or concepts around owning and controlling your own data, when it's owned…

Cost. Useful life. I thought about an off grid system. Batteries are expensive. Also, unless you live in a dry place in the equator, You'll need to account for things like winter, long rainy spells, so either you add more batteries to account for multiple days (weeks? months?) of low generation, or you'll need a diesel/gas generator, or have a hybrid system instead, which basically means you're using the utilities ga…

From what I’ve been reading, sodium ion batteries are about to land later this year and look set to drop costs upwards of 60%.

That and they can be cold booted and stand much more temperature diversity bitter and into frozen temps too.

Just saying, the tech and solar expansion is at run away global growth right now, despite American centric machinations.

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

#64

Post by fpoling »

elzbardico wrote: post #32
evolve2k wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar is highly distributed. At the most basic level with a solar & battery system the production and consumption and CONTROL are all yours. You own it and it's literally on your property. Refinements on ways to sell it to neighbours / recharge various EV's / use it for new purposes are all up to you. There are lots of analogies to self hosting or concepts around owning and controlling your own data, when it's owned…

Cost. Useful life. I thought about an off grid system. Batteries are expensive. Also, unless you live in a dry place in the equator, You'll need to account for things like winter, long rainy spells, so either you add more batteries to account for multiple days (weeks? months?) of low generation, or you'll need a diesel/gas generator, or have a hybrid system instead, which basically means you're using the utilities ga…

There was an article that described that in UK one needs 1 megawhat-hour battery over the winter to be grid independent. Judging by current trends in few years that will be below 40K USD. While this is indeed very expensive in most of US due to much more sun available the required battery would cost below 20k. One can also have a backup generator that can run constantly at maximum efficiency to replenish the battery. Then the whole system can already be below 20K. While expensive, it provides true independence and I suspect grid cost and centralized power is more expensive for society.

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

#65

Post by raddan »

glimshe wrote: post #41

I've thought about installing solar panels on my roof for years. But when I factor in installation costs, it never makes sense because the local energy rates are pretty reasonable... Also, I live in Southeast, a place with plenty of sun but nowhere near the Southwest. Solar panel prices fell hugely in the past years. Is there anything that could significantly reduce installation costs?

It is definitely true that the labor cost of a solar installation is the largest driver of cost. In my area, there are solar incentives to offset this. For example I was able to cover a large portion of the loan with a 0% interest rate through a state program. For the remaining portion my bank had a low(er) interest loan (like 5%) specifically for solar. And neither of these loans were home equity loans which psychologically made me happier to apply for them.

Another thing, if you have the space, is to consider a ground mount. Ground mount hardware adds a little cost, but it is a lot easier for a solar installer to set up, so they finish faster. Since labor is the biggest driver of cost, then it makes sense to build a very big array that doesn’t just offset your operating costs but completely eliminates it (well, net-eliminates it anyway).

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

#67

Post by mort96 »

reactordev wrote: post #42
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.

This isn’t remotely true. Solar / wind / nuclear / coal / gas / any electrical source including from neighboring grids can be inbound or outbound from your grid using, the grid. There are capacitors and transformers, relays and transmission lines. Any energy source can provide power. Solar used to give money back to its owners by selling power back to the grid but they killed that initiative quickly and will just use…

Well there are real challenges here. Generators which rely on massive spinning things naturally provide the grid with inertia; they resist changes to grid frequency. Power sources which rely on inverters or otherwise dynamically adapt to grid frequency don't naturally provide the same inertia.

This is a solvable problem, but it requires a solution nonetheless.

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

#69

Post by sandworm101 »

Contrary opinion: too much farmland is being turned over to solar. Our regulatory systems are not working. Land that once produced food now produces electricity. Turning a food farm into solar is too easy (ie cheap). The land is flat and there are nearby roads and electricity networks. And who is going to tell a farmer how to best use thier land? But the world needs more than datacenters. The world needs food.

Solar should be installed on unproductive land. Buildings should be covered in panels. Carparks should have solar roofs. If i were king of zoning, every new construction would be required to cover say 50% of thier footprint in panels. That is the direction to go. We should not continue to convert farmland.

A total parody, but on point. "Can I Beat Farming Sim WITHOUT FARMING?" - The Spiffing Brit

https://youtu.be/MaJvrGHJoAQ

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

#70

Post by londons_explore »

raddan wrote: post #55
reactordev wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn’t remotely true. Solar / wind / nuclear / coal / gas / any electrical source including from neighboring grids can be inbound or outbound from your grid using, the grid. There are capacitors and transformers, relays and transmission lines. Any energy source can provide power. Solar used to give money back to its owners by selling power back to the grid but they killed that initiative quickly and will just use…

Also, power companies did not necessarily kill energy export incentives. Here in Massachusetts my meter “runs backward” when I export to the grid. This does not earn me money but it does earn me kWh credits, which means that if I am net negative for energy import in the summer and net positive for import in the winter, I can be net zero (or close to it) for the year. In MA and a few other states, polluters are also r…

In a future with solar and batteries, daytime and nighttime electricity pricing cannot be equal - else nobody would bother to have a battery (grid scale or at home).

Rules and regulations could solve that problem (meter not allowed to go backwards, solar companies are forced to pay some kind of battery credit, etc), but the free market will always outcompete.

Therefore, I forsee the future lies in 'smart' electricity meters which can charge different rates at different times of day - perhaps with minute by minute live pricing.

Post reply on HN