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

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

#121

Post by stevenwoo »

gchamonlive wrote: post #116
b65e8bee43c2ed0 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the US is not a planned economy. if it was, computers would exist only to guide missiles and operate industrial machinery, and you would be mining coal, farming wheat, or manning an assembly line for a living.

Its not a planned economy by the government , because the US is an oligarchy. The billionaires are deciding how the government should plan investments in infrastructure and social policies. They have been able to lower the taxes that affect the richest (big beautiful bill) and cut spending on social programs (Medicaid). So it surely looks to me like the US economy is following a plan, just not the one that's in the b…

The available selection of automobiles available for sale feels like a good example of huge distortion caused by regulatory capture and tariffs imposed for same industries.

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

#122

Post by HWR_14 »

londons_explore wrote: post #105
HWR_14 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then a storm hits texas and without realizing it you run up a $30,000 electricity bill in a single night of not freezing.

This only happens if a small percentage of people have live pricing. If most people have live pricing, most people have an incentive to act on price changes - for example by turning the heating off in unused rooms to save money. In turn, that means that at times of crisis, prices will be high, but not 1000x high. Gasoline is another resource with live pricing, and suggesting "I want a subscription where I pay $3 per…

> If most people have live pricing, most people have an incentive to act on price changes

It's not latency free to act on price changes. If they spike while people are asleep, what do you expect would happen? And would people get a notification everytime the price changed at all. The logistics are hard.

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

#123

Post by gruez »

gchamonlive wrote: post #116
b65e8bee43c2ed0 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the US is not a planned economy. if it was, computers would exist only to guide missiles and operate industrial machinery, and you would be mining coal, farming wheat, or manning an assembly line for a living.

Its not a planned economy by the government , because the US is an oligarchy. The billionaires are deciding how the government should plan investments in infrastructure and social policies. They have been able to lower the taxes that affect the richest (big beautiful bill) and cut spending on social programs (Medicaid). So it surely looks to me like the US economy is following a plan, just not the one that's in the b…

>Its not a planned economy by the government

This just seems like a quibble over wording, given that "planned economy" is generally assumed to refer to economic planning by some governmental authority. Nobody thinks the opposite of a "planned economy" is everyone just going based off vibes, for instance.

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

#124

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

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.

Storage exists? Now down to $50/kWh.

Same method. Massive scale, trivial to deploy, works with barely any maintenance.

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

#125

Post by nicoburns »

exabrial wrote: post #120
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.

It’s too bad solar degrades over time. I think it’d be more of a no-brainer if we could actually manufacture it at scale domestically without it losing its efficiency over a 15 year period.

> It’s too bad solar degrades over time... without it losing its efficiency over a 15 year period.

Google says they degrade to 80-90% capacity over 25-30 years, which is ~double your 15 year time period. I've also previously seen people claiming that they then stabilise around the 80% level, and that we don't really know how long their total possible lifespan is because many extant solar panels are outliving their 25 year rated lifespans.

Capacity reduced to 80% won't work for some high-performance use cases, but is pretty decent for most.

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

#126

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

bob1029 wrote: post #61
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…

> 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 c…

Or just grid forming inverters?

https://spectrum.ieee.org/electric-inverter-2667719615

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

#127

Post by maxerickson »

HWR_14 wrote: post #118
maxerickson wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole gimmick with that supplier was that they exposed their customers more or less directly to grid pricing. You don't need to do that to charge different prices during different parts of the day.

The post I was responding to said > 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 . That's what I was responding to, not the day/night predetermined pricing.

They could still have a price limit, paid for by charging a bit more when prices are lower, it doesn't have to be priced directly to the grid to have impact on usage.

A max price guarantee would also give the supplier an incentive to have their planning in order.

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

#128

Post by gruez »

exabrial wrote: post #120
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.

It’s too bad solar degrades over time. I think it’d be more of a no-brainer if we could actually manufacture it at scale domestically without it losing its efficiency over a 15 year period.

>without it losing its efficiency over a 15 year period.

Why is this such a dealbreaker like you make it out to be? It's easily fixed by over-provisioning to account for future losses. Not to mention that power grids almost always have more capacity than what's needed, to account for future growth and maintenance downtime.

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

#129

Post by trollbridge »

jordanb wrote: post #91

While I'm concerned about the environmental challenges of reversing the trend and increasing energy consumption, I'm happy that people are living in more comfortable homes, that the Amercian industrial base is being restored, that more and better services are being provided (better healthcare, inexpensive and healthy food, comfortable, efficient and inexpensive transportation). That is what we're using this electrici…

I spoke with two working class people last week who are facing power shutoffs because they got an unexpected $700 power bill. Not sure if it were a sneaky electricity supplier change or if costs have simply gone up.

But the problem of consumer rates just always ratcheting up needs addressed.

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

#130

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

fpoling wrote: post #64
elzbardico wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

These studies tend to always rely on a perfectly balanced grid without any extra capacity to find these massive seasonal differences.

Add a bit of extra capacity to the wind/solar installations and the battery figures usually plummet.

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