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Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026

electrek.co

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Re: Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026

#71

Post by pbmonster »

tialaramex wrote: post #40
dnautics wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it depends. some places it makes sense, some places it doesn't. it will be adopted when the money speaks. the good news is that money is a reasonably close proxy to "environmental benefit" (balancing the environmental costs of green infra production versus dirtiness of gas generation)

> some places it doesn't I can see this for wind, but not solar. PV turns sunlight into electrical energy. The whole damp rock gets sunlight on the outside, why not build panels anywhere? For wind yeah, if you live one of those boring flat places which gets tornadoes a wind turbine is definitely a bad idea, it won't make much energy and then a tornado turns it into scrap and possibly destroys nearby things with chunk…

> why not build panels anywhere?

Because there's better alternatives same places. Norway has legendary well-suited topography for hydro power (>90% of electricity), and it's reliably windy (>8% of electricity). It's also so far north that the sun doesn't shine very much for half the year, and it's notoriously cloudy.

So yes, it will probably never make much sense to build a lot of solar panels in Norway. Same for Greenland, Iceland (substitute geothermal), and probably some parts of Canada, Alaska and Southern Argentina.

But also, yes, there's almost nobody living in those places. They're not terribly relevant in the grand scheme of things. Probably significantly less than 50M people in total.

Re: Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026

#72

Post by PyWoody »

wat10000 wrote: post #62
Aurornis wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know how you can be against solar unless you’ve been given some uninformed talking points. Are they against solar subsidies or other policy provisions? It’s hard to understand someone who is against passive energy collection.

There's a lot of selective concern. They'll be outraged about the environmental damage from mining and manufacturing needed for panels, but ignore the orders of magnitude worse damage from burning fossil fuels. My favorite is outrage over wind turbines killing birds. Cats kill a thousand times more birds but nobody cares about that.

> They'll be outraged about the environmental damage from mining and manufacturing needed for panels, but ignore the orders of magnitude worse damage from burning fossil fuels.

I always try to point out that, after all of the "environmental damage" done to create the solar panels, the panels will exist for 30 years before they can be recycled into new panels. Whereas, after all of the environmental damage done to produce gas and coal, it will lead to a one time use only energy output that has to be repeated until the end of time.

It makes zero sense environmentally or cost-wise to prefer fossil fuels.

Re: Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026

#73

Post by bob1029 »

vincnetas wrote: post #60
tialaramex wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> some places it doesn't I can see this for wind, but not solar. PV turns sunlight into electrical energy. The whole damp rock gets sunlight on the outside, why not build panels anywhere? For wind yeah, if you live one of those boring flat places which gets tornadoes a wind turbine is definitely a bad idea, it won't make much energy and then a tornado turns it into scrap and possibly destroys nearby things with chunk…

If we can build skyscrapers that can survive tornadoes, can wind turbines be made tornado proof?

I believe this is one of those having your cake & eating your cake scenarios.

Wind turbines are designed to be aerodynamically loaded on purpose. The blades can pitch arbitrarily to compensate for unwanted loads in the axial flow direction, but beyond a certain point it doesn't matter anymore because wind can do a lot of other things.

Re: Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026

#74

Post by mtmickush »

This is exciting news but the term power here should really be replaced with electricity which is clarified early on in the article.

Electricity only accounts for roughly 20-25% of all power / energy used and the vast majority of the remaining 75% is fueled by gas (cars, ships, heating, construction, ect.)

Re: Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026

#75

Post by black_puppydog »

erelong wrote: post #9

I know some people who are adamantly against solar and wind (personally I like both but I can see some shortcomings - for example I have heard that ai datacenters are using gas at times because of its flexibility) So what are some of the best talking points to "sell" solar and wind to the unconvinced? Or will they just adopt it once it's seen everywhere?

check volts.wtf and notably these recent podcast episodes:

https://www.volts.wtf/p/sooner-than-you-think-electricity

https://www.volts.wtf/p/giving-clean-electricity-a-political

Re: Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026

#76

Post by philipallstar »

dudefeliciano wrote: post #53
philipallstar wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Woke is cultural Marxism > Woke is an adjective derived from African-American English used since the 1930s or earlier to refer to awareness of racial prejudice and discrimination, often in the construction stay woke. [1] > Cultural Marxism is a far-right antisemitic conspiracy theory that misrepresents Western Marxism (especially the Frankfurt School) as being responsible for modern progressive movements, identity…

Yes, the first one was the original meaning of the word.

The second one is... I don't know how to debate someone who quotes Wikipedia like this. It's not what I said. That article looks incredibly one-sided, and uses fallacies of the "You think snow is white? Did you know Adolph Hitler thought snow was white?" persuasion.

Re: Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026

#77

Post by wat10000 »

tialaramex wrote: post #40
dnautics wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it depends. some places it makes sense, some places it doesn't. it will be adopted when the money speaks. the good news is that money is a reasonably close proxy to "environmental benefit" (balancing the environmental costs of green infra production versus dirtiness of gas generation)

> some places it doesn't I can see this for wind, but not solar. PV turns sunlight into electrical energy. The whole damp rock gets sunlight on the outside, why not build panels anywhere? For wind yeah, if you live one of those boring flat places which gets tornadoes a wind turbine is definitely a bad idea, it won't make much energy and then a tornado turns it into scrap and possibly destroys nearby things with chunk…

Tornadoes are not actually very common in terms of how often you'd expect a structure to be hit by one. You're looking at hundreds or thousands of years between tornado hits even in the most tornado-prone areas. They're numerous, but small.

Re: Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026

#78

Post by martijnvds »

WarmWash wrote: post #65
jahnu wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep hammering the point that they are cheaper. If they are open to more advanced discussion point to the amazing structural changes that batteries are only starting to bring. Tell them something that sounds mildly like science fiction but is in fact happening already and will be HUGE. E.g. the battery you’ll have in your AC/stove/car will save you money or even make you money when part of a smart mesh of DERs. Maybe…

Let me preface this that I am a huge advocate for renewables, and have been spending borderline unreasonable amounts on turning my home green. The rub with "solar is cheaper" is that those values are almost always calculated using an ideal environment. Solar is cheapest when you are using flat barren land in Arizona where an acre costs $500, the sun shines 330 days a year, you are bulk buying 750 MW of panels, and th…

Every kWh your panels make from sunlight that you use immediately (or store "behind the meter"), you don't have to buy from the grid.

And not buying something tends to be cheaper than buying :)

Re: Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026

#79

Post by dimitrios1 »

Aurornis wrote: post #46
erelong wrote: post #9

I know some people who are adamantly against solar and wind (personally I like both but I can see some shortcomings - for example I have heard that ai datacenters are using gas at times because of its flexibility) So what are some of the best talking points to "sell" solar and wind to the unconvinced? Or will they just adopt it once it's seen everywhere?

I don’t know how you can be against solar unless you’ve been given some uninformed talking points. Are they against solar subsidies or other policy provisions? It’s hard to understand someone who is against passive energy collection.

I am against it for one reason only, but it's very solvable, IMO, and it's the amount of space they take up.

I live next to 200+ acres of solar farms. A part of me cries a little when I see so much beautiful land and trees cut down and these lifeless panels taking up so much space. We have so many buildings, and structures already (think parking decks, tops of apartments, homes, offices, even parking lots) that we could put these, but instead we cut down acres of trees or use up perfectly usable farmland.

Re: Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026

#80

Post by fredophile »

tialaramex wrote: post #40
dnautics wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it depends. some places it makes sense, some places it doesn't. it will be adopted when the money speaks. the good news is that money is a reasonably close proxy to "environmental benefit" (balancing the environmental costs of green infra production versus dirtiness of gas generation)

> some places it doesn't I can see this for wind, but not solar. PV turns sunlight into electrical energy. The whole damp rock gets sunlight on the outside, why not build panels anywhere? For wind yeah, if you live one of those boring flat places which gets tornadoes a wind turbine is definitely a bad idea, it won't make much energy and then a tornado turns it into scrap and possibly destroys nearby things with chunk…

I spent a good chunk of my life in the Pacific Northwest. You get very long stretches of cloudy skies through most of the winter that are poor for solar. However, there are alternatives in that region like hydro that may be more suitable choices.
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