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

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

#251

Post by colechristensen »

ravedave5 wrote: post #140
_whiteCaps_ wrote: post #96

I just upgraded the solar system at my family's off-grid cabin. It's incredible how much battery technology has improved over the last 10 years. Everyone is getting tired of me checking the panel to see how many watts we're bringing in. Next project, install a shunt and get a Raspberry Pi talking to it over USB. And then I'll be able to build a Grafana dashboard. :)

I have a similar project, I'm so overpaneled I bought an electric heater so I could actually see how many watts I brought in during a nice summer day. The victron UIs have an excellent graph history.

The next step for people like you and things like nations: what do we do with this extra electricity we have laying around so often?

What people figure out to do with actually free energy will be exciting. There are a lot of extremely "inefficient" things that might suddenly become commonplace.

Proto-replicator technology where you dump your garbage into a barrel and it gets decomposed and recomposed into something similar to crude oil, blocks of metal, pure gasses, etc? Hydrocarbon fuel from air? Flying cars? You name it.

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

#252

Post by bryanlarsen »

nonethewiser wrote: post #132

Is it possible to increase the grid by add solar and wind and NOT adding an on-demand backup source (gas, etc.) WITHOUT ADDING RISK? What I mean is say the grid demands 100. The grid is powered entirely by coal. You give it 120 for 20% redundancy. This is extremely reliable. The grid demand is now 120. You now need 144 for 20% redundancy. You dont want to use coal. So you add solar and batteries. Batteries are great…

Just ask California. They've basically conducted the experiment you asked for by adding substantial solar & battery. They haven't had a blackout since 2020 and are the most stable grid in the entire US.

https://cleantechnica.com/2026/05/30/california-lowest-whole...

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

#253

Post by antonvs »

Kon5ole wrote: post #83
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.

>I don’t know how you can be against solar unless you’ve been given some uninformed talking points. One understandable (not saying it's good, just understandable) reason is if your business is selling electricity from a source more expensive than solar. Which is just about every source. I think power producers will eventually have to combine power generation with activities that generate money separately from selling…

> I think power producers will eventually have to combine power generation with activities that generate money separately from selling electricity. Like heavy industry, datacenters etc.

This generally isn't how markets or economics works. If power generation isn't profitable, many companies will just stop doing it. Prices will rise, making it attractive to more companies to do it.

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

#254

Post by jrmg »

scope2093 wrote: post #246

We installed roof solar (10kW panels + 8kW hybrid inverter + 32kWh battery + planning/execution) last October for 11k euro. After all the math, our "investment" would pay off in approx 8-10 years (at current electricity prices). That's without an electric car, which we plan to buy sometime in the next two years. All in all, pretty happy. Especially that we have frequent grid faults. Even my ISP has some beefy batteri…

Getting solar installed on our house, providing well over 100% of our energy needs overall (including car), has left me low-key kind of angry that we, as a society, are letting so much energy just uselessly fall onto structures and the ground when we could be harvesting and using it.

Especially in the US, and especially in homes, we tend to have dark roofs. Sunlight falls on these, heating the building up, then we burn fossil fuels to generate more energy to pump the heat outside. It’s absurd.

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

#255

Post by bryanlarsen »

lstodd wrote: post #236
bryanlarsen wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without that solar / wind, Europe would be paying 100 million euros per day more for LNG. Electricity in Europe is expensive enough already, making it even more expensive by shunning the cheapest available form would be even harder on industry.

And if Germany did not phase out nuclear, EU would not have relied on russian LNG for so long. But we live in an imperfect world.

Prematurely phasing out 10GW of nuclear electricity is a drop in the bucket compared to LNG usage. A mistake, but a minor one.

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

#256

Post by rwyinuse »

fp64 wrote: post #59
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.

I'm not against solar, my primary issue is that in northern Europe there's not much sun at some times. Energy storage and "smart grid" are not there yet, in my view, but maybe should have come first. Hydrogen (electrolysis) sounds a bit wild and impractical to me.

Usually there's either sun or wind. Last year 57% of Finland's electricity generation was from renewables, the rest being largely nuclear, and the electricity costs were among lowest in Europe.

Until battery tech gets (and maybe even after) it's a good idea to build some nuclear too.

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

#257

Post by thrownthatway »

_whiteCaps_ wrote: post #245
thrownthatway wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> without going over the volt/amp limit on the device. It’s not clear what device you’re referring to in this context.

The MPPT solar controller. MidNite has a sizing tool for this: https://www.midnitesolar.com/sizingTool/

So the most difficult part is using a calculator to determine the charge controller capacity.

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

#258

Post by didgetmaster »

On the graph, you can clearly see the seasonal demand for power during the summer months as air conditioning kicks in. The electricity production for gas mimics this as well each year. But the solar output does not seem to have a spike each summer. Why is that? You would think that solar output would be significantly higher when the summer months are here.

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

#259

Post by crote »

Neywiny wrote: post #173
foxyv wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar/wind is the cheapest form of power generation by far. You just can't beat it because they don't have any fuel costs. Gas peaker plants will always make sense until we have enough grid scale batteries. They will hold on for now until the price of natural gas hits rock bottom. But with the current advances in low cost battery technology I see them becoming less and less necessary. They would probably already be d…

I think you've missed that all generators have upfront cost. That's why the monetary payoff time for installing solar is non-zero. Versus a backup generator you're paying 2-3x the cost upfront. And yes we know the running cost is almost 0, the maintenance is almost nothing, etc etc, but I could see that argument not holding as much water as we need it to.

Solar also has incredibly low upfront costs: 400W panels are available for less than $100 / each these days.

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

#260

Post by californical »

colechristensen wrote: post #251
ravedave5 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a similar project, I'm so overpaneled I bought an electric heater so I could actually see how many watts I brought in during a nice summer day. The victron UIs have an excellent graph history.

The next step for people like you and things like nations: what do we do with this extra electricity we have laying around so often? What people figure out to do with actually free energy will be exciting. There are a lot of extremely "inefficient" things that might suddenly become commonplace. Proto-replicator technology where you dump your garbage into a barrel and it gets decomposed and recomposed into something s…

Generating hydrocarbons at home from their air with excess electricity is like the ultimate endgame in my opinion. It’d be so sick and enable a million new possibilities, essentially getting us into a net-zero emissions state without needing to use batteries for everything.

I doubt that it ends up being actually better due to efficiency losses but it’d be really cool!!

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