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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

#291

Post by wolrah »

dimitrios1 wrote: post #79
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 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 co…

> 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.

Where are you seeing healthy forests or other "beautiful land" being destroyed for solar farms? There's plenty of low-yield farmland and other similar land that's already been denatured by industry out there, lots of which already has major transmission infrastructure nearby, beautiful land tends to be expensive, and clearing trees costs money. It just doesn't make sense to do something like that outside of isolated areas where there's no other choice.

Here in the midwestern US every single solar or wind farm I've seen has either been on active farmland, former farmland, or a corporate/university campus.

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

#292

Post by jltsiren »

engineer_22 wrote: post #170
ceejayoz wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finland: > The net result: Pornainen fulfilled all of its municipal climate targets with a single installation. Oil use dropped 100 percent, emissions fell 70 percent, and woodchip combustion was cut by 60 percent. According to the Mayor of the Municipality of Pornainen, Antti Kuusela, the municipality now heats all its public buildings, including a new sports arena opening in September 2026, entirely through this di…

They are buying electricity and storing it as heat and time-arbitrage it to when the heat is needed, they make no mention of the electric power source. In any case, during the depth of winter, when it's needed most, they're still burning carbon. Previous paragraph to your quote: >During the coldest, most expensive stretch, the wood chip boiler became the primary unit, and the sand battery supplemented it. Remarkably:…

Finland only started building solar recently. Wind is still more cost-effective, if you only consider the cost of generation. But there is almost too much installed wind capacity. If you also consider the value of the generated energy, solar gets ahead, as it correlates less with existing generation.

In any case, Finland does not really use fossil fuels for electricity generation anymore. There is some cogeneration, where heat is the primary output, and reserve power plants that are only used in exceptional situations. Electricity is largely a solved problem, but it's proving harder to get rid of fossil fuels in heating and transportation.

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

#293

Post by abenga »

dfee wrote: post #119
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?

if you require a stable energy source, neither wind nor solar (nor both) provide a complete strategy. they can be a part of a composite strategy, though. for both wind and solar, they're also quite taxing on the environment during manufacturing. the "true cost" is rarely reported. nuclear energy has a different set of problems (including social / political ones). here's that industry's take on the economics of wind e…

> quite taxing on the environment during manufacturing

What power source isn't?

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

#294

Post by andyferris »

_whiteCaps_ wrote: post #244
jphil529 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really curious about the difficulty of doing a self install with Solar. I'm moderately handy (built a Sauna from no plans) and confident with electrical. Any gotchas?

It's fairly easy and there are a lot of forums around with knowledgeable people. My main issue was ensuring wire gauges were correct. One's intuition about dealing with house wiring @15A changes when you're dealing with 50A circuits. Also you need to pay attention to things like equal cable lengths between battery banks so you don't overcharge one battery in a series. However, I'm dealing with an off-grid cabin so I…

Modern off-road/off-grid inverter chargers make wiring to the network pretty easy. I'd still recommend an electrician, but most they'd likely need to do is wire the grid into the inverter-charger input, and your cabin to the output, and check whatever protection (like RCDs) your cabin has is sufficient/up-to-date.

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

#295

Post by ragebol »

jrmg wrote: post #254
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 bu…

On X/Twitter, I'm sometimes seeing graphs comparing energy usage per capita in the US vs the EU and China, with the narrative that the US is 'better' in some way because the higher energy usage.

And then there is stuff like the above indeed, uselessly wasting energy while things could be so much more efficient.

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

#296

Post by tencentshill »

eldaisfish wrote: post #277
ted_dunning wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The adoption rate in places like Australia and even Texas is what demonstrates that the argument holds water. People wouldn't be rushing to shift entire markets at the observed rates if the economics were upside down. It is the soundness of the economic model that is driving the adoption even against tariffs and subversion by the current US regime.

How do you explain the fact that the average residential electricity price is higher in Australia than in most of the US? This is not as simple as people here make it out to be. Consider also that solar is profitable today because it does not set the price of electricity in most markets. In a world where solar dominates, the prices of electricity could be negative. The economics of negative electricity prices becomin…

They paid to decommission fossils early, and amortized it over the future. So it's going to drop like a rock once those debts are paid and the last plants shut down, with fewer remaining customers and lighter load on the grid. But until then, consumers will be paying higher bills.

Similar to the UK - See item 18. https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/141240/html...

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

#297

Post by vince14 »

foxyv wrote: post #276
eldaisfish wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LCOE is a terrible metric for the power grid because it does not capture the cost of balancing the power grid. Excess renewable power is great but it creates a problem and the cost of that problem is not borne by the generators that created the problem. What LCOE captures in this context is that solar panels are cheap and that the fuel cost is zero. The average price of electricity is greatly affected by this, which…

That is not entirely correct. Typically you will see LCOE for Solar grouped with the LCOE of Solar and energy storage. EG: > Solar photovoltaic $1,327 $1,333–2,743 $31–146 12–30% > Solar PV with storage $1,748 $2,044 $53–81 20–31% https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#...

> and energy storage

What do you think this means? It doesn't mean what you think it means.

Quoting LCOE and ignoring system costs disqualifies you for any discussion on this topic, sorry.

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

#298

Post by ted_dunning »

anukin wrote: post #213
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.

The argument I have generally heard is consistent power output and grid availability 24x7 with solar is harder. So they augment with gas turbines. IMO augmenting it with nuclear is better.

And even better is to augment it with large scale batteries.

Nuclear is fine, but very expensive and very slow to deploy.

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

#299

Post by porphyra »

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…

Nice. In the US, it cost us $35k to install 7.6 kW panels + 13 kWh battery. But our PG&E electricity prices in the Bay Area are also several times more expensive than in Europe ($0.50 per kWh) so it will also pay off in 8-10 years.

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

#300

Post by volkl48 »

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…

As someone in New England: We don't have enough gas infrastructure up here either, you can't just add more gas plants to our grid and accomplish anything.

As it is, in the coldest periods of winter you will at times see the ISO-NE grid running on 40% oil because we don't have enough natural gas pipeline capacity to run all of the gas plants and meet natural gas heating demands. So many of the gas plants have to kick back over to burning oil.

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