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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

#321

Post by Gibbon1 »

foxyv wrote: post #107
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?

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…

Batteries in California have curtailed the need for peaker plants most of the year. Natural gas is starting to become a seasonal supply of electricity. Fall winter spring it's providing a few GW of power. Only in the mid to late summer does it break 10GW. That change happened over just five years.

I keep mentioning this because it's notable. California now needs to increase demand for electricity to move forward on electrification. Things like low cost workplace charging and mass adoption of heat pumps. Unfortunately California is going to elect a governor who thinks it's his job to protect entrenched interests. Fortunately big picture it doesn't matter except to people in California.

Currently renewable manufacturing is doing the the equivalent of adding 10 million barrels/day of oil production per year. Total production is 110 million barrels/day. Demand destruction for oil is coming very soon now.

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

#322

Post by sandos »

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…

11k euro is INSANELY cheap?

Afaik there is absolutely no way to the same thing legally here in Sweden. Unless prices have really fallen off a cliff.

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

#323

Post by codazoda »

porphyra wrote: post #299
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.

Plus $15k to move them for new shingles when the time comes, if they’re on shingles.

I wonder why we don’t use them to build shade structures instead.

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

#324

Post by epistasis »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #216
DonsDiscountGas wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody, anywhere, is building new coal power plants. Approximately all new power is wind and solar. Which is good. But there is still a lot of installed capacity. And until new solar is cheaper than existing coal (which will be awhile, maybe never) then coal only decreases as plants shut down.

China is. [1] I don't get why people feel the need to just start lying when talking about renewables. It's probably a large reason why people are always skeptical of 'rewnewables are cheaper than x' claims. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/katharinabuchholz/2026/02/27/ch...

They're building them, but not using them.

They get built because their market has messed up pricing for providing generation capacity, far in excess of the need for capacity. So the coal plants get built, and not used much.

In particular, they are replacing coal plants meant for baseload with newer and far more efficient coal plants meant for more intermittent use, but that amount of use will go down drastically in coming years as cheaper batteries and renewables flood the grid.

There's also a smattering of coal plants being built elsewhere in the world, but that's usually due to corruption in the process of regulatory approval. It's far easier to hide bribes in large coal plants than it is in tons of small renewables projects.

Edit: and I just realized that I was only talking about developing countries with those corruption accusations; I'd heard of many such instances in places such as Africa and India. But now I guess I must add the US to the list. We don't know what payments are going on behind the scenes because of Trump's cryptocurrency, but undoubtedly that's a big part of these new coal generators too.

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

#325

Post by turtlebits »

soggybread wrote: post #210
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?

I'm just getting into Solar myself and while it seems like a lot there are some things that you have to do math for. If you've got 10 panels you'll want to find out how to get all that energy to the inverter/mppt without going over the volt/amp limit on the device. This is probably the most difficult part and for everything else there's a huge solar community of people starting exactly where you are. I myself just bo…

Its not difficult, you just have to change the configuration of your panels between in series and parallel.

Ideally you dont buy the all in one batteries as they usually have anemic solar inputs.

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

#326

Post by turtlebits »

thrownthatway wrote: post #257
_whiteCaps_ wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, just figure out how much solar you want and buy and accordingly sized charge controller/MPPT.

They will all tell you maximum input volts and amperage. You can calculate watts by multiplying those two and just need to wire your panels in a way that doesn't exceed either value.

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

#327

Post by throwaway473825 »

citrin_ru wrote: post #148
fsh wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coal is much cheaper than gas.

Gas allows to use combined cycle gas turbines (CCGT) which is more efficient and it makes gas cheaper for electricity generation.

That's still not enough to bridge the gap between coal and gas. See for example this article:

https://www.ffe.de/en/publications/merit-order-shifts-and-th...

The US is an anomaly due to shale gas:

https://energyathaas.wordpress.com/2026/05/11/how-much-has-s...

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

#328

Post by throwaway473825 »

usefulcat wrote: post #116
fsh wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coal is much cheaper than gas.

Is it cheaper per MW of generated power? I thought that the main reason use of gas has increased so much (for power generation) over the past 20-30 years is that gas became cheaper.

It depends on the region. The US has shale gas which is genuinely cheaper than coal. Europe doesn't want to use coal for political reasons. China and India barely use gas since it can't compete with coal.

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

#329

Post by throwaway473825 »

iSnow wrote: post #313
Danox wrote: post #31

How is that working for German industry where you need dense energy if you are going to continue build anything big..

Germany IS suffering from high energy prices, but renewables are only a small part of the problem. It was a mistake to shut down the working nuclear power plants, and that also coincided with the abrupt loss of all (cheap) gas from Russia. Now, the country imports expensive LNG and renewables generate something like 80% on a good day - but thanks to merit order, the most expensive form of power generation sets the pr…

It should be noted that Russian gas was more expensive than any other source of electricity in Germany:

https://www.ffe.de/en/publications/merit-order-shifts-and-th...

Hungary still uses it, and it's not helping (aside from potential kickbacks):

https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/price_average_map/char...

China also stopped importing electricity from Russia since it couldn't compete with China's own coal, renewables and nuclear.

The truth is that Germany was bound to struggle as it decided to phase out nuclear and coal but keep gas.

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

#330

Post by tonymet »

tootie wrote: post #319
tonymet wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

to what end?

I just said. To reduce environmental impacts. A fully electric factory drawing power from a grid of renewables is cleaner, safer and more stable.

so it sounds like "bear infinite prosperity / comfort / security costs for dubious environmental benefits" . Have you thought about how to weight the costs vs the benefits? Are you proposing being poorer, hungrier, more miserable, less comfortable in the hot & cold season for "clean energy". so how much are you willing to sacrifice for it?
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