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Solar in California surpassed natural gas in the first five months of 2026

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Re: Solar in California surpassed natural gas in the first five months of 2026

#3

Post by epistasis »

Solar only increased a little bit, but imports went way up to push down natural gas.

California imported electricity is cleaner on average than internally generated electricity: lots of hydro and nuclear from neighbors, and the big one of the new SunZia massive wind farm. So directly displacing natural gas with imports is 100% win from a climate angle.

Re: Solar in California surpassed natural gas in the first five months of 2026

#5

Post by toomuchtodo »

ck2 wrote: post #4

Meanwhile guess who just gave ANOTHER BILLION to MORE wind farms not to finish building * https://apnews.com/article/trump-offshore-wind-energy-climat... The insanity of it all. Do we survive this decade? Are you SURE?

Trump Administration Abandons Fight Against Wind Energy as Clean Energy Output Surges - https://insideclimatenews.org/news/15062026/trump-administra... - June 15th, 2026

> Do we survive this decade? Are you SURE?

Yes. We simply took our foot of the accelerator pedal for a bit. Regrettable, but that is all. Hopefully a lesson has been learned, but perhaps not. Humans are tricky.

Re: Solar in California surpassed natural gas in the first five months of 2026

#6

Post by OkayPhysicist »

epistasis wrote: post #3

Solar only increased a little bit, but imports went way up to push down natural gas. California imported electricity is cleaner on average than internally generated electricity: lots of hydro and nuclear from neighbors, and the big one of the new SunZia massive wind farm. So directly displacing natural gas with imports is 100% win from a climate angle.

Does "imported" in this context include places like Linden Ranch, Washington, which is home to a wind farm fully operated by Los Angeles Department of Water and Power?

Re: Solar in California surpassed natural gas in the first five months of 2026

#7

Post by bryanlarsen »

epistasis wrote: post #3

Solar only increased a little bit, but imports went way up to push down natural gas. California imported electricity is cleaner on average than internally generated electricity: lots of hydro and nuclear from neighbors, and the big one of the new SunZia massive wind farm. So directly displacing natural gas with imports is 100% win from a climate angle.

Reading off those hard to read graphs, it looks like both solar and imports are up about 3GW in 2025? Why do you say imports increased so much more than solar?

Re: Solar in California surpassed natural gas in the first five months of 2026

#8

Post by dmoy »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #6
epistasis wrote: post #3

Solar only increased a little bit, but imports went way up to push down natural gas. California imported electricity is cleaner on average than internally generated electricity: lots of hydro and nuclear from neighbors, and the big one of the new SunZia massive wind farm. So directly displacing natural gas with imports is 100% win from a climate angle.

Does "imported" in this context include places like Linden Ranch, Washington, which is home to a wind farm fully operated by Los Angeles Department of Water and Power?

Yes

CA only produces like 70% of the electricity it uses, they get power all the way from Canada not just WA

Re: Solar in California surpassed natural gas in the first five months of 2026

#9

Post by epistasis »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #7
epistasis wrote: post #3

Solar only increased a little bit, but imports went way up to push down natural gas. California imported electricity is cleaner on average than internally generated electricity: lots of hydro and nuclear from neighbors, and the big one of the new SunZia massive wind farm. So directly displacing natural gas with imports is 100% win from a climate angle.

Reading off those hard to read graphs, it looks like both solar and imports are up about 3GW in 2025? Why do you say imports increased so much more than solar?

I could be misreading, but looking at the first graph, 2024-2025 had a fairly big jump in average GWh from solar. But 2025-2026 has a not very big jump? Very easy to misread, though.

Same with the very bottom set of three plots. Between 2025-2026, there's not much change in solar that I can see, but there's a huge change in night-time and morning imports, which depresses natural gas a ton.

Nighttime generation from SunZia would be a likely cause; at least in California night time wind is stronger than day time, usually, I wonder if New Mexico is the same.

Re: Solar in California surpassed natural gas in the first five months of 2026

#10

Post by josefritzishere »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #5
ck2 wrote: post #4

Meanwhile guess who just gave ANOTHER BILLION to MORE wind farms not to finish building * https://apnews.com/article/trump-offshore-wind-energy-climat... The insanity of it all. Do we survive this decade? Are you SURE?

Trump Administration Abandons Fight Against Wind Energy as Clean Energy Output Surges - https://insideclimatenews.org/news/15062026/trump-administra... - June 15th, 2026 > Do we survive this decade? Are you SURE? Yes. We simply took our foot of the accelerator pedal for a bit. Regrettable, but that is all. Hopefully a lesson has been learned, but perhaps not. Humans are tricky.

That particular human is not tricky, sort of the core problem.
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