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US electricity demand surged in 2025 – solar handled 61% of it

electrek.co

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Re: US electricity demand surged in 2025 – solar handled 61% of it

#151

Post by phendrenad2 »

jakobnissen wrote: post #57
torginus wrote: post #24

There should be a minimum level of expertise or commitment to the truth so that publication who certainly think of themselves as major league or factual don't publish blatantly false statements like this. Yes, demand rose, and solar panels were installed whose capacity was about 60% of the new demand, but to say solar handled 60% of new capacity is blatantly false. As someone who owns solar panels, I'm painfully awar…

No, you are reading the article wrong. It is indeed 60% of new electricity generation that is from solar, not capacity

Then shy doesn't the article literally say that? Why does it take three carefully-crafted sentences to say it? Because they're fooling you.

Re: US electricity demand surged in 2025 – solar handled 61% of it

#152

Post by LikeBeans »

bruckie wrote: post #136
reactordev wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, DC vs AC power. 12v vs 120v or 240v. This isn’t a limitation. All energy sources must be converted to useable energy to the grid somehow. So every power source requires an inverter or a down stepper or a really advanced rectifier or all of the above.

The people you're replying to aren't talking about converting from AC to DC or stepping voltage up or down. Rather, they're talking about grid stability. You can have mechanisms to convert from AC to DC and to step voltage up or down, but still have a unstable grid. We had a notable example of that last year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Iberian_Peninsula_blackou... . One way to think about this problem is that…

Great explanation about the grid being a giant machine that couple smaller machines with each other. About your last point, the buffer, I think batteries (chemical and also physical) seems to be the main key going forward.

Re: US electricity demand surged in 2025 – solar handled 61% of it

#153

Post by seanmcdirmid »

slashdev wrote: post #139
Aurornis wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a push to switch from fossil fuel to electricity across the board, and that’s a good thing. Cars are the big one. However even heating is going electric (heat pumps, not resistive). Induction stovetops outperform residential gas cooktops. Some cities are even experimenting with phasing out natural gas hookups for new construction. It all adds up, and it a good thing. It doesn’t explain 100% of the growth but…

In Vancouver, Canada natural gas was completely phased out as of the beginning of 2025 in most new construction.

What is NG good for? Induction cook tops perform better than gas ones, heat pumps do better than gas heaters. The only gap I can think of are just in time hot water heaters.

Re: US electricity demand surged in 2025 – solar handled 61% of it

#154

Post by bluGill »

WesternEdge wrote: post #94
api wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s just the stickiness of prices, not a problem with solar. Inflationary money is basically an ugly hack to allow prices to fall without falling.

But it's not happening in areas that keep coal on their grid - Wyoming, Texas, Utah, China, etc. It's primarily the places that try do both solar an fossil fuel retirement that are experiencing high energy prices - California, UK, Europe, Australia, etc.

Texas has the most wind power of any us state.

High energy prices happen when you don't do the basics to be ready for a change before making it. Or when you skip basic maintenance until everything falls apart. I'm sure there are many other complex factors I don't know about.

Re: US electricity demand surged in 2025 – solar handled 61% of it

#155

Post by testing22321 »

glimshe wrote: post #41

I've thought about installing solar panels on my roof for years. But when I factor in installation costs, it never makes sense because the local energy rates are pretty reasonable... Also, I live in Southeast, a place with plenty of sun but nowhere near the Southwest. Solar panel prices fell hugely in the past years. Is there anything that could significantly reduce installation costs?

I’m in Canada, in a tight valley with tons of snow. The panels on my roof make $1000 a year, and over their lifetime I’ll save around $20,000.

Complete no brainer.

Re: US electricity demand surged in 2025 – solar handled 61% of it

#156

Post by seanmcdirmid »

Aurornis wrote: post #140
trollbridge wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spoke with two working class people last week who are facing power shutoffs because they got an unexpected $700 power bill. Not sure if it were a sneaky electricity supplier change or if costs have simply gone up. But the problem of consumer rates just always ratcheting up needs addressed.

Electricity prices are heavily regulated. The largest increase I can find from a short search is around 20% for some customers in New Jersey. The average year over year increase is closer to 6% Unexpectedly high electricity bills are almost always from actual usage. Unexpectedly high winter electricity bills are usually from resistive electric heating in one way or another. You didn’t mention their normal December bi…

Texas is really different, it could be from there.

Re: US electricity demand surged in 2025 – solar handled 61% of it

#157

Post by torginus »

jakobnissen wrote: post #57
torginus wrote: post #24

There should be a minimum level of expertise or commitment to the truth so that publication who certainly think of themselves as major league or factual don't publish blatantly false statements like this. Yes, demand rose, and solar panels were installed whose capacity was about 60% of the new demand, but to say solar handled 60% of new capacity is blatantly false. As someone who owns solar panels, I'm painfully awar…

No, you are reading the article wrong. It is indeed 60% of new electricity generation that is from solar, not capacity

I think it's incredibly fishy. If I add a 1MW coal plant to the grid, I can pretty much run it at nominal capacity all year round, so 1MW * hours in the year is afair calculation.

If I add the same 1MW for solar, needless to say even assuming perfect weather, I'm lucky to get 1/3rd of that. Under real circumstances, the numbers are probably much worse.

When looking at marketing, I think it's always safe to assume they picked the most flattering numbers when they didn't specify how they made the calculation.

That's why it's very meaningful to talk about adding kWh - 1 kWh peak solar means more in Texas than in Chicago. It's even less meaningful for batteries - they can sustain incredible currents, to the point it's very rarely the meaningful bottleneck.

Yet that's exactly that what the cited 'global think-tank' Ember did, which the article cites as source. So they either misled on purpose, or like a lot of people, they confused GWh and GW, which is such a grave error for a supposed expert, that their whole analysis should be disregarded.

Re: US electricity demand surged in 2025 – solar handled 61% of it

#158

Post by LikeBeans »

bradfa wrote: post #137
HWR_14 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If most people have live pricing, most people have an incentive to act on price changes It's not latency free to act on price changes. If they spike while people are asleep, what do you expect would happen? And would people get a notification everytime the price changed at all. The logistics are hard.

Some solar inverter systems already have a data connection to get live pricing information from the grid operator. It’s not that big of a problem to implement, although it definitely isn’t pervasive yet. Minute by minute pricing is not crazy to expect and integration with HVAC, battery systems, and inverters isn’t crazy to expect to occur.

I think pulling for live pricing by inverters and appliances is not realistic on a grand scale. Using time of day pricing is much simpler imo.

Re: US electricity demand surged in 2025 – solar handled 61% of it

#159

Post by tastyfreeze »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #153
slashdev wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Vancouver, Canada natural gas was completely phased out as of the beginning of 2025 in most new construction.

What is NG good for? Induction cook tops perform better than gas ones, heat pumps do better than gas heaters. The only gap I can think of are just in time hot water heaters.

Gas cooktops are good for still being able to cook when the power is out.

Re: US electricity demand surged in 2025 – solar handled 61% of it

#160

Post by bluGill »

yunohn wrote: post #31
danmaz74 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that works perfectly well when solar is a small % of the grid, but when that number grows, then you need grid scale solutions and coordination for things to continue working well. And that requires both technical skill and political will.

So your implication that other sources of energy currently do not need scaling coordination somehow? I fail to see how that is true, maybe you can provide some insights?

Wind and solar are not in ur control. I can turn on a generator and get power. Some plants might need weeks to start up - but this is in my control. I have no idea how windy it will be in five days.
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