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Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid

arstechnica.com

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Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid

#151

Post by blacksmith_tb »

MichaelNolan wrote: post #104

Kind of a weird headline. It makes it sound like this just happened. But it happened almost 2 years ago. Reading the article is also a bit confusing. I finally figured out they are only referring to utility scale solar and not total solar (utility plus behind the meter) My overlay of the data: https://eia.languagelatte.com/ Raw data: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/browser/#/topic/0

Presumably we have dammed everything that made sense to (and some that didn't), so solar / wind will keep growing while hydro is unlikely to change (unless it drops).

Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid

#152

Post by floatrock »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #26
ertgbnm wrote: post #22

I am reminded by the perhaps revisionist history but still applicable belief that slavery was really ended by industrialization making abolition economically advantageous and not actually a socially driven movement. (In reality it was certainly a convoluted mixture of the two I'm sure.) I hope we are in a similar era with regards to climate change. Surely there's a lot of money to be made in harnessing effectively un…

> With a bit of social pressure we should be able to extinct the fossil fuel industry Taking Europe versus China, California versus Texas, it seems like social pressure is less effective than markets. Let markets build the power source they want to build and lo and behold you get lots of solar and wind and batteries.

It's a cute ideal, but you can't disentangle government from the energy sector. It's too big.

How do markets build infrastructure as large as an LNG terminal without the government tipping the scales with various guarantees? How do you build a literal coastline of refineries without government clearing the way with permissive regulations? How can you say "let markets figure it out" when the US military is the acquisition department of Halliburton's Iraqi joint venture?

Pretending "markets can figure it out if we just remove government subsidies" is hopelessly naiive. Geopolitics is mostly energy policy.

Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid

#153

Post by floatrock »

dzonga wrote: post #126

The trump administration by refusing to admit the superior metrics of solar, they're just burying their heads in sand. As admitting that solar is now a superior and cost effective means of energy means admitting that the US is no longer top dog. As empires are built on mastering a source of energy. the Portuguese | Dutch - mastered wind to power their ships. the British mastered coal to power Industrial Revolution. A…

Chinese also have battery manufacturing, whose rapidly falling cost-curve is what is missing to enable 24/7 solar.

American empire ruled with the petrodollar. Chinese will rule with the solaryuan if we don't get our shit together.

Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid

#154

Post by telotortium »

ceejayoz wrote: post #143
irishcoffee wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Military vehicles that take oil-derived fuel take diesel, not hydrocarbons. The oil in Venezuela serves that purpose nicely. No, I am not condoning anything here, just pointing something out.

There’s plenty of diesel available to us that doesn’t require stabilizing an authoritarian Central American nation and rebuilding their oil industry first.

I think Venezuela and Iran are more about restricting the oil to China in case of a conflict rather than providing energy for the US, although getting ahead of an anticipated demand increase from AI data centers is probably a contributing motivation.

Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid

#155

Post by JumpCrisscross »

floatrock wrote: post #152
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With a bit of social pressure we should be able to extinct the fossil fuel industry Taking Europe versus China, California versus Texas, it seems like social pressure is less effective than markets. Let markets build the power source they want to build and lo and behold you get lots of solar and wind and batteries.

It's a cute ideal, but you can't disentangle government from the energy sector. It's too big. How do markets build infrastructure as large as an LNG terminal without the government tipping the scales with various guarantees? How do you build a literal coastline of refineries without government clearing the way with permissive regulations? How can you say "let markets figure it out" when the US military is the acquisi…

> you can't disentangle government from the energy sector

Nobody argued as much. My point is the net effect of social pressure on the energy transformation has been costly—financially and politically—for relatively little bang.

Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid

#156

Post by Lucasoato »

ProllyInfamous wrote: post #133

It's incredible to me that California's primary generation source is cyclical solar — which it primarily offloads to PNW [0], who offsets any missing California solar with its MASSIVE Columbia River Hydro. Essentially co-dependant renewables, the entirety of West Coast through Colorado balancing primarily between solar and hydro (and natgas peakers). Nothing like Québec (¡hydro!), but still something . [0] https://i.…

Every time someone posts a imgur link on HN I get this as response:

    Imgur is temporarily over capacity. Please try again later.

Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid

#157

Post by 05 »

inglor_cz wrote: post #146
QuercusMax wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They used slave labor too, don't forget!

Slave labor is most efficient when it comes to non-skilled, hard work. Mining, agriculture, sex (where it still survives even in the Western world), where the output is easily checked and counted. When it comes to anything sophisticated done by qualified people, like "making advanced tools for the Führer", the options for subtle sabotage are there and pissed-off people will use them. In general, German occupation aut…

Counterpoint: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharashka

Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid

#158

Post by ceejayoz »

inglor_cz wrote: post #150
ceejayoz wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being able to lounge around while others toil for your gain is absolutely economic. And being comfortable doing it via slave labor is cultural. > if you exclude the enslaved, the south had a higher GDP per capita If you exclude the murders, Ted Bundy was a really nice guy.

Prior to the steam engine, what sources of energy you have? The wind and the water, both rather limited to specific activities (milling, sailing). And the power of human and animal muscle. Where the animals are stronger, but also much dumber, so most of the actual hard work has to be done by human hands. Basically all the settled civilizations used some sort of non-free or at best semi-free labour. Villeiny, serfdom,…

> Prior to the steam engine, what sources of energy you have?

Oxen? Paid laborers? It's not like the American South was unique in needing farm workers.

> Basically all the settled civilizations used some sort of non-free or at best semi-free labour.

The South was notable in clinging to slavery long after it had been abolished elsewhere.

> And given that humans are very good at rationalizing away their conditions, the cultures adapted to being comfortable with it, even considering the societal inequality as something ordained by the gods or karma.

Good, then we agree; it was at least in part cultural.

Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid

#159

Post by WarmWash »

dzonga wrote: post #126

The trump administration by refusing to admit the superior metrics of solar, they're just burying their heads in sand. As admitting that solar is now a superior and cost effective means of energy means admitting that the US is no longer top dog. As empires are built on mastering a source of energy. the Portuguese | Dutch - mastered wind to power their ships. the British mastered coal to power Industrial Revolution. A…

Someone desperately needs to build the largest solar farm on earth, nakedly as a direct affront to China, and call it the "The Grand Trump Sun Energy Complex", with a large statue of him standing at the center of the massive radial field of panels.

The dude would have no choice but to approve it and provide funding for it.

Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid

#160

Post by tokenless »

dzonga wrote: post #126

The trump administration by refusing to admit the superior metrics of solar, they're just burying their heads in sand. As admitting that solar is now a superior and cost effective means of energy means admitting that the US is no longer top dog. As empires are built on mastering a source of energy. the Portuguese | Dutch - mastered wind to power their ships. the British mastered coal to power Industrial Revolution. A…

"Drill baby drill" as he said this week.
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