Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Solar generates more energy in US than coal for first time

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 260 posts

Re: Solar generates more energy in US than coal for first time

#181

Post by Kaliboy »

harmmonica wrote: post #146
Kaliboy wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The post you replied to isn't fully correct. I'll tell you how you could do this in many ways that prevents the fuse problem. There's 3 ways to run solar. Grid tied, grid backed and off grid. I live on a farm and am off grid. The solar inverter is my "utility". After the inverter I have my main breaker. The inverter makes 5 kW max at 230 volts, so my fuse is 5000/230 = 20 amps. I'm outside the US, regulation is a sug…

Know you don't want to dox yourself, but .6 is... rough. Like super rough. Would love to know where this is, but no pressure. Thankfully you're not relying on it completely. And oh what I wouldn't give to know the incidence of deadly maybe very-damaging electrical fires there given your well put "regulation is a suggestion here everyone ignores." Because if the incident rate is no worse than here you can make some as…

I think it's the reason why we ignore regulation. It's not really malice or greed, local government is just a mess. It takes months of waiting.

And when we "break the rules" we consider the rules and break them in a way that minimizes our liability.

Like the reason for the certified install is to protect the line workers. I live on an island, so that's basically my neighbours. Nobody wants them dead. Likewise nobody wants to go through bureaucratic hell.

Solution: grid-backed installs that doesn't interact with the grid. Which any Juan or Pedro can do if you don't want to do it yourself. It runs around $200 to add a new "electric group" to your house.

And to be fair the standard rate is 0.38 cents per kWh and some fixed rate. But the poor they force on the pre-paid package which has no fixed rate, but runs at that higher rate.

And so when you can't afford to buy the electricity you end up in the dark without giving the utility any moral obligations.

I live in the "Caribbean Netherlands", the largest island of the 3.

Re: Solar generates more energy in US than coal for first time

#182

Post by wavemode »

tedggh wrote: post #43
rtkwe wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's part of what's notable about this. The administration hasn't been able to reverse the trend despite putting a massive thumb on the scale against projects like offshore wind and tariffs on solar panel imports. There's probably a delay in the effects though since projects started before they took office are probably starting to thin out and finish up. We'd have to look into the permitting of new projects…

A lot of comes from state initiatives too. Texas being conservative also happens to be very pro solar. I’m in the business and we have some great projects there. The US military is also pushing solar at their facilities. Then you have many private-state partnerships like tolls investing a lot in solar. The outlook in general is pretty positive in the US, a lot more than what people would think.

Anyone who still even views this as a conservative/liberal issue, is someone who is in the pocket of the fossil fuel lobby. Solar is simply a very cheap and realiable way to generate electricity. Much cheaper than gas and coal nowadays. Pure economic incentive is going to continue to drive its adoption.

Re: Solar generates more energy in US than coal for first time

#183

Post by amanaplanacanal »

mbgerring wrote: post #180
KennyBlanken wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s also from focused efforts to close coal plants, For many years coal has been more expensive than solar and wind. That's why utilities are decommissioning the plants.

It’s true, and the strategy of climate activists in the early 2000s and 2010s was to do everything they could to make coal and other fossil fuels as expensive as possible: by reducing access to capital, increasing the cost of legal and regulatory hurdles, sometime delaying projects through physical blockades, etc etc.

It would be nice if we could get industries to pay for the pollution they cause, but I'll take what I can get.

Re: Solar generates more energy in US than coal for first time

#184

Post by leonidasrup »

locallost wrote: post #118
harmmonica wrote: post #22

Question for those in the know... See lots of press about balcony solar in Germany, and California recently introduced a bill to allow it (I'm guessing other states already allow it; not sure if the CA bill has a chance of becoming law). But how far are we from a more plug and play home solar system that becomes a primary energy source as opposed to a limited secondary source? And what are the issues with it actually…

It can't be more or much more than the 800W as currently done in Germany because it would not be safe with the way electricity is delivered to a home. The reason is: when you pull electricity from the grid, the fuse would blow if you tried to pull too much current (e.g. you connect four hair dryers on the same outlet). It blows to prevent the wiring in your home from overheating and catching on fire. With balcony sol…

Another limitation is the transport capacity of each power line and each transformer (power lines and transformers don't care for the direction of the electricity, only for the amount of electricity).

For example if each house in a city would have 25A fuse and all the houses would simultaneously draw 25A, or simultaneously supply 25A the grid would collapse.

Usually the Diversity Factor for apartment block electric grids is around 35%.

https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/electrical-engineering/diversi...

https://ecalpro.com/compare/demand-diversity-100-apartments

Re: Solar generates more energy in US than coal for first time

#185

Post by ssl-3 »

daedrdev wrote: post #160
ssl-3 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. Shit happens. The system we have now is imperfect. The system we will have in 10 or 20 or 100 years surely will be imperfect, as well. We must not let perfect be the enemy of good: If we do, then we'll never get anything done at all.

In power grids the system must be able to handle peak loads for weeks at a time. Either it will shed loads (aka shut off electricity) or things will explode. A black start cannot be allowed to happen as it would be catastrophic

Peaks don't last for weeks, but yes: Load must sometimes be shed.

That happens today. It will happen tomorrow. It's imperfect. This imperfect nature doesn't mean that progress must cease, or that all things must be forever maximalized in search of perfection.

Re: Solar generates more energy in US than coal for first time

#186

Post by leonidasrup »

rtkwe wrote: post #36
Retric wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Total electricity produced by coal + gas is down over the last 20 years. Total electricity production is up, the difference is from wind and solar. This administration swapped to actively suppressing Wind and Solar via tariffs etc, and yet the trends continued because the underlying economic reality heavily favors battery backed solar.

I think that's part of what's notable about this. The administration hasn't been able to reverse the trend despite putting a massive thumb on the scale against projects like offshore wind and tariffs on solar panel imports. There's probably a delay in the effects though since projects started before they took office are probably starting to thin out and finish up. We'd have to look into the permitting of new projects…

Tariffs on solar panel imports should stimulate domestic solar panel production, but only when they are high enough and applied long enough to justify investments into new solar panel manufacturing facilities.

Re: Solar generates more energy in US than coal for first time

#187

Post by daedrdev »

davidw wrote: post #170
daedrdev wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefighters are infamous for creating elevator regulations that require being able to rotate a stretcher, which lead to less elevators duet to the immense costs, which is both completely unnecessary and defeats the entire purpose of the regulations for safety since now they have to drag injured people down stairs

They are also dragging their feet on 'single stair' reform, despite single stair being perfectly safe with adequate construction techniques https://www.pew.org/en/research-and-analysis/reports/2025/02...

Its especially egregious because 2 stair builds are easily and often designed with more distance between stairs and rooms than single stair builds are.

Re: Solar generates more energy in US than coal for first time

#188

Post by harmmonica »

mbgerring wrote: post #61
harmmonica wrote: post #22

Question for those in the know... See lots of press about balcony solar in Germany, and California recently introduced a bill to allow it (I'm guessing other states already allow it; not sure if the CA bill has a chance of becoming law). But how far are we from a more plug and play home solar system that becomes a primary energy source as opposed to a limited secondary source? And what are the issues with it actually…

It’s primarily a regulatory issue, and more states in the US will approve it over the coming years.

I don't see anyone replying to you here, and I don't know what your background is in this, but I think and hope you're spot on here. The more I've read replies in this thread the more I think this is mostly regulatory and maybe slightly a hardware issue (hardware issue is that there needs to be some kind of plug on an electrical panel that would remove the risks of having to pull the face off the panel, install a new breaker and connect the inverter).

Re: Solar generates more energy in US than coal for first time

#189

Post by tolciho »

SoftTalker wrote: post #4

This is more from a lot of coal power plants being converted to gas over the past 20 years than solar overtaking the outputs of those power plants. Coal output shrinking, solar output rising, the lines have crossed. Coal is unpopular in all but a few areas where coal mining is still a part of the local econonmy. I used to work near a coal plant and every day I'd go out to my car and it would have little black particl…

> have little black particles all over it. Nobody likes that, no matter what the President says.

Should you live near one of those big noisy "freeway" things you may note the little black particles over everything in the surroundings but nobody likes to tear down the interstate.

Re: Solar generates more energy in US than coal for first time

#190

Post by DANmode »

driverdan wrote: post #151
harmmonica wrote: post #22

Question for those in the know... See lots of press about balcony solar in Germany, and California recently introduced a bill to allow it (I'm guessing other states already allow it; not sure if the CA bill has a chance of becoming law). But how far are we from a more plug and play home solar system that becomes a primary energy source as opposed to a limited secondary source? And what are the issues with it actually…

A standard rooftop solar install with micro inverters is already pretty much plug and play. Wiring it up is the easy part. Even a more complex system with large centralized inverters and battery backup can be about as plug and play as a desktop computer if you use an all-in-one inverter/charger/controller. The challenge is scale. You can't take 10kW of solar and plug it into an outlet. It requires more hardware and w…

but you CAN just plug all of your stuff into the inverter.
Post reply on HN