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Solar generates more energy in US than coal for first time

theguardian.com

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

#191

Post by ZeroGravitas »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #143
mbgerring wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s also from focused efforts to close coal plants, and rapid, massive deployment of solar in the last 20 years, and new technology emerging (better batteries and dispatch technologies) to make solar into a 24/7 resource. For whatever reason, there’s a strong motivation for people to dismiss the gigantic global effort to transition the energy system away from fossil fuels, and claim that all that effort isn’t really…

> 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.

Some utilities didn't have direct market pressures to close coal because they were regulated and the regulator allowed them to recover costs plus a profit on top.

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

#192

Post by dpkirchner »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #142
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…

It's especially notable because there isn't just the thumb against offshore wind, solar panel tariffs, and even EVs. Chinese EVs can't be imported because of tariffs and many conservative states a pretending that EV drivers "don't pay their fair share because they don't buy gas" - except most gas taxes haven't been adjusted in multiple decades and don't even begin to pay for the cost of maintaining roads. Fuel taxes…

Unfortunately this is one of the few cases where both sides are close to the same -- they both chose to heavily tariff foreign EVs. Something to remember when Democrats talk about climate change.

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

#193

Post by horsawlarway »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #168
horsawlarway wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems likely. But I can't buy sodium ion today like I can LFP. The chemistry definitely seems to be better than LFP long term, but higher manufacturing costs and low scale means it's just not as available. CATL is predicting that they'll hit price parity for sodium against LFP this year, commercial scaling still needs to happen, though. Meanwhile, manufacturers can pick up prismatic LFP from all sorts of places, at g…

You can by sodium ion batteries today. They're more expensive, but work better in the cold. https://www.bluettipower.com/products/sodium-ion-battery-pio...

You can't really get them in the sort of energy density you need for an ESS at any comparable price to LFP right now, so they only really make sense in really limited spots.

Ex - the closest I can find is something like: https://batteryfinds.com/product/3-1v-210ah-sodium-ionna-ion...

but just compare against LFP: https://www.18650batterystore.com/products/eve-mb31-grade-a-...

So...

LFP: 4.0KWh @ $275.00 Sodium: 2.6KWh @ $568.00

Right now, it's older generations of the chemistry, and you end up paying twice as much for half the power. So yeah... unless you really need the temperature extremes, it makes a lot more sense to stick with LFP.

But CATL at least is claiming they have cells in the pipeline for this year that get NA+ down to comparable $/KWh as LFP, and then yes - I'd much prefer to use the newer chemistry.

If sodium follows the same trend as LFP did, they'll get much cheaper at scale, and performance will go up markedly over the next 15 years. I won't be at all surprised to see them end up completely dominating the space in the long run, but we're not yet at the spot where they're better than LFP (at its most mature).

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

#194

Post by csense »

xnx wrote: post #23

+1 to the Guardian for mentioning their data source, but -1 for not linking to it. +2 for EMBER for having a data source AND being able to link to the parameters that show solar overtaking coal for the month in the US. https://ember-energy.org/data/electricity-data-explorer/?ent...

This is a great link. The most interesting feature of the solar graph is the amplitude of the seasonal variations. It looks like we typically generating ~100% more solar power in July than December.

If "we need to store solar energy from summer to winter" is indeed a significant issue, maybe you could use the extra power in summertime to make natural gas [1] and then store the gas until you need it in the winter.

[1] https://www.terraformindustries.com/ is a startup working on turning solar power into natural gas

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

#195

Post by kibwen »

tolciho wrote: post #189
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.

> nobody likes to tear down the interstate

Lots of urban areas in the US have been resisting, tearing down, and/or relocating major roads since the freeway revolts of the 1970s:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_revolts_in_the_United_...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeway_removal

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

#196

Post by epistasis »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #159
epistasis wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is actually solar's output increasing. Natural gas's share of electricity generation has been falling for five years straight: https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/gas-share-in-global...

That's a link to a global chart. The OP is talking about the US. It's not surprising that countries that have to import natural gas are moving away from it and countries with plentiful local suppliew are doubling down on it.

I'm not seeing that in US data either. Here's data from a top web hit:

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-...

The 10-year change 2015 to 2025 is:

- Gas: +472 TWh, +35%

- Renewables: +525 TWh, +97%

Saying that this is more gas than coal is certainly not the case borne out by the numbers, even in the US, the one place where gas is as cheap as dirt due to it being a by-product of fracking.

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

#197

Post by gimmeThaBeet »

rtkwe wrote: post #73
tedggh wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

True though one of the major things they have been able to do because it's mostly in the federal purview is killing offshore wind.

It's sort a "broken clock right twice a day" thing, but I agree with not doing offshore wind in the US. The divergence immediately follows in that I wish they would just push onshore wind.

It's sort of a circular issue, it's madly expensive because we haven't built a lot and aren't super good at it, and we don't get much of it built because we aren't great at it and it always is ludicrously expensive.

The US has a uniquely underdeveloped maritime sector, we don't build a lot of the massive turbines you use offshore. You drive through central and west texas, it feels like there might be more wind turbines than people. We've kind of already made the decision based on what works.

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

#198

Post by marcosdumay »

daedrdev wrote: post #161
marcosdumay wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would need supercapacitors, but you can make an inverter emulate inertia almost as well as flywheels, and more than well enough to not make a difference once you push the energy into a few kilometers of non-zero impedance grid.

supercapacitors are quite difficult because they can explode

I have some news about flywheels...

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

#199

Post by Marsymars »

jwr wrote: post #114
Marsymars wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They typically generate 10-25% of their maximum output on the cloudiest of days. Most cloudy days are not maximally cloudy. If you're at higher latitudes, this is notably less of a drop-off than you see between high/low season. My friends with residential solar see <10% overall output in January vs July. (~60% drop from fewer sunshine hours, ~80% drop from decreased solar irradiance.)

This gets complex quickly, because temperature matters too: cells are more efficient when they are cold. These effects interact and the results are sometimes surprising. Many pure-numbers theoretical comparisons also make the assumption that you can consume all the power that the cells generate, which is not always the case. In an off-grid installation with a battery, for example, you might not be able to consume eve…

Yeah, I mean these aren't entirely theoretical, like observationally, people I know locally are getting They all have a relatively generous (I think - I'm not especially familiar with policies anywhere else) grid policy where they sell back any over-production in the summer. (They switch between summer/winter rates, so in the summer they buy/sell at ~35c/kWh and in the winter they buy/sell at ~8c/kWh. These rates are only effective as long as you don't have a net-surplus of generation in the year, so it doesn't make sense economically to oversize the system for more winter generation, as then you'll be generating more in the summer than you can use or sell back.)

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

#200

Post by epistasis »

leonidasrup wrote: post #166
epistasis wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That shift is going to happen a lot quicker than people expect, here's the expected 2026 US grid additions: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67205 - Solar: +87 TWh/year (assuming 23% capacity factor, lower end of US range) - Gas: +9TWh/year (6.3GW new, 4.6GW retirements, higher end of US capacity factor of 60%) https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67206 This is in the face of massive growth…

It will be interesting to see how solar evolves in the coming decade in US, maybe it could reach the current share of gas produced electricity, 40% . The country with the highest share of solar electricity is Hungary 27%, but they are part of the European electricity grid with lot of export and import. https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/hungary Gas turbine manufacturing factories are very expensive and gas tur…

> Per MWh costs of residential solar are usually 2x per MWh costs of utility scale solar. Utility scale solar power plants buy and install solar panels at larger scale and cheaper.

The only problem with this comparison is the cost of the grid, which at least in the US will dwarf the savings from doing utility scale installs.

One nice thing about residential solar is that it greatly reduces the need for transmission, while perhaps requiring some short-term enhancement on distribution. And ideally dumping a bunch of storage at grid distribution nodes in the form of a container of batteries would solve a ton of problems and reduce costs a lot. This is of course heavily resisted by utilities because in most places in the US they make their money on T&D costs, so cutting those is a threat to their existence.

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