US electricity demand surged in 2025 – solar handled 61% of it • Hacker News Board

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

#201

Post by chongli » Sat, Jan 17, 2026, 4:52 PM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #194

chongli wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heat pumps do not do well when it's -40 outside. You can say "fine, but how often does it get that cold?" but consumers are not going to be happy with a heat pump if their pipes freeze during an extended cold snap. I live in Southern Ontario and I have a heat pump with an auxiliary natural gas furnace for emergency heating. The heat pump shoulders most of the heating load but the thermostat does kick on the furnace w…

Canada's climate is really different when it comes to the extreme cold. Heat pumps are getting better at lower temperatures, but in an environment like Canada you still want auxiliary heat to be safe. > It should also be noted that although heat pumps are very efficient, even when it's below freezing outside, they cannot raise the temperature of the house very quickly. Consumers are generally quite unhappy when it ta…

It's not just the efficiency of the heat pump that is at issue, it's the insulation of the house. As the outside temperature plunges, the house begins cooling off much more rapidly. This means the reduced efficiency of the heat pump (operating in cold outdoor temperatures) needs to produce more heating than it would at higher temperatures, and it's just not capable of that. My house was built in the 1980s and its insulation has always been more than adequate for the original natural gas furnace to be able to heat.

The heat pump I have is only a few years old and cost $12,000 installed (before tax credits). To be able to rapidly heat the house when it's -40 outside would require a system costing several times that! Much cheaper just to use a furnace for those few days per year.

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

#202

Post by maxerickson » Sat, Jan 17, 2026, 4:54 PM UTC

jordanb wrote: post #200

tastyfreeze wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Gas stoves need electricity for the starter these days. Maybe you can get a really old one with a pilot light. It's far easier to provide a backup for electric appliances using a generator, than it is to store CNG onsite for gas interruption.

Matches work fine to light burners.

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

#203

Post by moregrist » Sat, Jan 17, 2026, 4:55 PM UTC

diego_moita wrote: post #164

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> What is NG good for? Mostly a myth by cooks that think it "heats faster" or "heats with a better distribution of heat". It is foolish, but many still think so. I personally believe that the only kind of cooking that benefits from NG are round-bottom woks. But they can be substituted by flat-bottom pans without problems.

> Mostly a myth by cooks that think it "heats faster"

It’s almost entirely about heat _control_, especially when you turn the heat down or off. Non-induction electric stoves can take minutes or longer for a burner to cool down. When you cut the heat on a NG stove, it’s essentially immediate.

This matters quite a bit for heat-sensitive dishes like omelettes.

Induction doesn’t have this problem, but also hasn’t been widely available until maybe recently and won’t work on a lot of aluminum cookware. So you’re asking people to change their cookware along with their range. That can be a bridge too far for many.

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

#204

Post by reylas » Sat, Jan 17, 2026, 4:56 PM UTC

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…

You are part of the PJM. Read into what the "Fuel Adjustment" actually is. Yes, prices are regulated, but if your area is short of power, they can buy it from the PJM, usually from other sources they own, at "market" rate not regulated rate.

The Fuel Adjustment is the legal loophole difference in the regulated rate vs the market rate. A few scheduled maintenance windows and oh look, we are short power.

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

#205

Post by maxerickson » Sat, Jan 17, 2026, 4:56 PM UTC

microtonal wrote: post #182

Retric wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Batteries or Generators don’t just let you cook and stay warm when the power is out but do everything else such as keep food cold as well.

Do induction cooking tops work well on batteries (or generators)? IIRC our induction plate has two-phase power because it can pull more than 3.6kW.

There are models that include a battery to reduce the input power requirement. That's not quite the same as the question, but it answers it, you just need a big enough battery and they are fine.

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

#206

Post by phil21 » Sat, Jan 17, 2026, 4:57 PM UTC

evolve2k wrote: post #25

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.

Solar is highly distributed. At the most basic level with a solar & battery system the production and consumption and CONTROL are all yours. You own it and it's literally on your property. Refinements on ways to sell it to neighbours / recharge various EV's / use it for new purposes are all up to you. There are lots of analogies to self hosting or concepts around owning and controlling your own data, when it's owned…

> I'd expect most tech people will value the distributed nature of solar over equivilents, that by design require centralisation and commerical/state ownership and control.

I do, but I do not find value in rich folks who can afford solar wanting their cake and eating it too.

If you get a solar setup, get batteries. Then disconnect from the grid entirely. You should not be able to use the grid as a free backup energy source for the last 5% of the time you'll need it. Those last digits of reliability are the expensive hard problem to solve. That, or be charged appropriately for adding your potential usage to the capacity market. I understand that this is not legal in many places, and that folks disconnecting from the grid also cause the grid to collapse at some point as well. But at least there would be less of an individual perverse incentive involved.

Home solar folks seem to love their free battery though. Or even worse - getting paid to dump power to the grid when it's value is the smallest. Net metering is not the way to go - home solar should be being paid something around instantaneous wholesale pricing at best, plus fees to manage the more complex management of the grid they cause via being thousands of kilowatt-scale install vs. a single 50MW solar farm.

So far in the US at least, many solar programs have simply been a handout to relatively rich folks subsidized by poorer grid consumers. It's really put a sour taste on something that should be for the greater good. I don't mind that those subsidies were used to jump-start the industry, but that time has long since passed.

tldr; if your total system cost to be fully off-grid and never have to worry about a power outage is not substantially more expensive than being grid-connected, you are likely being highly subsidized by other electricity consumers.

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

#207

Post by CorrectHorseBat » Sat, Jan 17, 2026, 4:57 PM UTC

rpdillon wrote: post #173

adventured wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe is so backwards when it comes to annual heat deaths that they manage to have more heat deaths per year than the US has gun deaths + heat deaths combined. You won't hear about that from Europeans though, it'd make them seem barbaric. 175,000 heat deaths per year in Europe according to the WHO. It's a staggering genocide of technological primitiveness. Imagine having millions of people die because you can't be b…

You sent me to the books because this is such a fascinating stat. It's true! Heat deaths in the US: 5 per million people. Italy: 500+ per million people. I had no idea.

I do think we'll need to change our view on airconditioning, every home should have airconditioning just like it has heating.

But I'm very sceptical of those numbers. They are apparently even worse for cold, and you can't attribute that to lack of airconditioning. I still think the huge difference can only be attributed to a difference in reporting.

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

#208

Post by gregbot » Sat, Jan 17, 2026, 4:59 PM UTC

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #188

cbmuser wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Australia is still highly dependent on coal. They’re not a prime example of how to decarbonize an electricity grid. If you want a good example, rather look at France!

Since 2005 France has deployed as much solar and wind generation as they've removed nuclear, about 10-15%. You probably meant late 20th Century France, when better renewable alternatives didn't exist, not current 21st century France.

Ahh yes. France’s investment in replacing carbon free nuclear with… carbon free intermittents. Fortunately that hype-driven waste is not stopping France from building out new EPR2 reactors.

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

#209

Post by jlarocco » Sat, Jan 17, 2026, 5:00 PM UTC

microtonal wrote: post #175

tastyfreeze wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I am not sure where you live, but I cannot remember the last time our power went out (Western Europe). I have gas-cooked since I was a kid (living in an area with a lot of natural gas, so houses were connected to gas since the 50ies), but induction is so much nicer that I'm happy to not be able to cook during a once in a ~10-20 year outage. Also a lot safer (it still happens quite frequently that a house blows up bec…

Sadly one of those countries is the United States.

Here in Colorado they've started pre-emptively shutting off power during wind storms when it's hot and dry because there have been multiple instances of wind blowing down power lines which then start big fires. We had one instance in December where the power was out 2-3 days for tens of thousands of people, and over a week for some people.

Of course the problem is that nobody wants to pay to bury the lines. They'd need all new equipment for digging, to retrain all of the technicians, and get permission from a million different entities to dig up their land. We're effectively locked in to overhead cables.

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

#210

Post by Retric » Sat, Jan 17, 2026, 5:03 PM UTC

microtonal wrote: post #182

Retric wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Batteries or Generators don’t just let you cook and stay warm when the power is out but do everything else such as keep food cold as well.

Do induction cooking tops work well on batteries (or generators)? IIRC our induction plate has two-phase power because it can pull more than 3.6kW.

Sure, as long as you size the system to expected loads.

An 8kW generator suitable for occasional use is only ~1,000$. A Powerwall 3 does 11kW continuous and peaks at 30kW for transitory loads like starting heavy equipment.

The most convenient solution where a generator automatically kicks in during a power outage requires an electrician and extra equipment, but there’s also real tradeoffs to having gas lines going to your home.