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Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026

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Re: Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026

#201

Post by jphil529 »

_whiteCaps_ wrote: post #96

I just upgraded the solar system at my family's off-grid cabin. It's incredible how much battery technology has improved over the last 10 years. Everyone is getting tired of me checking the panel to see how many watts we're bringing in. Next project, install a shunt and get a Raspberry Pi talking to it over USB. And then I'll be able to build a Grafana dashboard. :)

Really curious about the difficulty of doing a self install with Solar. I'm moderately handy (built a Sauna from no plans) and confident with electrical. Any gotchas?

Re: Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026

#202

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

tonymet wrote: post #146
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're correct that this ought to say "electricity" and not "power". But I think you're wrong to think that gas is "critical" to any of the things you've listed. "Currently used" ... yes. "Not replaceable by electricity" ... no (unlike, e.g. air travel).

explain the cost to replace a hop drying kiln with an electrical one, including the grid load.

I'm not going to do that.

Electrical heat using heat pumps is cheaper than in-situ heating with any fossil fuel because (a) the base price per unit of energy is (or certainly can be) lower (b) the coefficient of performance is higher.

There are obviously costs to changing heating systems. But that doesn't mean that a gas heating system cannot be replaced by an electrical one.

Re: Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026

#203

Post by thrance »

erelong wrote: post #9

I know some people who are adamantly against solar and wind (personally I like both but I can see some shortcomings - for example I have heard that ai datacenters are using gas at times because of its flexibility) So what are some of the best talking points to "sell" solar and wind to the unconvinced? Or will they just adopt it once it's seen everywhere?

[flagged]

Re: Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026

#204

Post by enoint »

fsh wrote: post #98
citrin_ru wrote: post #89

It's a good news but I didn't expect that coal is still on the 1st place and not really trending down. I though coal was largely replaced by gas years ago...

Coal is much cheaper than gas.

Not per-MWh in North America.

Re: Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026

#205

Post by bryanlarsen »

dimitrios1 wrote: post #79
Aurornis wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know how you can be against solar unless you’ve been given some uninformed talking points. Are they against solar subsidies or other policy provisions? It’s hard to understand someone who is against passive energy collection.

I am against it for one reason only, but it's very solvable, IMO, and it's the amount of space they take up. I live next to 200+ acres of solar farms. A part of me cries a little when I see so much beautiful land and trees cut down and these lifeless panels taking up so much space. We have so many buildings, and structures already (think parking decks, tops of apartments, homes, offices, even parking lots) that we co…

The standard alternative to a solar farm is a monoculture corn farm producing ethanol. That monoculture corn farm regularly gets sprayed, plowed and harvested, each time decimating its animal population. Your solar farm is probably filled with a diverse selection of grass and weeds, supporting a far higher animal population than that corn farm.

Re: Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026

#206

Post by Retric »

Neywiny wrote: post #173
foxyv wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar/wind is the cheapest form of power generation by far. You just can't beat it because they don't have any fuel costs. Gas peaker plants will always make sense until we have enough grid scale batteries. They will hold on for now until the price of natural gas hits rock bottom. But with the current advances in low cost battery technology I see them becoming less and less necessary. They would probably already be d…

I think you've missed that all generators have upfront cost. That's why the monetary payoff time for installing solar is non-zero. Versus a backup generator you're paying 2-3x the cost upfront. And yes we know the running cost is almost 0, the maintenance is almost nothing, etc etc, but I could see that argument not holding as much water as we need it to.

Loans transfer upfront costs into operating costs, thus making upfront costs largely meaningless for anyone with access to cheap credit.

Re: Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026

#207

Post by megaman821 »

nonethewiser wrote: post #132

Is it possible to increase the grid by add solar and wind and NOT adding an on-demand backup source (gas, etc.) WITHOUT ADDING RISK? What I mean is say the grid demands 100. The grid is powered entirely by coal. You give it 120 for 20% redundancy. This is extremely reliable. The grid demand is now 120. You now need 144 for 20% redundancy. You dont want to use coal. So you add solar and batteries. Batteries are great…

Trivially yes, for any locations with summer energy use peaks. The solar output will be the greatest when the demand for cooling is at its greatest.

Yes, for places with sizeable hydropower. You simply hold the water for longer.

Probably yes, for places where the need for redundancy is rare. Natural gas peaker plants are cheaper to build and simpler to operate with the tradeoff of being less efficient than combined cycle plants.

Re: Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026

#208

Post by fredophile »

lstodd wrote: post #127
fredophile wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you point to large scale solar or wind projects that were shoved into places that have extended periods of low sunlight or wind?

The entire Energiewende for example.

Are you saying that they chose bad locations inside of Germany for wind and solar or that Germany doesn't have any viable locations and they shouldn't build wind and solar in Germany at all?

Re: Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026

#209

Post by jimt1234 »

kieranmaine wrote: post #42
jqpabc123 wrote: post #2

Renewable energy offers a competitive advantage for any energy intensive activity --- like manufacturing or AI. China gets it, the USA doesn't.

The USA get's it. Trump doesn't. Texas is a the leader in wind and solar in the US. Compare generation stats for yesterday between 2021 and 2026 on the Texas grid (ERCOT) * 2021 - https://www.gridstatus.io/live/ercot?date=2021-06-03 * 2026 - https://www.gridstatus.io/live/ercot?date=2026-06-03 Also, the Californian grid (CAISO) shows where everyone is headed with a huge deployment of batteries: * 2021 - https://www.g…

Does the USA really get it? I'd like to believe that, but honestly, I hear a lot of hatin' on anything related to renewable or 'green' energy, not just from Trump.

Re: Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026

#210

Post by soggybread »

jphil529 wrote: post #201
_whiteCaps_ wrote: post #96

I just upgraded the solar system at my family's off-grid cabin. It's incredible how much battery technology has improved over the last 10 years. Everyone is getting tired of me checking the panel to see how many watts we're bringing in. Next project, install a shunt and get a Raspberry Pi talking to it over USB. And then I'll be able to build a Grafana dashboard. :)

Really curious about the difficulty of doing a self install with Solar. I'm moderately handy (built a Sauna from no plans) and confident with electrical. Any gotchas?

I'm just getting into Solar myself and while it seems like a lot there are some things that you have to do math for. If you've got 10 panels you'll want to find out how to get all that energy to the inverter/mppt without going over the volt/amp limit on the device. This is probably the most difficult part and for everything else there's a huge solar community of people starting exactly where you are. I myself just bought an Anker solar battery and 2 panels that I bring out during the day to charge the battery and it runs my laptop and monitor for the evening after I get home from work. I want to do more but I'm renting so I'm just trying to find ways to do so. When my state legalizes balcony solar you bet I'm going to play with that too.
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