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

Post by enoint » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 5:45 PM UTC

baby_souffle wrote: post #199

tootie wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but compare that to the amount of land used for oil and gas extraction. The difference is that mines and drills can only go where there's stuff to extract and solar panels can go anywhere. Including near residential areas. That's also due to the fact that they are so environmentally neutral.

And you can do some agriculture near and under the panels. That's not the case with an oil well.

Post by verdverm » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 5:49 PM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #218

zahlman wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Take a look at California. Their grid is routinely, daily, generating ~84% of its power from renewables [1] (with ~25GW of existing solar PV capacity, ~6GW of wind, and ~6GW of hydro). > ... Not everywhere is California, but solar and batteries are the cheapest form of generation in 90%+ of the world [5]. ... Then why is electricity so expensive there compared to the US average?

It's not. California has the cheapest wholesale electricity prices in the country. It's the only place in the country with a wholesale rate below $100 / MWh, and California is way below $100. https://cleantechnica.com/2026/05/30/california-lowest-whole... Retail prices are of course super high in California, but that has nothing to do with generation.

Post by foxyv » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 5:52 PM UTC

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.

Post by wat10000 » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 5:59 PM UTC

customguy wrote: post #143

wat10000 wrote: post #77

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Tornadoes are not actually very common in terms of how often you'd expect a structure to be hit by one. You're looking at hundreds or thousands of years between tornado hits even in the most tornado-prone areas. They're numerous, but small.

So what I'm hearing is very sturdy, christmas tree shaped turbines (long blades at the bottom, getting shorter as you go up), on a very heavy central shaft ending in a spike that gets driven deep into the ground by dropping them from great height with planes (there probably needs to be a thruster stage on top that accelerates them beyond mere free fall) into the path of tornadoes. No clue what to do with the energy,…

Post by 0cf8612b2e1e » Thu, Jun 04, 2026, 6:10 PM UTC

outside1234 wrote: post #44

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?

You need to include batteries in the equation: solar, wind, water and batteries. What California and others have shown is that you can replace natural gas peaker plants (literally - tear out natural gas turbines) with batteries and get both superior cost dynamics and "dispatchability" (aka turning them on and off). Batteries have millisecond level dispatch, peaker plants have hours level dispatch.