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

electrek.co

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

#231

Post by morshu9001 »

einpoklum wrote: post #230

The title is somewhat misleading. First, US demand increased by 3.1%. That is bad - demand should be going down, since there is a need to conserve electricity while much of it is provided by CO2-emitting sources. That said - it is not such a huge "surge" that the fact that 61% of it was covered by an increase in Solar capacity is so impressive. Second, Solar generation is said to have reached 84 TW. But if the increa…

Gonna fully admit I skipped reading the article when I saw a confusing title, and now I'm leaving instead of trying to figure out what it meant.

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

#232

Post by wasabi991011 »

andsoitis wrote: post #143
jordanb wrote: post #91

While I'm concerned about the environmental challenges of reversing the trend and increasing energy consumption, I'm happy that people are living in more comfortable homes, that the Amercian industrial base is being restored, that more and better services are being provided (better healthcare, inexpensive and healthy food, comfortable, efficient and inexpensive transportation). That is what we're using this electrici…

> That is what we're using this electricity for, right? Yes, amongst others. > increasing energy consumption, I'm happy that people are living in more comfortable homes, that the Amercian industrial base is being restored, that more and better services are being provided (better healthcare, inexpensive and healthy food, comfortable, efficient and inexpensive transportation). Over the last 25 years, we've the seen the…

You have a lot of assumptions in your takeaways.

> Housing stock outpaced population, reflecting smaller household sizes and more single-person households.

Or rich people owning more vacation homes.

> Healthcare expanded far faster than population, a structural shift rather than demographic necessity.

What? It could easily be the population getting older and/or sicker. Even if it was a structural shift, it could be in the negative direction ie less efficiency.

> Food production grew roughly in line with population, but without proportional land expansion productivity gains.

What land expansion? You didn't include that in your stats. And no source to verify.

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

#233

Post by Leherenn »

buckle8017 wrote: post #213
Aurornis wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t realize how nice it is to live and work in air conditioned spaces until visiting a part of Europe where AC is viewed with disdain for reasons I still don’t understand. Also the move to electric heat pumps is increasing electricity rates but reducing natural gas usage and improving overall efficient. The GP comment was trying to do snarky doomerism but accidentally hit upon a lot of truths. It’s amazing how…

> You don’t realize how nice it is to live and work in air conditioned spaces until visiting a part of Europe where AC is viewed with disdain for reasons I still don’t understand. Most of Europe is poor. AC is expensive. It's actually that simple. There's AC in Switzerland.

> There's AC in Switzerland.

Not at all, it has one of the lowest rate in Europe along with the UK. It's very hard to get the building permit required to install one. Portable AC has had a boom those past few years though (because it doesn't require a permit).

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

#234

Post by evolve2k »

phil21 wrote: post #206
evolve2k wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

While many rich are benefiting, they are still driving demand, that is funding continuous improvements that funding further efficiencies innovation and driving down the cost per kWh. In a very really way this makes solar cheaper and cheaper, the benefits of this one, unlike the debunked economic namesake do infact trickle down.

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

#235

Post by SoftTalker »

tastyfreeze wrote: post #223
3eb7988a1663 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TIL. Never used a modern gas stove, so I had not considered that without a pilot light, there must be a way to disable the flow or constantly spew gas into the house. Then again, I have had a pilot light go out for some amount of time without obvious ill effect, so the volume of gas must be low.

Pilot lights stay lit all the time so no igniter is required. My range has electric spark igniters. They don't work when the power is out but there is also no pilot light expelling gas. I just manually light the burner when the power is out.

My gas stove has spark ignitors for the burners and the oven has an incandescent ignitor. The oven has safety interlocks so the gas valve won't open if the ignitor is not hot. The oven cannot be lit manually, but the stovetop burners can. So in a power outage, I can cook in pots and pans but not bake.

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

#236

Post by seniortaco »

einpoklum wrote: post #230

The title is somewhat misleading. First, US demand increased by 3.1%. That is bad - demand should be going down, since there is a need to conserve electricity while much of it is provided by CO2-emitting sources. That said - it is not such a huge "surge" that the fact that 61% of it was covered by an increase in Solar capacity is so impressive. Second, Solar generation is said to have reached 84 TW. But if the increa…

The title is disgusting click bait with the hopes to falsely make the reader believe that Solar covered 61% of the total annual power need and not just the YoY delta.

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

#238

Post by wasabi991011 »

b65e8bee43c2ed0 wrote: post #97
jordanb wrote: post #91

While I'm concerned about the environmental challenges of reversing the trend and increasing energy consumption, I'm happy that people are living in more comfortable homes, that the Amercian industrial base is being restored, that more and better services are being provided (better healthcare, inexpensive and healthy food, comfortable, efficient and inexpensive transportation). That is what we're using this electrici…

the US is not a planned economy. if it was, computers would exist only to guide missiles and operate industrial machinery, and you would be mining coal, farming wheat, or manning an assembly line for a living.

> China is not a planned economy. If it was, recent electric vehicles and battery technology would exist only to guide missiles and operate industrial machinery...

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

#239

Post by SoftTalker »

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…

In the central USA my power is out up to 3 or 4 times a year for an hour or more, and momentarily maybe once every month or two. It's due to our power distribution being mostly overhead lines which are vulnerable to falling trees, squirrels, ice accumulation, storm and wind damage, etc. Even though my neighborhood has buried lines, that's just the last mile. The incoming power is all overhead lines.
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