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

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

#241

Post by SoftTalker »

laurencerowe wrote: post #226
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…

I think it is simply because in most of Europe air conditioning is unnecessary for comfort 95% of the year. Here in San Francisco most homes don't have air conditioning either, but there might be a week or two where it gets very hot and we just put up with the barbaric technological primitiveness. Much of the US is extremely unpleasant without air-conditioning for a substantial portion of the year so of course everyo…

Yes in many parts of the US it's not just the heat but the humidity. One summer I tried going without AC as much as possible to see how much it would change my electric bill. I could handle the temperature most of the time but the humidity especially at night started giving me mold problems in the house. Cleaned that up and went back to using the AC and no more mold. Not sure how people controlled this back in the pre-AC days, maybe just a lot more cleaning.

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

#242

Post by PeakKS »

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.

It is now, haven't you heard? Computers are reserved for LLMs only.

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

#243

Post by lithocarpus »

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…

[flagged]

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

#244

Post by malfist »

nightski wrote: post #184
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.

I own an induction stove, and overall really enjoy it. But there are certain types of cooking it's not nearly as well suited to (still possible, but not as good). One of those is cooking on a wok. But really it comes down to heating. Heat pumps are not universally better. We are currently sitting at -25C or so which is pretty common in the winter (it can even get a fair bit colder at times). Hardly any of the contrac…

If you're really hampered by not having a wok behavior for your induction stove, good news! There are plugin induction woks! From what I hear they work great. Technology Connections on YouTube did a great video about them

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

#245

Post by guerby »

laurencerowe wrote: post #228
rpdillon wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Figures based on coroners reports are somewhat suspect. > In September 2022, a vicious heat wave enveloped much of the western U.S., placing tens of millions of people under heat advisories. Temperatures across California soared into the triple digits. Sacramento broke its heat record by more than 6 degrees Fahrenheit when the temperature hit 116 degrees. > California death certificates showed that 20 people died as…

Thanks for the paper link, very different figures from the random USA newspaper article :)

I'd love to see an age adjusted figure as well as it's likely Europe has likely more very old people and my guess is that heat/cold mortality is concentrated in the very old people.

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

#246

Post by [deleted] »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #153
slashdev wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Vancouver, Canada natural gas was completely phased out as of the beginning of 2025 in most new construction.

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.

[deleted]

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

#247

Post by asdff »

youngtaff wrote: post #217
diego_moita wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Burning gas also releases a lot of pollutants — we’ve a gas hob but always switch the extractor on when we use it because of this

You should have the hood on while cooking no matter the type of stove top.

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

#248

Post by idiotsecant »

energy123 wrote: post #62
idiotsecant wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so frustrating discussing topics you know about on HN because you get so many software developers, which naturally know everything, that make comments like this. Solar does not 'just work' - in the US it's a crisis in the making. Power prices in several areas of the grid routinely go negative because the grid is a zero sum game - there is very little storage so what goes in must exactly match what goes out or gr…

> Solar with storage is an amazing resource. Without storage it's counterproductive if it's grid tied. Solar creates the economic incentive for storage. Without solar coming first, storage cannot occur. You can see this in California. In the beginning, it made sense to install only solar, because energy developers are compensated at the margin. Once the grid is saturated with solar, then the marginal economics change…

Huh? You don't need solar to build storage. Lots of generation sources become much, much better with storage. Storage is what you use to compensate for bad transmission, and we have plenty of bad transmission.

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

#249

Post by idiotsecant »

7952 wrote: post #40
idiotsecant wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so frustrating discussing topics you know about on HN because you get so many software developers, which naturally know everything, that make comments like this. Solar does not 'just work' - in the US it's a crisis in the making. Power prices in several areas of the grid routinely go negative because the grid is a zero sum game - there is very little storage so what goes in must exactly match what goes out or gr…

But respectfully isn't the crisis more in the American political system and regulation? And surely large scale solar farms/batery storage connected to a supergrid (or whatever they are called) are a relatively good fit for this kind of legacy grid.

I mean..yes? Megaprojects are always political. But that's exactly the issue. No politician gets interest when they talk about building transmission towers and battery plants. They get fawning well meaning but inherently ignorant attention when they build renewable generation. The incentive is to support generation and avoid the politically less popular, more expensive, and ultimately much more important transmission and storage.

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

#250

Post by laurencerowe »

sandworm101 wrote: post #71
mort96 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well there are real challenges here. Generators which rely on massive spinning things naturally provide the grid with inertia; they resist changes to grid frequency. Power sources which rely on inverters or otherwise dynamically adapt to grid frequency don't naturally provide the same inertia. This is a solvable problem, but it requires a solution nonetheless.

That too can be replicated. There are a few centrifuges out there. Not batteries, but spinning masses meant to keep the frequency stable. Some are looking at using air conditioning motors, of which we have millions, as such a spinning mass.

Grid frequency can also be regulated with batteries and grid forming inverters.

https://www.energy-storage.news/batteries-are-number-one-at-...

https://arena.gov.au/blog/australias-grid-forming-battery-re...

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