Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid • Hacker News Board

Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid

#251

Post by ceejayoz » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 10:19 PM UTC

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #244

ceejayoz wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The invention of the cotton gin increased the use of slaves; it didn’t decrease it. Because the efficiency increase in that part of the process meant we could grow so much more cotton to be processed. It wasn't very profitable before that, because slave labor wasn't very efficient at the process. (This led, eventually, to more automation of the planting/harvesting process.)

Clearly, you are much more clever than I am because I still have no idea what your thesis is supposed to be.

Thesis: Slavery is a morally unacceptable crutch that leads to stagnation over innovation in the long run.

Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid

#252

Post by wasabi991011 » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 10:19 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #46

Zigurd wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about we try keeping big money out of politics and using ranked preference voting before we declare democracy obsolete? People have been studying that stuff.

FWIW most experts now favor approval voting [1] over ranked choice. Approval voting has similar advantages as ranked choice in allowing 3rd-party candidates and favoring moderate candidates. It avoids the chaotic behavior that RCV can exhibit [2] where shifts in the order of voters' down-ballot preferences can very significantly alter the outcome of the election [3]. And it's also much easier to explain to voters ("I…

Not to be cynical, but what does it look like when most candidates aren't acceptable to a majority of people?

Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid

#253

Post by crystal_revenge » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 10:20 PM UTC

ertgbnm wrote: post #22

I am reminded by the perhaps revisionist history but still applicable belief that slavery was really ended by industrialization making abolition economically advantageous and not actually a socially driven movement. (In reality it was certainly a convoluted mixture of the two I'm sure.) I hope we are in a similar era with regards to climate change. Surely there's a lot of money to be made in harnessing effectively un…

> I hope we are in a similar era with regards to climate change.

I'm struggling to understand the level of completely irrational rejection of reality in all these comments.

Emissions continue rise every year, we are already locked into extreme climate change, multiple nations are engaged in military conflicts to capture oil, we globally use more fossil fuels every year.

Companies are starting to convert jet engines into natural gas powered generator for AI data centers [0]

So far we've continually used 'green' energy to supplement the use of non-renewable fossil fuels. We have far more EVs on the road than we did a few years ago and are using more oil than before in the US (and producing more than we ever have).

We are already out of the standard IPC scenarios and potentially on track for a 'hot house earth' future [1].

It is quite clear that we are ramping up for global war over natural resources (largely fossil fuels) and we will burn the planet to the ground chasing the last drop of oil.

0. https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/how-jet-engines-are-...

1. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/11/point-of...

Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid

#254

Post by toomuchtodo » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 10:23 PM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #231

nerdralph wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't start with a 5MW project. Start with a 10-20kW ground-mount project in your back yard. Then build a 100-200kW project before trying MW.

I think the hardest part of building a solar farm is the permitting. Many municipalities are hostile to the idea of converting farmland into solar fields, even with agrovoltaics. There are special interest groups that may come in and try to derail your project by propagandizing the local community against it. "But what will we eat?" is a propaganda point that you will hear a lot even though it's totally bogus. If I w…

In many states, state law overrides local planning's ability to prevent siting renewables. Check if your state is one of these states if your project size requires it.

> "But what will we eat?" is a propaganda point that you will hear a lot even though it's totally bogus.

Indeed. The US farms almost 60 million acres for biofuels, the size of the state of Oregon. These arguments do not come from serious people imho. People are simply married to their rural identity and ag cosplay, despite it being wildly inefficient and subsidized by the federal government.

https://kaufman.substack.com/p/at-least-31-states-consider-o...

https://cleantomorrow.org/reports/

(have installed 100kw+ in residential solar, and have experience following along for a ~100MW project)

Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid

#255

Post by xbmcuser » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 10:24 PM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #226

floatrock wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese also have battery manufacturing, whose rapidly falling cost-curve is what is missing to enable 24/7 solar. American empire ruled with the petrodollar. Chinese will rule with the solaryuan if we don't get our shit together.

You just slightly missed the crux of the issue here. The big "problem" with renewables like solar is that once you've installed enough for yourself you are done for like 30 years. There is no monthly sun fee you need to keep paying. There is no solardollar , because there's nothing that needs to be extracted, transported, and sold every single day. A lot of billionaires are in an existential crisis over a world where…

True but there are 2 technology converges that are happening at the same time cheap energy that is getting cheaper. And automation powered by that energy that also gets cheaper as energy gets cheaper as well as efficiency gains. The current world economic systems and most government systems are unlikely to survive the upheaval that this will cause in the next 15-20 years.

Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid

#256

Post by kmax12 » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 10:25 PM UTC

pelcg wrote: post #250

kmax12 wrote: post #122

if this type of data is interesting to you, here’s a site I’ve built that tracks like grid data across the US and Canada: https://www.gridstatus.io/live We have generation mix, load, and pricing data. Both real time and historical

Never seen this before and looks great. How often does this get updated?

We stream new data in as the sources publish it. typically, every 5 minutes.

We collect from a lot of sources, so nearly every minute something is updating.

Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid

#257

Post by citrin_ru » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 10:26 PM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #226

floatrock wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese also have battery manufacturing, whose rapidly falling cost-curve is what is missing to enable 24/7 solar. American empire ruled with the petrodollar. Chinese will rule with the solaryuan if we don't get our shit together.

You just slightly missed the crux of the issue here. The big "problem" with renewables like solar is that once you've installed enough for yourself you are done for like 30 years. There is no monthly sun fee you need to keep paying. There is no solardollar , because there's nothing that needs to be extracted, transported, and sold every single day. A lot of billionaires are in an existential crisis over a world where…

> Even the solar panel market is self defeating. Once there is enough installed power the demand will drop off sharply as the refresh cycle is too long.

It's not going to happen soon - solar is still just 8% of world energy production. Even if solar will cover 100% of consumption on a sunny day it still would make sense to buy more panels to have enough output on a cloudy day or in the morning/evening. It's likely production of solar panels will be a good business till at least 2050 and oil business will start to decline before that unless will be propped by corrupt politicians.

Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid

#258

Post by iknowstuff » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 10:28 PM UTC

ProllyInfamous wrote: post #223

KaiserPro wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If ERCOT ("Texas") would get over their independant grid "benefits" Currently, even though it pains me to say this, ERCOT has one of the most mature battery systems in the world. Everything else is valid though.

Absolutely: ERCOT's battery storage is worldbest. As a fifth-generation former Texan, I understand "separatist mentality." ERCOT's buy/sell market is perhaps also the most purely capitalistic marketplace in existance (and among least-regulated, in first-world); for these reasons, winter-proofing funding is terrible and outages likely when the system is stressed (e.g. approximately every decade Texas loses power durin…

they also pay like 1/5th of pg&e rates

plus it seems ERCOT has learned and the grid seems fine now

Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid

#259

Post by epistasis » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 10:30 PM UTC

Kye wrote: post #63

epistasis wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had so many arguments with people that think replacing a continual supply of gasoline with solar panels and batteries means that we are just as dependent on the source of solar panels as we are on the source of gasoline. It's hard for people to visualize the massive shift here. It's the difference between needing to eat every single day, to merely needing to buy a 5-year supply and never having to worry about ea…

You also get 30 years of efficiency improvements and 20 years of capacity and reliability improvements when you replace them. In practice: https://www.rte.ie/news/regional/2026/0116/1553440-mayo-wind... >> "Each one of the new wind turbines will be capable of supplying more power to the national electricity grid than was generated by the entire Bellacorick wind farm."

It's funny, there was meme-like behavior a few years ago where anti-wind advocates would say "they're tearing down the wind farms before their end of life, like only 15 years in! Clearly wind doesn't work at all!"

And then you'd go and look at the details of any these "tear downs" and you find out that it's not because the current wind farm is failing, it's because turbine technology had improved so much that it made financial sense to drop in much bigger turbines right now, before their natural end of life.

Shortly after that, there started to be complaints about "what will we do with the waste from these massive wind turbine blades!?" as if they were in any way comparable in toxicity to the byproducts of fossil fuel extraction and burning.

It's so funny to see how shallow these anti-renewable talking points are. They all require that people spend zero effort and avoid critical thought in any way.

Re: Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid

#260

Post by wasabi991011 » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 10:30 PM UTC

wang_li wrote: post #141

JuniperMesos wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What specific educational test would you like to see for someone to be legally eligible to vote in some jurisdiction? SAT score higher than a certain threshold (what specific threshold?). What if huge numbers of people cheat on the test in order to be able to legally vote? What if instead the educational criteria is a degree from some credited educational institution? Who decides what institutions will be authorized…

I'm not saying you have to have a certain level of education to vote, I'm saying you have to have a certain level of functional ability to not be incarcerated for the rest of your life. Such as you have to be able to read and write and do math at some certain level. Voting yourself other people's stuff would be that the safety net is bare minimum to keep people who are going through unexpected issues alive. But no on…

> I'm saying you have to have a certain level of functional ability to not be incarcerated for the rest of your life. Such as you have to be able to read and write and do math at some certain level.

Having a failure of parental upbringing and education system causing someone to be incarcerated seems cruel. Should a child who ran away from home & school to avoid family abuse be incarcerated? There are so many current systems of society (education, police, disability, etc) that have failures at the margin that adding incarceration seems over the top.