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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

#31

Post by yunohn »

danmaz74 wrote: post #4
Kon5ole wrote: post #3

Solar can be deployed by hundreds of thousands of individual efforts and financing at the same time, with almost no bureaucracy. It starts to produce electricity basically the same day. I can't imagine anything being able to compete with that for speed and scale - or costs, for that matter. Once deployed it's basically free.

The issue is that works perfectly well when solar is a small % of the grid, but when that number grows, then you need grid scale solutions and coordination for things to continue working well. And that requires both technical skill and political will.

So your implication that other sources of energy currently do not need scaling coordination somehow? I fail to see how that is true, maybe you can provide some insights?

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

#32

Post by elzbardico »

evolve2k wrote: post #25
danmaz74 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that works perfectly well when solar is a small % of the grid, but when that number grows, then you need grid scale solutions and coordination for things to continue working well. And that requires both technical skill and political will.

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…

Cost. Useful life. I thought about an off grid system. Batteries are expensive. Also, unless you live in a dry place in the equator, You'll need to account for things like winter, long rainy spells, so either you add more batteries to account for multiple days (weeks? months?) of low generation, or you'll need a diesel/gas generator, or have a hybrid system instead, which basically means you're using the utilities gas generator instead.

Then, subsides are drying up. Systems have a useful life, your panels can be damaged by storms, for maximizing battery life you need to ensure you don't discharge it below 20%, and neither charge it over 100%.

So, in the end, the grid needs to be there anyway, but as most grid costs are fixed, whenever you use it now, it is going to be more expensive.

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

#33

Post by zahlman »

mschuster91 wrote: post #15

[flagged]

> Where are all the "without nuclear power we're dooooooomed" people at the moment?

I haven't seen any on HN across multiple submissions discussing both solar and nuclear power (or both at once).

I have, however, seen people unreasonably characterized as such.

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

#34

Post by elzbardico »

chii wrote: post #18
JuniperMesos wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mine bitcoin, run LLM inference, smelt aluminum, make synthetic fossil fuels from atmospheric CO2.

> make synthetic fossil fuels from atmospheric CO2. that would actually be my preferred solution (if only it was less energy inefficient, sigh).

If the marginal value of electricity is negative, what matters if it is energy inefficient?

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

#35

Post by idiotsecant »

mschuster91 wrote: post #15

[flagged]

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 grid frequency deviations and eventually blackouts happen. This is much more likely to happen once undispatchable resources climb past a certain threshold in our generation mix.

To fix this we need massive storage and transmission investment, like moon landing and WW2 put together. We desperately need to do that before we add more non-dispatchable generation.

Solar with storage is an amazing resource. Without storage it's counterproductive if it's grid tied.

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

#36

Post by elzbardico »

infecto wrote: post #20
mschuster91 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> idk like turning the heat way up during the day That is something you can reasonably do, but it's only useful in winter. > or using high power appliances more during the day Well, given that people have to work during the day, I doubt that that will work out on a large enough scale. And even if you'd pre-program a laundry machine to run at noon, the laundry would sit and get smelly during summer until you'd get hom…

At least in the US there is a push to make electric appliances smarter already. So for example, the electric hot water heater responding to the strain on the grid. The same could happen for AC, heat, EVs and other higher load appliances. At scale that can help out the grid immensely either in times of peak load or dip in demand.

This is good for water heaters for example. I wonder if storing chilled water for air conditioning would be a feasible strategy to do the same.

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

#37

Post by rr808 »

evolve2k wrote: post #25
danmaz74 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that works perfectly well when solar is a small % of the grid, but when that number grows, then you need grid scale solutions and coordination for things to continue working well. And that requires both technical skill and political will.

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…

> their centralised options become redundant

This is not the problem. The problem is that everyone moves to solar for most of the year not using or paying for the infrastructure, then in cold winter nights everyone expects the grid to be able to supply as normal.

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

#38

Post by 7952 »

evolve2k wrote: post #25
danmaz74 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that works perfectly well when solar is a small % of the grid, but when that number grows, then you need grid scale solutions and coordination for things to continue working well. And that requires both technical skill and political will.

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…

Weirdly in the UK it seems to be best to charge battery overnight from the grid and sell back during the day alongside any solar generated.

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

#39

Post by lazide »

elzbardico wrote: post #34
chii wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> make synthetic fossil fuels from atmospheric CO2. that would actually be my preferred solution (if only it was less energy inefficient, sigh).

If the marginal value of electricity is negative, what matters if it is energy inefficient?

Scale/quantity.

That ‘negative value’ electricity could also be used to do something else. And actually requires a lot of capital to produce. It isn’t actually free, it’s a side effect of another process that has restraints/restrictions.

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

#40

Post by 7952 »

idiotsecant wrote: post #35
mschuster91 wrote: post #15

[flagged]

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.
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