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

arstechnica.com

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

#31

Post by wang_li »

Zigurd wrote: post #7
bubblewand wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Democracy has unfortunate failure scenarios, make a note for history books and system design lessons. Vote better next time. Major problems with the US system have been known for a long time. It's been regarded as basically obsolete for over a century now, by the kind of people who study this stuff.

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.

How about, before we try to keep "big money" out of politics and adopt ranked preference voting, we ban ill educated people and ban voting yourself other people's stuff. Voting is not a survival skill, it's a civic obligation.

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

#32

Post by toomuchtodo »

whatever1 wrote: post #30
toomuchtodo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is global oil oversupply of ~2M-3.7M barrels/day. China destroys ~1M barrels/day of global oil demand for every 24 months of EV production. Iran needs $164/barrel to break even on their budget, $86/barrel for Saudi Arabia, ~$60 for US shale (per Bloomberg). China has already potentially hit peak oil and ~>50% of new vehicle sales are battery electric or plug in hybrids. Oil is over, regardless of this admin's p…

Gasoline might be on decline (but the gas car fleet will take decades to turn over), but for literally everything else there is no viable alternative. Trucks, ships, airplanes, freight trains, even heating for older buildings. So no, we need our refineries for a good part of this century. Likely we will keep just the integrated ones (chemical + fuels).

Whether we need them will be a function if they are financially sustainable. No profit, and they will close (as is the case with the Valero Benicia refinery in Northern California, shuttering April 2026). That is the linchpin to push fossil fuels to failure faster, find economically vulnerable and/or unsustainable fossil infrastructure and push it to failure (fossil supply chain death spiral). Because if no one will pay for it, it will not continue to exist, and the demand base to spread fixed costs across will only shrink into the future, pushing prices to unaffordability compared to non fossil alternatives.

(think in systems)

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

#33

Post by crystal_revenge »

Wistar wrote: post #11

Related: Alec Watson’s recent, and excellent, Technology Connections YouTube piece on renewable energy. “You are being misled about renewable energy technology” https://youtu.be/KtQ9nt2ZeGM?si=CJ_Tt9DnWSKH8eGC

That entire talk didn't once mention the phrase "energy density" which is the real reason we rely so heavily on hydrocarbons.

Additionally this talk makes the usual mistake of conflating "electricity" with "energy". While the US does have fairly high percentage of energy in the form of electricity it's still only around 33% of the US energy needs.

And still we see that "green energy" only supplements not replaces our other energy needs. We've seen tremendous EV adoption and yet US oil consumption is on an upward trend and nearing pre-pandemic highs [0].

It's wild that there are multiple, very serious global conflicts heating up over control of oil and people still believe we're just a few more years away from a purely green energy world with no evidence to suggest that's a remotely reasonable belief.

0. https://afdc.energy.gov/data/10324

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

#35

Post by tmellon2 »

Elon Musk mentioned that just a 100 square mile grid of Solar can power the entire USA. I did not believe it; a simple calculation later, I was convinced. The USA of yesteryear would have done this already and more. Sure other sources are required, but honestly we humans have to advance beyond burning dead things for fuel.

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

#36

Post by ggggffggggg »

danans wrote: post #28
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One nice thing about what’s happening is that politics are losing to reality. I’m not even sure how this became a left vs right issue in the first place (isn’t the right meant to be pro free market!?) but it doesn’t matter at this point anyway. Eg. Texas is doing really well in renewable rollouts (see the amount of battery capacity they are putting in - https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/energy-envi...…

> One nice thing about what’s happening is that politics are losing to reality. I’m not even sure how this became a left vs right issue in the first place (isn’t the right meant to be pro free market!?) No, the right isn't meant to be pro free-market. It's meant to protect the interests, longevity, and demand-capture of its donor industries, primarily fossil fuels extraction, processing, and distribution, but increas…

At scale no group is against its own personal interests. It sucks and it’s hypocritical and annoying, but that’s humans.

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

#37

Post by chinathrow »

tmellon2 wrote: post #35

Elon Musk mentioned that just a 100 square mile grid of Solar can power the entire USA. I did not believe it; a simple calculation later, I was convinced. The USA of yesteryear would have done this already and more. Sure other sources are required, but honestly we humans have to advance beyond burning dead things for fuel.

Meanwhile he is burning jet fuel to power is AI cluster.

A clusterfuck of priorities.

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

#38

Post by axus »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #24
crystal_revenge wrote: post #21

It's also been a great year for oil production which has reached new record highs in the US! [0] 0. https://www.energy.gov/state-american-energy-promises-made-p...

There is global oil oversupply of ~2M-3.7M barrels/day. China destroys ~1M barrels/day of global oil demand for every 24 months of EV production. Iran needs $164/barrel to break even on their budget, $86/barrel for Saudi Arabia, ~$60 for US shale (per Bloomberg). China has already potentially hit peak oil and ~>50% of new vehicle sales are battery electric or plug in hybrids. Oil is over, regardless of this admin's p…

Ukraine and the CO2 levels are lucky that Russia pumping less oil is "good for America".

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

#39

Post by ceejayoz »

jp191919 wrote: post #34

I wonder why existing hydro isn't utilized to it's potential. For instance, the Grand Coulee Dam has the highest capacity of any power station in the US of almost 7 MW but usually puts out about a third of that.

It turns out that "releasing immense amounts of water downstream" can have side effects.

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

#40

Post by matthewdgreen »

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…

It was a socially-driven movement, but economics made it feasible for social concerns to win. The lesson is that you need both, and this is especially true when time is short.
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