US electricity demand surged in 2025 – solar handled 61% of it • Hacker News Board

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

#341

Post by eldaisfish » Mon, Jan 19, 2026, 2:56 PM UTC

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #333

eldaisfish wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Methane has lots of value in colder climates, especially much of Canada. Methane is cheap and does not lose heating capacity as temperature falls. Across most of Canada, the median construction year for a typical house is in the 1980. Half were built before that, meaning insulation standards were lower. The #1 problem with heat pumps in Canada is low temperature performance. The heat output drops but the rate of heat…

Toronto/Vancouver areas are both well within the temp range for heat pumps (e.g. ~50% of Canada's population). The further norther areas are a bit cold for air source heat pumps, but are still well within ground based heat pump temp ranges.

Toronto and Vancouver have completely different climates.

Toronto regularly has ten days per year where the high temperature is below -15 C.

Even cold climate heat pumps struggle at those temperatures. I would know, i have one.

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

#342

Post by njarboe » Mon, Jan 19, 2026, 6:12 PM UTC

fulafel wrote: post #322

njarboe wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you against increasing energy consumption? Increasing energy consumption is what pulled the world out of the feudal, warlord misery of the past. Maybe switch the focus of this feeling towards being against pollution or something that is a negative. Just being against energy consumption is quite regressive and anti-human.

To mitigate the ongoing climate catastrophe we must ramp down fossil fuels use and production. As long as there's fossil fuels in the electricity production mix, electricity use is contributes to the problem. This report tells us that fossil energy use is increasing as only 60% of the increase was covered by solar.

The world would much more easily transition to post fossil fuel if all of society was pushing for cleaner and cheaper electricity and a philosophy of using more to make life better. The attitude that we must reduce is just anti-progress and anti-human and is what many people are fighting against when they support more fossil fuels. The split of solar and wind being supported by the reduce camp and fossil fuel use into the growth mindset was a great tragedy.

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

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Post by herewulf » Tue, Jan 20, 2026, 1:40 AM UTC

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…

> I am not sure where you live, but I cannot remember the last time our power went out (Western Europe).

I guess you don't live in Berlin.

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

#344

Post by fulafel » Tue, Jan 20, 2026, 6:14 PM UTC

njarboe wrote: post #342

fulafel wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To mitigate the ongoing climate catastrophe we must ramp down fossil fuels use and production. As long as there's fossil fuels in the electricity production mix, electricity use is contributes to the problem. This report tells us that fossil energy use is increasing as only 60% of the increase was covered by solar.

The world would much more easily transition to post fossil fuel if all of society was pushing for cleaner and cheaper electricity and a philosophy of using more to make life better. The attitude that we must reduce is just anti-progress and anti-human and is what many people are fighting against when they support more fossil fuels. The split of solar and wind being supported by the reduce camp and fossil fuel use int…

Accelerating fossil fuel usage and while adding renewables to the mix is not going to pan out well. Accelerating the climate catastrophe is not pro-human. It might be pro-progress for some definition I guess if you don't mind the death toll.

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

#345

Post by njarboe » Tue, Jan 20, 2026, 6:39 PM UTC

fulafel wrote: post #344

njarboe wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world would much more easily transition to post fossil fuel if all of society was pushing for cleaner and cheaper electricity and a philosophy of using more to make life better. The attitude that we must reduce is just anti-progress and anti-human and is what many people are fighting against when they support more fossil fuels. The split of solar and wind being supported by the reduce camp and fossil fuel use int…

Accelerating fossil fuel usage and while adding renewables to the mix is not going to pan out well. Accelerating the climate catastrophe is not pro-human. It might be pro-progress for some definition I guess if you don't mind the death toll.

Few people just want to burn fossil fuels, they want to do things with energy. Focus should be on making non-CO2 emitting energy cheap and abundant. Most people against burning fossil fuel are also not promoting more and cheaper energy use.

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

#346

Post by catketch » Thu, Jan 29, 2026, 10:42 PM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #146

catketch wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That happens when people are on variable rate or TOU plans, it's very common. "sneaky" may or not be part of it, since ostensibly there's a contract that defines the terms of the electrical service, so it shouldn't be a surprise. But for a lot of folks it's a lot to keep track of, there can be confusing terminology, and yes, some energy retailers are predatory in their plan marketing or contract terms. It's a double…

I kind of doubt a single surprise bill that happened to arrive in the winter is a TOU plan change. If someone changes to a TOU plan and their bill shoots up, they’re smart enough to blame the plan change and cite that Most surprise winter time bills are just excess electric heater usage, such as after the purchase of a couple space heaters without thinking about the overall cost. > This is why there's pushback in som…

> What areas have deregulated residential electricity?

17 states in the U.S, plus D.C.