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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

#341

Post by ericd »

kllrnohj wrote: post #308
jandrese wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. The feedback loop of capitalism means we are likely to reach that point sooner than you would expect. No we won't. Even if we waved a magic wand and converted the entire planet to solar today, there would still be new installations tomorrow because energy demand is i…

That hasn’t really been true in the US in recent decades - efficiency improvements and deindustrialization were balancing increasing population. It’s recently started growing again because EVs, heat pumps, and DCs, but even a 3% increase in demand has caused a lot of growing pains.

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

#342

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

ericd wrote: post #339
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. If the average panel lifetime is 25 years, and it takes > 25 years to reach "full capacity" (whatever that might mean or whatever level that is at), then by definition there will be a continuous cycle of panel replacement taking place. It's not as if we get all the P…

The 25 year thing comes from the 25 year warranties - they’re generally warrantied to be at 80% power capability at 25 years. I don’t know the real lifetime, but presumably it’s a lot longer than 25 years. And by that point, maybe we’ll have the deuteriumdollar…

The first set of PV panels I put on our van didn't even make their 10 year warranty @ 80%. Anecdata, sure, but still data.

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

#343

Post by flir »

underlipton wrote: post #327
citrin_ru wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 pr…

It also assumes that there will never be demand for improved solar generation orthogonal to currently-prioritized metrics. As an example, a nice park near my house was clear-cut to install a solar farm a few years ago. I used to enjoy walks under the trees in that park, and seeing the animals that lived there. Perhaps as solar infrastructure becomes more stable and secure, concerns will turn towards the ecological ra…

Assuming we consume ~20 TW on average, a metre-squared panel kicks out ~40 W on average, and we halve that to account for batteries and other infra... I reckon we're talking about 1 million square kilometres (people will be along in a sec to check my working, but it's just a Fermi estimate).

Call it 10% of the Sahara.

Bear in mind that if we go all-electric, raw energy consumption falls significantly, many panels will be sited on buildings, solar isn't the only renewable, and solar farms aren't ecological deserts - you can graze animals below them.

Honestly, seems like a good trade to me.

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

#344

Post by WD-42 »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #329
yoyohello13 wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It such obvious corruption. Trump ordered the pentagon to buy coal power specifically.

The crazy thing is coal mining is 40,000 jobs. I have never seen such a tiny industry given such preferential/oversized treatment. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES1021210001 Lyft is 10% of the size of big coal and Amazon is over 20x larger.

Meanwhile the areas where the coal jobs used to exist (or still do) just had their food stamps removed or reduced. It's such a charade.

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

#345

Post by ceejayoz »

recursive wrote: post #326
viewtransform wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California power generation profile yesterday showing solar and battery proportion. https://engaging-data.com/california-electricity-generation/...

What does it mean to do battery-based power generation?

It means you charge the batteries when you have extra power (like a sunny day), and you use that charge to handle the times you don't.

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

#346

Post by jjk166 »

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…

In the US the invention of the cotton gin reinvigorated slavery, which prior to that point had been declining. In the Antebellum south, slavery was profitable, with average return on slaves of about 8 to 10%. Even after slavery was legally abolished, extremely similar social institutions remained for decades (share cropping + institutionalized racism). It wasn't until the 1940s that cotton picking was mechanized.

The North steamrolled the South economically because manufacturing steamrolls agriculture in terms of productivity, but an apples to apples comparison between farmers shows slave owning plantations were economically more productive than free farmers. After abolition, the South's per capita productivity dropped substantially, and remained 20% lower per capita in 1880 than it had been in 1860.

Obviously slaves were individually much worse off than if they were free, and society as a whole suffered from the suppression of human capital. Had all those people been free for all that time, imagine what could have been accomplished besides growing more cotton. But for the slave-owner, there was never a point where abolition became economically advantageous, hence why slavery was ended at gunpoint.

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

#347

Post by shwaj »

bubblewand wrote: post #5
toomuchtodo wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear you, I'm just saying we keep grinding forward. This admin has less than 3 years to go. Nothing stops this freight train, even if they try to slow it down. You can't fix stupid, you can just keep turning the gears to grind it down. > Trump is likely to have delayed off shore wind in the US by at least 4 years, and may be many more. This will cost ratepayers a lot, and set the US behind most other countries in t…

> 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.

Can you provide examples that support your assertion, that the US system was already generally seen as obsolete in 1926?

Smells like BS.

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

#348

Post by defrost »

shwaj wrote: post #347
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.

Can you provide examples that support your assertion, that the US system was already generally seen as obsolete in 1926? Smells like BS.

"Obsolete" is pretty strong, clearly it's still limping along and hasn't quite yet succumbed to Benjamin's Franklin's expectation that it would fall to Despots if not vigoriously maintained.

But it was absolutely seen as "a good first effort" that could be improved upon in the 1890s.

Evidence of that is the new Australian Federation used the UK Westminster system and the system straight of Washington as inspiration to create what was considered "better" .. a Washminster system of government.

The current degeneration of a system founded by people opposed to Party Politics into a Hotelling's law quagmire of two parties, neither particularly broadly representative of general population, should be sound evidence that something went wrong along the way.

That's the emergant behaviour of discrete iterations of the US electoral system as was and as is for you.

Still, absolutely thumbs up for effort and intent those bold founders.

Shame it didn't scale well and got captured by corporations.

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

#349

Post by mr_toad »

fsckboy wrote: post #325
dzonga wrote: post #126

The trump administration by refusing to admit the superior metrics of solar, they're just burying their heads in sand. As admitting that solar is now a superior and cost effective means of energy means admitting that the US is no longer top dog. As empires are built on mastering a source of energy. the Portuguese | Dutch - mastered wind to power their ships. the British mastered coal to power Industrial Revolution. A…

> the Portuguese | Dutch - mastered wind to power their ships. the British mastered coal to power Industrial Revolution the British were world-beating masters of sailing technology before they were masters of anything else, and that enabled them to leverage their advances in other areas (including mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun) to become a mercantile behemoth.

They cut down their forests to build ships; they needed coal to keep the lights on.

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

#350

Post by dalyons »

WarmWash wrote: post #159
dzonga wrote: post #126

The trump administration by refusing to admit the superior metrics of solar, they're just burying their heads in sand. As admitting that solar is now a superior and cost effective means of energy means admitting that the US is no longer top dog. As empires are built on mastering a source of energy. the Portuguese | Dutch - mastered wind to power their ships. the British mastered coal to power Industrial Revolution. A…

Someone desperately needs to build the largest solar farm on earth, nakedly as a direct affront to China, and call it the "The Grand Trump Sun Energy Complex", with a large statue of him standing at the center of the massive radial field of panels. The dude would have no choice but to approve it and provide funding for it.

You’re joking but that would probably actually work
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