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

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

#351

Post by ambicapter » Thu, Feb 26, 2026, 1:55 AM UTC

thelastgallon wrote: post #340

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…

Old panels are continuously being replaced with new panels. This is happening now with a few year old panels. So many free old panels available, because new ones are producing 590W/panel. Over 25 years, there will be a lot more advances, panels that will be printed by textiles, or painted on surfaces, or grown by bacteria.

How big is a panel?

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

#352

Post by kbenson » Thu, Feb 26, 2026, 1:57 AM UTC

jjk166 wrote: post #346

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…

> After abolition, the South's per capita productivity dropped substantially, and remained 20% lower per capita in 1880 than it had been in 1860.

I wonder how much of that was because of economies of scale (Even if it's forced scale). Plantations are large and have many workers, and can scale without having to worry (to a degree) about retaining workers, since workers are for most intents just machines you invest in and pay to keep up in that system, which allows for easier scaling.

We've seen increasing consolidation of farms into large entities over the centuries, so perhaps this was just a system that made that much, much easier to do.

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

#353

Post by margalabargala » Thu, Feb 26, 2026, 2:07 AM UTC

kllrnohj wrote: post #323

margalabargala wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right but the problem is subsidies change that math. If the US gov subsidizes oil, then the economics of that work out even if solar wins in a free market.

That's true, but also requires that companies believe those subsidies will remain in place over ~20-30 years. Assuming US elections remain fair, that's not going to be the case. By contrast solar / wind subsidies are effective since the bulk of their cost is up-front, so you can generally rely on getting full value out of those subsidies. Subsidies can certainly delay things at this point, but it's hard to see how it…

I agree. Subsidies will delay, but they will not change the outcome.

Considering we are racing against CO2 release and the warming planet, I worry that the delay makes a large difference in outcome, not for energy breakdown, but in quality of life for humanity.

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

#354

Post by kbenson » Thu, Feb 26, 2026, 2:11 AM UTC

testing22321 wrote: post #182

hnuser847 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. As distasteful as it is to put it in these terms, some slaveholders had massive "balance sheets" consisting of thousands of human "assets". Outlawing slavery meant reducing the value of these assets to zero.

Which is identical to all the balance sheets today will oil and gas infrastructure and the billions dumped into ICE R&D they were hoping to amortize over the next 30 years. They’ll fight tooth and nail

Identical might be a bit strong. It's only identical if we signed a law that made oil and gas illegal tomorrow. There are definitely parallels, but this is much more of a normal market situation where most things are handled through incentives, not regulation to such an extreme degree we make the common immediately illegal.

Perhaps most importantly, it not being an immediate change allows the entrenched interests time to shift their strategies and portfolios over time to take advantage of the more economically advantageous option. Many people aren't happy with the time frames that generally requires, but they also seem to be very happy with reliable energy and and economy that doesn't collapse overnight and having invested a year or two ago in a car which would become worthless tomorrow.

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

#355

Post by dalyons » Thu, Feb 26, 2026, 2:11 AM UTC

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #13

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

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...…

Sadly they can be stopped. ~25% of US counties have adopted regulation effectively blocking new solar and wind (1). Up from 15% only a year ago!

Peoples stupidity and self sabotage truly knows no bounds.

1 https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2026/02/2...

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

#356

Post by SlightlyLeftPad » Thu, Feb 26, 2026, 2:12 AM UTC

I wish it would bring prices down to a point where it would make sense to install on every home. Particularly, in California, costs have increased and the value proposition decreased drastically with NEM3.0. So, the solar industry here has kind of imploded even though it desperately needs to be built out to power my home’s OpenClaws.

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

#357

Post by SimbaOnSteroids » Thu, Feb 26, 2026, 2:12 AM 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…

That may not be a problem for a while as we're going to have to do desalination and CCS at a scale that's quite incomprehensible at the moment.

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

#358

Post by dalyons » Thu, Feb 26, 2026, 2:16 AM UTC

AxiomaticSpace wrote: post #25

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...…

Yea I wonder how that battery capacity graph will look like post January 2026, since Texas's SB388 specifically excludes batteries from it's dispatchable power generation requirements. That doesn't necessarily prevent batteries storage from being constructed, but it does tilt the field pretty heavily in favor of natural gas.

AFAIU that bill did not pass and died.

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

#359

Post by SlightlyLeftPad » Thu, Feb 26, 2026, 2:17 AM UTC

WD-42 wrote: post #344

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There’s such an amount of implied or perceived shame attached to using these government safety nets in America. I’d be surprised if anyone who was benefiting from them worked in coal.

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

#360

Post by yowayb » Thu, Feb 26, 2026, 2:17 AM UTC

dylan604 wrote: post #248

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 trump administration by refusing to admit the superior metrics of solar, they're just burying their heads in sand. I don't think I agree with this as it suggests they are doing it because they can't be bothered about it. Instead, they are doing it specifically because their (and/or their friend's) pockets are getting filled. To me, the latter is much more sinister.

I have a theory that corruption+nepotism are unstoppable forces of nature.

Advanced governments only force corruption to distribute and obfuscate.

I think this is why there appears to be some correlation between unpopular behavior and financial success.

Government essentially erects artificial barriers to entry on behalf of the incumbent businesses that fund it.