Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026 • Hacker News Board

Re: Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026

#351

Post by scope2093 » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 5:22 AM UTC

porphyra wrote: post #299

scope2093 wrote: post #246

We installed roof solar (10kW panels + 8kW hybrid inverter + 32kWh battery + planning/execution) last October for 11k euro. After all the math, our "investment" would pay off in approx 8-10 years (at current electricity prices). That's without an electric car, which we plan to buy sometime in the next two years. All in all, pretty happy. Especially that we have frequent grid faults. Even my ISP has some beefy batteri…

Nice. In the US, it cost us $35k to install 7.6 kW panels + 13 kWh battery. But our PG&E electricity prices in the Bay Area are also several times more expensive than in Europe ($0.50 per kWh) so it will also pay off in 8-10 years.

$35k and $0.50 per kWh is quite pricy. My brother is in US (Kansas) and he told me that for the time being, it doesn't make sense for him to get solar, as the utility price is something like $0.07/kWh and he uses a low amount of electricity and install cost would be somewhere around $20k-25k. I think the math works?

We also did the math for ourselves with 8-10 years at current electricity prices: 30 eurocents/kWh (which got 3x more expensive in the last 10 years). So we might be lucky and break even even sooner.

Re: Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026

#352

Post by scope2093 » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 5:27 AM UTC

sandos wrote: post #322

scope2093 wrote: post #246

We installed roof solar (10kW panels + 8kW hybrid inverter + 32kWh battery + planning/execution) last October for 11k euro. After all the math, our "investment" would pay off in approx 8-10 years (at current electricity prices). That's without an electric car, which we plan to buy sometime in the next two years. All in all, pretty happy. Especially that we have frequent grid faults. Even my ISP has some beefy batteri…

11k euro is INSANELY cheap? Afaik there is absolutely no way to the same thing legally here in Sweden. Unless prices have really fallen off a cliff.

Yes, indeed, once I saw the math/price, it seemed like a no-brainer to just install it. Anedoctal, of course, the rumour is a few (small-ish) companies here offer their complete services abroad in EU (at least to Germany to my knowledge), which makes it very cheap to install, but I did not interact with said companies.

I have friends in Germany and their solar (similar to ours, no batteries) installation cost more than double. At the time, it seemed expensive and out of reach...

EDIT: forgot to mention that there is a big solar installation boom here, our godfather has a small company which just installed two solar parks and waits for them to go into operation (which is harder than it sounds, due to bureaucracy).

EDIT 2: Just for fun, I've calculated todays price (retail price at the time of writing this) using Romanian prices:

- 22 solar panels (460w): 434.39 RON/panel [1]

- 8kW hybrid inverter: 4873 RON [2]

- 2 16kWh batteries: 17576 RON [3]

Total is 32009 RON, that is (at current exchange rate) 6088EUR. The rest is service (planning/execution), warranty and so on.

[1]: https://depozitsolar.ro/canadian-solar-4/canadian-solar-toph...

[2]: https://ecobatenergy.ro/invertor-deye-hibrid-sun-8k-sg05lp1-...

[3]: https://ecobatenergy.ro/acumulator-renon-lifepo4-xcellent-pl...

Re: Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026

#353

Post by DaSHacka » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 5:29 AM UTC

sleight42 wrote: post #289

Waiting for this to get flagged because, once again, the US sucks. A lot of us know why the US is behind in wind and solar. It's because of a five letter word that starts with "T". Do better, America.

I fail to see how locomotives have anything to do with this conversation

Re: Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026

#354

Post by pfdietz » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 5:38 AM UTC

dimitrios1 wrote: post #79

Aurornis wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know how you can be against solar unless you’ve been given some uninformed talking points. Are they against solar subsidies or other policy provisions? It’s hard to understand someone who is against passive energy collection.

I am against it for one reason only, but it's very solvable, IMO, and it's the amount of space they take up. I live next to 200+ acres of solar farms. A part of me cries a little when I see so much beautiful land and trees cut down and these lifeless panels taking up so much space. We have so many buildings, and structures already (think parking decks, tops of apartments, homes, offices, even parking lots) that we co…

What do you have against farmers using their land as they see fit? Are you against property rights? What other freedoms do you oppose?

Re: Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026

#355

Post by pfdietz » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 5:39 AM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #205

dimitrios1 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am against it for one reason only, but it's very solvable, IMO, and it's the amount of space they take up. I live next to 200+ acres of solar farms. A part of me cries a little when I see so much beautiful land and trees cut down and these lifeless panels taking up so much space. We have so many buildings, and structures already (think parking decks, tops of apartments, homes, offices, even parking lots) that we co…

The standard alternative to a solar farm is a monoculture corn farm producing ethanol. That monoculture corn farm regularly gets sprayed, plowed and harvested, each time decimating its animal population. Your solar farm is probably filled with a diverse selection of grass and weeds, supporting a far higher animal population than that corn farm.

The solar farm powering BEVs also uses maybe 1/200th the area of the equivalent bioethanol farm powering ICVs.

Re: Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026

#356

Post by pfdietz » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 5:42 AM UTC

graemep wrote: post #18

erelong wrote: post #9

I know some people who are adamantly against solar and wind (personally I like both but I can see some shortcomings - for example I have heard that ai datacenters are using gas at times because of its flexibility) So what are some of the best talking points to "sell" solar and wind to the unconvinced? Or will they just adopt it once it's seen everywhere?

I do not think the two should be lumped together. They do both need storage but solar is more predictable. Winds can be low for extended periods.

We can analyze this issue with historical weather data, and it turns out it's tractable. Using solar + wind + batteries + non-fossil fuel turbines enables 365/24/7 "synthetic baseload", 100% renewable.

See https://model.energy/ for a web site that will solve this optimization problem for you in various places.

Re: Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026

#357

Post by JuniperMesos » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 5:51 AM UTC

Guid_NewGuid wrote: post #129

erelong wrote: post #9

I know some people who are adamantly against solar and wind (personally I like both but I can see some shortcomings - for example I have heard that ai datacenters are using gas at times because of its flexibility) So what are some of the best talking points to "sell" solar and wind to the unconvinced? Or will they just adopt it once it's seen everywhere?

I almost feel like it doesn't matter if Joe-public is on board or not at this stage. For as much as capitalism kinda got us into this mess, at this point the flywheel is going in the other direction and it's a natural market consequence that renewables will win. Lack of priced in externalities created the problem but the same economics will now save us.* The money men have no moral attachment to any source so given h…

China's Leninist command economy also burned (and still does burn) tremendous amounts of fossil fuels to generate energy, just as the command economy of the Soviet Union did, and just as the more-or-less free markets of the western world did and still do. People burn fossil fuels because the energy that they generate is incredibly useful for everything in the modern world, regardless of the economic system governing any particular jurisdiction.

Re: Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026

#358

Post by bluefirebrand » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 5:53 AM UTC

jphil529 wrote: post #201

_whiteCaps_ wrote: post #96

I just upgraded the solar system at my family's off-grid cabin. It's incredible how much battery technology has improved over the last 10 years. Everyone is getting tired of me checking the panel to see how many watts we're bringing in. Next project, install a shunt and get a Raspberry Pi talking to it over USB. And then I'll be able to build a Grafana dashboard. :)

Really curious about the difficulty of doing a self install with Solar. I'm moderately handy (built a Sauna from no plans) and confident with electrical. Any gotchas?

I don't have solar myself but I worked for a solar tech company for a couple of years

I think the biggest gotcha we dealt with was that you can't (or shouldn't) just wire solar into your house and call it a day. You have to let your electrical company know, there are permits and inspections that need to be done before you wire your solar into the public grid. There may also be some relevant bylaws you should know about, or if you live in an HOA you should check their policy first so you don't start a fight.

It's like a lot of things. Conceptually easy, but bureaucracy makes it complicated

Re: Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026

#359

Post by JuniperMesos » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 5:54 AM UTC

outside1234 wrote: post #44

erelong wrote: post #9

I know some people who are adamantly against solar and wind (personally I like both but I can see some shortcomings - for example I have heard that ai datacenters are using gas at times because of its flexibility) So what are some of the best talking points to "sell" solar and wind to the unconvinced? Or will they just adopt it once it's seen everywhere?

You need to include batteries in the equation: solar, wind, water and batteries. What California and others have shown is that you can replace natural gas peaker plants (literally - tear out natural gas turbines) with batteries and get both superior cost dynamics and "dispatchability" (aka turning them on and off). Batteries have millisecond level dispatch, peaker plants have hours level dispatch.

California has very expensive residential electricity. This isn't solely due to the amount of solar and natural gas in the electricity generation mix, but it does mean that what California is doing is not a great guide to what other jurisdictions ought to be doing.

Re: Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026

#360

Post by JuniperMesos » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 5:55 AM UTC

okr wrote: post #23

erelong wrote: post #9

I know some people who are adamantly against solar and wind (personally I like both but I can see some shortcomings - for example I have heard that ai datacenters are using gas at times because of its flexibility) So what are some of the best talking points to "sell" solar and wind to the unconvinced? Or will they just adopt it once it's seen everywhere?

I find no arguments against solar. I can put it everywhere and has no moving parts. Once storing is solved, perfect. But wind?? Huge nature areas are destroyed by beton fundaments, rotors break, and just in germany was a scandal lately about recycling, as the first structures need to be renewed.

Wind power does seem to be generally not quite as good as photovoltaic solar power. But yeah every source of electricity has some downside. I don't have any good reason to care more about the possibility of rotors breaking or how to recycle the turbines, than I do about the possibility that a natural gas peaker plant might suffer a mechanical failure.