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

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

#371

Post by rudhdb773b »

yowayb wrote: post #360
dylan604 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

That's why I see AI (with a clear set of provided objectives and guidelines, i.e., a constitution) as the future of government.

As dystopian as that sounds, it's the only way I see to truly rid ourselves of corruption.

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

#372

Post by Rapzid »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #320
margalabargala wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is California enough to drag the rest of the country with them, though?

Other comments mentioned Texas, but check out the Ercot dashboard: https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards Not only did solar and wind provide the vast majority of power during the day today, as I write this comment coal is neck-and-neck with storage as an energy resource - i.e. power that was saved during the day because it was so sunny. Coal simply makes no economic sense as a power source for electricity gene…

Today Texas kissed 50% generation from solar around 11:30AM and was generating 63% from wind last night.

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

#373

Post by recursive »

ceejayoz wrote: post #345
recursive wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hm, so that seems to kind of obscure how that power actually got generated. Maybe it was all coal, although that seems unlikely. It seems like battery usage is important to measure. But calling it generation seems to obscure something, unless they're double-counting the generation. That's misleading in another way though.

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

#374

Post by dyauspitr »

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 is intentionally trying to kill solar so that their oil buddies can make money for another 5-10 years.

It’s insane to think that close to 80% of cars in shenzen are electric. I don’t even understand how that works. These EV cars have been around for about a decade. How has the entire population of the city purchased a new vehicle in that short span of time.

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

#375

Post by Rapzid »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #26
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…

> With a bit of social pressure we should be able to extinct the fossil fuel industry Taking Europe versus China, California versus Texas, it seems like social pressure is less effective than markets. Let markets build the power source they want to build and lo and behold you get lots of solar and wind and batteries.

We are at the tail end of 30+ years of successful social awareness efforts, and government regulation and incentivization.

Social awareness and pressure produced the government action necessary to incubate the early markets and seed research. It helped to spur the armies of young researches set about improving solar generation, wind generation, power storage, electric motors, and even LEDs.

Yeah, it's "obvious" now the economics make sense for producers to build wind and solar farms. Or yeah, purchasing LEDs is a no-brainer now why on earth would anyone want to incandescent bulbs; that's boomer tech.

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

#376

Post by hollerith »

Rapzid wrote: post #375
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With a bit of social pressure we should be able to extinct the fossil fuel industry Taking Europe versus China, California versus Texas, it seems like social pressure is less effective than markets. Let markets build the power source they want to build and lo and behold you get lots of solar and wind and batteries.

We are at the tail end of 30+ years of successful social awareness efforts, and government regulation and incentivization. Social awareness and pressure produced the government action necessary to incubate the early markets and seed research. It helped to spur the armies of young researches set about improving solar generation, wind generation, power storage, electric motors, and even LEDs. Yeah, it's "obvious" now t…

I operate incandescent bulbs because I consider them healthier than LED bulbs, especially the incandescents with neodymium glass that transmits UV light.

(Unlike my LED bulbs though, I will turn an incandescent off every time I step away from it.)

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

#377

Post by ceejayoz »

recursive wrote: post #373
ceejayoz wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hm, so that seems to kind of obscure how that power actually got generated. Maybe it was all coal, although that seems unlikely. It seems like battery usage is important to measure. But calling it generation seems to obscure something, unless they're double-counting the generation. That's misleading in another way though.

It's not coal.

Here's the chart with everything but battery+solar turned off.

https://imgur.com/a/5HfjAdI

Makes the scenario quite clear. No double counting.

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

#378

Post by eucyclos »

jacquesm wrote: post #264
legitster wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slavery was already being abolished in the West when Adam Smith wrote the Wealth of Nations. But what was notable was that Adam Smith was really the first to make a strong case and prediction that it was not just the moral thing to do, but would lead to prosperity. Adam Smith also differentiated between different levels of slavery - that Roman slavery was different than Serfdom was different from chattel slavery in t…

And effectively it did: many people are kept in their place by the combined pressure points of debt and employment to stay (barely) afloat. This is of course nothing compared to the cruelty of real slavery but the effect is much the same, a lot of people are working their asses of for an upper class that can ruin their lives at the drop of a hat. That there are no whips involved is nice but it also clearly delineated…

Rental versus outright purchase is a weird transition. I have this idea for a faction in a post apocalyptic setting that started out as a libertarian community that idealized a society with zero slavery but found it constantly hiding in arrangements like the one you describe, so they made it very explicit and transactional instead: every member of the community is a central bank, and the currency takes the form of small clay discs with a number and a thumbprint. Anyone can mint their own money, but anyone can redeem money for hours of slave labor with the issuing party. And of course there are rules limiting what slaves can be compelled to do, like no minting more hours and no demanding a specific slave.

For some reason this concept is very sticky to me. I actually think it could work as a low tech monetary regime in a grid down scenario.

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

#379

Post by eucyclos »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #334
roenxi wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Adam Smith famously wrote that slavery was economically detrimental way back in 1776. It still took nearly 100 years to abolish slavery... Slavery had basically been a thing for all of human history up to that point, and based on my discussions on HN many smart people don't believe a lot of what Adam Smith said. There are still a lot of basic economic ideas that would make people much wealthier that struggle to get…

> Slavery had basically been a thing for all of human history up to that point Would note that New World-style chattel slavery doesn't seem to have broadly historically precedented.

True, but if your point is that most slavery regimes throughout history were less awful for the slaves, it's also worth remembering that most accounts of those regimes weren't written by the victors of a war that saw the other sides slavery practices as justification for said war.

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

#380

Post by samrus »

floatrock wrote: post #153
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…

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.

Solaryuan? How does that work? You dont need to buy sun. Just the initial infrastructure. Even if, in a post oil world, china refuses to let you buy the latest panels down the line, a country could just coast on its existing solar infra. Theres no need to use the yuan to sell of buy the energy
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