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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

#421

Post by tialaramex »

whatever1 wrote: post #392
tialaramex wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oil is processed using fractional distillation, we're not making the kerosene, in some sense a fraction of the oil "was" kerosene and we just split that out from the rest. It's not important that the kerosene was once a dead organism, we can technically just make it with energy, carbon and water, it's basically a narrow range of hydrocarbons so you synthesize a suitable mixture of CxHx chains and that'll work for e.g…

As long as thermodynamics allow, everything is possible. The question always is who is gonna pay for it? Societies have other priorities much higher on their list compared to energy cleanness.

"Natural" Oil is literally finite, we're currently burning everything which died over millions of years, when we say it isn't "renewable" that's not some vague idea about the planet not overheating (though to be sure if we heat the planet up and make it uninhabitable that would suck for us) but that literally it's running out.

So "who is gonna pay for it" is everybody, eventually.

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

#422

Post by blitzar »

chipsa wrote: post #401
nerdralph wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Panels prices bottomed about a year ago below many manufacturer's cash cost, and have gone mostly sideways since. https://www.pvxchange.com/Price-Index If silver stays above $70/oz, prices will likely go up by 5-10%. Until Perovskite tandem technology matures, there's unlikely to be any significant reduction in PV module prices.

I got panels last year because I’m pretty confident that the majority of the cost of putting panels on my roof is the stuff besides the actual panels. So pricing won’t go down much for getting an actual installer to do it.

> the majority of the cost of putting panels on my roof is the stuff besides the actual panels

and installation / wages dont seem like they are going down anytime in the foreseable future

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

#423

Post by mlrtime »

8ytecoder wrote: post #238
margalabargala wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Texas, technically, generates more TWh than California. I think a data center boom followed by a bust would help a lot more than what California can do. Unlike in cars, CAs market size or regulations can’t help/hinder other fuel sources as much. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_renewab...

Interesting this doesn't get passed around as much, not only does Texas generate more than California, it's twice as much.

The % is lower, but still higher than the countries average.

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

#424

Post by [deleted] »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #32
whatever1 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gasoline might be on decline (but the gas car fleet will take decades to turn over), but for literally everything else there is no viable alternative. Trucks, ships, airplanes, freight trains, even heating for older buildings. So no, we need our refineries for a good part of this century. Likely we will keep just the integrated ones (chemical + fuels).

Whether we need them will be a function if they are financially sustainable. No profit, and they will close (as is the case with the Valero Benicia refinery in Northern California, shuttering April 2026). That is the linchpin to push fossil fuels to failure faster, find economically vulnerable and/or unsustainable fossil infrastructure and push it to failure (fossil supply chain death spiral). Because if no one will…

[deleted]

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

#425

Post by JumpCrisscross »

samrus wrote: post #381
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because all transactions for oil anywhere in the world are dollar-denominated This was sort of true in the 1970s only because we ignored the Soviet Union and its allies, which included a lot of petroleum production. It's totally untrue now, in a world where America exports oil. (I traded contracts in Connecticut in the early 2010s. Oil was priced in all sorts of currencies. British and Norwegian oil, for example, i…

What about iranian or russian oil? Can british and norweigian buy iranian oil in currency other than dollars?

> Can british and norweigian buy iranian oil in currency other than dollars?

Both Russia and Iran are heavily sanctioned by the U.S. Neither sells its oil for dollars by default, though either will accept them, of course.

Note, too, that pricing and settlement are different. If I’m Russia selling oil to India, I can “sell” at $50/barrel and accept payment in rupees or rubles. (Indian refineries were not paying Russia dollars for oil.)

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

#426

Post by pjc50 »

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.

> corruption+nepotism are unstoppable forces of nature

History suggests it's the other way round. They're awfully prevalent - what is a hereditary monarchy but nepotism - but the value of meritocracy over nepotism enables such better governance that it tends to win handily in proxy or actual conflicts. Similarly, if your society is too corrupt when you go to war you discover that someone has sold the tyres off all your stored vehicles, or suchlike.

You also can't have a complex society without a complex government. This goes all the way back to Qin dynasty vs. "barbarians".

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

#427

Post by pjc50 »

_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.

The UK fishing industry was cited a lot as a reason for Brexit, despite being just over 10k jobs ( https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/uk-sea-fisheries-an... ) and less economically significant than Warhammer.

(see the "everything is gender now" thesis: fishing and coal mining are "manly" industries, which is why they get this preferential treatment from the right-wing)

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

#428

Post by pjc50 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #332
mbgerring wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's the US dollars circulating globally because all transactions for oil anywhere in the world are dollar-denominated , giving the US control over the entire global financial system.

> because all transactions for oil anywhere in the world are dollar-denominated This was sort of true in the 1970s only because we ignored the Soviet Union and its allies, which included a lot of petroleum production. It's totally untrue now, in a world where America exports oil. (I traded contracts in Connecticut in the early 2010s. Oil was priced in all sorts of currencies. British and Norwegian oil, for example, i…

Thankyou for pointing this out. People get very weird about how the petrodollar works, it's more about convenience than force. Like the "eurodollar" of financial clearing. In general people overlook how much America (and to a lesser extent the UK) export "stability as a service". Which becomes jeopardized if the leader is unstable.

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

#429

Post by pjc50 »

dyauspitr wrote: post #374
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.

> 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.

As one comment says, many of those are going from 0 cars to 1 car. But also the average age of cars in China is less: https://min.news/en/auto/6ebd7edbc7df2c10102b857be9c06a47.ht...

It's also worth questioning what wealth and poverty look like in China; the changes in family structure; savings, investment, and credit; and so on. Shenzen is a rich city.

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

#430

Post by pjc50 »

devin wrote: post #181

Does anyone in these comments have any tips for would-be solar farmers or people who are generally interested in being part of building out the future of our grid? I'd like to get my hands dirty. I'm talking about getting into 5-10 MW projects, not solar on a roof.

Trying to cost this out (in a UK context), I found very few press releases give actual cost numbers. This was rather cute though: https://www.kentonline.co.uk/sittingbourne/news/you-can-hear... "took over a 5MW site in Bobbing, near Sittingbourne, in December 2023 after raising £176,100 of investments through a crowdfunding campaign"

That is for taking it over from a previous operator, and seems extremely low. More recognizable £1.5k/kW numbers give about £7.5m for that. So unless you're independently wealthy then finance is going to be your #1 consideration. It might actually be easier to do community funding in the UK than the US, provided you structure your investors as creditors and not equity.

#2 consideration is going to be planning rules and the availability of special get-outs for renewables schemes.

#3 is going to be grid connection. In the UK you need permission from OFGEM for large systems. It is also potentially expensive if they make you pay to dig up the road and lay 5MW cabling.

Acquiring land is tied in to all of those.

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