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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

#71

Post by tialaramex »

whatever1 wrote: post #30
toomuchtodo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is global oil oversupply of ~2M-3.7M barrels/day. China destroys ~1M barrels/day of global oil demand for every 24 months of EV production. Iran needs $164/barrel to break even on their budget, $86/barrel for Saudi Arabia, ~$60 for US shale (per Bloomberg). China has already potentially hit peak oil and ~>50% of new vehicle sales are battery electric or plug in hybrids. Oil is over, regardless of this admin's p…

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).

In several countries their freight trains are electric today. Trucks can be electric too, and a lot of shipping needn't run on fossil fuels although we're further off widespread commercial offerings than we are for trains or trucks which you can just buy today.

The main obstacle is aeroplanes, so that's Jet-A aka Kerosene as fuel, but even then if the numbers get nasty the airlines will kill a lot of services rather than try to pass on unaffordable prices and eat the fuel cost when there aren't enough buyers.

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

#72

Post by ceejayoz »

jp191919 wrote: post #68
bryanlarsen wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vogtle is also the most expensive electricity in the world, the only electricity costing more than $10,000 per kW.

And on the other end of the spectrum, grand coulee would be ~$1,500/kW in todays dollars.

Those are very different metrics.

edit: Parent got edited; it was talking about $0.02/kwh initially.

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

#73

Post by jeffbee »

paxys wrote: post #47
tmellon2 wrote: post #35

Elon Musk mentioned that just a 100 square mile grid of Solar can power the entire USA. I did not believe it; a simple calculation later, I was convinced. The USA of yesteryear would have done this already and more. Sure other sources are required, but honestly we humans have to advance beyond burning dead things for fuel.

Not 100 sq miles but 100 mile x 100 mile, which is 10,000 sq miles. And that assumes peak efficiency. Factoring in degredation you'd have to multiply this by 2. Not "just" by any stretch of the imagination. This is larger than Rhode Island and Lake Erie combined. Aka a pipe dream. Might as well "just" build a dyson sphere while we are at it.

10k square miles of photovoltaic power plant would cost about 1 trillion current US dollars, even assuming that such a project does not drive the cost down. This is easily achievable and roughly 20 orders of magnitude cheaper than a Dyson sphere.

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

#74

Post by NoLinkToMe »

crystal_revenge wrote: post #33
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

That entire talk didn't once mention the phrase "energy density" which is the real reason we rely so heavily on hydrocarbons. Additionally this talk makes the usual mistake of conflating "electricity" with "energy". While the US does have fairly high percentage of energy in the form of electricity it's still only around 33% of the US energy needs. And still we see that "green energy" only supplements not replaces our…

Yeah I watched this a week or so ago and had a similar issue.

I'm super optimistic about green energy and in favor of expanding it.

But also acutely aware it's barely putting a dent on energy use despite year-on-year record levels of capacity install (>90% of new capacity is green), which far exceeds expert expectations every single year. Non-renewables keep growing, forecasts and ambitions were cut by the Trump admin, and it is expected that the latest economic revolution's (AI) main bottleneck is going to be energy by the end of the year.

We have essentially blown past the paris accord thresholds (we've seen months of +1.5c temperature, which was the limit we envisioned in 2015) and despite renewables far exceeding expectations, they completely fell short of what is necessary pre-2023. Post-2023 you have Trump derailing renewables wherever he can and AI increasing demand even further.

It really looks pretty hopeless and frankly it's sad that there is no real conversation about this, which seems to be an existential question for the generation living in 2100 and beyond.

You're also now getting to the point that adding new capacity is increasing the amount of renewable energy that is being curtailed (i.e. thrown away), meaning while renewables get cheaper over time, the rate of things getting cheaper will slow down as renewables must be increasingly paired with storage investments (which are also getting cheaper but introduce additional cost).

For example, sunny Cyprus curtailed 13%, 29% and 49% (!!) of its solar generation in 2023 to 2025 respectively. Yes last year half of the solar power that was produced, was thrown away, because of a lack of demand-supply balancing. Cyprus is uniquely poorly positioned (high solar potential, small country with a single small timezone, no interconnectors to offload surplus to other countries, no storage facilities etc) but it's still a sign of things to come. Further generation will increasingly need to be paired with significant storage, or it's partially wasted.

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

#75

Post by snozolli »

peyton wrote: post #41
legitster wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.) More or less. Adam Smith famously wrote that slavery was economically detrimental way back in 1776. It still took nearly 100 years…

[flagged]

These people categorically did not want to start a farm; otherwise they would not have been facing famine.

Please tell me more on your theories regarding these immigrants.

The only ones I'm aware of were Irish immigrants. Most of them were urban dwellers, not farmers. The Irish who were farmers were generally working on farms owned by the English.

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

#76

Post by bryanlarsen »

crystal_revenge wrote: post #57
toomuchtodo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is global oil oversupply of ~2M-3.7M barrels/day. China destroys ~1M barrels/day of global oil demand for every 24 months of EV production. Iran needs $164/barrel to break even on their budget, $86/barrel for Saudi Arabia, ~$60 for US shale (per Bloomberg). China has already potentially hit peak oil and ~>50% of new vehicle sales are battery electric or plug in hybrids. Oil is over, regardless of this admin's p…

> Oil is over Then why has both global [0] and US [1] consumption been rising year-over-year for the last few years and projected to continue to rise [2]? All those articles you're posting about short term changes in the dynamics of the oil market (except China, which is remains a net energy importer only because of oil, so they have a strong strategic reason to reduce oil depdence, though they still use quite a bit[…

That's like asking "why is the train still moving even though the brakes are on"?

Not very long ago not only was consumption increasing every year, it was increasing at an increasing rate every year. And that increasing rate was itself increasing not so much time before that. We've reversed the 3rd derivate, and we've reversed the 2nd derivative. If the 2nd derivative is negative for sufficient time, the 1st derivative will itself go negative. Looks like it'll happen this year, but the year's not over yet.

The first derivative is consumption. The 0th derivative is amount of carbon in the air. For that to go down would require a carbon negative economy which I don't have much hope for.

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

#77

Post by [deleted] »

crystal_revenge wrote: post #57
toomuchtodo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is global oil oversupply of ~2M-3.7M barrels/day. China destroys ~1M barrels/day of global oil demand for every 24 months of EV production. Iran needs $164/barrel to break even on their budget, $86/barrel for Saudi Arabia, ~$60 for US shale (per Bloomberg). China has already potentially hit peak oil and ~>50% of new vehicle sales are battery electric or plug in hybrids. Oil is over, regardless of this admin's p…

> Oil is over Then why has both global [0] and US [1] consumption been rising year-over-year for the last few years and projected to continue to rise [2]? All those articles you're posting about short term changes in the dynamics of the oil market (except China, which is remains a net energy importer only because of oil, so they have a strong strategic reason to reduce oil depdence, though they still use quite a bit[…

[deleted]

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

#78

Post by RealityVoid »

paxys wrote: post #47
tmellon2 wrote: post #35

Elon Musk mentioned that just a 100 square mile grid of Solar can power the entire USA. I did not believe it; a simple calculation later, I was convinced. The USA of yesteryear would have done this already and more. Sure other sources are required, but honestly we humans have to advance beyond burning dead things for fuel.

Not 100 sq miles but 100 mile x 100 mile, which is 10,000 sq miles. And that assumes peak efficiency. Factoring in degredation you'd have to multiply this by 2. Not "just" by any stretch of the imagination. This is larger than Rhode Island and Lake Erie combined. Aka a pipe dream. Might as well "just" build a dyson sphere while we are at it.

As the Technology Connections dude highlighted, yearly, there are about 50 000 square miles used for ethanol fuel cultivation. We do much bigger and less efficient things for fuel. Distributing this all over the country seems much less pipe dreamy than you assert.

Distributed production is super doable. Of course you won't just put a big square somewhere.

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

#79

Post by subpixel »

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

May the man run for office

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

#80

Post by [deleted] »

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...…

[deleted]
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