I don't think this article did the math right. In the linked source from the article (https://ember-energy.org/data/electricity-data-explorer/?ent...), in 03/2026 combined generation from hydro (26 TWh), wind (53), solar (27.7), bioenergy (3.82), and other renewables (1.51) is 112.03 TWh, vs 120 TWh for natural gas. It's still an impressive number but it is still slightly less than natural gas.
For the first time in the U.S., renewables generate more power than natural gas
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Re: For the first time in the U.S., renewables generate more power than natural gas
#72Extending the life of existing power infra is low-hanging fruit for more power short term, but the economics of renewables are just unstoppable. Article states 93% of new generation capacity was renewable which is good, but I can sense that nimbyism is growing towards wind and solar. Not to mention the animus towards China who has wisely cornered manufacturing of these. The US has shot itself in the foot because of i…
What's even more important is how solar, and to a lesser extent other tech, served as a gateway for China to accumulate electrical engineering, physics, and chemistry talent the US seems committed to offshoring by incentivizing universities to hire the cheapest available grad student talent (inevitably from China). We are training them and not our own.
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Re: For the first time in the U.S., renewables generate more power than natural gas
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
nuclear is not useful today. It is too slow to change output as load changes. We need to focus on storage for all the excess power renewables give at the best case, shifting that to worst case-
Stored electricity is much more expensive than nuclear electricity. To replace 1 GW of nuclear running at 92% CF with solar+storage, you need 3-4 GW of solar nameplate plus enough storage to cover nighttime AND multi-day cloudy periods AND seasonal winter deficit. The seasonal piece is what blows up the cost, you'd need weeks of storage, which at current Li-ion prices is economically absurd ($1000s/MWh delivered).
For the few days without wind, natural gas is cheaper than nuclear. There is also biogas and hydro. Nuclear is not cheap to turn on off. Also, the insurance cost of nuclear power is not accounted for: basically, there is no insurance, and the state (the population) just have to live with the risk.
Re: For the first time in the U.S., renewables generate more power than natural gas
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
The wars in Ukraine and irán have also highlighted what a horrendous insecurity nuclear power plants are. A direct missile attack on one could be catastrophic. The idea that such will never happen is as silly as the idea that there will never be an accident or a tsunami. But passive safety won't stop a missile.
> what a horrendous insecurity nuclear power plants are. A direct missile attack on one could be catastrophic The same holds for hydro. Even worse, there would be no time for evacuation. Yet nobody is considering banning dams.
Not in the same ballpark. Chernobyl nearly poisoned the entire continent’s water supply. Nuclear waste is far far worse than excess water.
Re: For the first time in the U.S., renewables generate more power than natural gas
#75Extending the life of existing power infra is low-hanging fruit for more power short term, but the economics of renewables are just unstoppable. Article states 93% of new generation capacity was renewable which is good, but I can sense that nimbyism is growing towards wind and solar. Not to mention the animus towards China who has wisely cornered manufacturing of these. The US has shot itself in the foot because of i…
Some panel manufacturing has been moved to the US and is actually thriving. Qcells keeps growing, year over year and as of 2023 had expanded their US facilities to manufacture more than 5.1 GW[0] of annual production. I'm aware this is a drop in the bucket compared to the estimated 339 GW[1] of annual production in China, but we're also talking about a single manufacturer operating in an actively hostile administration and yet is still managing to grow.
Given this is the top comment on the article at the moment, I thought it was worth at least pushing back on this sentiment at least a little bit.
[0]https://us.qcells.com/blog/qcells-north-america-completes-da...
[1] https://futurism.com/science-energy/solar-energy-china-produ...
Re: For the first time in the U.S., renewables generate more power than natural gas
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
The world's biggest industrial economy, China, installed about 300x more renewable energy than nuclear last year. New nuclear sucks, and baseload is a false concept that can (and is) being synthetically replicated with over-building + storage + transmission + peaking.
Firm/dispatchable capacity that can run for arbitrary durations is required unless you've solved seasonal storage. https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(18)30386-6 Firm low-carbon resources consistently lower decarbonized electricity system costs • Availability of firm low-carbon resources reduces costs 10%–62% in zero-CO2 cases • Without these resources, electricity costs rise rapidly as CO2 limits near zer…
The solution mix needs to be tailored the location.
Non-tropical equatorial countries don't have meaningful seasonality, so they don't need seasonal storage.
For countries far north of the equator, it's more challenging, but there are multiple tools to address this, including: over-building so you have enough in winter, using wind which is seasonally negatively correlated with solar, importing power over HVDC, and diversifying wind spatially to reduce correlations which drop more than linearly in distance.
For small countries very far away from the equator that have highly variable insolation and limited geography to decorrelate, nuclear may be better. But it cannot be asserted a priori without a simulation study tailored to the specifics of that location. When I said that nuclear is bad, I am talking in generalities about the common case (United States) at current market prices.
The paper that you linked is old, we are dealing with exponential change in the price of storage and solar.
Re: For the first time in the U.S., renewables generate more power than natural gas
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
The wars in Ukraine and irán have also highlighted what a horrendous insecurity nuclear power plants are. A direct missile attack on one could be catastrophic. The idea that such will never happen is as silly as the idea that there will never be an accident or a tsunami. But passive safety won't stop a missile.
Saying humanity should never use nuclear energy just because someone might shoot a missile at it is incredibly stupid when CO2 emissions are causing climate change.
If climate change prevention is the target, then its also an no for nuclear.
Nuclear reactors need tons of cement, the fuel needs an complicated and energy intensive process with a lot of waste.
Re: For the first time in the U.S., renewables generate more power than natural gas
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
If we want to have an industrial economy with 24×7 heavy manufacturing then we need nuclear power for the base load. There's no need to change output much. The amount of batteries needed to keep a huge factory running is ridiculous.
The cost of nuclear power is absurd . It's 5x the cost of solar and wind. If you use electricity to synthesize gas and then burn that later to generate electricity that is still cheaper than nuclear power. https://theecologist.org/2016/feb/17/wind-power-windgas-chea... Nobody builds nuclear power because it's cost effective or green. They either have nukes like China or have purchased an option on nukes (like Iran or…
You need to overprovision solar and wind capacity by at minimum 5x for northern latitudes' winter months compared to the summer, plus another few multipliers to keep storage topped up, or invest heavily in HVDC and massively overprovision the southern states.
For that scenario, nuclear is still marginally cheaper (at today's prices at least).
Re: For the first time in the U.S., renewables generate more power than natural gas
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
> what a horrendous insecurity nuclear power plants are. A direct missile attack on one could be catastrophic The same holds for hydro. Even worse, there would be no time for evacuation. Yet nobody is considering banning dams.
Dams are just too good a source to ban them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medog_Hydropower_Station 60 GW planned capacity!
Both are good sources of energy. If you're going to make the argument that "nuclear is unsafe so we shouldn't do it" though, it's relevant to keep in mind that since we've had nuclear power, dam failures have outpaced nuclear by many times in terms of deaths / TwH (1).
Edit to add: Before anyone jumps on for this it's important to note that without the Banquiao disaster the rates are about the same. Still means "nuclear is unsafe" is kind of a red herring.
Re: For the first time in the U.S., renewables generate more power than natural gas
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can we stop with this? It's not a helpful line of thinking or a useful argument. This is the batman vs. superman argument of children at a comic convention. Arguing whether federal highway funding factors in to the cost of coal is absurdly useless. "I wonder how good it could be" It's already here, solar is already dramatically cheaper and has none of the risk profile a global energy market produces. You install sola…
It doesn't seem like a silly argument to me, and certainly not moralizing. Rather "I wonder..." seems to be an indirectly phrased request for information, an open invitation for somebody who has seen the numbers to provide a link. But I do think I get your point - the subsidies are there so we should compare the costs as they are.
I also acknowledge that we need energy for pretty much everything, so finding ways to make it cheaper enables a whole range of industrial activity as well.
It’s quite intriguing that we haven’t been able to come up with solid energy policies in the recent decades and it’s all about rent seeking behavior of existing providers that’s holding us back. I don’t understand why we can enable things like Uber/Lyft to disrupt the taxi madalyon system, but become very protective about certain industries, even when it’s in our best interest to explore those areas in detail (regardless of the result).