71–80 of 260 posts
There was an article recently about how the West Asia war is quickly decarbonising South Asia. Lot of solar and wind projects in the pipeline for SA countries. Especially because now renewables are a national security issue
Oh, snap, did Turkey attack Cyprus again? :-p
What West Asian war? Isn't Iran firmly in the Middle East by any reasonable definition?
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I think that's part of what's notable about this. The administration hasn't been able to reverse the trend despite putting a massive thumb on the scale against projects like offshore wind and tariffs on solar panel imports. There's probably a delay in the effects though since projects started before they took office are probably starting to thin out and finish up. We'd have to look into the permitting of new projects…
A lot of comes from state initiatives too. Texas being conservative also happens to be very pro solar. I’m in the business and we have some great projects there. The US military is also pushing solar at their facilities. Then you have many private-state partnerships like tolls investing a lot in solar. The outlook in general is pretty positive in the US, a lot more than what people would think.
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I think that's part of what's notable about this. The administration hasn't been able to reverse the trend despite putting a massive thumb on the scale against projects like offshore wind and tariffs on solar panel imports. There's probably a delay in the effects though since projects started before they took office are probably starting to thin out and finish up. We'd have to look into the permitting of new projects…
A lot of comes from state initiatives too. Texas being conservative also happens to be very pro solar. I’m in the business and we have some great projects there. The US military is also pushing solar at their facilities. Then you have many private-state partnerships like tolls investing a lot in solar. The outlook in general is pretty positive in the US, a lot more than what people would think.
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The world is, roughly, deploying 1TW/solar PV a year at current rates. It took a while to get here, it won’t take as long to get to 100%. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/installed-solar-pv-capaci...
Storage is the issue. You still need to supply base load (well, all load) at night.
+1 to the Guardian for mentioning their data source, but -1 for not linking to it. +2 for EMBER for having a data source AND being able to link to the parameters that show solar overtaking coal for the month in the US. https://ember-energy.org/data/electricity-data-explorer/?ent...
The latest 2025 summary report[0] has some great information, some top-level call-outs
- Solar power alone met 75% of the net increase in electricity demand. Together with wind, the two sources met almost all (99%) demand growth.
- For the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, and only the fifth time this century, fossil generation did not rise, recording a small fall of 38 TWh (-0.2%)
- For the first time in 100 years, renewables (33.8%, 10,730 TWh) overtook coal power (33.0%, 10,476 TWh) in the global electricity mix...
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Storage is the issue. You still need to supply base load (well, all load) at night.
It's not, grid-scale batteries are being deployed all over the world, and newer batteries keep getting better and cheaper. Storage hasn't been the issue for years.
The former, even a few years ago, I agree. The latter, people were arguing about a year or two ago. (Though your point remains as the trend was clear).
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i think it’s kind of the opposite: balcony solar is good for power companies in the same way that them asking you to turn off your lights is good for power companies: if each customer is using less overall power they can serve more customers with existing infra. that obviously depends on time of use and the sun etc, but balcony solar in the USA can’t come fast enough. my electricity in NYC is almost $.40/kWh, a limit…
That definitely sounds reasonable for balcony, but I was trying to ask if you were able to generate the lion's share of your usage from a DIY or plug and play system would the utilities be against that ? I would think so because that would eat into their profits. If enough people were knocking several cents per kWh off their bills, would they just end up charging more for the infrastructure to make up for the loss? I…
Here in California, PG&E has a "base service fee" of $24/month. That you owe even if they sell you no (as in ZERO) electricity:
https://www.pge.com/en/account/billing-and-assistance/base-s...
Question for those in the know... See lots of press about balcony solar in Germany, and California recently introduced a bill to allow it (I'm guessing other states already allow it; not sure if the CA bill has a chance of becoming law). But how far are we from a more plug and play home solar system that becomes a primary energy source as opposed to a limited secondary source? And what are the issues with it actually…
>how far are we from a more plug and play home solar system that becomes a primary energy source as opposed to a limited secondary source? We don't need a more plug and play system. A zero agreement interconnection for whatever UL certified 300W-ish scale is fine and should be widely deployed. There needing to be interconnection agreements with your utility and an inspection is not a blocker that needs to be removed.…
Perhaps you're just responding because I brought up grid tie (fair!), but I'm wondering why not aspire to remove the blocker, which would mean de-risking the installation so that laypeople could do it without having to get an electrician involved (which is what's so amazing about balcony).
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Contrary to popular belief, solar panels don't generate zero power on cloudy days. They typically generate 10-25% of their maximum output on the cloudiest of days. Most cloudy days are not maximally cloudy. We don't need solar panels everywhere to get even close to ~100% renewables (with nuclear, wind, new geothermal, and hydro). The areas where you put them are distributed enough that it would be exceptionally rare…
But they do generate zero power at night.
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Good point. But one factor is China is also greatly reducing their emissions. For instance, their pollution levels have plummeted after enacting strict controls: https://epic.uchicago.edu/insights/china-has-quickly-and-sha... Still, that is a good point, a lot of the emissions from manufacturing have been shifted to other countries.
>China is also greatly reducing their emissions Are they? because looking at these charts[0], although fossil fuel use as a percent of total energy may be going down, the absolute values for coal, gas and oil only go up year over year. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/china#what-sources...