While I'm concerned about the environmental challenges of reversing the trend and increasing energy consumption, I'm happy that people are living in more comfortable homes, that the Amercian industrial base is being restored, that more and better services are being provided (better healthcare, inexpensive and healthy food, comfortable, efficient and inexpensive transportation).
That is what we're using this electricity for, right?
> That is what we're using this electricity for, right?
Yes, amongst others.
> increasing energy consumption, I'm happy that people are living in more comfortable homes, that the Amercian industrial base is being restored, that more and better services are being provided (better healthcare, inexpensive and healthy food, comfortable, efficient and inexpensive transportation).
Over the last 25 years, we've the seen the following change across the dimensions you picked:
Energy consumption: +15%
Population: +21%
Hospitals (hospital sector size as a function using employment as proxy): +45-50%
Homes: +27-30%
Food production: +23-25%
Transportation (vehicle miles travelled): +14-16%
------
Some take-aways:
Population grew faster than energy and transportation, implying major efficiency gains.
Housing stock outpaced population, reflecting smaller household sizes and more single-person households.
Healthcare expanded far faster than population, a structural shift rather than demographic necessity.
Food production grew roughly in line with population, but without proportional land expansion productivity gains.
Transportation growth lagged housing growth, suggesting more remote work, urbanization, and efficiency.
> Housing stock outpaced population, reflecting smaller household sizes and more single-person households.
Or rich people owning more vacation homes.
> Healthcare expanded far faster than population, a structural shift rather than demographic necessity.
What? It could easily be the population getting older and/or sicker. Even if it was a structural shift, it could be in the negative direction ie less efficiency.
> Food production grew roughly in line with population, but without proportional land expansion productivity gains.
What land expansion? You didn't include that in your stats. And no source to verify.
There is a push to switch from fossil fuel to electricity across the board, and that’s a good thing.
Cars are the big one. However even heating is going electric (heat pumps, not resistive). Induction stovetops outperform residential gas cooktops. Some cities are even experimenting with phasing out natural gas hookups for new construction.
It all adds up, and it a good thing. It doesn’t explain 100% of the growth but it’s a lot of it.
> Amercian industrial base is being restored, that more and better services are being provided (better healthcare, inexpensive and healthy food, comfortable, efficient and inexpensive transportation).
Trying to put concepts like “better healthcare” on to the growth of electricity demand is unrealistic but generally speaking we’re putting electricity to good use. It’s not being wasted.
We are indeed living in more comfortable homes. Americans are migrating to the sunbelt because of ample AC in the summer and the winters are pleasant. that’s a big part of why we have many fewer heat deaths per capita than Europe: https://www.thetimes-tribune.com/2025/08/02/opinion-us-heat-...
You don’t realize how nice it is to live and work in air conditioned spaces until visiting a part of Europe where AC is viewed with disdain for reasons I still don’t understand.
Also the move to electric heat pumps is increasing electricity rates but reducing natural gas usage and improving overall efficient.
The GP comment was trying to do snarky doomerism but accidentally hit upon a lot of truths. It’s amazing how many things are getting better but some people are hell bent on being cynical about it anyway.
Europe is so backwards when it comes to annual heat deaths that they manage to have more heat deaths per year than the US has gun deaths + heat deaths combined. You won't hear about that from Europeans though, it'd make them seem barbaric. 175,000 heat deaths per year in Europe according to the WHO. It's a staggering genocide of technological primitiveness. Imagine having millions of people die because you can't be bothered to adopt 1950s technology (and of course I'm aware of the things the US is backwards on).
I spoke with two working class people last week who are facing power shutoffs because they got an unexpected $700 power bill. Not sure if it were a sneaky electricity supplier change or if costs have simply gone up.
But the problem of consumer rates just always ratcheting up needs addressed.
Electricity prices are heavily regulated. The largest increase I can find from a short search is around 20% for some customers in New Jersey. The average year over year increase is closer to 6%
Unexpectedly high electricity bills are almost always from actual usage. Unexpectedly high winter electricity bills are usually from resistive electric heating in one way or another.
You didn’t mention their normal December bill in this exact house, which is an important piece of information.
That happens when people are on variable rate or TOU plans, it's very common. "sneaky" may or not be part of it, since ostensibly there's a contract that defines the terms of the electrical service, so it shouldn't be a surprise. But for a lot of folks it's a lot to keep track of, there can be confusing terminology, and yes, some energy retailers are predatory in their plan marketing or contract terms. It's a double edged sword of free market choice in deregulated markets. People that have choices for their energy supply don't always have the time and knowledge to optimize their plan choices and electricity use to get "optimum" pricing. This is why there's pushback in some areas that have had deregulated energy markets to go back to regulated pricing, the "average consumer" isn't seeing the payoff of the free market (even if that is technically "their fault").
Why are you against increasing energy consumption? Increasing energy consumption is what pulled the world out of the feudal, warlord misery of the past. Maybe switch the focus of this feeling towards being against pollution or something that is a negative. Just being against energy consumption is quite regressive and anti-human.
the US is not a planned economy. if it was, computers would exist only to guide missiles and operate industrial machinery, and you would be mining coal, farming wheat, or manning an assembly line for a living.
> China is not a planned economy. If it was, recent electric vehicles and battery technology would exist only to guide missiles and operate industrial machinery...
Some of the economy should be encouraged with heavy subsidy or though DoD purchases.
It's worked out well for us in the past.
Wind and solar, nuclear, EVs, manufacturing, robots, chips, and drones should be helped along by the state.
We would be stupid not to spend in these categories.
We should also build out chemical inputs manufacture, rare earths refining, pharmaceutical manufacture, etc. to support the work that happens downstream and to be less fragile to supply chain disruption.
A multi-polar world is inherently less stable and demands more self-sufficiency.
Its not a planned economy by the government, because the US is an oligarchy. The billionaires are deciding how the government should plan investments in infrastructure and social policies.
They have been able to lower the taxes that affect the richest (big beautiful bill) and cut spending on social programs (Medicaid).
So it surely looks to me like the US economy is following a plan, just not the one that's in the best interest of the population -- which is OP's original criticism.
Solar can be deployed by hundreds of thousands of individual efforts and financing at the same time, with almost no bureaucracy. It starts to produce electricity basically the same day.
I can't imagine anything being able to compete with that for speed and scale - or costs, for that matter. Once deployed it's basically free.
The issue is that works perfectly well when solar is a small % of the grid, but when that number grows, then you need grid scale solutions and coordination for things to continue working well. And that requires both technical skill and political will.
This isn’t remotely true. Solar / wind / nuclear / coal / gas / any electrical source including from neighboring grids can be inbound or outbound from your grid using, the grid. There are capacitors and transformers, relays and transmission lines. Any energy source can provide power. Solar used to give money back to its owners by selling power back to the grid but they killed that initiative quickly and will just use your energy you provide.
The issues you describe are from coal, oil, and gas lobbyists saying solar isn’t viable because of nighttime. When the grid is made up of batteries…
If every house had solar and some LiFePo batteries on site, high demand can be pulled from the grid while during low demand and high production, it can be given to the grid. The energy companies can store it, hydropower or batteries, for later. We have the ability. The political will is simply the lobbyists giving people money so they won’t. But we can just do it anyway. Start with your own home.
Solar is highly distributed. At the most basic level with a solar & battery system the production and consumption and CONTROL are all yours. You own it and it's literally on your property.
Refinements on ways to sell it to neighbours / recharge various EV's / use it for new purposes are all up to you.
There are lots of analogies to self hosting or concepts around owning and controlling your own data, when it's owned by you, you retain soverignty and full rights on what happens.
I'd expect most tech people will value the distributed nature of solar over equivilents, that by design require centralisation and commerical/state ownership and control.
Get your solar, back increasingly distributed approaches, let those pushing centralised agendas be the ones to pay for their grid. Eventually they are forced to change.
As we're finding in Australia, our high solar uptake by citizens.. is pressuring governments to respond, lest their centralised options become redundant. What we found is that as more people moved to solar, the power companies lumped the costs for grid maintenance onto those who hadnt moved yet, actually contributing to even further accelerated solar adoption and pressure to rework the system. Big corporates can lobby for themselves you dont owe them your custom.
The Australian grid shows that when solar is the dominant part of the grid, it can still work pretty well. But you need to plan for when the sun is not shining and adapt to the notion that base load translates as "expensive power that you can't turn off when you need to" rather than "essential power that is always there when needed". The notion of having more than that when a lot of renewables are going to come online by the tens of GW is not necessarily wise from a financial point of view.
That's why coal plants are disappearing rapidly. And gas plants are increasingly operating in peaker plant mode (i.e. not providing base load). Also battery (domestic and grid) is being deployed rapidly and actively incentivized. And there are a lot of investments in things like grid forming inverters so that small communities aren't dependent on a long cable to some coal plant far away.
The economics of all this are adding up. Solar is the cheapest source of energy. Batteries are getting cheap as well. And the rest is just stuff you need to maintain a reliable energy system. None of this is cheap but it's cheaper than the alternative which would be burning coal and gas. And of course home owners figuring out that solar + batteries earn themselves back in a few short years is kind of forcing the issue.
Australian grid prices are coming down a lot because they are spending less and less on gas and coal. The evening peak is now flattened because of batteries. They actually have negative rates for power during the day. You can charge your car or battery for free for a few hours when there's so much solar on the grid that they prefer to not charge you than to shut down the base load of coal/gas at great cost. Gas plants are still there for bridging any gaps in supply.
(Home) batteries are quickly becoming cheap and per-hour electricity rates can be implemented at a reasonable time. With that, the grid owner can influence the grid stability without having to build capacity or generation itself.
We see that quite often here in the summer as the energy price sometimes drops to minus 60ct/kWh (more often it hovers around -5 to -10). It is pretty much "please use everything now" to avoid grid issues. It often happens on very clear days with lots of wind.
The bigger issue, at least in the US, is that there is a huge lack of supply in the equipment to connect to the grid at the moment. Backlogs are still 1-3 years after order, not terrible but still an issue deploying.
i wonder if ppl's electricity consumption habits will change in response to this, idk like turning the heat way up during the day or using high power appliances more during the day
So your implication that other sources of energy currently do not need scaling coordination somehow? I fail to see how that is true, maybe you can provide some insights?
Well as we all know the political will in this country seems to generally be "let's all commit suicide together", but perhaps mass installations of solar will provide material reason to improve conditions somewhat.
Solar can't produce electricity at night, it's hardly a a credible sole competitor if the power surge requires a constant power supply. Renewables are most of the time coupled with gas power plants to handle this.
It’s too bad solar degrades over time. I think it’d be more of a no-brainer if we could actually manufacture it at scale domestically without it losing its efficiency over a 15 year period.
> It’s too bad solar degrades over time... without it losing its efficiency over a 15 year period.
Google says they degrade to 80-90% capacity over 25-30 years, which is ~double your 15 year time period. I've also previously seen people claiming that they then stabilise around the 80% level, and that we don't really know how long their total possible lifespan is because many extant solar panels are outliving their 25 year rated lifespans.
Capacity reduced to 80% won't work for some high-performance use cases, but is pretty decent for most.
>without it losing its efficiency over a 15 year period.
Why is this such a dealbreaker like you make it out to be? It's easily fixed by over-provisioning to account for future losses. Not to mention that power grids almost always have more capacity than what's needed, to account for future growth and maintenance downtime.
Not all australia is moving g at the same speed. Check south Australia, and it is a massive success. The difference is that the government invested in renewewals, along with solar in rooftops. As SA is smaller they did not had pressure from lobbies. Now, are almost 100% renewal energy all year long.
What about behind the meter fossil fuel for datacenters? The underlying Ember one [0] is nearly all about the grid, with mention of behind the meter solar data being incomplete.
The cognitive dissonance around optimism regarding renewables and the fact that there are multiple military actions going on around the globe right now focused exclusively on extracting more fossil fuels from the ground is a bit much sometimes.
Why do people even pretend like we haven't signed up for "what's worse than the worse case scenario?" as far as climate goes?
The only way to reduce the already severe impacts of global warming are to keep fossil fuels in the ground. It doesn't matter how much energy is generated by solar so long as we continue to dig up and burn fossil fuels. It's quite clear that we have zero intentions of slowing down or even keeping our fossil fuel consumption steady.
If we had record electricity demand, and anything short of 100% of it was covered by renewables, that means we're burning more fossil fuels then we were before.
We have, pretty unequivocally at this point, signed up for seeing what the end game of civilization looks like rather than realistically exploring or even considering any alternatives.
So the increase was 3.1% and it was "fourth largest in the last decade", which means, "barely above average growth rate". Considering that economy growth rate was the fastest in a decade except 2021 which was a covid recovery year, it doesn't really show anything abnormal at all.
Did "demand surge" or was excess peak power sold of for nearly 0 to people that can spin up and turn off load on the turn of a dime (crypto)? We have had negative pricing (they pay you to take the power) to stabilize the grid due to solar/wind peaks.
The book Here Comes the Sun by Bill McKibben is a really great read on the changing economics of solar. It came out August 2025 so its fairly up to date too.
It really depends on how you write the headline. "US electricity demand surges in 2025 while new utility-scale solar installations decrease from 2024" is equally accurate. It's unclear what the future holds if the trend remains down or flat.
I've thought about installing solar panels on my roof for years. But when I factor in installation costs, it never makes sense because the local energy rates are pretty reasonable... Also, I live in Southeast, a place with plenty of sun but nowhere near the Southwest.
Solar panel prices fell hugely in the past years. Is there anything that could significantly reduce installation costs?
Parts/materials costs in contractor quotes are often padded so they aren't completely overshadowed by the labor portion. In any job where there's specialized knowledge or license restrictions (HVAC) or risk (walking on a roof), the floor for labor rates is usually 2-4x the materials cost.
But, the real issue is that almost nobody pays cash upfront for their solar install. Between incentives, loans, and/or predatory PPAs, the prices lose touch with reality. See healthcare, college tuition, housing prices, etc. for similar scenarios where credit or third-parties distort the market.
Residential is expensive anyway, larger installations are plenty viable. My town in a northern Michigan is installing solar to help stabilize the rates they offer (I pay about 11 cents per kWh).
It is definitely true that the labor cost of a solar installation is the largest driver of cost. In my area, there are solar incentives to offset this. For example I was able to cover a large portion of the loan with a 0% interest rate through a state program. For the remaining portion my bank had a low(er) interest loan (like 5%) specifically for solar. And neither of these loans were home equity loans which psychologically made me happier to apply for them.
Another thing, if you have the space, is to consider a ground mount. Ground mount hardware adds a little cost, but it is a lot easier for a solar installer to set up, so they finish faster. Since labor is the biggest driver of cost, then it makes sense to build a very big array that doesn’t just offset your operating costs but completely eliminates it (well, net-eliminates it anyway).
Yeah solar viability is highly dependent on your local conditions and electricity costs. Also on your utility’s buyback program.
I have low electricity costs, no time of use pricing, and I don’t think I can sell back. I also live in a very cloudy city. So solar doesn’t make much sense!
Where I live in the west, the time to break even was projected at 7.5y for panels rated that run at 85% for 25y and expected lifetime of 30y.
I think the main consideration where I live is whether you can make the investment and if you plan on staying in your house long enough to realize the benefit. Also nearly all of the power I offset is from coal.
»US electricity demand jumped by 135 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2025, a 3.1% increase, the fourth‑largest annual rise of the past decade. Over that same period, solar generation grew by a record 83 TWh – a 27% increase from 2024 and the biggest absolute gain of any power source. That single jump in solar output covered 61% of all new electricity demand nationwide.«
This article equates generation with consumption which is a fallacy.
Lots of solar and wind generation is actually produced without meeting demand meaning that the generated electricity often has to be wasted.
So I'm reading it correctly, 39& of "the surge" was covered by traditional energy sources. Which still means use of traditional sources increased. Correct?
I guess the good news is, solar is available when demand is highest. Nonetheless, is it helping to solve a problem or is it serving more as an enabler of the status quo?
First, US demand increased by 3.1%. That is bad - demand should be going down, since there is a need to conserve electricity while much of it is provided by CO2-emitting sources. That said - it is not such a huge "surge" that the fact that 61% of it was covered by an increase in Solar capacity is so impressive.
Second, Solar generation is said to have reached 84 TW. But if the increase in demand was 135 TW, and that's just 3.1% of total demand, then total demand is 4355 TW, and Solar accounts for 1.92% of generation. That is _really_ bad. Since we must get to near-0 emissions in electricity generation ASAP to avoid even harsher effects of global warming; and most of the non-Solar generation in the US is by Natural Gas and Coal [1].
You could nitpick and say that the important stat is "total renewables" rather than just Solar, and that the US has a lot of Nuclear, and that's technically true, but it's not as though Nuclear output is surging, and it has more obstacles and challenges, for reasons. So, the big surge to expect in the US is Solar - and we're only seeing very little of that. If you mis-contextualize it sounds like a lot: "60% of new demand! 27% increase since last year!" but that's not the right context.
The title is disgusting click bait with the hopes to falsely make the reader believe that Solar covered 61% of the total annual power need and not just the YoY delta.
Confusing headline (on purpose I'm sure). No, solar didn't handle 61% of total energy demand. It handled 61% of the so-called "surge" - 3% growth over the prior year.
Not saying this is relevant in solar vs nuclear debate but "eco nerds" are probably not happy about new demand of additional 52TWh or part of it that is not covered by renewables/nuclear.
It's so frustrating discussing topics you know about on HN because you get so many software developers, which naturally know everything, that make comments like this.
Solar does not 'just work' - in the US it's a crisis in the making. Power prices in several areas of the grid routinely go negative because the grid is a zero sum game - there is very little storage so what goes in must exactly match what goes out or grid frequency deviations and eventually blackouts happen. This is much more likely to happen once undispatchable resources climb past a certain threshold in our generation mix.
To fix this we need massive storage and transmission investment, like moon landing and WW2 put together. We desperately need to do that before we add more non-dispatchable generation.
Solar with storage is an amazing resource. Without storage it's counterproductive if it's grid tied.
> Solar with storage is an amazing resource. Without storage it's counterproductive if it's grid tied.
Solar creates the economic incentive for storage. Without solar coming first, storage cannot occur.
You can see this in California. In the beginning, it made sense to install only solar, because energy developers are compensated at the margin. Once the grid is saturated with solar, then the marginal economics changes in response to the duck curve, and storage starts to make economic sense.
If you block solar, you block storage. To believe otherwise is to be ignorant of the temporal aspect of the economics.
Solar is not dispatchable like a gas power plant is as the sun needs to shine to produce electricity. But it can very much be curtailed to any percentage you want. And that is being done globally every day exactly when it would be uneconomical to generate that electricity.
Interestingly this is as opposed to nuclear energy, which is basically never curtailed and always runs at 100% unless needed for maintenance or safety. Which is one of the main factors why nuclear energy is not economical anymore in a modern grid that values flexibility over constant generation.
But respectfully isn't the crisis more in the American political system and regulation? And surely large scale solar farms/batery storage connected to a supergrid (or whatever they are called) are a relatively good fit for this kind of legacy grid.
Contrary opinion: too much farmland is being turned over to solar. Our regulatory systems are not working. Land that once produced food now produces electricity. Turning a food farm into solar is too easy (ie cheap). The land is flat and there are nearby roads and electricity networks. And who is going to tell a farmer how to best use thier land? But the world needs more than datacenters. The world needs food.
Solar should be installed on unproductive land. Buildings should be covered in panels. Carparks should have solar roofs. If i were king of zoning, every new construction would be required to cover say 50% of thier footprint in panels. That is the direction to go. We should not continue to convert farmland.
A total parody, but on point. "Can I Beat Farming Sim WITHOUT FARMING?" - The Spiffing Brit
I'll bite: the US dedicates about 5 billion bushels of corn a year to ethanol production [0], which is basically solar with extra steps. At a generous yield of 190 bushels/acre [1], this is 26 million acres dedicated to ethanol production (WRI puts it at 30m [2]).
Depending on who you ask, it would take somewhere between 2.5 [3] and 13.5 million acres [4] of solar to supply total US electricity demand, including storage and maintenance etc. We could double it to be safe and account for the reduction in ethanol production, and it would still all fit within the land currently used for corn ethanol. (btw this works out to a >10x increase in efficiency over ethanol.)
Of course I do agree that there's lots of less productive land (desert in the west, grazing land in the plains, and parking lots/rooftops everywhere) that should be used when available. But even in the midwest and east the land use is not a problem.
But there are also millions of acres of corn being grown solely for the purpose of ethanol. A lot of that acreage could be better off utilized as solar farms
There are a lot of places where solar panels can increase yield for specific plants by providing a shade. They also can generate electricity to run electrical pumps for targeted irrigation saving a lot of water.
Ya, but that isnt as widespread as fields being rededicated from crops generally to solar exclusively. And mixed use doesnt mesh well in a world of crop rotation and crop-specific harvesting equipment. I have yet to see a combine that can drive over solar panels without touching them.
There should be a minimum level of expertise or commitment to the truth so that publication who certainly think of themselves as major league or factual don't publish blatantly false statements like this.
Yes, demand rose, and solar panels were installed whose capacity was about 60% of the new demand, but to say solar handled 60% of new capacity is blatantly false.
As someone who owns solar panels, I'm painfully aware that there can be days, weeks of bad weather when there's barely any generation. But even at the best of times, solar has a hard time covering for the demand of something like data centers which suck down insane amount of juice round the clock.
There's also no information about whether these data centers are located to be close to solar farms, and we know that in many cases, they're not.
I think it's incredibly fishy. If I add a 1MW coal plant to the grid, I can pretty much run it at nominal capacity all year round, so 1MW * hours in the year is afair calculation.
If I add the same 1MW for solar, needless to say even assuming perfect weather, I'm lucky to get 1/3rd of that. Under real circumstances, the numbers are probably much worse.
When looking at marketing, I think it's always safe to assume they picked the most flattering numbers when they didn't specify how they made the calculation.
That's why it's very meaningful to talk about adding kWh - 1 kWh peak solar means more in Texas than in Chicago. It's even less meaningful for batteries - they can sustain incredible currents, to the point it's very rarely the meaningful bottleneck.
Yet that's exactly that what the cited 'global think-tank' Ember did, which the article cites as source. So they either misled on purpose, or like a lot of people, they confused GWh and GW, which is such a grave error for a supposed expert, that their whole analysis should be disregarded.
While I'm concerned about the environmental challenges of reversing the trend and increasing energy consumption, I'm happy that people are living in more comfortable homes, that the Amercian industrial base is being restored, that more and better services are being provided (better healthcare, inexpensive and healthy food, comfortable, efficient and inexpensive transportation).
That is what we're using this electricity for, right?
> That is what we're using this electricity for, right?
Yes, amongst others.
> increasing energy consumption, I'm happy that people are living in more comfortable homes, that the Amercian industrial base is being restored, that more and better services are being provided (better healthcare, inexpensive and healthy food, comfortable, efficient and inexpensive transportation).
Over the last 25 years, we've the seen the following change across the dimensions you picked:
Energy consumption: +15%
Population: +21%
Hospitals (hospital sector size as a function using employment as proxy): +45-50%
Homes: +27-30%
Food production: +23-25%
Transportation (vehicle miles travelled): +14-16%
------
Some take-aways:
Population grew faster than energy and transportation, implying major efficiency gains.
Housing stock outpaced population, reflecting smaller household sizes and more single-person households.
Healthcare expanded far faster than population, a structural shift rather than demographic necessity.
Food production grew roughly in line with population, but without proportional land expansion productivity gains.
Transportation growth lagged housing growth, suggesting more remote work, urbanization, and efficiency.
[flagged]
You have a lot of assumptions in your takeaways.
> Housing stock outpaced population, reflecting smaller household sizes and more single-person households.
Or rich people owning more vacation homes.
> Healthcare expanded far faster than population, a structural shift rather than demographic necessity.
What? It could easily be the population getting older and/or sicker. Even if it was a structural shift, it could be in the negative direction ie less efficiency.
> Food production grew roughly in line with population, but without proportional land expansion productivity gains.
What land expansion? You didn't include that in your stats. And no source to verify.
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There is a push to switch from fossil fuel to electricity across the board, and that’s a good thing.
Cars are the big one. However even heating is going electric (heat pumps, not resistive). Induction stovetops outperform residential gas cooktops. Some cities are even experimenting with phasing out natural gas hookups for new construction.
It all adds up, and it a good thing. It doesn’t explain 100% of the growth but it’s a lot of it.
> Amercian industrial base is being restored, that more and better services are being provided (better healthcare, inexpensive and healthy food, comfortable, efficient and inexpensive transportation).
Trying to put concepts like “better healthcare” on to the growth of electricity demand is unrealistic but generally speaking we’re putting electricity to good use. It’s not being wasted.
In Vancouver, Canada natural gas was completely phased out as of the beginning of 2025 in most new construction.
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We are indeed living in more comfortable homes. Americans are migrating to the sunbelt because of ample AC in the summer and the winters are pleasant. that’s a big part of why we have many fewer heat deaths per capita than Europe: https://www.thetimes-tribune.com/2025/08/02/opinion-us-heat-...
You don’t realize how nice it is to live and work in air conditioned spaces until visiting a part of Europe where AC is viewed with disdain for reasons I still don’t understand.
Also the move to electric heat pumps is increasing electricity rates but reducing natural gas usage and improving overall efficient.
The GP comment was trying to do snarky doomerism but accidentally hit upon a lot of truths. It’s amazing how many things are getting better but some people are hell bent on being cynical about it anyway.
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Europe is so backwards when it comes to annual heat deaths that they manage to have more heat deaths per year than the US has gun deaths + heat deaths combined. You won't hear about that from Europeans though, it'd make them seem barbaric. 175,000 heat deaths per year in Europe according to the WHO. It's a staggering genocide of technological primitiveness. Imagine having millions of people die because you can't be bothered to adopt 1950s technology (and of course I'm aware of the things the US is backwards on).
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I spoke with two working class people last week who are facing power shutoffs because they got an unexpected $700 power bill. Not sure if it were a sneaky electricity supplier change or if costs have simply gone up.
But the problem of consumer rates just always ratcheting up needs addressed.
Electricity prices are heavily regulated. The largest increase I can find from a short search is around 20% for some customers in New Jersey. The average year over year increase is closer to 6%
Unexpectedly high electricity bills are almost always from actual usage. Unexpectedly high winter electricity bills are usually from resistive electric heating in one way or another.
You didn’t mention their normal December bill in this exact house, which is an important piece of information.
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That happens when people are on variable rate or TOU plans, it's very common. "sneaky" may or not be part of it, since ostensibly there's a contract that defines the terms of the electrical service, so it shouldn't be a surprise. But for a lot of folks it's a lot to keep track of, there can be confusing terminology, and yes, some energy retailers are predatory in their plan marketing or contract terms. It's a double edged sword of free market choice in deregulated markets. People that have choices for their energy supply don't always have the time and knowledge to optimize their plan choices and electricity use to get "optimum" pricing. This is why there's pushback in some areas that have had deregulated energy markets to go back to regulated pricing, the "average consumer" isn't seeing the payoff of the free market (even if that is technically "their fault").
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Prices only go one way. Without inflation, debt has to be repaid in more expensive $'s than it was created in and the whole system goes boom.
Why are you against increasing energy consumption? Increasing energy consumption is what pulled the world out of the feudal, warlord misery of the past. Maybe switch the focus of this feeling towards being against pollution or something that is a negative. Just being against energy consumption is quite regressive and anti-human.
And slavery is what pushed certain empires and colonies to riches, that doesn't mean we keep doing it forever expecting positive returns
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the US is not a planned economy. if it was, computers would exist only to guide missiles and operate industrial machinery, and you would be mining coal, farming wheat, or manning an assembly line for a living.
> China is not a planned economy. If it was, recent electric vehicles and battery technology would exist only to guide missiles and operate industrial machinery...
It is now, haven't you heard? Computers are reserved for LLMs only.
The US was a planned economy during wwii fwiw
Some of the economy should be encouraged with heavy subsidy or though DoD purchases.
It's worked out well for us in the past.
Wind and solar, nuclear, EVs, manufacturing, robots, chips, and drones should be helped along by the state.
We would be stupid not to spend in these categories.
We should also build out chemical inputs manufacture, rare earths refining, pharmaceutical manufacture, etc. to support the work that happens downstream and to be less fragile to supply chain disruption.
A multi-polar world is inherently less stable and demands more self-sufficiency.
Its not a planned economy by the government, because the US is an oligarchy. The billionaires are deciding how the government should plan investments in infrastructure and social policies.
They have been able to lower the taxes that affect the richest (big beautiful bill) and cut spending on social programs (Medicaid).
So it surely looks to me like the US economy is following a plan, just not the one that's in the best interest of the population -- which is OP's original criticism.
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…and I wouldn’t have to read this kind of drivel. Sounds like a blessing.
It’s a political imperative to get rid of everybody who thinks increasing energy consumption is a bad thing.
Is that sarcastic? I'm not sure. Healthcare, food, transportation, and housing are becoming much more expensive and less affordable.
I’m guessing there’s a strong “/S” after this post..
Better: advertising!
Forgot /s
That’s what I was thinking, clearly sarcasm because none of that is true.
> That is what we're using this electricity for, right?
Ok, I'll say it: it's for AI datacenters to train chat bots.
You know, we don't have any choice! We need more power. It's getting so tough to get something to tell Trump he isn't totally fucking up America.
Solar can be deployed by hundreds of thousands of individual efforts and financing at the same time, with almost no bureaucracy. It starts to produce electricity basically the same day.
I can't imagine anything being able to compete with that for speed and scale - or costs, for that matter. Once deployed it's basically free.
The issue is that works perfectly well when solar is a small % of the grid, but when that number grows, then you need grid scale solutions and coordination for things to continue working well. And that requires both technical skill and political will.
This isn’t remotely true. Solar / wind / nuclear / coal / gas / any electrical source including from neighboring grids can be inbound or outbound from your grid using, the grid. There are capacitors and transformers, relays and transmission lines. Any energy source can provide power. Solar used to give money back to its owners by selling power back to the grid but they killed that initiative quickly and will just use your energy you provide.
The issues you describe are from coal, oil, and gas lobbyists saying solar isn’t viable because of nighttime. When the grid is made up of batteries…
If every house had solar and some LiFePo batteries on site, high demand can be pulled from the grid while during low demand and high production, it can be given to the grid. The energy companies can store it, hydropower or batteries, for later. We have the ability. The political will is simply the lobbyists giving people money so they won’t. But we can just do it anyway. Start with your own home.
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Solar is highly distributed. At the most basic level with a solar & battery system the production and consumption and CONTROL are all yours. You own it and it's literally on your property.
Refinements on ways to sell it to neighbours / recharge various EV's / use it for new purposes are all up to you.
There are lots of analogies to self hosting or concepts around owning and controlling your own data, when it's owned by you, you retain soverignty and full rights on what happens.
I'd expect most tech people will value the distributed nature of solar over equivilents, that by design require centralisation and commerical/state ownership and control.
Get your solar, back increasingly distributed approaches, let those pushing centralised agendas be the ones to pay for their grid. Eventually they are forced to change.
As we're finding in Australia, our high solar uptake by citizens.. is pressuring governments to respond, lest their centralised options become redundant. What we found is that as more people moved to solar, the power companies lumped the costs for grid maintenance onto those who hadnt moved yet, actually contributing to even further accelerated solar adoption and pressure to rework the system. Big corporates can lobby for themselves you dont owe them your custom.
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You are not wrong.
The Australian grid shows that when solar is the dominant part of the grid, it can still work pretty well. But you need to plan for when the sun is not shining and adapt to the notion that base load translates as "expensive power that you can't turn off when you need to" rather than "essential power that is always there when needed". The notion of having more than that when a lot of renewables are going to come online by the tens of GW is not necessarily wise from a financial point of view.
That's why coal plants are disappearing rapidly. And gas plants are increasingly operating in peaker plant mode (i.e. not providing base load). Also battery (domestic and grid) is being deployed rapidly and actively incentivized. And there are a lot of investments in things like grid forming inverters so that small communities aren't dependent on a long cable to some coal plant far away.
The economics of all this are adding up. Solar is the cheapest source of energy. Batteries are getting cheap as well. And the rest is just stuff you need to maintain a reliable energy system. None of this is cheap but it's cheaper than the alternative which would be burning coal and gas. And of course home owners figuring out that solar + batteries earn themselves back in a few short years is kind of forcing the issue.
Australian grid prices are coming down a lot because they are spending less and less on gas and coal. The evening peak is now flattened because of batteries. They actually have negative rates for power during the day. You can charge your car or battery for free for a few hours when there's so much solar on the grid that they prefer to not charge you than to shut down the base load of coal/gas at great cost. Gas plants are still there for bridging any gaps in supply.
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(Home) batteries are quickly becoming cheap and per-hour electricity rates can be implemented at a reasonable time. With that, the grid owner can influence the grid stability without having to build capacity or generation itself.
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We see that quite often here in the summer as the energy price sometimes drops to minus 60ct/kWh (more often it hovers around -5 to -10). It is pretty much "please use everything now" to avoid grid issues. It often happens on very clear days with lots of wind.
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The bigger issue, at least in the US, is that there is a huge lack of supply in the equipment to connect to the grid at the moment. Backlogs are still 1-3 years after order, not terrible but still an issue deploying.
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i wonder if ppl's electricity consumption habits will change in response to this, idk like turning the heat way up during the day or using high power appliances more during the day
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Storage exists? Now down to $50/kWh.
Same method. Massive scale, trivial to deploy, works with barely any maintenance.
So your implication that other sources of energy currently do not need scaling coordination somehow? I fail to see how that is true, maybe you can provide some insights?
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Well as we all know the political will in this country seems to generally be "let's all commit suicide together", but perhaps mass installations of solar will provide material reason to improve conditions somewhat.
> Solar can be deployed... with almost no bureaucracy.
It can be.
Unless existing bureaucracy doesn't want that.
Solar can't produce electricity at night, it's hardly a a credible sole competitor if the power surge requires a constant power supply. Renewables are most of the time coupled with gas power plants to handle this.
You don't need solar to be 100% perfect to be useful
It's really a shame, a damned shame, that we haven't invented batteries yet.
Combined with batteries it is also very resilient
Yes, great feature. Unfortunately, to the status quo, it's a bug.
A lot of the opposition to it is vibes based at this point.
Big industrial projects. Big power plants. Big finance. Real men.
It’s silly. If you want a real men trip get into body building and MMA or something and use solar power.
It’s too bad solar degrades over time. I think it’d be more of a no-brainer if we could actually manufacture it at scale domestically without it losing its efficiency over a 15 year period.
> It’s too bad solar degrades over time... without it losing its efficiency over a 15 year period.
Google says they degrade to 80-90% capacity over 25-30 years, which is ~double your 15 year time period. I've also previously seen people claiming that they then stabilise around the 80% level, and that we don't really know how long their total possible lifespan is because many extant solar panels are outliving their 25 year rated lifespans.
Capacity reduced to 80% won't work for some high-performance use cases, but is pretty decent for most.
>without it losing its efficiency over a 15 year period.
Why is this such a dealbreaker like you make it out to be? It's easily fixed by over-provisioning to account for future losses. Not to mention that power grids almost always have more capacity than what's needed, to account for future growth and maintenance downtime.
Here's a good podcast (with written transcript) about what's happening in Australia.
https://www.volts.wtf/p/whats-the-real-story-with-australian
The difference in the permitting process between Australia and US is staggering.
Australia is still highly dependent on coal. They’re not a prime example of how to decarbonize an electricity grid.
If you want a good example, rather look at France!
Not all australia is moving g at the same speed. Check south Australia, and it is a massive success. The difference is that the government invested in renewewals, along with solar in rooftops. As SA is smaller they did not had pressure from lobbies. Now, are almost 100% renewal energy all year long.
It can be done.
Since 2005 France has deployed as much solar and wind generation as they've removed nuclear, about 10-15%.
You probably meant late 20th Century France, when better renewable alternatives didn't exist, not current 21st century France.
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What about behind the meter fossil fuel for datacenters? The underlying Ember one [0] is nearly all about the grid, with mention of behind the meter solar data being incomplete.
[0] https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/solar-met-61-of-us-...
The cognitive dissonance around optimism regarding renewables and the fact that there are multiple military actions going on around the globe right now focused exclusively on extracting more fossil fuels from the ground is a bit much sometimes.
Why do people even pretend like we haven't signed up for "what's worse than the worse case scenario?" as far as climate goes?
The only way to reduce the already severe impacts of global warming are to keep fossil fuels in the ground. It doesn't matter how much energy is generated by solar so long as we continue to dig up and burn fossil fuels. It's quite clear that we have zero intentions of slowing down or even keeping our fossil fuel consumption steady.
If we had record electricity demand, and anything short of 100% of it was covered by renewables, that means we're burning more fossil fuels then we were before.
We have, pretty unequivocally at this point, signed up for seeing what the end game of civilization looks like rather than realistically exploring or even considering any alternatives.
> the fourth‑largest annual rise of the past decade
Really doesn't sound like much of a surge then!
Hey, that still means it's higher than the median annual rise AND higher than most years!
> higher than the median annual rise
Of that we cannot be sure... Because maybe 6 years saw a fall - so there would only be 4 rises, of which this is the smallest!
Jevons paradox in action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
Also known as induced demand (as more is available)
Curiously, TFA doesn't raise the question of why demand surged, it spends its 8 microparagraphs only praising solar.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say it has some thing to do with those data centers and LLM stuff.
Funny, I was thinking the same thing.
So the increase was 3.1% and it was "fourth largest in the last decade", which means, "barely above average growth rate". Considering that economy growth rate was the fastest in a decade except 2021 which was a covid recovery year, it doesn't really show anything abnormal at all.
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Did "demand surge" or was excess peak power sold of for nearly 0 to people that can spin up and turn off load on the turn of a dime (crypto)? We have had negative pricing (they pay you to take the power) to stabilize the grid due to solar/wind peaks.
The book Here Comes the Sun by Bill McKibben is a really great read on the changing economics of solar. It came out August 2025 so its fairly up to date too.
It really depends on how you write the headline. "US electricity demand surges in 2025 while new utility-scale solar installations decrease from 2024" is equally accurate. It's unclear what the future holds if the trend remains down or flat.
The USA had a pull forward effect in 2024 because some tariffs applied to anything completed after the end of that year.
This pumps the numbers for 2024 and depresses them for 2025.
I've thought about installing solar panels on my roof for years. But when I factor in installation costs, it never makes sense because the local energy rates are pretty reasonable... Also, I live in Southeast, a place with plenty of sun but nowhere near the Southwest.
Solar panel prices fell hugely in the past years. Is there anything that could significantly reduce installation costs?
PV is wildly expensive in the US.
Apparently you even need a permit from the grid operator for it.
Here in NL they come to your house a week after you call and your panels are up and connected in 4 hours or so.
Labor for anything is expensive in the US.
Parts/materials costs in contractor quotes are often padded so they aren't completely overshadowed by the labor portion. In any job where there's specialized knowledge or license restrictions (HVAC) or risk (walking on a roof), the floor for labor rates is usually 2-4x the materials cost.
But, the real issue is that almost nobody pays cash upfront for their solar install. Between incentives, loans, and/or predatory PPAs, the prices lose touch with reality. See healthcare, college tuition, housing prices, etc. for similar scenarios where credit or third-parties distort the market.
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Residential is expensive anyway, larger installations are plenty viable. My town in a northern Michigan is installing solar to help stabilize the rates they offer (I pay about 11 cents per kWh).
It is definitely true that the labor cost of a solar installation is the largest driver of cost. In my area, there are solar incentives to offset this. For example I was able to cover a large portion of the loan with a 0% interest rate through a state program. For the remaining portion my bank had a low(er) interest loan (like 5%) specifically for solar. And neither of these loans were home equity loans which psychologically made me happier to apply for them.
Another thing, if you have the space, is to consider a ground mount. Ground mount hardware adds a little cost, but it is a lot easier for a solar installer to set up, so they finish faster. Since labor is the biggest driver of cost, then it makes sense to build a very big array that doesn’t just offset your operating costs but completely eliminates it (well, net-eliminates it anyway).
Yeah solar viability is highly dependent on your local conditions and electricity costs. Also on your utility’s buyback program.
I have low electricity costs, no time of use pricing, and I don’t think I can sell back. I also live in a very cloudy city. So solar doesn’t make much sense!
I’m in Canada, in a tight valley with tons of snow. The panels on my roof make $1000 a year, and over their lifetime I’ll save around $20,000.
Complete no brainer.
Where I live in the west, the time to break even was projected at 7.5y for panels rated that run at 85% for 25y and expected lifetime of 30y.
I think the main consideration where I live is whether you can make the investment and if you plan on staying in your house long enough to realize the benefit. Also nearly all of the power I offset is from coal.
»US electricity demand jumped by 135 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2025, a 3.1% increase, the fourth‑largest annual rise of the past decade. Over that same period, solar generation grew by a record 83 TWh – a 27% increase from 2024 and the biggest absolute gain of any power source. That single jump in solar output covered 61% of all new electricity demand nationwide.«
This article equates generation with consumption which is a fallacy.
Lots of solar and wind generation is actually produced without meeting demand meaning that the generated electricity often has to be wasted.
I'm a luddite so forgive me when I ask this. How does the grid "waste" electricity to avoid overfilling?
Thank god it's not those pesky windmills...
Don 'Quixote' Trump
So, where's the emissions graph?
So I'm reading it correctly, 39& of "the surge" was covered by traditional energy sources. Which still means use of traditional sources increased. Correct?
I guess the good news is, solar is available when demand is highest. Nonetheless, is it helping to solve a problem or is it serving more as an enabler of the status quo?
The title is somewhat misleading.
First, US demand increased by 3.1%. That is bad - demand should be going down, since there is a need to conserve electricity while much of it is provided by CO2-emitting sources. That said - it is not such a huge "surge" that the fact that 61% of it was covered by an increase in Solar capacity is so impressive.
Second, Solar generation is said to have reached 84 TW. But if the increase in demand was 135 TW, and that's just 3.1% of total demand, then total demand is 4355 TW, and Solar accounts for 1.92% of generation. That is _really_ bad. Since we must get to near-0 emissions in electricity generation ASAP to avoid even harsher effects of global warming; and most of the non-Solar generation in the US is by Natural Gas and Coal [1].
You could nitpick and say that the important stat is "total renewables" rather than just Solar, and that the US has a lot of Nuclear, and that's technically true, but it's not as though Nuclear output is surging, and it has more obstacles and challenges, for reasons. So, the big surge to expect in the US is Solar - and we're only seeing very little of that. If you mis-contextualize it sounds like a lot: "60% of new demand! 27% increase since last year!" but that's not the right context.
[1] : https://www.statista.com/statistics/220174/total-us-electric...
Gonna fully admit I skipped reading the article when I saw a confusing title, and now I'm leaving instead of trying to figure out what it meant.
The title is disgusting click bait with the hopes to falsely make the reader believe that Solar covered 61% of the total annual power need and not just the YoY delta.
Confusing headline (on purpose I'm sure). No, solar didn't handle 61% of total energy demand. It handled 61% of the so-called "surge" - 3% growth over the prior year.
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> Where are all the "without nuclear power we're dooooooomed" people at the moment?
I haven't seen any on HN across multiple submissions discussing both solar and nuclear power (or both at once).
I have, however, seen people unreasonably characterized as such.
Not saying this is relevant in solar vs nuclear debate but "eco nerds" are probably not happy about new demand of additional 52TWh or part of it that is not covered by renewables/nuclear.
It's so frustrating discussing topics you know about on HN because you get so many software developers, which naturally know everything, that make comments like this.
Solar does not 'just work' - in the US it's a crisis in the making. Power prices in several areas of the grid routinely go negative because the grid is a zero sum game - there is very little storage so what goes in must exactly match what goes out or grid frequency deviations and eventually blackouts happen. This is much more likely to happen once undispatchable resources climb past a certain threshold in our generation mix.
To fix this we need massive storage and transmission investment, like moon landing and WW2 put together. We desperately need to do that before we add more non-dispatchable generation.
Solar with storage is an amazing resource. Without storage it's counterproductive if it's grid tied.
> Solar with storage is an amazing resource. Without storage it's counterproductive if it's grid tied.
Solar creates the economic incentive for storage. Without solar coming first, storage cannot occur.
You can see this in California. In the beginning, it made sense to install only solar, because energy developers are compensated at the margin. Once the grid is saturated with solar, then the marginal economics changes in response to the duck curve, and storage starts to make economic sense.
If you block solar, you block storage. To believe otherwise is to be ignorant of the temporal aspect of the economics.
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> undispatchable resources
Solar is not dispatchable like a gas power plant is as the sun needs to shine to produce electricity. But it can very much be curtailed to any percentage you want. And that is being done globally every day exactly when it would be uneconomical to generate that electricity.
Interestingly this is as opposed to nuclear energy, which is basically never curtailed and always runs at 100% unless needed for maintenance or safety. Which is one of the main factors why nuclear energy is not economical anymore in a modern grid that values flexibility over constant generation.
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But respectfully isn't the crisis more in the American political system and regulation? And surely large scale solar farms/batery storage connected to a supergrid (or whatever they are called) are a relatively good fit for this kind of legacy grid.
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Lying title
Remove this
Contrary opinion: too much farmland is being turned over to solar. Our regulatory systems are not working. Land that once produced food now produces electricity. Turning a food farm into solar is too easy (ie cheap). The land is flat and there are nearby roads and electricity networks. And who is going to tell a farmer how to best use thier land? But the world needs more than datacenters. The world needs food.
Solar should be installed on unproductive land. Buildings should be covered in panels. Carparks should have solar roofs. If i were king of zoning, every new construction would be required to cover say 50% of thier footprint in panels. That is the direction to go. We should not continue to convert farmland.
A total parody, but on point. "Can I Beat Farming Sim WITHOUT FARMING?" - The Spiffing Brit
https://youtu.be/MaJvrGHJoAQ
I'll bite: the US dedicates about 5 billion bushels of corn a year to ethanol production [0], which is basically solar with extra steps. At a generous yield of 190 bushels/acre [1], this is 26 million acres dedicated to ethanol production (WRI puts it at 30m [2]).
Depending on who you ask, it would take somewhere between 2.5 [3] and 13.5 million acres [4] of solar to supply total US electricity demand, including storage and maintenance etc. We could double it to be safe and account for the reduction in ethanol production, and it would still all fit within the land currently used for corn ethanol. (btw this works out to a >10x increase in efficiency over ethanol.)
Of course I do agree that there's lots of less productive land (desert in the west, grazing land in the plains, and parking lots/rooftops everywhere) that should be used when available. But even in the midwest and east the land use is not a problem.
[0] - https://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/pub-details?pubid=1057...
[1] - https://www.ncga.com/stay-informed/media/the-corn-economy/ar...
[2] - https://www.wri.org/insights/increased-biofuel-production-im...
[3] - https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/energy/2015/05/21/fact-checking-elon...
[4] (PDF) - https://docs.nrel.gov/docs/fy08osti/42463.pdf
that ethanol leaves leftovers that are used for other things so your numbers are misleading.
But there are also millions of acres of corn being grown solely for the purpose of ethanol. A lot of that acreage could be better off utilized as solar farms
There are a lot of places where solar panels can increase yield for specific plants by providing a shade. They also can generate electricity to run electrical pumps for targeted irrigation saving a lot of water.
Ya, but that isnt as widespread as fields being rededicated from crops generally to solar exclusively. And mixed use doesnt mesh well in a world of crop rotation and crop-specific harvesting equipment. I have yet to see a combine that can drive over solar panels without touching them.
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Agrivoltaics are a thing.
There should be a minimum level of expertise or commitment to the truth so that publication who certainly think of themselves as major league or factual don't publish blatantly false statements like this.
Yes, demand rose, and solar panels were installed whose capacity was about 60% of the new demand, but to say solar handled 60% of new capacity is blatantly false.
As someone who owns solar panels, I'm painfully aware that there can be days, weeks of bad weather when there's barely any generation. But even at the best of times, solar has a hard time covering for the demand of something like data centers which suck down insane amount of juice round the clock.
There's also no information about whether these data centers are located to be close to solar farms, and we know that in many cases, they're not.
No, you are reading the article wrong. It is indeed 60% of new electricity generation that is from solar, not capacity
Then shy doesn't the article literally say that? Why does it take three carefully-crafted sentences to say it? Because they're fooling you.
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I think it's incredibly fishy. If I add a 1MW coal plant to the grid, I can pretty much run it at nominal capacity all year round, so 1MW * hours in the year is afair calculation.
If I add the same 1MW for solar, needless to say even assuming perfect weather, I'm lucky to get 1/3rd of that. Under real circumstances, the numbers are probably much worse.
When looking at marketing, I think it's always safe to assume they picked the most flattering numbers when they didn't specify how they made the calculation.
That's why it's very meaningful to talk about adding kWh - 1 kWh peak solar means more in Texas than in Chicago. It's even less meaningful for batteries - they can sustain incredible currents, to the point it's very rarely the meaningful bottleneck.
Yet that's exactly that what the cited 'global think-tank' Ember did, which the article cites as source. So they either misled on purpose, or like a lot of people, they confused GWh and GW, which is such a grave error for a supposed expert, that their whole analysis should be disregarded.
electrik publishes misleading stuff more often than not