What's going to happen in the future is that May will be a month of extreme electricity abundance, with a good chunk of the electricity just not being collected at all because the grid doesn't need it, and it will be cheaper to have unused electricity in May than to have too little solar in December.
> What's going to happen in the future is that May will be a month of extreme electricity abundance, with a good chunk of the electricity just not being collected at all because the grid doesn't need it
This is already a thing in some places. Or, sometimes, because the grid can't _take_ it. Here's a dashboard for Irish energy production: https://www.smartgriddashboard.com/all/solar/?duration=month - on the wind and solar you'll notice that on big days, actual production is usually way below forecast production. This is sometimes due to actual mis-forecast, or due to renewable production being high enough that it meets total demand. But usually it's that the _grid_ can't take it; there is demand, but no way to get it there.
It's a chicken-egg problem, of course; you're not going to build excess grid capacity in the hopes that someone one day builds a wind farm, so in practice grid upgrades trail renewable sources.
Doubtful, the tradeoff is solar cost versus storage cost. Pumped hydro and gravity are waaaaaaaay too expensive compared to excess solar panels. Pumped hydro takes massive construction projects, which are very very expensive these days. Gravity storage (non-water, meaning non-hydro) never made any sense at all, the material costs are just way too high.
Iron-air storage is still being proven out, but it still requires so much material that only getting 1-2 cycles per year just won't justify it, because electricity is going to be so cheap.
It's hard to overstate how cheap solar panels are these days. Even in the US, which has costs 3x-5x the rest of the world because of failed protective tariffs.
Pumped storage utility is tied to duty cycle.
You want one cycle per day with some overage, not one cycle per year.
A lot of the cost scales with storage volume.
If you look at the pumped storage projects built and under construction in China, they are all daily focused.
Except the water is in short supply, so where's that magically coming from? The Great Salt Lake is shrinking and specific to Utah. Just look at Lake Meade and Hoover Dam as an example.
Vaclav Smil would be quick to replace the word power with electricity in the title of this article. It is why Germany can say renewables supply 56% of its electricity while renewables supply only about 21% of its energy. The rest of energy generation won't quickly be replaced with renewables: diesel and kerosene moving freight and people, natural gas in furnaces and boilers, coke reducing iron ore into steel, methane feeding the reactors that fix nitrogen to make fertilizer, and coal that turns limestone into cement.
I am fully on board with renewables! I have just found Smil's perspective quite useful here.
> In 2025, coal composes just 15 percent of U.S. electricity generation, and while 190 gigawatts (GW) of coal capacity remain online, the fleet is down 43 percent from 340 GW at its peak in 2010. This change is largely due to the fact that coal power is simply more expensive than cleaner power sources like wind, solar, batteries, and natural gas.
> Electricity demand growth and new actions by the current U.S. presidential administration may slow this decline in the short-term, but with no proposals to build new coal plants anywhere in America and worsening economic competitiveness – particularly where policymakers are strengthening air and water standards to protect their constituents – its long-term share of U.S. electricity generation will continue to decrease
It's unfortunately worse than coal subsidies. There are direct Federal orders that obsolete coal plants are not allowed to shut down. One example from Washington state:
So? We can still measure how much power everyone in a state uses, and how much power the state generates. Utah generates a lot of power from non-renewable sources, and I assume (but I can't find data) they have the ability to generate a lot more but didn't because solar was used instead. That solar is a big part of what Utah generates is just big news.
Now if we are comparing a hypothetical place that doesn't have anything else this wouldn't be interesting, but that isn't the case. (I'm sure my suburb generates more energy from solar than anything else - as you would expect the only other generation we have is backup generators)
Also true for California for quite some time.
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/solar/california-solar-...
What's going to happen in the future is that May will be a month of extreme electricity abundance, with a good chunk of the electricity just not being collected at all because the grid doesn't need it, and it will be cheaper to have unused electricity in May than to have too little solar in December.
> What's going to happen in the future is that May will be a month of extreme electricity abundance, with a good chunk of the electricity just not being collected at all because the grid doesn't need it
This is already a thing in some places. Or, sometimes, because the grid can't _take_ it. Here's a dashboard for Irish energy production: https://www.smartgriddashboard.com/all/solar/?duration=month - on the wind and solar you'll notice that on big days, actual production is usually way below forecast production. This is sometimes due to actual mis-forecast, or due to renewable production being high enough that it meets total demand. But usually it's that the _grid_ can't take it; there is demand, but no way to get it there.
It's a chicken-egg problem, of course; you're not going to build excess grid capacity in the hopes that someone one day builds a wind farm, so in practice grid upgrades trail renewable sources.
And eventually that arbitrage will be big enough to justify a pumped hydro/gravity/iron-air storage.
Doubtful, the tradeoff is solar cost versus storage cost. Pumped hydro and gravity are waaaaaaaay too expensive compared to excess solar panels. Pumped hydro takes massive construction projects, which are very very expensive these days. Gravity storage (non-water, meaning non-hydro) never made any sense at all, the material costs are just way too high.
Iron-air storage is still being proven out, but it still requires so much material that only getting 1-2 cycles per year just won't justify it, because electricity is going to be so cheap.
It's hard to overstate how cheap solar panels are these days. Even in the US, which has costs 3x-5x the rest of the world because of failed protective tariffs.
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Or possibly the return of some heavy industry?
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Pumped storage utility is tied to duty cycle. You want one cycle per day with some overage, not one cycle per year. A lot of the cost scales with storage volume.
If you look at the pumped storage projects built and under construction in China, they are all daily focused.
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Large-scale battery storage is already expanding rapidly, and is way cheaper than pumped storage.
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Except the water is in short supply, so where's that magically coming from? The Great Salt Lake is shrinking and specific to Utah. Just look at Lake Meade and Hoover Dam as an example.
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Not the future, now.
Most Australians now get free power for three hours a day because there is simply so much.
This is the way.
Solar harvest time.
Make ray while the sun's shinin'
Vaclav Smil would be quick to replace the word power with electricity in the title of this article. It is why Germany can say renewables supply 56% of its electricity while renewables supply only about 21% of its energy. The rest of energy generation won't quickly be replaced with renewables: diesel and kerosene moving freight and people, natural gas in furnaces and boilers, coke reducing iron ore into steel, methane feeding the reactors that fix nitrogen to make fertilizer, and coal that turns limestone into cement.
I am fully on board with renewables! I have just found Smil's perspective quite useful here.
Vaclav Smil has been so wrong on energy, that I'm a bit surprised to see his name mentioned at all.
The idea of "primary energy" versus electricity is an important concept, but completely unconnected to Smil.
https://ember-energy.org/data/us-electricity-data-explorer/?...
Sad to see coal going up (?)
The chart defaults to ending at 2025. Move the right timeline marker all the way to the right (today).
> In 2025, coal composes just 15 percent of U.S. electricity generation, and while 190 gigawatts (GW) of coal capacity remain online, the fleet is down 43 percent from 340 GW at its peak in 2010. This change is largely due to the fact that coal power is simply more expensive than cleaner power sources like wind, solar, batteries, and natural gas.
> Electricity demand growth and new actions by the current U.S. presidential administration may slow this decline in the short-term, but with no proposals to build new coal plants anywhere in America and worsening economic competitiveness – particularly where policymakers are strengthening air and water standards to protect their constituents – its long-term share of U.S. electricity generation will continue to decrease
https://energyinnovation.org/expert-voice/what-is-coals-futu...
https://www.sierraclub.org/coal/coal-plant-map
https://www.energy.gov/ceser/2025-doe-202c-orders
good thing the President is pouring billions into restarting coal plants
what a freaking horror show we are living in
At least at this point solar can be driven by pure market forces, it doesn't need federal subsidies to make sense.
It's unfortunately worse than coal subsidies. There are direct Federal orders that obsolete coal plants are not allowed to shut down. One example from Washington state:
https://www.opb.org/article/2026/06/18/federal-order-keeps-w...
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Utah isn't a power grid.
They're on the western interconnect.
Combined solar and wind are about 25-30% of production there.
These articles about individual states are trash.
Fwiw I think Utah is the only state with legalized plugin solar (many more on the way though!)
A few more states have recently joined it. https://pluginsolarus.com/states
State plug in solar legislation tracker: https://www.brightsaver.org/legislation-tracker
(passed in 10 states, 2 awaiting signatures, as of this comment)
Utah is about half of the Pacificorp East balancing authority.
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/US-NW-PACE/live/fif...
Nevada Power serves a substantial amount of western Utah.
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/US-NW-NEVP/live/fif...
Cool, that's still not a grid for stability purposes.
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So? We can still measure how much power everyone in a state uses, and how much power the state generates. Utah generates a lot of power from non-renewable sources, and I assume (but I can't find data) they have the ability to generate a lot more but didn't because solar was used instead. That solar is a big part of what Utah generates is just big news.
Now if we are comparing a hypothetical place that doesn't have anything else this wouldn't be interesting, but that isn't the case. (I'm sure my suburb generates more energy from solar than anything else - as you would expect the only other generation we have is backup generators)
I think I know what this means, but I bet you share a better explanation with us all too of the point you're making
Okay debbie downer, it's still positive news