Solar is winning the energy race - The world’s cheapest power source is scaling at warp speed, pushing coal, gas and nuclear aside
Solar is winning the energy race
The world’s cheapest power source is scaling at warp speed, pushing coal, gas and nuclear aside.Gero Rueter (Deutsche Welle)
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Jul (they/she)
in reply to Chris Remington • • •like this
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protist
in reply to Jul (they/she) • • •Powderhorn
in reply to protist • • •like this
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Jul (they/she)
in reply to protist • • •Yeah, but most of the data centers recently brought online to feed the LLM/"AI" bubble have triggered a bunch of retired coal plants to be restarted as well as old "dirty" nuclear plant that generate fissile-material for the new nuclear weapons Trump ordered built and other nuclear waste that we already dont have anywhere to store longterm. Part of the excuse being that the demand of these centers is too volatile for green energy. Plus Musk and Trump killing off the programs to build a network of car charging stations mean electric car production for the US market has been drastically cut despite gains in other countries. And cutting the incentives for heat pumps and replacing natural gas furnaces and water heaters has reduced the boom that heat pumps were having as well as are having elsewhere.
And the general public believes that natural gas in homes and gasoline in cars is cheaper than electric although that is not true, it's only that
Anyway, more "dirty" energy sources are in use than a few years ago, do any gains in clean energy have been outpaced significantly b
... Show more...Yeah, but most of the data centers recently brought online to feed the LLM/"AI" bubble have triggered a bunch of retired coal plants to be restarted as well as old "dirty" nuclear plant that generate fissile-material for the new nuclear weapons Trump ordered built and other nuclear waste that we already dont have anywhere to store longterm. Part of the excuse being that the demand of these centers is too volatile for green energy. Plus Musk and Trump killing off the programs to build a network of car charging stations mean electric car production for the US market has been drastically cut despite gains in other countries. And cutting the incentives for heat pumps and replacing natural gas furnaces and water heaters has reduced the boom that heat pumps were having as well as are having elsewhere.
And the general public believes that natural gas in homes and gasoline in cars is cheaper than electric although that is not true, it's only that
Anyway, more "dirty" energy sources are in use than a few years ago, do any gains in clean energy have been outpaced significantly by increases in use of dirty energy in the US, though that isn't the case in many other countries like China and many EU countries without such large tax subsidies for the general public to consume fossil fuels more cheaply out of pocket.
Powderhorn
in reply to Chris Remington • • •I paid ~$800 for 1.2kW of solar panels on my van in 2023. The 600Ah of LFP was an additional $1,700. I've not paid a power bill in 2.5 years. How anyone could choose to not go solar baffles me. I was paying $3/kWh through the city-owned utility. Nominally, it was somewhere around 15 cents, but after all the fees that Austin charges, despite using only 20kWh/month, my bill was $60 at minimum.
The city has now raised rates five times since I went off-grid, so a straight $60 times 30 months undersells the ROI. It would now be $75-80, and $80 times 30 months means I'll have broken even by May.
Less than three years, and when the power goes out in town, I'm unaware of it unless I run into a complaint on Reddit.
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toynbee
in reply to Powderhorn • • •its_me_xiphos
in reply to toynbee • • •toynbee
in reply to its_me_xiphos • • •I don't disagree that it was insane!
But no, the reason is that I live in a decently sized old house in a cold area. We've dual zone climate control and I'm not sure either heat pump stopped running the whole month. I do run some servers but that's true year round and most months my power bill is in various parts of triple digits.
Hanrahan
in reply to toynbee • • •sanzky
in reply to Powderhorn • • •I pay on average between 20 and 30 euro cent per kwh
MonkderVierte
in reply to Powderhorn • • •Uh, that's really a lot.
Powderhorn
in reply to MonkderVierte • • •You think using 2.2% of that is excessive?
MonkderVierte
in reply to Powderhorn • • •political model envisaging the average First World citizen reducing their average energy usage to no more than 2000 watts by 2050
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)SaharaMaleikuhm
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eleitl
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bryndos
in reply to eleitl • • •Upvote.
It always bugs me when headlines focus on electricity rather than total energy use. And flip between the terms as if the author and their editors maybe don't know the difference.
Then again i don't know what I should expect from an article that thinks "warp speed" is a reasonable description of anything.
Even within the limited frame of electricity generation, coal and gas (output electrical energy) have gone up maybe +1.2PWh since 2019. Roughly double that for the input fuel energy but best stick with output to compare to Solar.
Solar elec gen might be up +1.5 to 2.5PWh from 2019 if we believe the cited 2025 estimates.
... Show more...But overall I'd call that 'growing a bit faster' than coal and gas generation not really pushing it aside.
We've not seen coal and gas elec gen figures for 2025 though, if all this ai datacentres talk is to be believed, then it's very possible that gas and coal has ramped up too - as they're by far the easiest to turn up in the short term.
They just have to ignore any environmental restrictions and run coal for more hours.
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It always bugs me when headlines focus on electricity rather than total energy use. And flip between the terms as if the author and their editors maybe don't know the difference.
Then again i don't know what I should expect from an article that thinks "warp speed" is a reasonable description of anything.
Even within the limited frame of electricity generation, coal and gas (output electrical energy) have gone up maybe +1.2PWh since 2019. Roughly double that for the input fuel energy but best stick with output to compare to Solar.
Solar elec gen might be up +1.5 to 2.5PWh from 2019 if we believe the cited 2025 estimates.
But overall I'd call that 'growing a bit faster' than coal and gas generation not really pushing it aside.
We've not seen coal and gas elec gen figures for 2025 though, if all this ai datacentres talk is to be believed, then it's very possible that gas and coal has ramped up too - as they're by far the easiest to turn up in the short term.
They just have to ignore any environmental restrictions and run coal for more hours.
I'd be reckoning Solar elec gen at <2% of total energy demand in 2025 factoring in their claimed growth for 2025, not 10%.
Spacehooks
in reply to Chris Remington • • •