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What clickbait nonsense and misleading nonsense. Solar accounts for 1.3% of our electric production. https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427 https://www

What clickbait nonsense and misleading nonsense. Solar accounts for 1.3% of our electric production. https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427 Saying that solar is the biggest source of "new" US Power is like if bill gates picked up a penny from the street and bloomberg saying picking pennies from the street is bill gates' biggest source of "new" wealth. I understand being pro-solar, I am too. But why is HN and much of social media rife with lies and misrepresentations about solar? Reading bloomberg and HN, you'd think solar was a significant contributor to energy and coal was dead. But that's just factually incorrect. And they been lying for years now. But most importantly, it's the scientific lies about energy production and solar that is bothersome. As if solar panels are the answer for coal. Natural gas ( a fossil fuel ) is why coal has leveled off ( not died but leveled off ). Solar had nothing to do with it. And coal is still the biggest source of electricity around the world and the 2nd biggest source in the US. Solar energy is going to be a minor part of the world's energy strategy unless a revolutionary breakthrough happens ( a significant breakthrough on par with cold fusion ). That's a basic fact of current state of physics. So sick of misleading clickbait from media outlets like bloomberg. Edit: If you want a total world view of energy sources. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Bp_world_energy_consumption_2016.gif https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Bp_world...

durkie 8y ago
I think the misunderstanding here is that you're talking about now: "solar is 1.3% of our electric production", "coal is still the biggest source", etc. This, I believe, is missing the point of the article. The importance of noting that solar is the biggest source of new power is that is signifies the economics of power generation have changed. So sure, there's still lots of coal and there's still lots of natural gas. But if you're adding new capacity we're at the point where it makes more sense to build large solar arrays. So in a sense, this article is noting the beginning of the end for coal and natural gas. The present percent contribution of solar or coal is not so important.
- cgriswald 8y ago
  "New" is relative, hence the Bill Gates picking up the penny example. Sure, it's a true statement the second he picks up the penny, but it's not a meaningful one. In the case of the article, we are talking about a single quarter.
  - ceejayoz 8y ago
    It is meaningful here, though. If Gates started showing indications that he was primarily going to pick up pennies from now on, that'd have important implications and questions raised.
  - durkie 8y ago
    The article could have made a stronger case about the broader trends: although this is referring only to a single quarter's worth of new capacity in the US, this trend has been happening on a longer term in many other countries.
  - thinkcontext 8y ago
    "New" is certainly meaningful. It gives an indication of where the market is going, investors want this information. It definitely meaningful to GE's natural gas turbine division, which has had big losses since demand has been less than they have forecasted "Renewables boom is a bust for gas equipment suppliers like GE" https://www.utilitydive.com/news/renewables-boom-is-a-bust-for-gas-equipment-suppliers-like-ge/524345/ https://www.utilitydive.com/news/renewables-boom-is-a-bust-f...
    - cgriswald 8y ago
      Sure, it has a meaning, but it does not have the meaning implied by the title, hence clickbait, which was paidleaf's point.
      - thinkcontext 8y ago
        The title says "new" and the article discusses new generation. Paidleaf said the title makes an implication about overall generation, how does it do that?
comicjk 8y ago
Speaking of misleading, your Bill Gates analogy is quite misleading too. These figures about new electric power are sums over a quarter-year, so small statistical fluctuations like finding a penny (or opening a single power plant) are smoothed out. To complete the analogy, if Bill Gates' biggest source of new wealth this quarter and last quarter were finding pennies, that would be quite a big deal, because over that period he would have to find hundreds of thousands of tons of them - more than doubling US zinc production in the process.
- kthejoker2 8y ago
  Or Microsoft's stock price took a dive? Analogies are fun!
imgabe 8y ago
I don't think it's misleading at all. More new solar power is being built than any other source. That's a good thing and if the trend continues, solar will eventually overtake other sources. If, over the course of the past year, Bill Gates made more money from picking up pennies than any other source, that would be news too. It would indicate that his other sources of income have dried up.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
thinkcontext 8y ago
I don't get why you think "new" is inaccurate or misleading. This shows where investments are being made now, which is highly relevant. For example, GE's natural gas turbine division has been taking a beating lately due to renewables, ie: "Renewables boom is a bust for gas equipment suppliers like GE" https://www.utilitydive.com/news/renewables-boom-is-a-bust-for-gas-equipment-suppliers-like-ge/524345/ https://www.utilitydive.com/news/renewables-boom-is-a-bust-f... You make points about the overall contributions of fossil fuels to national generation capacity but that's not what the article is about. Don't get me wrong, there are other reasons the headline and article are misleading. Comparing nameplate system capacity of electricity sources w/o taking into account the capacity factor is highly misleading. Also, discussion of whether solar projects were pushed up in an effort to beat the tariffs would have been appropriate.
- beat 8y ago
  "My deliberately incorrect reading of the headline is wrong!"
beat 8y ago
You're right, the article doesn't say coal is dead. It says coal is dying. Social media is rife with what you call "lies and misrepresentations about solar" because a lot of people are very excited to see real progress being made in converting the electric grid from dirty, limited coal to clean, unlimited solar/wind. When I see numbers like this, I'm not thinking about "1.3%". I'm thinking about what this trend means for how it's going to look in 20-30 years.
- nickik 8y ago
  Other countries have solved this today, even others 40 years ago (France). But we today are exited about 'maybe in 20-30 years'.
  - beat 8y ago
    Big projects take time. Decades. The financial models of power utilities are based on multi-decade deprecation of plants that cost hundreds of millions (or billions) to build. Adding solar/wind to add new capacity or replace retiring capacity is a different and much better financial model than replacing equipment that is not yet fully deprecated. But it's a much slower one. Be patient.
    - nickik 8y ago
      I understand why it is not happening. But my point is that there seem to be more interest in solar and wind as ends in themselves rather then actual discussion of how to de-carbonize the economy.
      - beat 8y ago
        That just seems like an unnecessarily negative perspective to me. The point is, we are starting to de-carbonize the economy. And it's being done because market forces are a tailwind, not a headwind. All the moral imperatives in the world won't be as effective as a profit motive. I'm not one of those silly people who finds a moral valence in market forces, but I'm always happy when I see them working in my favor, because they're as relentless as erosion.
tim333 8y ago
>Solar energy is going to be a minor part of the world's energy strategy unless a revolutionary breakthrough happens It doesn't really need a revolutionary breakthrough, just for solar and battery costs to drop 50% or so such that they become the cheapest option. A 50% drop will probably happen just from the existing trends continuing.
- nickik 8y ago
  What this ignores is that the price for the end consumer is not directly related to the price of solar panel. The combined cost of solar, batteries and grid changes, more advanced handling and software actually don't result in cheaper energy prices. Compare California to places where they use gas.
  - tim333 8y ago
    Yeah that's kind of why we need another 50% or so to really be cheaper after you allow for the problems with peaker plants, upgrading the grid and so on.
- beat 8y ago
  Indeed. I'd say we are in the midst of a "revolutionary breakthrough" right now. The cost-per-kwh of solar/wind electric power is now lower than fossil, and still dropping. Consumer options are growing on the low end, and experience with industrial-scale installations is growing on the high end. There's another breakthrough I'm looking forward to, however - really good instantaneous pricing and metering. When prices are set on demand and fully automated, then energy caching hooked to the grid becomes viable. This creates a good arbitrage financial model. Store energy from solar/wind when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing, and sell that stored energy when demand is up and supply is down. Once that's working, the whole grid gets remodeled. Then we can make a real dent in the coal-fired baseload plants and aging nuclear plants that desperately need retired. Economies of scale and experience will reduce production cost for whole suites of energy storage technologies (batteries, compression, thermal, flywheel, gravity, etc), even if they don't become more efficient. That's an exciting future.
- jartelt 8y ago
WhompingWindows 8y ago
It's understandable coming from Bloomberg, their MO is to drive up clicks/views. Is it technically untrue? Well, in this advanced economy with projected flat electricity demand, there isn't much growth in demand for utilities, except for replacing retiring stock like coal, nuclear, etc. It's simply a massively large industrial base that fossil fuels are leveraging day-in day-out, powering the vast majority of vehicles, airplanes, cement, steel, aluminum, plastics, and on and on. Electricity is one component of our emissions base, yes, but it's something like 25-30% of our emissions. Solar/wind/other non-fossil-fuels will take 100 years to fill all of the use-cases seen with current fossil fuels, and even then they still may be used in some niche applications. Sadly, readers don't want to face the uncomfortable facts: we are still a fossil fuel civilization and will be for decades.
jartelt 8y ago
1.3% of generation today with a growth rate of roughly 30-40% per year. We are installing a ton of solar and are no longer building a significant number of new coal plants or nuclear plants. The article is pointing out an emerging trend. Before we know it, solar generation will account for 5% of electricity generation.
mikeash 8y ago
I don’t understand what you think is misleading here. It clearly says new power. That means it’s growing faster, not that it’s the biggest. Your Bill Gates analogy doesn’t work. He’s still making fantastic amounts of money from his investments. If picking money up off the sidewalk was actually his biggest source of new wealth (which is an odd way of saying “income”) then that would be huge news.
peterwwillis 8y ago
> why is HN and much of social media rife with lies and misrepresentations Clickbait (economic or personal gain), or people perpetuating things that sound good, or things they want to believe. Emotion influences the perception of information, and information can influence emotion. > Solar energy is going to be a minor part of the world's energy strategy unless a revolutionary breakthrough happens ( a significant breakthrough on par with cold fusion ). That's a basic fact of current state of physics What physics based on what equipment? An array of photovoltaic cells may or may not be as efficient as the Ivanpah solar facility. Ivanpah produced 719,398 GWh/yr across a six square mile area. Theoretically we would only need to cover half of the Mojave with such sites to provide for the US's annual electricity need.
interdocken 8y ago
> https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427 According to your source, 1.3% of utility production comes from solar. It provides an estimate for smaller residential rooftop installations which brings total current generation closer to 2%.

durkie 8y ago

I think the misunderstanding here is that you're talking about now: "solar is 1.3% of our electric production", "coal is still the biggest source", etc. This, I believe, is missing the point of the article. The importance of noting that solar is the biggest source of new power is that is signifies the economics of power generation have changed. So sure, there's still lots of coal and there's still lots of natural gas. But if you're adding new capacity we're at the point where it makes more sense to build large solar arrays. So in a sense, this article is noting the beginning of the end for coal and natural gas. The present percent contribution of solar or coal is not so important.

cgriswald 8y ago
"New" is relative, hence the Bill Gates picking up the penny example. Sure, it's a true statement the second he picks up the penny, but it's not a meaningful one. In the case of the article, we are talking about a single quarter.
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  It is meaningful here, though. If Gates started showing indications that he was primarily going to pick up pennies from now on, that'd have important implications and questions raised.
- durkie 8y ago
  The article could have made a stronger case about the broader trends: although this is referring only to a single quarter's worth of new capacity in the US, this trend has been happening on a longer term in many other countries.
- thinkcontext 8y ago
  "New" is certainly meaningful. It gives an indication of where the market is going, investors want this information. It definitely meaningful to GE's natural gas turbine division, which has had big losses since demand has been less than they have forecasted "Renewables boom is a bust for gas equipment suppliers like GE" https://www.utilitydive.com/news/renewables-boom-is-a-bust-for-gas-equipment-suppliers-like-ge/524345/ https://www.utilitydive.com/news/renewables-boom-is-a-bust-f...
  - cgriswald 8y ago
    Sure, it has a meaning, but it does not have the meaning implied by the title, hence clickbait, which was paidleaf's point.
    - thinkcontext 8y ago
      The title says "new" and the article discusses new generation. Paidleaf said the title makes an implication about overall generation, how does it do that?

comicjk 8y ago

Speaking of misleading, your Bill Gates analogy is quite misleading too. These figures about new electric power are sums over a quarter-year, so small statistical fluctuations like finding a penny (or opening a single power plant) are smoothed out. To complete the analogy, if Bill Gates' biggest source of new wealth this quarter and last quarter were finding pennies, that would be quite a big deal, because over that period he would have to find hundreds of thousands of tons of them - more than doubling US zinc production in the process.

kthejoker2 8y ago
Or Microsoft's stock price took a dive? Analogies are fun!

imgabe 8y ago

I don't think it's misleading at all. More new solar power is being built than any other source. That's a good thing and if the trend continues, solar will eventually overtake other sources. If, over the course of the past year, Bill Gates made more money from picking up pennies than any other source, that would be news too. It would indicate that his other sources of income have dried up.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

thinkcontext 8y ago

I don't get why you think "new" is inaccurate or misleading. This shows where investments are being made now, which is highly relevant. For example, GE's natural gas turbine division has been taking a beating lately due to renewables, ie: "Renewables boom is a bust for gas equipment suppliers like GE" https://www.utilitydive.com/news/renewables-boom-is-a-bust-for-gas-equipment-suppliers-like-ge/524345/ https://www.utilitydive.com/news/renewables-boom-is-a-bust-f... You make points about the overall contributions of fossil fuels to national generation capacity but that's not what the article is about. Don't get me wrong, there are other reasons the headline and article are misleading. Comparing nameplate system capacity of electricity sources w/o taking into account the capacity factor is highly misleading. Also, discussion of whether solar projects were pushed up in an effort to beat the tariffs would have been appropriate.

beat 8y ago
"My deliberately incorrect reading of the headline is wrong!"

beat 8y ago

You're right, the article doesn't say coal is dead. It says coal is dying. Social media is rife with what you call "lies and misrepresentations about solar" because a lot of people are very excited to see real progress being made in converting the electric grid from dirty, limited coal to clean, unlimited solar/wind. When I see numbers like this, I'm not thinking about "1.3%". I'm thinking about what this trend means for how it's going to look in 20-30 years.

nickik 8y ago
Other countries have solved this today, even others 40 years ago (France). But we today are exited about 'maybe in 20-30 years'.
- beat 8y ago
  Big projects take time. Decades. The financial models of power utilities are based on multi-decade deprecation of plants that cost hundreds of millions (or billions) to build. Adding solar/wind to add new capacity or replace retiring capacity is a different and much better financial model than replacing equipment that is not yet fully deprecated. But it's a much slower one. Be patient.
  - nickik 8y ago
    I understand why it is not happening. But my point is that there seem to be more interest in solar and wind as ends in themselves rather then actual discussion of how to de-carbonize the economy.
    - beat 8y ago
      That just seems like an unnecessarily negative perspective to me. The point is, we are starting to de-carbonize the economy. And it's being done because market forces are a tailwind, not a headwind. All the moral imperatives in the world won't be as effective as a profit motive. I'm not one of those silly people who finds a moral valence in market forces, but I'm always happy when I see them working in my favor, because they're as relentless as erosion.

tim333 8y ago

>Solar energy is going to be a minor part of the world's energy strategy unless a revolutionary breakthrough happens It doesn't really need a revolutionary breakthrough, just for solar and battery costs to drop 50% or so such that they become the cheapest option. A 50% drop will probably happen just from the existing trends continuing.

nickik 8y ago
What this ignores is that the price for the end consumer is not directly related to the price of solar panel. The combined cost of solar, batteries and grid changes, more advanced handling and software actually don't result in cheaper energy prices. Compare California to places where they use gas.
- tim333 8y ago
  Yeah that's kind of why we need another 50% or so to really be cheaper after you allow for the problems with peaker plants, upgrading the grid and so on.
beat 8y ago
Indeed. I'd say we are in the midst of a "revolutionary breakthrough" right now. The cost-per-kwh of solar/wind electric power is now lower than fossil, and still dropping. Consumer options are growing on the low end, and experience with industrial-scale installations is growing on the high end. There's another breakthrough I'm looking forward to, however - really good instantaneous pricing and metering. When prices are set on demand and fully automated, then energy caching hooked to the grid becomes viable. This creates a good arbitrage financial model. Store energy from solar/wind when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing, and sell that stored energy when demand is up and supply is down. Once that's working, the whole grid gets remodeled. Then we can make a real dent in the coal-fired baseload plants and aging nuclear plants that desperately need retired. Economies of scale and experience will reduce production cost for whole suites of energy storage technologies (batteries, compression, thermal, flywheel, gravity, etc), even if they don't become more efficient. That's an exciting future.
jartelt 8y ago

WhompingWindows 8y ago

It's understandable coming from Bloomberg, their MO is to drive up clicks/views. Is it technically untrue? Well, in this advanced economy with projected flat electricity demand, there isn't much growth in demand for utilities, except for replacing retiring stock like coal, nuclear, etc. It's simply a massively large industrial base that fossil fuels are leveraging day-in day-out, powering the vast majority of vehicles, airplanes, cement, steel, aluminum, plastics, and on and on. Electricity is one component of our emissions base, yes, but it's something like 25-30% of our emissions. Solar/wind/other non-fossil-fuels will take 100 years to fill all of the use-cases seen with current fossil fuels, and even then they still may be used in some niche applications. Sadly, readers don't want to face the uncomfortable facts: we are still a fossil fuel civilization and will be for decades.

jartelt 8y ago

1.3% of generation today with a growth rate of roughly 30-40% per year. We are installing a ton of solar and are no longer building a significant number of new coal plants or nuclear plants. The article is pointing out an emerging trend. Before we know it, solar generation will account for 5% of electricity generation.

mikeash 8y ago

I don’t understand what you think is misleading here. It clearly says new power. That means it’s growing faster, not that it’s the biggest. Your Bill Gates analogy doesn’t work. He’s still making fantastic amounts of money from his investments. If picking money up off the sidewalk was actually his biggest source of new wealth (which is an odd way of saying “income”) then that would be huge news.

peterwwillis 8y ago

> why is HN and much of social media rife with lies and misrepresentations Clickbait (economic or personal gain), or people perpetuating things that sound good, or things they want to believe. Emotion influences the perception of information, and information can influence emotion. > Solar energy is going to be a minor part of the world's energy strategy unless a revolutionary breakthrough happens ( a significant breakthrough on par with cold fusion ). That's a basic fact of current state of physics What physics based on what equipment? An array of photovoltaic cells may or may not be as efficient as the Ivanpah solar facility. Ivanpah produced 719,398 GWh/yr across a six square mile area. Theoretically we would only need to cover half of the Mojave with such sites to provide for the US's annual electricity need.

interdocken 8y ago

> https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427 According to your source, 1.3% of utility production comes from solar. It provides an estimate for smaller residential rooftop installations which brings total current generation closer to 2%.