26 ms·

Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system

353 points by dmazin 1y ago

peterpost2 1y ago
Paywall
- gjm11 1y ago
  For what it's worth, it didn't throw one up for me. Anyway, for anyone wondering what's beyond the slightly clickbaity headline, it isn't about some astronomical phenomenon; the subheading reads "In the past two years, without much notice, solar power has begun to truly transform the world’s energy system." and the article is all about that.
  - Brajeshwar 1y ago
    It do not throw up for me either. I was silently hoping that they excluded IPs from more economically behind countries, so we can read. I was happy.
    - ljf 1y ago
      No paywall for me here in the UK. Maybe they consider us an economically behind country too.
  - gjm11 1y ago
    In case anyone's wondering: the HN title has now been changed to be more informative than the original article title, which was something like "4.6 billion years on, the sun is having a moment".
- mikepurvis 1y ago
  Reader mode on FF and a reload dismissed it for me.
- anomaly_ 1y ago
  People deserve to be paid for their work.
georgecmu 1y ago
https://archive.is/lv3eU https://archive.is/lv3eU
joshdavham 1y ago
How are people making these?
- m348e912 1y ago
  >How are people making these? Do you mean how are people making archive links? They go to archive.is and provide a paywalled link and the website archives and displays the content. I can't tell you how they get around paywalls or how archive.is has managed to not get shutdown, but that's how it's done.
- pcthrowaway 1y ago
  Take the paywalled URL: https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-a-warming-planet/46-billion-years-on-the-sun-is-having-a-moment https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-a-warming-planet/46... Add archive.is in front of it https://archive.is/https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-a-warming-planet/46-billion-years-on-the-sun-is-having-a-moment https://archive.is/https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-... If you get an nginx page (I seem to get one pretty often), you can try archive.today, archive.li, or any of the alternates in the URL section on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archive.today https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archive.today If the article has already been archived, you can select one of the snapshots which the archive site will show you. If it hasn't, click to archive it and wait ~5 minutes for it to finish. You'll get access to the snapshot and a URL you can share.
  - ignoramous 1y ago
    > If you get an nginx page (I seem to get one pretty often) It appears to be a rate-limit mechanism of some sort specific to a fingerprint. Clearing cookies for archive.[is|vn|fo|md] may (or may not) get you past it.
    - pcthrowaway 1y ago
      I'm pretty sure it's IP-based because I get it on different devices from the same network when it happens.
    - 1y ago
jama211 1y ago
[flagged]
coldspoon95 1y ago
[flagged]
- omellet 1y ago
  You seem to be ignoring the most important factor, which is cost.
  - TSiege 1y ago
    You also only need to buy the panel once. Fuel is free
- Cthulhu_ 1y ago
  > cheap energy is will power the next AI boom This is already happening, that and the crypto boom from a few years ago. > and lift the poor and middle class up But this is not happening; the ones doing AI stuff, crypto stuff, energy stuff have no interest in lifting any classes up. Energy prices are not going down, because demand is going up alongside supply, to the point where in some places the energy grid can't keep up. At-home solar and EVs are putting strain on the residential grids, even the newly built ones that have been reinforced 4x compared to the power grid of 10, 20 years ago. Thorium reactors will cost billions and decades to build, even if you can find a location, get past the legal hurdles, the societal outrage, NIMBYism, etc. Meanwhile, you can get solar panels from your local DIY store, or order a pallet of them off the internet for cheap. Anyone with roof or field space can build themselves a solar farm, but nuclear or thorium reactors are huge, nationwide and political investments.
  - nashashmi 1y ago
    In capitalism, we innovate for more profit. We don’t innovate to get random people wealthy.
    - coldspoon95 1y ago
      High EROI = high profit for investors
linusg789 1y ago
http://web.archive.org/web/20250709125256/https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-a-warming-planet/46-billion-years-on-the-sun-is-having-a-moment http://web.archive.org/web/20250709125256/https://www.newyor...
Aardwolf 1y ago
Given that life on earth in the last multi-billion years wasn't possible without the sun, it's strange to say that it has a moment only today
- treve 1y ago
  It's a small joke.
arh5451 1y ago
Nice article explaining solar energy policy. I think the article still doesn't address the mismatch between solar energy production and consumption, which needs to be filled by storage mechanisms. Also would have been nice to have a critical look at how the Chinese were able to corner the Solar market via state sponsored means.
- LetsGetTechnicl 1y ago
  What "critical look" is there to take? How about the way that the US gov't subsidizes the oil and gas industry, and is about to restart the coal industry? For some reason gov't investment in industry is only bad when China does it.
  - notTooFarGone 1y ago
    China bad when it's the only country that actually does something meaningful. Cheap batteries are fueling energy transition and the demand is only met by huge overproduction by china. China is actually carrying our lazy asses.
    - MisterTea 1y ago
      > China is actually carrying our lazy asses. Its not laziness, its corruption. The USA has a government that's tainted by moneyed interests who don't want their established gravy train derailed no matter how much it's fucking the entire planets environment. Now add to that, the current administration is too stupid and short sighted to ever incentivize change.
      - Gigachad 1y ago
        It’s a perfect example of overwhelming greed, corruption, and hate collapsing an empire.
        cindyllm 1y ago
        [dead]
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
ryukoposting 1y ago
> offering a plausible check to not only the climate crisis but to autocracy. Instead of relying on scattered deposits of fossil fuel—the control of which has largely defined geopolitics for more than a century—we are moving rapidly toward a reliance on diffuse but ubiquitous sources of supply. A lot of this article was clearly written with rose-colored glasses on, but this might be the silliest line of all. The author just finished talking about how a single country makes up the overwhelming share of solar panel and battery production, but hey, look how much more "diffuse and ubiquitous" it is!
- IsTom 1y ago
  With some investment you can make solar panels locally, you can't produce new oil deposits.
  - fragmede 1y ago
    Isn't that what biofuels are? Sun -> plants (corn) -> liquid that goes in (modified) cars
    - IsTom 1y ago
      EROI for them is really bad.
      - pfdietz 1y ago
        And power/area for biofuels is abysmal. Using PV for BEVs instead of ethanol in ICE vehicles would reduce land requirements by a factor of ~100.
    - triceratops 1y ago
      Sun (+ fertilizers made using petroleum)
- bryanlarsen 1y ago
  Once you build a solar plant, you no longer have a dependence on the country that made those solar panels. That solar plant will function for 50 years with very little maintenance. China is basically a single point of failure for future power expansion, but they can't take away solar plants already built.
Biologist123 1y ago
This was a great positive start to the day. Thanks whoever posted that. One point curious in its omission is whether the growth of renewables outpaces the depletion of our carbon budget. Presumably that’s the critical metric in all of this. [Edit: I ran this question through ChatGPT and the initial (unvalidated) response wasn’t so exciting. This obviously put a dampener on my mood. And I wondered why people like McKibben only talk about the upside. It can sometimes feel a bit like Kayfabe, playing with the the reader’s emotions. And like my old man says: if someone tells you about pros and cons, they’re an advisor. If someone tells you only about pros, they’re a salesman.]
- alex_duf 1y ago
  >whether the growth of renewables outpaces the depletion of our carbon budget I'm not sure I understand. There's no carbon budget, any carbon that we emit is carbon we'll have to re-capture somehow and the longer it stays in the atmosphere the longer it will have a heating effect. I think renewable have accelerated to the point of matching the electricity growth worldwide: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-production-by-source https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-production-by... We've also passed the peak of CO2 per capita, but since the population is still growing we are still increasing carbon emitions worldwide. It's going to be a while before we stop emitting anything, and then longer before we start re-absorbing it...
  - Biologist123 1y ago
    My apologies. By available carbon budget, I meant the carbon we can burn before we exceed 1.5 degrees, or 2 degrees etc.
    - myrmidon 1y ago
      I think 1.5°C is already basically impossible; scenarios between 2°C and 4°C by 2100 over pre-industrial levels seem achievable-- that would be a total remaining CO2 budget of ~3 Tera-tons of CO2 within 2100. That is an average of 4 tons of CO2/person/year for 10 billion people. Americans are at 3x that right now, Europeans/Chinese 2x, and a few wealthy nations are already there (France, Switzerland, Israel). Poorer countries like India are significantly under that value (for now!). Doubling that CO2 budget to 6000 Gt would make things significantly worse (5° expected temperature increase or more).
danaris 1y ago
A remarkably positive and hopeful article. It's really staggering seeing the figures of not just how much solar has grown in recent years, but how massively its growth has outstripped everyone's predictions from essentially any time in the past. I also really liked this passage about the direct on-the-ground effects of being able to install solar panels: > If you have travelled through rural Asia, you know the sound of diesel generators pumping the millions of deep tube wells that were a chief driver of the agricultural Green Revolution of the nineteen-sixties and seventies. Now solar electricity is pumping the water—diesel sales in Pakistan apparently fell thirty per cent in 2024. If you’re a farmer, that’s kind of a miracle; fuel, one of your biggest costs, is simply gone. Being able to pay a one-time up-front cost and just....never have to worry about paying for fuel for your irrigation system again. Truly remarkable. It is, if you'll pardon the pun, quite a ray of sunshine in these otherwise dark and uncertain times.
- energy123 1y ago
  Batteries will soon follow the same trajectory, just lagged. The same economic forces will produce the same outcome. We now have cost-effective stationary storage solution with non-scarce inputs, manufacturers are just waiting for the demand. It's hard to see this truth right now, because the demand isn't there for it to happen just yet. At the margin, energy developers will install solar instead of batteries, up until the point that the grid is saturated with solar, at which point they will switch to batteries. But very few energy grids have reached that point of saturation, so demand hasn't sent manufacturers the market signal to begin high-volume production of grid storage. That will change as more grids mature like California/Texas.
- throwaway2037 1y ago
  > diesel sales in Pakistan apparently fell thirty per cent in 2024 If true, this is fantastic news for Pakistan. They are in the middle of an awful economic crisis, that includes a balance of payments crisis (central bank has too few dollars to support necessary imports, like oil and gas). Anything they do to reduce trade defects will be very helpful.
thomascountz 1y ago
> ...people are now putting up a gigawatt’s worth of solar panels, the rough equivalent of the power generated by one coal-fired plant, every fifteen hours. This is amazing! Whether you believe photovoltaics are the most efficient form of green energy production or not, you cannot argue the impressive economics behind them. Successful engineering has to meet the market at the end of the day.
- pfdietz 1y ago
  > are the most efficient form What does this even mean?
  - aaronbrethorst 1y ago
    being a sentence fragment, not much! It helps to zoom out to the context of the entire sentence, where the GP says: "Whether you believe photovoltaics are the most efficient form of green energy production or not, you cannot argue the impressive economics behind them" It's definitely impressive that the cost per watt of a PV panel is roughly 13% of where it was just 15 years ago. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-pv-prices https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-pv-prices
    - kragen 1y ago
      You're overstating the current price of PV panels by a factor of three to five; it's closer to 3% of the 15-years-ago price than to 13%. That graph ends in 02023, at US$0.31/Wp, toward the end of the solar-panel bubble set up by the price-fixing cartel at the time. The actual current price is €0.11/Wp, or €0.06/Wp for low-cost (low-efficiency, no-warranty) panels: https://www.solarserver.de/photovoltaik-preis-pv-modul-preisindex/ https://www.solarserver.de/photovoltaik-preis-pv-modul-preis... €0.11 is 5% of US$2.39 (the Wp price on that graph from 02010), and €0.06 is 2.7% of it. However, my notes from 02016 say that the Solarserver price index for July 02010 was €1.62/Wp; sadly I did not note which module class that was. €0.11 is 6.8% of €1.62, but of course the Euro was worth more at the time... This three-to-five-fold difference is why you're seeing this article now.
    - 1y ago
ambientenv 1y ago
I just can't get that exuberant when I also read things like this [1]. [1] - https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/the-tale-of-two-energy-transitions?publication_id=1498475&post_id=167504563&isFreemail=true&r=cyze3&triedRedirect=true https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/the-tale-of-two-ene...
- audunw 1y ago
  I only skimmed the article but there didn’t seem to be much written about how much of that non-electric fossil fuel is waste heat. I know there are versions of the energy source-sink graph which shows wasted energy. Why didn’t the author use it? Weird. There are studies on how much energy is required to decarbonise everything, not just local electricity production. The energy required is far less than what you’d think if you look at the primary energy of all the energy we use today. One aspect of this is what you see with the transition to EV or from gas to induction cook tops. It comes with a huge reduction in wasted energy. The other aspect is the transition to heat pumps, which is over 100% efficient, so you need a lot less energy to provide the same amount of heat. There are now commercial industrial heat pumps that has reached 200°C, which enables the use in more industrial applications. The third is the transition to recycling. At some point we will have enough materials for all that we need to do. The green energy transition requires a big temporary jump in the amount of lithium and copper we need. But once all vehicles have been transitioned to EVs, most of those material will come from recycled materials, cutting the energy required to acquire those materials to a tiny fraction of what we need now.
- aredox 1y ago
  All of OECD countries are lying about their growth numbers, and Russia is "gaining strength". A base sanity check shows this is a load of BS.
- hoerensagen 1y ago
  Maybe I'm misunderstanding but the Author seems to think that the main conversion losses in electricity generation come from renewables Edit: I think this paragraph should be enough to show that it is not advisable to trust the author on anything to do with energy: >Due to the weight of all this stuff, and the relatively mild heat and scattered light coming from the Sun, solar panels produce no more than 20 Watts for each kg of their mass, even on a sunny day. Meanwhile wind turbines, with their massive concrete bases and tall steel towers, generate a mere 6 Watts for every kg of their weight. (Batteries fare slightly better at 240 W/kg.) For comparison diesel fuel produces 13,000 Watts for every kg of fuel burned. A regular diesel engine weighing 150 kg can thus easily produce 110 kW of power, while the same feat would require 5.5 tons of solar panels directly lit by the Sun at noon.
audunw 1y ago
I would recommend reading or watching what Tony Seba has put out. He has correctly predicted where we ended up with solar, and his predictions for the next stage of the energy transition is very remarkable and uplifting. It seems overly optimistic at first but makes a lot of sense when you look at the trend lines.
- jillesvangurp 1y ago
  I think the raw economics behind the transition are very interesting. People have a hard time imagining transformative changes. They keep trying to project the current state of affairs onto the post transition state. Of course the current state is mostly the result of how things used to work and not really a predictor for the future. When things stop working in the same way, a lot of other things start shifting. For example steel production is happening close to where coal used to be produced. And a lot of other industries depend on steel. What happens if steel production transitions to renewables? It will move to wherever renewables are cheapest. Which typically isn't where it's currently happening. Everything depending on cheap steel might move as well. I think the current US policies are unfortunate (for the US) but ultimately futile. They'll fall behind and will see their exports affected. That will lead to local economic problems that ultimately will lead to economic reform to fix that. It will delay the energy transition in the US for a bit (10-20 years, maybe less). The tariffs will curtail imports. Which, ironically means other countries will be less dependent on exporting to it. And also less motivated to import relatively expensive things from the US. So US exports will decline in lockstep with its imports. And the whole tariff volatility just means that countries will start insulating themselves from being dependent on anything coming from the US. And that will extend to all sectors in the US. Agriculture, gas, cars, software services, etc. The obvious fix to this in a few years will be a hard break with the (recent) past and ending trade wars and pulling the plug on the fossil fuel industry. Which by then won't be competitive anymore. It actually isn't right now but the US chooses to shove that under the carpet with trillions of dollars of government support. And most of that money is being borrowed. Interest and inflation is going to be a key thing to keep an eye on in the next few years. The US is sitting on a big stinky gas fueled debt bubble currently. What happens when that bursts and the gas becomes worthless?
Loic 1y ago
From a geopolitical point of view, if we increase solar/renewable, we decrease dependencies on fossil fuels. As fossil fuels are traded in USD, we decrease our needs of USD, so we decrease the value of the USD. Isn't it what the current US administration want? A weak USD to boost export?
- DamonHD 1y ago
  From outside at least, the US administration seems very like a bunch of cruel angry teens lashing out against reality, so various others (eg the bond markets) seem not sure that even if the US administration wants something that it would know why it does or that what is wanted would be a sensible thing or that it could be executed on...
ErigmolCt 1y ago
While the US is busy trying to revive the oil-soaked 20th century, places like Namibia are leapfrogging straight into a distributed, solar-powered future with YouTube tutorials... It's like watching the fossil era get out-hustled in real time.
- seydor 1y ago
  To be fair the US is leading the world in solar and wind per capita EDIT: energy consumption from renewables, not installed capacity https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/energy?tab=chart&hideControls=false&Total+or+Breakdown=Select+a+source&Energy+or+Electricity=Primary+energy&Metric=Per+capita+consumption&Select+a+source=Renewables&country=USA~CHN~OWID_EU27 https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/energy?tab=chart&hideCo... https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-solar?tab=chart&time=2000..latest&country=CHN~USA~OWID_EU27 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-solar?tab=char... https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/wind-electricity-per-capita?tab=chart&country=USA%7EOWID_EU27%7ECHN https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/wind-electricity-per-capi...
  - svantana 1y ago
    What is your source for that statement? According to [1], countries like the Netherlands, Germany, Spain and Denmark are way ahead of the US in those respects. [1] https://app.electricitymaps.com/ https://app.electricitymaps.com/
  - ludwigschubert 1y ago
    The US is at half the per capital levels of Sweden, and seems to lag behind most of Europe: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-electricity-generation-from-solar-and-wind?tab=table https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-electricity-ge... Do I misunderstand?
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
  - aa-jv 1y ago
pzo 1y ago
good article I just don't know why author prefer to spell all numbers using words rather than digits. It's very mentally taxing for me to read, e.g: >> of twenty-one thousand respondents in twenty-one countries, found that sixty-eight per cent favored solar energy, “five times more [...] could be just: >> of 21,000 responders in 21 countries, found that 68% favored solar energy, "5x more [...]
- ZeroGravitas 1y ago
  I believe this is a New Yorker magazine house style thing. I'd assume the author uses numerals in the book this article is based on.
  - HPsquared 1y ago
    If there are two options, you can trust they'll go for the more verbose one.
    - shmeeed 1y ago
      Autors are often paid by word count. Note that I'm not saying that's the reason here, but it could be.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- bokkies 1y ago
  Also Cape Town is a city in South Africa..no idea where Capetown is
  - antonvs 1y ago
    It's near Stellen Bosch
- happyraul 1y ago
  That's simply good writing practice. I find it more taxing to read digits than prose.
Animats 1y ago
"Last year, for the third year straight, heat pumps outsold furnaces in the U.S." Now that's a major development not mentioned much. Heat pumps have both improved quite a bit, and become cheaper due to sheer volume.
- matwood 1y ago
  I recently bought a heat pump dryer and it's pretty cool. No exhaust vent, just water drain. It also doesn't need the heavy duty power plug since it pulls so much less electricity than a typical heated air dryer.
  - pjc50 1y ago
    Ah of course - it can recycle the heat. Hot air going out a vent is wasted energy that you've paid for.
  - markus_zhang 1y ago
    I don’t know this thing exists. I need to take a look and maybe buy one when the current one breaks down. What brand did you purchase? Thanks.
    - matwood 1y ago
      I have an LG. They look to cost a premium in the US above heated air one. They also seem to be gentler on clothes since they pump in warm dry air vs. super heated air.
      - zitsarethecure 1y ago
        Out of curiosity, is it a "smart" appliance that requires an app to function?
        neon_electro 1y ago
        I have an LG heat pump dryer as well, it doesn't require the app to function as far as I understand.
jonplackett 1y ago
> Instead of relying on scattered deposits of fossil fuel—the control of which has largely defined geopolitics for more than a century—we are moving rapidly toward a reliance on diffuse but ubiquitous sources of supply. The sun and the wind are available everywhere I’m all for solar - but does it really solve the geographical / geopolitical issues of oil, as it’s currently rolling out? China produces pretty much all the solar panels - That’s quite a big concentration of power, even more so than oil.
- bhaak 1y ago
  Solar panels can be locally recycled. Oil cannot. Of course if you don't build up a local solar industry you are still dependent on foreign countries but it's not that China has an unchanging monopoly on the solar industry.
  - nradov 1y ago
    Solar panel recycling has never really been done at scale. And a country would need fairly advanced manufacturing capabilities first before they could conduct that recycling.
    - adrianN 1y ago
      Are old solar panels available at scale? They last for decades.
      - lnsru 1y ago
        First 15-20 years old Siemens panels come off the roofs right now in Germany. Still having 2/3 of the rated power generation capability. Absolutely fascinating thing. And since they cost more or less nothing it would make absolutely sense to install them in some lower cost of living area in southern Europe. I can get the panels in Germany, who wants to take over the southern Europe part?
        hnaccount_rng 1y ago
jillesvangurp 1y ago
The article doesn't mention a technology that deserves some attention because it counters the biggest and most obvious deficiency in solar: the sun doesn't always shine. That technology is cables. Cables allow us to move energy over long distances. And with HVCD cables that can mean across continents, oceans, time zones, and climate regions. The nice things about cables is that they are currently being underutilized. They are designed to have enough capacity so that the grid continues to function at peak demand. Off peak, there is a lot of under utilized cable capacity. An obvious use for that would be transporting power to wherever batteries need to be re-charged from wherever there is excess solar/wind power. And cables can work both ways. So import when there's a shortage, export when there's a surplus. And that includes the rapidly growing stock of batteries that are just sitting there with an average charge state close to more or less fully charged most of the time. We're talking terawatt hours of power. All you need to get at that is cables. Long distance cables will start moving non trivial amounts of renewable power around as we start executing on plans to e.g. connect Moroccan solar with the UK, Australian solar with Singapore, east coast US to Europe, etc. There are lots of cable projects stuck in planning pipelines around the world. Cables can compensate for some of the localized variations in energy productions caused by seasonal effects, weather, or day/night cycles. For the rest, we have nuclear, geothermal, hydro, and a rapidly growing stock of obsolete gas plants that we might still turn on on a rainy day. I think anyone still investing in gas plants will need a reality check: mothballed gas plant aren't going to be very profitable. But we'll keep some around for decades to come anyway.
- HPsquared 1y ago
  Any country relying on international cables for electricity would need to build and maintain full local backup power capacity. The combined cost of cables + backup may be more than storage cost. (Of course there are many factors which affect all these costs)
  - CrossVR 1y ago
    Norway, Denmark and The Netherlands are all part of the European Union. Would you make the same claim if we were talking about US states? (With Texas being a special exception)
rpozarickij 1y ago
> Solar power is now growing faster than any power source in history, and it is closely followed by wind power—which is really another form of energy from the sun, since it is differential heating of the earth that produces the wind that turns the turbines. It's interesting to realize that the vast majority of the energy used by humans comes from the sun (with the exception of nuclear and geothermal energy). Even hydro power comes from the sun, because the sun evaporates the water which then becomes part of rivers or other water reservoirs that power hydroelectric generators.
- lordofgibbons 1y ago
  All fossil fuels also come from the sun!
  - vrx-meta 1y ago
    The nuclear fuels are also probably from the Sun. Pretty much everything is the Sun.
    - ses1984 1y ago
      They came from some other suns, technically.
      - deleted 1y ago
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    - deleted 1y ago
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    - isolli 1y ago
      Hm, no, don't the heavy elements used for nuclear fission come from a previous generation of stars?
  - Sharlin 1y ago
    I wonder if there are some minimal fossil hydrocarbon deposits somewhere that originate from chemosynthesis-only microbe populations.
louwrentius 1y ago
In Star Trek The Next Generation, energy is a 'solved problem'. Material needs are also a 'solved problem'. Money doesn't exist anymore. I think at least 70% of the Hacker News crowd would hate this world because they would have no idea what to do with their life under these circumstances. What is life about except turning a profit? How can you have power over other people? Feel important with all your money? Look at Elon, he's happy. (They probably would become Ferengi). Maybe people can learn something from the anarchist David Graeber.
- CoolChum 1y ago
  > In Star Trek The Next Generation, energy is a 'solved problem'. In later Star Trek shows of the same era they show that it isn't really. A major plot point of voyager is them having to save power because they can't get the resources to keep the ship running. It kinda forgotten about later, but it shows that whatever power sources they are using isn't infinite and is still finite. > Material needs are also a 'solved problem'. Did you forget the episode where Troi literally has a breakdown in one episode because she knows the desert she is eating isn't real? She won't be the only person. They end up bartering BTW in one episode to get real eggs in so they can make real "authentic" scrambled eggs. Throughout the show they have to barter (which is less efficient form of transaction) to get things the replica can't produce or that are hand produced. Which echoes more wealthy people in reality buying hand produced items at a greater cost, over cheap mass produced items. > Money doesn't exist anymore. Money certainly exists in some sort of context as Federation has to trade and everyone else use Gold Pressed Latinum. It may not be used on Earth, but it is used elsewhere extensively and the Federation must also have some of that currency to be able to trade with those outside of it. People who rave about the vision that TNG put forward. They seem to forget that in Star Trek: Deep Space 9 they show the other side of the Federation. In the first episode they show the other side of the federation. Q introduced the federation to the Borg early and set off the chain of events which leads to the death of thousands of Starfleet personnel including Sisko's wife which he is haunted by throughout the entire series. This was a direct consequence of Picard's poor choices when dealing with two There are disaffected federation citizens that have started a terrorist / militia force called the marquis as a direct consequence of the colonisation of their homes by foreign invaders when the Federation sold them out.
isolli 1y ago
The piece doesn't mention the recent blackout in Spain. Wasn't it caused by the lack of energy sources with rotational inertia?
- vasco 1y ago
  It was a design/dimensioning error, something was expected to absorb reactive power and it added it instead.
- ViewTrick1002 1y ago
  The reporting so far is that they did not manage the reactive power correct leading to a voltage trip. But the fossil and nuclear lobbies were straight on blaming renewables when it happened. They are desperate for any handouts they can get their hands on before a select few are preserved as museum pieces.
- diffeomorphism 1y ago
  No, that was some of the initial speculation, but turned out to be wrong.
papaver-somnamb 1y ago
Tony Seba around 10 years ago predicted (among many other things) that ~2024 the cost of generating a unit of electricity onsite with PV will cost less than merely delivering the same unit of electricity over transmission infrastructure, not even considering the cost of generating that unit. Nowadays he is diving into what he terms the phase change disruptions where he explores and thinks out the ramifications of these disruptions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9McWXZA5wc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9McWXZA5wc
- GratiaTerra 1y ago
  I agree, personal energy abundance is disruptive: * Utility decentralization, economic liberation from near zero marginal cost of energy after initial investment. * Geo political: reduced dependence on hydrocarbon fuels, energy sovereignty * Transportation: every home is becomes a 'gas station' to recharge EVs, or for the EVs to charge the house in case of low house batteries (as opposed to ICE generator) * Climate: no hydrocarbons burned => no pollution * Technological civilization: abundant clean energy creates a feedback loop of innovation in energy production, storage, AI and networking * new business models from energy as a service
- jes5199 1y ago
  I've been following Seba since around 2020, and it's wild how: 1) he continues to be correct 2) people are still very slow to believe him his predictions have gotten a LOT more dramatic lately, I can't wait to see if he's still nailing it
  - dalyons 1y ago
    where do you follow him? i just poked around in X & youtube but all his stuff there seems ~a year old.
    - jes5199 1y ago
      Tony himself doesn’t post frequently, but his new book “Stellar” is worth checking out. Some of the other RethinkX people, Adam Dorr @adam_dorr and Bradd Libby @bradd_libby are better at posting high-frequency updates using Seba’s models. former-RethinkX researcher Nafeez Ahmed has a blog that is also worth checking out: ageoftransformation.org
asdefghyk 1y ago
The unsolved problem with solar power and wind power is how to store it so that it can be used 24/7. Stored at a affordable price that is. Storage so that the supply can be maintained 24/7 across the inevitable renewable ( sola and/'or wind droughts ) that can and do last several days, from time to time.
markus_zhang 1y ago
I recall that other power plants such as thermal power is still required to provide “inertia” for the whole system, as solar fluctuates a lot. The recent Spain-Portugal outage showed that there is not enough inertia in the system. I don’t really understand inertia in power plants but I wonder if it helps to push nuclear as primary and solar as secondary?
- cinntaile 1y ago
  The more likely future imo is different forms of dedicated inertia rather than inertia that you used to automatically get from old school power plants with big turbines. Both will coexist of course. Financial incentives for different support systems for electrical grids will continue to evolve in the foreseeable future.
- pjc50 1y ago
  This is mostly a matter of control systems engineering: inverters tend to be perfectly grid-following, but there's no reason why the phase angle can't be adjusted to provide "virtual inertia". Same for battery systems - an early market for these in the UK is getting paid for "fast frequency response". Every battery can be a virtual flywheel. https://www.modernpowersystems.com/analysis/batteries-for-fast-frequency-response-in-the-uk-4944789/ https://www.modernpowersystems.com/analysis/batteries-for-fa... Conversely, the Spain problem appears to have been a classic control systems problem of a slow undamped oscillation that gradually got out of hand. (I believe the preliminary incident reports got published and discussed on HN, if someone would like to link that here?) Nuclear may or may not have a role, but it's much slower to build than solar, so starting a plant now is going to face a very different landscape with a lot more solar in by the time it completes.
  - markus_zhang 1y ago
    Thanks. One benefit about nuclear, maybe I’m overstretching a bit, is that it is a large system engineering project so hopefully it trains and retains many engineers and technicians. Maybe solar farm serves that purpose too? But somehow “nuclear” sounds more cool…
tim333 1y ago
Exponential growth gonna exponential in both solar and AI. A lot of people are in denial and like this is all hype it'll never happen followed by wow how did that happen.
hookbock 1y ago
[dead]
xbmcuser 1y ago
China is also now facing an interesting problem as solar + batteries are cheaper than coal today. But coal currently is around 60% of its electricity supply it uses around 10 trillion kwh. So 6 trillion kwh * $0.08c is $600 billion ie it will have to destroy a $5-600 billion industry that employees millions of people. But at the same time it will be getting cheaper energy and the cost of producing energy will keep getting cheaper each year that would be another deflationary pressure on its economy.
- pornel 1y ago
  Of all the places I think China has the least sentiment for protecting business of industries it doesn't want, to keep a line going up on paper. Their push for renewables and energy independence is very deliberate. When they reach the goal, it's not "oh noes, our precious coal jobs, how are we going to placate rural voters and coal lobbyists", it's cheaper energy, and workers freed to be moved to more productive things.
  - xbmcuser 1y ago
    Oh I know I am just saying China currently needs to stimulate it internal consumption to maintain its economic growth targets. But cheaper energy that keeps getting cheaper each year is a wierd problem to have and it will be interesting to see how it plays out in the next 5-10 year.
  - getnormality 1y ago
    It's funny that our hope for the future now seems to stand upon the Chinese Communist Party being the paragons of enlightened, unsentimental capitalism that we never were.
- hnaccount_rng 1y ago
  That’s only a problem if you care about the stranded investment side. The energy industry isn’t that personel intensive (plus you could just continue to employ the people). But they absolutely will deprecate the power plants and stop buying the coal. The former will bankrupt some of the projects which planned with much longer repayment periods. The latter will immediately safe money
rel_ic 1y ago
Renewable energy is great, but we're not replacing fossil fuels with it, we're just adding more energy usage. And our energy usage is destroying the environment. Don't let these advancements in solar make you think things are getting better. We need to reduce fossil fuel usage, not just increase solar usage. https://pocketcasts.com/podcasts/b3b696c0-226d-0137-f265-1d245fc5f9cf/dbe82956-123c-4533-924c-7ec72fa03e83 https://pocketcasts.com/podcasts/b3b696c0-226d-0137-f265-1d2...
- amarait 1y ago
  What replaces fossil fuels is some kind of breakthrough in batteries. At the moment its getting better every year were currently at less than $100 per KWh which is crazy but needs to be improved for allowing more off the grid energy consumption
  - pjc50 1y ago
    The lesson from solar is that it won't be "a breakthrough" but the gradual accumulation of a thousand different efforts at cost-shaving across the whole supply chain making batteries gradually but inexorably cheaper. There won't be fanfare when fixed batteries start using sodium chemistry rather than lithium, for example, but that will start happening across the next few years.
  - pydry 1y ago
    We can either pray and wait for a technological breakthrough that makes storage tech way cheaper than gas or we can just use taxes and subsidies to make it happen now. It's not so hard. Lavish subsidies were used to make nuclear power semi-sort-of-competitive even though it's way more expensive. The same thing could have been done with solar and wind but apparently we thought the best course of action was just to wait until they became cheaper than coal without subsidies (& then Obama and Trump slammed solar with tariffs).
    - conductr 1y ago
      “We” are only in control of “us”. The rest of the world will keep burning fossil fuel
logic_node 1y ago
It’s crazy that most emergency plans ignore geomagnetic threats—did you know a Carrington‑level flare today could knock out transformers worth hundreds of billions? What low‑cost steps could cities take now?
- ViewTrick1002 1y ago
  This seems to be more doomerism than reality. What you are saying is that the induced current will be strong enough to cause damage even after all breakers trip. Having to black start a bunch of grids world wide? Yes. Widespread damage? No.
  - megaman821 1y ago
    Also, having a bunch of batteries on the grid would make a black start much easier.
deleted 1y ago
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perfectritone 1y ago
"...it is closely followed by wind power—which is really another form of energy from the sun..." By that logic, fossil fuels are also a form of solar power.
Amaury-El 1y ago
Solar used to feel pretty distant from everyday life. But now more and more rooftops are generating power, and even rural areas can run on their own. People who aren’t into tech can still feel the shift. It really is like getting electricity straight from the sky.

353 points by dmazin 1y ago

peterpost2 1y ago

Paywall

gjm11 1y ago
For what it's worth, it didn't throw one up for me. Anyway, for anyone wondering what's beyond the slightly clickbaity headline, it isn't about some astronomical phenomenon; the subheading reads "In the past two years, without much notice, solar power has begun to truly transform the world’s energy system." and the article is all about that.
- Brajeshwar 1y ago
  It do not throw up for me either. I was silently hoping that they excluded IPs from more economically behind countries, so we can read. I was happy.
  - ljf 1y ago
    No paywall for me here in the UK. Maybe they consider us an economically behind country too.
- gjm11 1y ago
  In case anyone's wondering: the HN title has now been changed to be more informative than the original article title, which was something like "4.6 billion years on, the sun is having a moment".
mikepurvis 1y ago
Reader mode on FF and a reload dismissed it for me.
anomaly_ 1y ago
People deserve to be paid for their work.

georgecmu 1y ago

https://archive.is/lv3eU https://archive.is/lv3eU

joshdavham 1y ago

How are people making these?

m348e912 1y ago
>How are people making these? Do you mean how are people making archive links? They go to archive.is and provide a paywalled link and the website archives and displays the content. I can't tell you how they get around paywalls or how archive.is has managed to not get shutdown, but that's how it's done.
pcthrowaway 1y ago
Take the paywalled URL: https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-a-warming-planet/46-billion-years-on-the-sun-is-having-a-moment https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-a-warming-planet/46... Add archive.is in front of it https://archive.is/https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-a-warming-planet/46-billion-years-on-the-sun-is-having-a-moment https://archive.is/https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-... If you get an nginx page (I seem to get one pretty often), you can try archive.today, archive.li, or any of the alternates in the URL section on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archive.today https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archive.today If the article has already been archived, you can select one of the snapshots which the archive site will show you. If it hasn't, click to archive it and wait ~5 minutes for it to finish. You'll get access to the snapshot and a URL you can share.
- ignoramous 1y ago
  > If you get an nginx page (I seem to get one pretty often) It appears to be a rate-limit mechanism of some sort specific to a fingerprint. Clearing cookies for archive.[is|vn|fo|md] may (or may not) get you past it.
  - pcthrowaway 1y ago
    I'm pretty sure it's IP-based because I get it on different devices from the same network when it happens.
  - 1y ago

jama211 1y ago

[flagged]

coldspoon95 1y ago

[flagged]

omellet 1y ago
You seem to be ignoring the most important factor, which is cost.
- TSiege 1y ago
  You also only need to buy the panel once. Fuel is free
Cthulhu_ 1y ago
> cheap energy is will power the next AI boom This is already happening, that and the crypto boom from a few years ago. > and lift the poor and middle class up But this is not happening; the ones doing AI stuff, crypto stuff, energy stuff have no interest in lifting any classes up. Energy prices are not going down, because demand is going up alongside supply, to the point where in some places the energy grid can't keep up. At-home solar and EVs are putting strain on the residential grids, even the newly built ones that have been reinforced 4x compared to the power grid of 10, 20 years ago. Thorium reactors will cost billions and decades to build, even if you can find a location, get past the legal hurdles, the societal outrage, NIMBYism, etc. Meanwhile, you can get solar panels from your local DIY store, or order a pallet of them off the internet for cheap. Anyone with roof or field space can build themselves a solar farm, but nuclear or thorium reactors are huge, nationwide and political investments.
- nashashmi 1y ago
  In capitalism, we innovate for more profit. We don’t innovate to get random people wealthy.
  - coldspoon95 1y ago
    High EROI = high profit for investors

linusg789 1y ago

http://web.archive.org/web/20250709125256/https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-a-warming-planet/46-billion-years-on-the-sun-is-having-a-moment http://web.archive.org/web/20250709125256/https://www.newyor...

Aardwolf 1y ago

Given that life on earth in the last multi-billion years wasn't possible without the sun, it's strange to say that it has a moment only today

treve 1y ago
It's a small joke.

arh5451 1y ago

Nice article explaining solar energy policy. I think the article still doesn't address the mismatch between solar energy production and consumption, which needs to be filled by storage mechanisms. Also would have been nice to have a critical look at how the Chinese were able to corner the Solar market via state sponsored means.

LetsGetTechnicl 1y ago
What "critical look" is there to take? How about the way that the US gov't subsidizes the oil and gas industry, and is about to restart the coal industry? For some reason gov't investment in industry is only bad when China does it.
- notTooFarGone 1y ago
  China bad when it's the only country that actually does something meaningful. Cheap batteries are fueling energy transition and the demand is only met by huge overproduction by china. China is actually carrying our lazy asses.
  - MisterTea 1y ago
    > China is actually carrying our lazy asses. Its not laziness, its corruption. The USA has a government that's tainted by moneyed interests who don't want their established gravy train derailed no matter how much it's fucking the entire planets environment. Now add to that, the current administration is too stupid and short sighted to ever incentivize change.
    - Gigachad 1y ago
      It’s a perfect example of overwhelming greed, corruption, and hate collapsing an empire.
      - cindyllm 1y ago
        [dead]

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

ryukoposting 1y ago

> offering a plausible check to not only the climate crisis but to autocracy. Instead of relying on scattered deposits of fossil fuel—the control of which has largely defined geopolitics for more than a century—we are moving rapidly toward a reliance on diffuse but ubiquitous sources of supply. A lot of this article was clearly written with rose-colored glasses on, but this might be the silliest line of all. The author just finished talking about how a single country makes up the overwhelming share of solar panel and battery production, but hey, look how much more "diffuse and ubiquitous" it is!

IsTom 1y ago
With some investment you can make solar panels locally, you can't produce new oil deposits.
- fragmede 1y ago
  Isn't that what biofuels are? Sun -> plants (corn) -> liquid that goes in (modified) cars
  - IsTom 1y ago
    EROI for them is really bad.
    - pfdietz 1y ago
      And power/area for biofuels is abysmal. Using PV for BEVs instead of ethanol in ICE vehicles would reduce land requirements by a factor of ~100.
  - triceratops 1y ago
    Sun (+ fertilizers made using petroleum)
bryanlarsen 1y ago
Once you build a solar plant, you no longer have a dependence on the country that made those solar panels. That solar plant will function for 50 years with very little maintenance. China is basically a single point of failure for future power expansion, but they can't take away solar plants already built.

Biologist123 1y ago

This was a great positive start to the day. Thanks whoever posted that. One point curious in its omission is whether the growth of renewables outpaces the depletion of our carbon budget. Presumably that’s the critical metric in all of this. [Edit: I ran this question through ChatGPT and the initial (unvalidated) response wasn’t so exciting. This obviously put a dampener on my mood. And I wondered why people like McKibben only talk about the upside. It can sometimes feel a bit like Kayfabe, playing with the the reader’s emotions. And like my old man says: if someone tells you about pros and cons, they’re an advisor. If someone tells you only about pros, they’re a salesman.]

alex_duf 1y ago
>whether the growth of renewables outpaces the depletion of our carbon budget I'm not sure I understand. There's no carbon budget, any carbon that we emit is carbon we'll have to re-capture somehow and the longer it stays in the atmosphere the longer it will have a heating effect. I think renewable have accelerated to the point of matching the electricity growth worldwide: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-production-by-source https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-production-by... We've also passed the peak of CO2 per capita, but since the population is still growing we are still increasing carbon emitions worldwide. It's going to be a while before we stop emitting anything, and then longer before we start re-absorbing it...
- Biologist123 1y ago
  My apologies. By available carbon budget, I meant the carbon we can burn before we exceed 1.5 degrees, or 2 degrees etc.
  - myrmidon 1y ago
    I think 1.5°C is already basically impossible; scenarios between 2°C and 4°C by 2100 over pre-industrial levels seem achievable-- that would be a total remaining CO2 budget of ~3 Tera-tons of CO2 within 2100. That is an average of 4 tons of CO2/person/year for 10 billion people. Americans are at 3x that right now, Europeans/Chinese 2x, and a few wealthy nations are already there (France, Switzerland, Israel). Poorer countries like India are significantly under that value (for now!). Doubling that CO2 budget to 6000 Gt would make things significantly worse (5° expected temperature increase or more).

danaris 1y ago

A remarkably positive and hopeful article. It's really staggering seeing the figures of not just how much solar has grown in recent years, but how massively its growth has outstripped everyone's predictions from essentially any time in the past. I also really liked this passage about the direct on-the-ground effects of being able to install solar panels: > If you have travelled through rural Asia, you know the sound of diesel generators pumping the millions of deep tube wells that were a chief driver of the agricultural Green Revolution of the nineteen-sixties and seventies. Now solar electricity is pumping the water—diesel sales in Pakistan apparently fell thirty per cent in 2024. If you’re a farmer, that’s kind of a miracle; fuel, one of your biggest costs, is simply gone. Being able to pay a one-time up-front cost and just....never have to worry about paying for fuel for your irrigation system again. Truly remarkable. It is, if you'll pardon the pun, quite a ray of sunshine in these otherwise dark and uncertain times.

energy123 1y ago
Batteries will soon follow the same trajectory, just lagged. The same economic forces will produce the same outcome. We now have cost-effective stationary storage solution with non-scarce inputs, manufacturers are just waiting for the demand. It's hard to see this truth right now, because the demand isn't there for it to happen just yet. At the margin, energy developers will install solar instead of batteries, up until the point that the grid is saturated with solar, at which point they will switch to batteries. But very few energy grids have reached that point of saturation, so demand hasn't sent manufacturers the market signal to begin high-volume production of grid storage. That will change as more grids mature like California/Texas.
throwaway2037 1y ago
> diesel sales in Pakistan apparently fell thirty per cent in 2024 If true, this is fantastic news for Pakistan. They are in the middle of an awful economic crisis, that includes a balance of payments crisis (central bank has too few dollars to support necessary imports, like oil and gas). Anything they do to reduce trade defects will be very helpful.

thomascountz 1y ago

> ...people are now putting up a gigawatt’s worth of solar panels, the rough equivalent of the power generated by one coal-fired plant, every fifteen hours. This is amazing! Whether you believe photovoltaics are the most efficient form of green energy production or not, you cannot argue the impressive economics behind them. Successful engineering has to meet the market at the end of the day.

pfdietz 1y ago
> are the most efficient form What does this even mean?
- aaronbrethorst 1y ago
  being a sentence fragment, not much! It helps to zoom out to the context of the entire sentence, where the GP says: "Whether you believe photovoltaics are the most efficient form of green energy production or not, you cannot argue the impressive economics behind them" It's definitely impressive that the cost per watt of a PV panel is roughly 13% of where it was just 15 years ago. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-pv-prices https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-pv-prices
  - kragen 1y ago
    You're overstating the current price of PV panels by a factor of three to five; it's closer to 3% of the 15-years-ago price than to 13%. That graph ends in 02023, at US$0.31/Wp, toward the end of the solar-panel bubble set up by the price-fixing cartel at the time. The actual current price is €0.11/Wp, or €0.06/Wp for low-cost (low-efficiency, no-warranty) panels: https://www.solarserver.de/photovoltaik-preis-pv-modul-preisindex/ https://www.solarserver.de/photovoltaik-preis-pv-modul-preis... €0.11 is 5% of US$2.39 (the Wp price on that graph from 02010), and €0.06 is 2.7% of it. However, my notes from 02016 say that the Solarserver price index for July 02010 was €1.62/Wp; sadly I did not note which module class that was. €0.11 is 6.8% of €1.62, but of course the Euro was worth more at the time... This three-to-five-fold difference is why you're seeing this article now.
  - 1y ago

ambientenv 1y ago

I just can't get that exuberant when I also read things like this [1]. [1] - https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/the-tale-of-two-energy-transitions?publication_id=1498475&post_id=167504563&isFreemail=true&r=cyze3&triedRedirect=true https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/the-tale-of-two-ene...

audunw 1y ago
I only skimmed the article but there didn’t seem to be much written about how much of that non-electric fossil fuel is waste heat. I know there are versions of the energy source-sink graph which shows wasted energy. Why didn’t the author use it? Weird. There are studies on how much energy is required to decarbonise everything, not just local electricity production. The energy required is far less than what you’d think if you look at the primary energy of all the energy we use today. One aspect of this is what you see with the transition to EV or from gas to induction cook tops. It comes with a huge reduction in wasted energy. The other aspect is the transition to heat pumps, which is over 100% efficient, so you need a lot less energy to provide the same amount of heat. There are now commercial industrial heat pumps that has reached 200°C, which enables the use in more industrial applications. The third is the transition to recycling. At some point we will have enough materials for all that we need to do. The green energy transition requires a big temporary jump in the amount of lithium and copper we need. But once all vehicles have been transitioned to EVs, most of those material will come from recycled materials, cutting the energy required to acquire those materials to a tiny fraction of what we need now.
aredox 1y ago
All of OECD countries are lying about their growth numbers, and Russia is "gaining strength". A base sanity check shows this is a load of BS.
hoerensagen 1y ago
Maybe I'm misunderstanding but the Author seems to think that the main conversion losses in electricity generation come from renewables Edit: I think this paragraph should be enough to show that it is not advisable to trust the author on anything to do with energy: >Due to the weight of all this stuff, and the relatively mild heat and scattered light coming from the Sun, solar panels produce no more than 20 Watts for each kg of their mass, even on a sunny day. Meanwhile wind turbines, with their massive concrete bases and tall steel towers, generate a mere 6 Watts for every kg of their weight. (Batteries fare slightly better at 240 W/kg.) For comparison diesel fuel produces 13,000 Watts for every kg of fuel burned. A regular diesel engine weighing 150 kg can thus easily produce 110 kW of power, while the same feat would require 5.5 tons of solar panels directly lit by the Sun at noon.

audunw 1y ago

I would recommend reading or watching what Tony Seba has put out. He has correctly predicted where we ended up with solar, and his predictions for the next stage of the energy transition is very remarkable and uplifting. It seems overly optimistic at first but makes a lot of sense when you look at the trend lines.

jillesvangurp 1y ago
I think the raw economics behind the transition are very interesting. People have a hard time imagining transformative changes. They keep trying to project the current state of affairs onto the post transition state. Of course the current state is mostly the result of how things used to work and not really a predictor for the future. When things stop working in the same way, a lot of other things start shifting. For example steel production is happening close to where coal used to be produced. And a lot of other industries depend on steel. What happens if steel production transitions to renewables? It will move to wherever renewables are cheapest. Which typically isn't where it's currently happening. Everything depending on cheap steel might move as well. I think the current US policies are unfortunate (for the US) but ultimately futile. They'll fall behind and will see their exports affected. That will lead to local economic problems that ultimately will lead to economic reform to fix that. It will delay the energy transition in the US for a bit (10-20 years, maybe less). The tariffs will curtail imports. Which, ironically means other countries will be less dependent on exporting to it. And also less motivated to import relatively expensive things from the US. So US exports will decline in lockstep with its imports. And the whole tariff volatility just means that countries will start insulating themselves from being dependent on anything coming from the US. And that will extend to all sectors in the US. Agriculture, gas, cars, software services, etc. The obvious fix to this in a few years will be a hard break with the (recent) past and ending trade wars and pulling the plug on the fossil fuel industry. Which by then won't be competitive anymore. It actually isn't right now but the US chooses to shove that under the carpet with trillions of dollars of government support. And most of that money is being borrowed. Interest and inflation is going to be a key thing to keep an eye on in the next few years. The US is sitting on a big stinky gas fueled debt bubble currently. What happens when that bursts and the gas becomes worthless?

Loic 1y ago

From a geopolitical point of view, if we increase solar/renewable, we decrease dependencies on fossil fuels. As fossil fuels are traded in USD, we decrease our needs of USD, so we decrease the value of the USD. Isn't it what the current US administration want? A weak USD to boost export?

DamonHD 1y ago
From outside at least, the US administration seems very like a bunch of cruel angry teens lashing out against reality, so various others (eg the bond markets) seem not sure that even if the US administration wants something that it would know why it does or that what is wanted would be a sensible thing or that it could be executed on...

ErigmolCt 1y ago

While the US is busy trying to revive the oil-soaked 20th century, places like Namibia are leapfrogging straight into a distributed, solar-powered future with YouTube tutorials... It's like watching the fossil era get out-hustled in real time.

seydor 1y ago
To be fair the US is leading the world in solar and wind per capita EDIT: energy consumption from renewables, not installed capacity https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/energy?tab=chart&hideControls=false&Total+or+Breakdown=Select+a+source&Energy+or+Electricity=Primary+energy&Metric=Per+capita+consumption&Select+a+source=Renewables&country=USA~CHN~OWID_EU27 https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/energy?tab=chart&hideCo... https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-solar?tab=chart&time=2000..latest&country=CHN~USA~OWID_EU27 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-solar?tab=char... https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/wind-electricity-per-capita?tab=chart&country=USA%7EOWID_EU27%7ECHN https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/wind-electricity-per-capi...
- svantana 1y ago
  What is your source for that statement? According to [1], countries like the Netherlands, Germany, Spain and Denmark are way ahead of the US in those respects. [1] https://app.electricitymaps.com/ https://app.electricitymaps.com/
- ludwigschubert 1y ago
  The US is at half the per capital levels of Sweden, and seems to lag behind most of Europe: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-electricity-generation-from-solar-and-wind?tab=table https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-electricity-ge... Do I misunderstand?
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- aa-jv 1y ago

pzo 1y ago

good article I just don't know why author prefer to spell all numbers using words rather than digits. It's very mentally taxing for me to read, e.g: >> of twenty-one thousand respondents in twenty-one countries, found that sixty-eight per cent favored solar energy, “five times more [...] could be just: >> of 21,000 responders in 21 countries, found that 68% favored solar energy, "5x more [...]

ZeroGravitas 1y ago
I believe this is a New Yorker magazine house style thing. I'd assume the author uses numerals in the book this article is based on.
- HPsquared 1y ago
  If there are two options, you can trust they'll go for the more verbose one.
  - shmeeed 1y ago
    Autors are often paid by word count. Note that I'm not saying that's the reason here, but it could be.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
bokkies 1y ago
Also Cape Town is a city in South Africa..no idea where Capetown is
- antonvs 1y ago
  It's near Stellen Bosch
happyraul 1y ago
That's simply good writing practice. I find it more taxing to read digits than prose.

Animats 1y ago

"Last year, for the third year straight, heat pumps outsold furnaces in the U.S." Now that's a major development not mentioned much. Heat pumps have both improved quite a bit, and become cheaper due to sheer volume.

matwood 1y ago
I recently bought a heat pump dryer and it's pretty cool. No exhaust vent, just water drain. It also doesn't need the heavy duty power plug since it pulls so much less electricity than a typical heated air dryer.
- pjc50 1y ago
  Ah of course - it can recycle the heat. Hot air going out a vent is wasted energy that you've paid for.
- markus_zhang 1y ago
  I don’t know this thing exists. I need to take a look and maybe buy one when the current one breaks down. What brand did you purchase? Thanks.
  - matwood 1y ago
    I have an LG. They look to cost a premium in the US above heated air one. They also seem to be gentler on clothes since they pump in warm dry air vs. super heated air.
    - zitsarethecure 1y ago
      Out of curiosity, is it a "smart" appliance that requires an app to function?
      - neon_electro 1y ago
        I have an LG heat pump dryer as well, it doesn't require the app to function as far as I understand.

jonplackett 1y ago

> Instead of relying on scattered deposits of fossil fuel—the control of which has largely defined geopolitics for more than a century—we are moving rapidly toward a reliance on diffuse but ubiquitous sources of supply. The sun and the wind are available everywhere I’m all for solar - but does it really solve the geographical / geopolitical issues of oil, as it’s currently rolling out? China produces pretty much all the solar panels - That’s quite a big concentration of power, even more so than oil.

bhaak 1y ago
Solar panels can be locally recycled. Oil cannot. Of course if you don't build up a local solar industry you are still dependent on foreign countries but it's not that China has an unchanging monopoly on the solar industry.
- nradov 1y ago
  Solar panel recycling has never really been done at scale. And a country would need fairly advanced manufacturing capabilities first before they could conduct that recycling.
  - adrianN 1y ago
    Are old solar panels available at scale? They last for decades.
    - lnsru 1y ago
      First 15-20 years old Siemens panels come off the roofs right now in Germany. Still having 2/3 of the rated power generation capability. Absolutely fascinating thing. And since they cost more or less nothing it would make absolutely sense to install them in some lower cost of living area in southern Europe. I can get the panels in Germany, who wants to take over the southern Europe part?
      - hnaccount_rng 1y ago

jillesvangurp 1y ago

The article doesn't mention a technology that deserves some attention because it counters the biggest and most obvious deficiency in solar: the sun doesn't always shine. That technology is cables. Cables allow us to move energy over long distances. And with HVCD cables that can mean across continents, oceans, time zones, and climate regions. The nice things about cables is that they are currently being underutilized. They are designed to have enough capacity so that the grid continues to function at peak demand. Off peak, there is a lot of under utilized cable capacity. An obvious use for that would be transporting power to wherever batteries need to be re-charged from wherever there is excess solar/wind power. And cables can work both ways. So import when there's a shortage, export when there's a surplus. And that includes the rapidly growing stock of batteries that are just sitting there with an average charge state close to more or less fully charged most of the time. We're talking terawatt hours of power. All you need to get at that is cables. Long distance cables will start moving non trivial amounts of renewable power around as we start executing on plans to e.g. connect Moroccan solar with the UK, Australian solar with Singapore, east coast US to Europe, etc. There are lots of cable projects stuck in planning pipelines around the world. Cables can compensate for some of the localized variations in energy productions caused by seasonal effects, weather, or day/night cycles. For the rest, we have nuclear, geothermal, hydro, and a rapidly growing stock of obsolete gas plants that we might still turn on on a rainy day. I think anyone still investing in gas plants will need a reality check: mothballed gas plant aren't going to be very profitable. But we'll keep some around for decades to come anyway.

HPsquared 1y ago
Any country relying on international cables for electricity would need to build and maintain full local backup power capacity. The combined cost of cables + backup may be more than storage cost. (Of course there are many factors which affect all these costs)
- CrossVR 1y ago
  Norway, Denmark and The Netherlands are all part of the European Union. Would you make the same claim if we were talking about US states? (With Texas being a special exception)

rpozarickij 1y ago

> Solar power is now growing faster than any power source in history, and it is closely followed by wind power—which is really another form of energy from the sun, since it is differential heating of the earth that produces the wind that turns the turbines. It's interesting to realize that the vast majority of the energy used by humans comes from the sun (with the exception of nuclear and geothermal energy). Even hydro power comes from the sun, because the sun evaporates the water which then becomes part of rivers or other water reservoirs that power hydroelectric generators.

lordofgibbons 1y ago
All fossil fuels also come from the sun!
- vrx-meta 1y ago
  The nuclear fuels are also probably from the Sun. Pretty much everything is the Sun.
  - ses1984 1y ago
    They came from some other suns, technically.
    - deleted 1y ago
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  - isolli 1y ago
    Hm, no, don't the heavy elements used for nuclear fission come from a previous generation of stars?
- Sharlin 1y ago
  I wonder if there are some minimal fossil hydrocarbon deposits somewhere that originate from chemosynthesis-only microbe populations.

louwrentius 1y ago

In Star Trek The Next Generation, energy is a 'solved problem'. Material needs are also a 'solved problem'. Money doesn't exist anymore. I think at least 70% of the Hacker News crowd would hate this world because they would have no idea what to do with their life under these circumstances. What is life about except turning a profit? How can you have power over other people? Feel important with all your money? Look at Elon, he's happy. (They probably would become Ferengi). Maybe people can learn something from the anarchist David Graeber.

CoolChum 1y ago
> In Star Trek The Next Generation, energy is a 'solved problem'. In later Star Trek shows of the same era they show that it isn't really. A major plot point of voyager is them having to save power because they can't get the resources to keep the ship running. It kinda forgotten about later, but it shows that whatever power sources they are using isn't infinite and is still finite. > Material needs are also a 'solved problem'. Did you forget the episode where Troi literally has a breakdown in one episode because she knows the desert she is eating isn't real? She won't be the only person. They end up bartering BTW in one episode to get real eggs in so they can make real "authentic" scrambled eggs. Throughout the show they have to barter (which is less efficient form of transaction) to get things the replica can't produce or that are hand produced. Which echoes more wealthy people in reality buying hand produced items at a greater cost, over cheap mass produced items. > Money doesn't exist anymore. Money certainly exists in some sort of context as Federation has to trade and everyone else use Gold Pressed Latinum. It may not be used on Earth, but it is used elsewhere extensively and the Federation must also have some of that currency to be able to trade with those outside of it. People who rave about the vision that TNG put forward. They seem to forget that in Star Trek: Deep Space 9 they show the other side of the Federation. In the first episode they show the other side of the federation. Q introduced the federation to the Borg early and set off the chain of events which leads to the death of thousands of Starfleet personnel including Sisko's wife which he is haunted by throughout the entire series. This was a direct consequence of Picard's poor choices when dealing with two There are disaffected federation citizens that have started a terrorist / militia force called the marquis as a direct consequence of the colonisation of their homes by foreign invaders when the Federation sold them out.

isolli 1y ago

The piece doesn't mention the recent blackout in Spain. Wasn't it caused by the lack of energy sources with rotational inertia?

vasco 1y ago
It was a design/dimensioning error, something was expected to absorb reactive power and it added it instead.
ViewTrick1002 1y ago
The reporting so far is that they did not manage the reactive power correct leading to a voltage trip. But the fossil and nuclear lobbies were straight on blaming renewables when it happened. They are desperate for any handouts they can get their hands on before a select few are preserved as museum pieces.
diffeomorphism 1y ago
No, that was some of the initial speculation, but turned out to be wrong.

papaver-somnamb 1y ago

Tony Seba around 10 years ago predicted (among many other things) that ~2024 the cost of generating a unit of electricity onsite with PV will cost less than merely delivering the same unit of electricity over transmission infrastructure, not even considering the cost of generating that unit. Nowadays he is diving into what he terms the phase change disruptions where he explores and thinks out the ramifications of these disruptions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9McWXZA5wc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9McWXZA5wc

GratiaTerra 1y ago
I agree, personal energy abundance is disruptive: * Utility decentralization, economic liberation from near zero marginal cost of energy after initial investment. * Geo political: reduced dependence on hydrocarbon fuels, energy sovereignty * Transportation: every home is becomes a 'gas station' to recharge EVs, or for the EVs to charge the house in case of low house batteries (as opposed to ICE generator) * Climate: no hydrocarbons burned => no pollution * Technological civilization: abundant clean energy creates a feedback loop of innovation in energy production, storage, AI and networking * new business models from energy as a service
jes5199 1y ago
I've been following Seba since around 2020, and it's wild how: 1) he continues to be correct 2) people are still very slow to believe him his predictions have gotten a LOT more dramatic lately, I can't wait to see if he's still nailing it
- dalyons 1y ago
  where do you follow him? i just poked around in X & youtube but all his stuff there seems ~a year old.
  - jes5199 1y ago
    Tony himself doesn’t post frequently, but his new book “Stellar” is worth checking out. Some of the other RethinkX people, Adam Dorr @adam_dorr and Bradd Libby @bradd_libby are better at posting high-frequency updates using Seba’s models. former-RethinkX researcher Nafeez Ahmed has a blog that is also worth checking out: ageoftransformation.org

asdefghyk 1y ago

The unsolved problem with solar power and wind power is how to store it so that it can be used 24/7. Stored at a affordable price that is. Storage so that the supply can be maintained 24/7 across the inevitable renewable ( sola and/'or wind droughts ) that can and do last several days, from time to time.

markus_zhang 1y ago

I recall that other power plants such as thermal power is still required to provide “inertia” for the whole system, as solar fluctuates a lot. The recent Spain-Portugal outage showed that there is not enough inertia in the system. I don’t really understand inertia in power plants but I wonder if it helps to push nuclear as primary and solar as secondary?

cinntaile 1y ago
The more likely future imo is different forms of dedicated inertia rather than inertia that you used to automatically get from old school power plants with big turbines. Both will coexist of course. Financial incentives for different support systems for electrical grids will continue to evolve in the foreseeable future.
pjc50 1y ago
This is mostly a matter of control systems engineering: inverters tend to be perfectly grid-following, but there's no reason why the phase angle can't be adjusted to provide "virtual inertia". Same for battery systems - an early market for these in the UK is getting paid for "fast frequency response". Every battery can be a virtual flywheel. https://www.modernpowersystems.com/analysis/batteries-for-fast-frequency-response-in-the-uk-4944789/ https://www.modernpowersystems.com/analysis/batteries-for-fa... Conversely, the Spain problem appears to have been a classic control systems problem of a slow undamped oscillation that gradually got out of hand. (I believe the preliminary incident reports got published and discussed on HN, if someone would like to link that here?) Nuclear may or may not have a role, but it's much slower to build than solar, so starting a plant now is going to face a very different landscape with a lot more solar in by the time it completes.
- markus_zhang 1y ago
  Thanks. One benefit about nuclear, maybe I’m overstretching a bit, is that it is a large system engineering project so hopefully it trains and retains many engineers and technicians. Maybe solar farm serves that purpose too? But somehow “nuclear” sounds more cool…

tim333 1y ago

Exponential growth gonna exponential in both solar and AI. A lot of people are in denial and like this is all hype it'll never happen followed by wow how did that happen.

hookbock 1y ago

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xbmcuser 1y ago

China is also now facing an interesting problem as solar + batteries are cheaper than coal today. But coal currently is around 60% of its electricity supply it uses around 10 trillion kwh. So 6 trillion kwh * $0.08c is $600 billion ie it will have to destroy a $5-600 billion industry that employees millions of people. But at the same time it will be getting cheaper energy and the cost of producing energy will keep getting cheaper each year that would be another deflationary pressure on its economy.

pornel 1y ago
Of all the places I think China has the least sentiment for protecting business of industries it doesn't want, to keep a line going up on paper. Their push for renewables and energy independence is very deliberate. When they reach the goal, it's not "oh noes, our precious coal jobs, how are we going to placate rural voters and coal lobbyists", it's cheaper energy, and workers freed to be moved to more productive things.
- xbmcuser 1y ago
  Oh I know I am just saying China currently needs to stimulate it internal consumption to maintain its economic growth targets. But cheaper energy that keeps getting cheaper each year is a wierd problem to have and it will be interesting to see how it plays out in the next 5-10 year.
- getnormality 1y ago
  It's funny that our hope for the future now seems to stand upon the Chinese Communist Party being the paragons of enlightened, unsentimental capitalism that we never were.
hnaccount_rng 1y ago
That’s only a problem if you care about the stranded investment side. The energy industry isn’t that personel intensive (plus you could just continue to employ the people). But they absolutely will deprecate the power plants and stop buying the coal. The former will bankrupt some of the projects which planned with much longer repayment periods. The latter will immediately safe money

rel_ic 1y ago

Renewable energy is great, but we're not replacing fossil fuels with it, we're just adding more energy usage. And our energy usage is destroying the environment. Don't let these advancements in solar make you think things are getting better. We need to reduce fossil fuel usage, not just increase solar usage. https://pocketcasts.com/podcasts/b3b696c0-226d-0137-f265-1d245fc5f9cf/dbe82956-123c-4533-924c-7ec72fa03e83 https://pocketcasts.com/podcasts/b3b696c0-226d-0137-f265-1d2...

amarait 1y ago
What replaces fossil fuels is some kind of breakthrough in batteries. At the moment its getting better every year were currently at less than $100 per KWh which is crazy but needs to be improved for allowing more off the grid energy consumption
- pjc50 1y ago
  The lesson from solar is that it won't be "a breakthrough" but the gradual accumulation of a thousand different efforts at cost-shaving across the whole supply chain making batteries gradually but inexorably cheaper. There won't be fanfare when fixed batteries start using sodium chemistry rather than lithium, for example, but that will start happening across the next few years.
- pydry 1y ago
  We can either pray and wait for a technological breakthrough that makes storage tech way cheaper than gas or we can just use taxes and subsidies to make it happen now. It's not so hard. Lavish subsidies were used to make nuclear power semi-sort-of-competitive even though it's way more expensive. The same thing could have been done with solar and wind but apparently we thought the best course of action was just to wait until they became cheaper than coal without subsidies (& then Obama and Trump slammed solar with tariffs).
  - conductr 1y ago
    “We” are only in control of “us”. The rest of the world will keep burning fossil fuel

logic_node 1y ago

It’s crazy that most emergency plans ignore geomagnetic threats—did you know a Carrington‑level flare today could knock out transformers worth hundreds of billions? What low‑cost steps could cities take now?

ViewTrick1002 1y ago
This seems to be more doomerism than reality. What you are saying is that the induced current will be strong enough to cause damage even after all breakers trip. Having to black start a bunch of grids world wide? Yes. Widespread damage? No.
- megaman821 1y ago
  Also, having a bunch of batteries on the grid would make a black start much easier.

deleted 1y ago

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perfectritone 1y ago

"...it is closely followed by wind power—which is really another form of energy from the sun..." By that logic, fossil fuels are also a form of solar power.

Amaury-El 1y ago

Solar used to feel pretty distant from everyday life. But now more and more rooftops are generating power, and even rural areas can run on their own. People who aren’t into tech can still feel the shift. It really is like getting electricity straight from the sky.