5 ms·

Land cost and grid connection are often huge costs that aren't factored in too. The kW per acre metric is pretty poor for solar, especially when you get out of

Land cost and grid connection are often huge costs that aren't factored in too. The kW per acre metric is pretty poor for solar, especially when you get out of sunny desert areas.

toomuchtodo 1y ago
Land cost is immaterial when talking utility scale ground mount and rooftop. Grid connection improvement costs are highly variable and dependent on local distribution infra. Solar is so cheap, you can usually roll the generator development cost component into the financing, with the utility paying the other component of it. > The kW per acre metric is pretty poor for solar, especially when you get out of sunny desert areas. The data says different. Broadly speaking, anywhere in the continental US is favorable for solar. The US gets more sunlight than Germany, and Germany has 101GW of solar capacity installed as of this comment (deploying ~2GW/month). You might need more panels near Canada, but panels and land are cheap, and demand for power is low due to limited population (caveats being PNW, served by hydro, and NE-ISO in New England, which is going to turn up a transmission line in December to bring 1.2GW of hydro from Québec). For comparison, the US ag industry farms almost 60 million acres for soybean and corn biofuel, and that is far less cost and resource efficient than covering that land in solar PV. Citations: EIA: Where solar is found and used - https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/solar/where-solar-is-found.php https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/solar/where-solar-is-fou... EIA: Solar and wind crush coal with 20% more power in 2025 - https://electrek.co/2025/09/24/eia-solar-and-wind-crush-coal-with-20-percent-more-power-in-2025/ https://electrek.co/2025/09/24/eia-solar-and-wind-crush-coal... - September 24th, 2025 EIA: Utility-Scale Generation Units Planned to Come Online Septmeber 2025 - August 2026 - https://web.archive.org/web/20251029151054/https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/images/figure_6_01_c.png https://web.archive.org/web/20251029151054/https://www.eia.g... interconnection.fyi: Active solar projects in queue - https://www.interconnection.fyi/?status=Active&type=Solar https://www.interconnection.fyi/?status=Active&type=Solar Electricity Maps - https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/live/fifteen_minutes https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/live/fifteen_minutes Solar energy is now the cheapest source of power, study - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45506365 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45506365 - October 2025 A harmonized dataset of ground-mounted solar energy in the US with enhanced metadata - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-025-05862-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-025-05862-4 - September 29th, 2025 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45587816 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45587816 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45507531 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45507531 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43333236 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43333236
- Workaccount2 1y ago
  This is true, but a bit of a dodge. Solar is competing with gas, so when you have a land parcel and want to maximize the energy you get from it, you need lots of sunshine to beat out gas. This also factors heavily into where we use energy vs. where we produce it, and the associated losses. You can slot a GW of gas generation into ~350 acres anywhere. Solar you need ~5,000 acres with lots of sun. Combine this with the fact that the land where energy is used (population centers) is the land that is most expensive, and the difference becomes substantial. This also doesn't factor in energy storage costs, which is also necessary to reach parity with gas. Also, don't take this as me attacking solar, I am a huge proponent, but there is a reality check needed so people can understand why we aren't paving the earth with panels despite constant headlines of "Solar is the cheapest energy". It's the cheapest energy when in an ideal location, and overwhelming majority of people in the US don't live in an ideal location. This however doesn't really apply to non-gridscale generation. People can (and should) put panels on their roofs and batteries in their basement.
  - toomuchtodo 1y ago
    Gas generation manufacturing has a 7-10 year backlog [1] [2]. You can build ~1GW of solar in under a year [3] (1GW of solar is deployed every 15 hours globally, as of this comment, tangentially). As you can see with Intermountain in Utah, supplying power to Los Angeles (via Path 27), you can site batteries and renewables in the middle of nowhere and leverage existing transmission to get utility scale solar to load centers [4]. Again, there is lots of land everywhere, and it is straightforward to get solar generated to the load. It doesn't matter that solar takes more land than gas, nuclear, or other legacy generator technologies; its cost makes it a non issue. Also, solar, backed by battery storage, is cheaper than gas in most cases [5] [6] [7] [8]. No dodge, solar won, and it is going to steamroll fossil fuels globally as battery storage deployment comes up to speed [9] [10]. > To call solar power’s rise exponential is not hyperbole, but a statement of fact. Installed solar capacity doubles roughly every three years, and so grows ten-fold each decade. Such sustained growth is seldom seen in anything that matters. That makes it hard for people to get their heads round what is going on. When it was a tenth of its current size ten years ago, solar power was still seen as marginal even by experts who knew how fast it had grown. The next ten-fold increase will be equivalent to multiplying the world’s entire fleet of nuclear reactors by eight in less than the time it typically takes to build just a single one of them. > Solar cells will in all likelihood be the single biggest source of electrical power on the planet by the mid 2030s. By the 2040s they may be the largest source not just of electricity but of all energy. On current trends, the all-in cost of the electricity they produce promises to be less than half as expensive as the cheapest available today. This will not stop climate change, but could slow it a lot faster. Much of the world—including Africa, where 600m people still cannot light their homes—will begin to feel energy-rich. That feeling will be a new and transformational one for humankind. [1] Gas-Turbine Crunch Threatens Demand Bonanza in Asia - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-10-07/gas-turbine-crunch-threatens-asian-lng-demand-bonanza https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-10-07/gas-tu... | https://archive.today/z4Ixw https://archive.today/z4Ixw - October 7th, 2025 [2] AI-Driven Demand for Gas Turbines Risks a New Energy Crunch - https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2025-bottlenecks-gas-turbines/ https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2025-bottlenecks-gas-turb... | https://archive.today/b8bhn https://archive.today/b8bhn - October 1st, 2025 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45746627 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45746627 (Solar PV project timeline citations) [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45569054 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45569054 (Path 27 transmission citations) [5] Solar, battery storage to lead new U.S. generating capacity additions in 2025 - https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=64586 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=64586 - February 24th, 2025 [6] Solar+storage is so much farther along than you think - https://www.volts.wtf/p/solarstorage-is-so-much-farther-along https://www.volts.wtf/p/solarstorage-is-so-much-farther-alon... - July 16th, 2025 [7] In Solar vs. Gas Matchup, It Was Energy Storage That Killed The Beast - https://cleantechnica.com/2025/03/02/in-solar-vs-gas-matchup-it-was-energy-storage-that-killed-the-beast/ https://cleantechnica.com/2025/03/02/in-solar-vs-gas-matchup... - March 2nd, 2025 [8] Solar electricity every hour of every day is here and it changes everything - https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/solar-electricity-every-hour-of-every-day-is-here-and-it-changes-everything/ https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/solar-electricity-e... - June 21st, 2025 [9] The exponential growth of solar power will change the world - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40746617 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40746617 - June 2024 [10] Global battery industry grows 83% in last five years, boosting deployment to over 300 GW - https://www.ess-news.com/2025/10/28/global-battery-industry-grows-83-in-last-five-years-boosting-deployment-to-over-300-gw/ https://www.ess-news.com/2025/10/28/global-battery-industry-... - October 28th, 2025

Land cost and grid connection are often huge costs that aren't factored in too. The kW per acre metric is pretty poor for solar, especially when you get out of sunny desert areas.

toomuchtodo 1y ago

Land cost is immaterial when talking utility scale ground mount and rooftop. Grid connection improvement costs are highly variable and dependent on local distribution infra. Solar is so cheap, you can usually roll the generator development cost component into the financing, with the utility paying the other component of it. > The kW per acre metric is pretty poor for solar, especially when you get out of sunny desert areas. The data says different. Broadly speaking, anywhere in the continental US is favorable for solar. The US gets more sunlight than Germany, and Germany has 101GW of solar capacity installed as of this comment (deploying ~2GW/month). You might need more panels near Canada, but panels and land are cheap, and demand for power is low due to limited population (caveats being PNW, served by hydro, and NE-ISO in New England, which is going to turn up a transmission line in December to bring 1.2GW of hydro from Québec). For comparison, the US ag industry farms almost 60 million acres for soybean and corn biofuel, and that is far less cost and resource efficient than covering that land in solar PV. Citations: EIA: Where solar is found and used - https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/solar/where-solar-is-found.php https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/solar/where-solar-is-fou... EIA: Solar and wind crush coal with 20% more power in 2025 - https://electrek.co/2025/09/24/eia-solar-and-wind-crush-coal-with-20-percent-more-power-in-2025/ https://electrek.co/2025/09/24/eia-solar-and-wind-crush-coal... - September 24th, 2025 EIA: Utility-Scale Generation Units Planned to Come Online Septmeber 2025 - August 2026 - https://web.archive.org/web/20251029151054/https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/images/figure_6_01_c.png https://web.archive.org/web/20251029151054/https://www.eia.g... interconnection.fyi: Active solar projects in queue - https://www.interconnection.fyi/?status=Active&type=Solar https://www.interconnection.fyi/?status=Active&type=Solar Electricity Maps - https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/live/fifteen_minutes https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/live/fifteen_minutes Solar energy is now the cheapest source of power, study - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45506365 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45506365 - October 2025 A harmonized dataset of ground-mounted solar energy in the US with enhanced metadata - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-025-05862-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-025-05862-4 - September 29th, 2025 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45587816 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45587816 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45507531 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45507531 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43333236 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43333236

Workaccount2 1y ago
This is true, but a bit of a dodge. Solar is competing with gas, so when you have a land parcel and want to maximize the energy you get from it, you need lots of sunshine to beat out gas. This also factors heavily into where we use energy vs. where we produce it, and the associated losses. You can slot a GW of gas generation into ~350 acres anywhere. Solar you need ~5,000 acres with lots of sun. Combine this with the fact that the land where energy is used (population centers) is the land that is most expensive, and the difference becomes substantial. This also doesn't factor in energy storage costs, which is also necessary to reach parity with gas. Also, don't take this as me attacking solar, I am a huge proponent, but there is a reality check needed so people can understand why we aren't paving the earth with panels despite constant headlines of "Solar is the cheapest energy". It's the cheapest energy when in an ideal location, and overwhelming majority of people in the US don't live in an ideal location. This however doesn't really apply to non-gridscale generation. People can (and should) put panels on their roofs and batteries in their basement.
- toomuchtodo 1y ago
  Gas generation manufacturing has a 7-10 year backlog [1] [2]. You can build ~1GW of solar in under a year [3] (1GW of solar is deployed every 15 hours globally, as of this comment, tangentially). As you can see with Intermountain in Utah, supplying power to Los Angeles (via Path 27), you can site batteries and renewables in the middle of nowhere and leverage existing transmission to get utility scale solar to load centers [4]. Again, there is lots of land everywhere, and it is straightforward to get solar generated to the load. It doesn't matter that solar takes more land than gas, nuclear, or other legacy generator technologies; its cost makes it a non issue. Also, solar, backed by battery storage, is cheaper than gas in most cases [5] [6] [7] [8]. No dodge, solar won, and it is going to steamroll fossil fuels globally as battery storage deployment comes up to speed [9] [10]. > To call solar power’s rise exponential is not hyperbole, but a statement of fact. Installed solar capacity doubles roughly every three years, and so grows ten-fold each decade. Such sustained growth is seldom seen in anything that matters. That makes it hard for people to get their heads round what is going on. When it was a tenth of its current size ten years ago, solar power was still seen as marginal even by experts who knew how fast it had grown. The next ten-fold increase will be equivalent to multiplying the world’s entire fleet of nuclear reactors by eight in less than the time it typically takes to build just a single one of them. > Solar cells will in all likelihood be the single biggest source of electrical power on the planet by the mid 2030s. By the 2040s they may be the largest source not just of electricity but of all energy. On current trends, the all-in cost of the electricity they produce promises to be less than half as expensive as the cheapest available today. This will not stop climate change, but could slow it a lot faster. Much of the world—including Africa, where 600m people still cannot light their homes—will begin to feel energy-rich. That feeling will be a new and transformational one for humankind. [1] Gas-Turbine Crunch Threatens Demand Bonanza in Asia - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-10-07/gas-turbine-crunch-threatens-asian-lng-demand-bonanza https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-10-07/gas-tu... | https://archive.today/z4Ixw https://archive.today/z4Ixw - October 7th, 2025 [2] AI-Driven Demand for Gas Turbines Risks a New Energy Crunch - https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2025-bottlenecks-gas-turbines/ https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2025-bottlenecks-gas-turb... | https://archive.today/b8bhn https://archive.today/b8bhn - October 1st, 2025 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45746627 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45746627 (Solar PV project timeline citations) [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45569054 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45569054 (Path 27 transmission citations) [5] Solar, battery storage to lead new U.S. generating capacity additions in 2025 - https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=64586 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=64586 - February 24th, 2025 [6] Solar+storage is so much farther along than you think - https://www.volts.wtf/p/solarstorage-is-so-much-farther-along https://www.volts.wtf/p/solarstorage-is-so-much-farther-alon... - July 16th, 2025 [7] In Solar vs. Gas Matchup, It Was Energy Storage That Killed The Beast - https://cleantechnica.com/2025/03/02/in-solar-vs-gas-matchup-it-was-energy-storage-that-killed-the-beast/ https://cleantechnica.com/2025/03/02/in-solar-vs-gas-matchup... - March 2nd, 2025 [8] Solar electricity every hour of every day is here and it changes everything - https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/solar-electricity-every-hour-of-every-day-is-here-and-it-changes-everything/ https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/solar-electricity-e... - June 21st, 2025 [9] The exponential growth of solar power will change the world - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40746617 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40746617 - June 2024 [10] Global battery industry grows 83% in last five years, boosting deployment to over 300 GW - https://www.ess-news.com/2025/10/28/global-battery-industry-grows-83-in-last-five-years-boosting-deployment-to-over-300-gw/ https://www.ess-news.com/2025/10/28/global-battery-industry-... - October 28th, 2025