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Installed capacity is a misleading number. If you assessed the trucking industry by simply sum-ing the rated capacity of all the hardware you'd be rightfully l

Installed capacity is a misleading number. If you assessed the trucking industry by simply sum-ing the rated capacity of all the hardware you'd be rightfully laughed and and called a liar on the basis of all the times the trucks are empty and all the trucks that run out of volume before weight. Renewables is a similar situation. Some panel in a solar farm in Canada is not gonna see the conditions that let it produce rated capacity nearly as often as one in Arizona. So the guy in Canada installs more capacity to get the same power. Meanwhile the guy in Arizona doesn't have enough copper leading out of his site to handle the power he could produce at peak on the best days, because he over-provisioned too, in order to be able to produce a given amount earlier/later in the day. The actual generation hardware is so cheap that this is just the sensible way to deploy renewables, but it makes for stupid misleading numbers. Legacy power generation has much different numbers and isn't subject to the whims of the weather so installed capacity is a number that means something in that context.

toomuchtodo 7mo ago
This is a common rebuttal, but not grounded in reality. Even assuming ~20% capacity factor for "apples to apples" comparison to legacy thermal and nuclear, solar and batteries are the cheapest form of power to install. Current geopolitical events spiking LNG costs make the math even more favorable towards renewables. https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/24-hour-solar-now-economically-viable-for-the-worlds-sunniest-regions/ https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/24-hour-solar-now-ec... 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... ("104$/MWh: Achieving 97% of the way to 24/365 solar in very sunny regions is now affordable at as low as $104/MWh, cheaper than coal and nuclear and 22% less than a year earlier.") > Legacy power generation has much different numbers and isn't subject to the whims of the weather so installed capacity is a number that means something in that context. Legacy power is ridiculously expensive in comparison. Who will invest in fossil gas generation when ~20% of LNG exports have been taken offline for the next 3-5 years? https://www.lazard.com/media/eijnqja3/lazards-lcoeplus-june-2025.pdf https://www.lazard.com/media/eijnqja3/lazards-lcoeplus-june-... (page 8) Strikes on Qatar's LNG Ras Laffan plant Will Reshape the Future of Fossil Gas - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47484246 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47484246 - March 2026 Fossil fuels are over, it's just how fast we get to "done." Enough sunlight falls on the Earth in 30-60 minutes to power humanity for a year. Solar PV and battery manufacturing continues to spool up, and year by year, more fossil generation is pushed out. California is routinely operating at 80% renewables, 90% low carbon generation during daylight hours as they work towards installing battery storage to replace their fossil generation (~52GW target by 2045), for example, while having plans for 10s of GWs of additional solar to come online over the next decade. https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/US-CAL-CISO/live/fifteen_minutes https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/US-CAL-CISO/live/fi... https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/california-electricity-data/california-energy-storage-system-survey https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/califo... https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/solar/were-harvesting-the-sun-solar-project-california https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/solar/were-harvesting-t...
- cucumber3732842 7mo ago
  I didn't say they weren't cheap. I said you were being misleading. I'm not rebutting your thesis. I'm rebutting your defense of it. They're so cheap they get over-provisioned on purpose. Can you imagine some guy speci'ng switchgear and transmission lines for a coal or gas plant that can't handle the plant running full tilt? Yeah me either. But that's exactly how it's done for renewables because that's where the sweet spot of cost-benifit is. A dozen 10mw turbines might be fed through 100mw of transmission hardware. They can never produce their rated 120mw because liquid copper would happen if they did. But they were intentionally provisioned that way so that based on weather patterns and whatnot they'd be able to expect say 80mw a certain number of days per year. There are untold numbers of renewable installations out there that cannot supply their nameplate capacity to the grid in such a manner.
  - toomuchtodo 7mo ago
    There is nothing wrong with over provisioning cheap renewable power generation when it is economically superior to building fossil assets that will end up stranded. As long as grid demand is met and it is cheaper to build renewables and batteries to do it, it will be done, and that is the path we're on. If gas plants cannot economically compete, they will not be built or fired. And the evidence shows they cannot compete, regardless of their competing capacity factor and dispatchability.
    - pepperoni_pizza 7mo ago
      Do you have some links to how someone scaled up storage? I know that scaling up solar is easy, but I don't know of any nation that build significant storage.
      - toomuchtodo 7mo ago
        https://about.bnef.com/insights/clean-energy/global-energy-storage-boom-three-things-to-know/ https://about.bnef.com/insights/clean-energy/global-energy-s... https://www.iea.org/commentaries/global-battery-markets-are-growing-strongly-and-so-are-the-supply-risks https://www.iea.org/commentaries/global-battery-markets-are-... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=toomuchtodo%20battery&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
derefr 7mo ago
Refer to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_consumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electrici... The largest electricity consumers all have good places to put solar farms.
tzs 7mo ago
> Installed capacity is a misleading number. If you assessed the trucking industry by simply sum-ing the rated capacity of all the hardware you'd be rightfully laughed and and called a liar on the basis of all the times the trucks are empty and all the trucks that run out of volume before weight. Renewables is a similar situation. OK, but what if someone looked at the rated capacity of all trucks and noted that in the last 5 years it went up by 24%, 22%, 28%, 54%, and 45%? That would strongly suggest that the amount trucks actually being used is growing rapidly because people aren't going to be buying new trucks unless they have to.
- ithkuil 7mo ago
  Yes, unless people had some incentives to show an increase in the trucking capacity in order to meet some metrics and get more funding etc. (not saying that's what's happening, but just as a counterpoint to your logic)

toomuchtodo 7mo ago

This is a common rebuttal, but not grounded in reality. Even assuming ~20% capacity factor for "apples to apples" comparison to legacy thermal and nuclear, solar and batteries are the cheapest form of power to install. Current geopolitical events spiking LNG costs make the math even more favorable towards renewables. https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/24-hour-solar-now-economically-viable-for-the-worlds-sunniest-regions/ https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/24-hour-solar-now-ec... 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... ("104$/MWh: Achieving 97% of the way to 24/365 solar in very sunny regions is now affordable at as low as $104/MWh, cheaper than coal and nuclear and 22% less than a year earlier.") > Legacy power generation has much different numbers and isn't subject to the whims of the weather so installed capacity is a number that means something in that context. Legacy power is ridiculously expensive in comparison. Who will invest in fossil gas generation when ~20% of LNG exports have been taken offline for the next 3-5 years? https://www.lazard.com/media/eijnqja3/lazards-lcoeplus-june-2025.pdf https://www.lazard.com/media/eijnqja3/lazards-lcoeplus-june-... (page 8) Strikes on Qatar's LNG Ras Laffan plant Will Reshape the Future of Fossil Gas - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47484246 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47484246 - March 2026 Fossil fuels are over, it's just how fast we get to "done." Enough sunlight falls on the Earth in 30-60 minutes to power humanity for a year. Solar PV and battery manufacturing continues to spool up, and year by year, more fossil generation is pushed out. California is routinely operating at 80% renewables, 90% low carbon generation during daylight hours as they work towards installing battery storage to replace their fossil generation (~52GW target by 2045), for example, while having plans for 10s of GWs of additional solar to come online over the next decade. https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/US-CAL-CISO/live/fifteen_minutes https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/US-CAL-CISO/live/fi... https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/california-electricity-data/california-energy-storage-system-survey https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/califo... https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/solar/were-harvesting-the-sun-solar-project-california https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/solar/were-harvesting-t...

cucumber3732842 7mo ago
I didn't say they weren't cheap. I said you were being misleading. I'm not rebutting your thesis. I'm rebutting your defense of it. They're so cheap they get over-provisioned on purpose. Can you imagine some guy speci'ng switchgear and transmission lines for a coal or gas plant that can't handle the plant running full tilt? Yeah me either. But that's exactly how it's done for renewables because that's where the sweet spot of cost-benifit is. A dozen 10mw turbines might be fed through 100mw of transmission hardware. They can never produce their rated 120mw because liquid copper would happen if they did. But they were intentionally provisioned that way so that based on weather patterns and whatnot they'd be able to expect say 80mw a certain number of days per year. There are untold numbers of renewable installations out there that cannot supply their nameplate capacity to the grid in such a manner.
- toomuchtodo 7mo ago
  There is nothing wrong with over provisioning cheap renewable power generation when it is economically superior to building fossil assets that will end up stranded. As long as grid demand is met and it is cheaper to build renewables and batteries to do it, it will be done, and that is the path we're on. If gas plants cannot economically compete, they will not be built or fired. And the evidence shows they cannot compete, regardless of their competing capacity factor and dispatchability.
  - pepperoni_pizza 7mo ago
    Do you have some links to how someone scaled up storage? I know that scaling up solar is easy, but I don't know of any nation that build significant storage.
    - toomuchtodo 7mo ago
      https://about.bnef.com/insights/clean-energy/global-energy-storage-boom-three-things-to-know/ https://about.bnef.com/insights/clean-energy/global-energy-s... https://www.iea.org/commentaries/global-battery-markets-are-growing-strongly-and-so-are-the-supply-risks https://www.iea.org/commentaries/global-battery-markets-are-... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=toomuchtodo%20battery&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

derefr 7mo ago

Refer to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_consumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electrici... The largest electricity consumers all have good places to put solar farms.

tzs 7mo ago

> Installed capacity is a misleading number. If you assessed the trucking industry by simply sum-ing the rated capacity of all the hardware you'd be rightfully laughed and and called a liar on the basis of all the times the trucks are empty and all the trucks that run out of volume before weight. Renewables is a similar situation. OK, but what if someone looked at the rated capacity of all trucks and noted that in the last 5 years it went up by 24%, 22%, 28%, 54%, and 45%? That would strongly suggest that the amount trucks actually being used is growing rapidly because people aren't going to be buying new trucks unless they have to.

ithkuil 7mo ago
Yes, unless people had some incentives to show an increase in the trucking capacity in order to meet some metrics and get more funding etc. (not saying that's what's happening, but just as a counterpoint to your logic)