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This is more from a lot of coal power plants being converted to gas over the past 20 years than solar overtaking the outputs of those power plants. Coal output

This is more from a lot of coal power plants being converted to gas over the past 20 years than solar overtaking the outputs of those power plants. Coal output shrinking, solar output rising, the lines have crossed. Coal is unpopular in all but a few areas where coal mining is still a part of the local econonmy. I used to work near a coal plant and every day I'd go out to my car and it would have little black particles all over it. Nobody likes that, no matter what the President says.

toomuchtodo 5mo ago
The world is, roughly, deploying 1TW/solar PV a year at current rates. It took a while to get here, it won’t take as long to get to 100%. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/installed-solar-pv-capacity https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/installed-solar-pv-capaci...
- SoftTalker 5mo ago
  Storage is the issue. You still need to supply base load (well, all load) at night.
  - pstuart 5mo ago
    True, but battery advancements are ongoing at a rapid pace. Sodium-ion is now viable and will be a mainstay in grid storage. Ignoring ideology, this path is plain cheaper than anything else.
  - idontwantthis 5mo ago
    Grid batteries are being deployed everywhere every day and the cost including storage is now lower than fossil fuels.
  - deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
  - Retric 5mo ago
    Not quite, current nighttime load is largely a function of cheaper nighttime rates. People don’t set their EV’s to charge from 11-5AM because that’s the only time their cars are plugged in. If rates crater at noon on Sunday, there’s many an EV happy to suck up power then. So yes batteries are going to continue to grow rapidly, but it’s a smaller role than it might seem.
    - Paradigma11 5mo ago
      Great, so now not only is power production nondeterministic, your cars tank also is. It was too expensive and the algorithm decided to wait charging, so no spontaneous road trip for you, sorry.
      - notahacker 5mo ago
        I mean, assuming you don't zero your charge out when returning home, you could just take a few minutes to use a rapid charger part way through the journey...
      - jaggederest 5mo ago
        As an electric car owner, this is absolutely the biggest non-problem ever. If you're planning a long journey, you push one button at some point over the preceeding week and it charges to full regardless of price.
      - Retric 5mo ago
        There’s nothing non deterministic about cheaper daytime rates as you scale solar production. Net result, lower average electricity prices but a slow rise in nighttime rates across decades. Similarly people respond to price changes, that’s the foundation for how capitalism functions. You don’t need to care, but many people will choose to save money when possible.
  - hyperhello 5mo ago
    The main load is during the day when the sun shines anyway, and then the seasonally changing periods before and after, basically ramping when people are getting up, then dropping off while people are going to bed. On the west side of a continent, the power for the ramp can come from the east because the sun shines earlier there; on the west the sun shines later and the east can get power. At night, there are still nuclear and other plants, and it is very foreseeable that installations of ground battery technology will have been in place well before twentieth century plants are retired.
    - pdq 5mo ago
      High load in the day during sunlight is mostly true for summer heat, but in the winter you have cold evenings which requires base load or storage, combined with solar angle/efficiency being worse in the winter.
      - ssl-3 5mo ago
        Yeah, it's imperfect. Does that mean that it is untenable?
      - Broken_Hippo 5mo ago
        Actually, the US uses more power during the day in the summer - there is a dropoff in the night for both summer and winter. Night time use is somewhat similar. [1] Cooling takes more energy than warming, so the summer daytime use is higher. Summer = warm evenings. I'm from Indiana - it was almost always cooler at 10am than 7pm, even in the winter. It takes time to heat up or cool down. I'll also mention that nights and weekends use less power because business and industry tend to shut down during these times. Which would somewhat logically mean that despite the efficiency being worse during winter, it isn't as much of a strain because power demands are less. [1]https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915
        fooblaster 5mo ago
        Cooling doesn't really take more energy than warming, because cooling is warming if you have a heat pump. Are you not just observing here the usage of fossil fuels for heating, which is extremely common?
  - cduzz 5mo ago
    These days I think "at night" is mostly covered or at least could be mostly covered both by wind and batteries. The "base load" question may still be appropriate for deep winter, high (or low) latitudes, etc, but renewables are getting there pretty fast.
  - horsawlarway 5mo ago
    LFPs are cheap and safe, with very good cycle counts. Sodium seems to be actually hitting real commercial production volumes (ex - GM just announced a sodium ramp up days ago, CATL has been producing them for a while). I expect we'll see sodium mature a good bit over the next decade (right now - it's just not quite as good as LFP, but it has a lot of promise in temperature extremes and cheap input materials) So sure - storage is an issue. But it's not THE issue anymore. It costs surprisingly little to get enough LFP storage to cover an entire house at modest usage for days at a time (ex - under 10k for 42.9KWh of storage, UL approved https://signaturesolar.com/eg4-wallmount-all-weather-lithium-battery-48v-280ah-14-3kwh-lifepo4-all-weather-energy-storage-ul1973-ul9540a-10-year-warranty/ https://signaturesolar.com/eg4-wallmount-all-weather-lithium...) So yes - storage remains something to consider. But I think pretending that storage is a constraint that should stop PV rollout is... cough... bullshit cough... Let industry that needs it pull from existing generation at night, convert residential to solar as fast as possible. Subsidize residential battery rollout the same way we do for insulation and other efficiency improving home improvements (which to be clear - we were doing prior to the current admin). China isn't fucking around on the solar front, and the continued excuses in US from entrenched interests tangled up in the oil industry are criminal.
    - michaelbuckbee 5mo ago
      I think it's your last point that's actually the strongest. There's always gaps between theoretical and practical, but to see China investing so hard in the future while the US digs in it's heels is infuriating.
      - toomuchtodo 5mo ago
        China exported 68GW of solar PV in March 2026, double the prior month and 14GW more than total solar PV capacity installed in Spain. Chinese solar exports double in a month to hit record high amid energy crisis - https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/chinese-solar-exports-double-in-a-month-to-hit-record-high-amid-energy-crisis/ https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/chinese-solar-export... - April 23rd, 2026 https://ember-energy.org/data/chinas-solar-pv-export-explorer/ https://ember-energy.org/data/chinas-solar-pv-export-explore... https://ember-energy.org/data/china-cleantech-exports-data-explorer/ https://ember-energy.org/data/china-cleantech-exports-data-e...
  - jillesvangurp 5mo ago
    The whole point about modern gas/coal plants is that it's relatively cheap to shut them down and start them up again. They are backup power, not for providing inflexible base load. Batteries + renewables are taking a lot of market share and flexible backup power is much more important than baseload (inflexible power like nuclear)
    - pstuart 5mo ago
      Gas is faster to respond, coal, not so much. From the Goog: Starting up a coal-fired power station depends heavily on the plant's current temperature, taking anywhere from 2 to 48 hours to reach full operational capacity. Because of massive metal boilers and turbines, the heating process must be slow to prevent severe thermal fatigue and equipment damage. [1, 2] The startup time is broken down by the plant's previous state: • Hot Start (less than 8 hours offline): 2 to 4 hours. The boiler and equipment are still warm, allowing for a relatively quick resumption of steam production. • Warm Start (8 to 120 hours offline): 4 to 8 hours. • Cold Start (More than 120 hours offline): 12 to 48 hours. The plant must be heated from room temperature, which involves initially burning expensive natural gas or diesel just to safely warm the furnace and metal pipes before coal can be introduced. [1, 3, 5] To explore how these heavy thermal operations impact the broader electricity supply, you can review the U.S. Energy Information Administration's grid reliability data or dive deeper into the technical challenges via the Environmental Protection Agency's Coal Startup Report. [6] If you are interested in the broader power market, let me know: [1] https://www.quora.com/Why-its-not-that-easy-to-start-operating-power-plants-after-being-subjected-to-a-situation-where-Load-is-remarkably-higher-than-generation https://www.quora.com/Why-its-not-that-easy-to-start-operati... [2] https://www.quora.com/How-long-does-it-take-for-a-thermal-power-plant-to-hot-start-up https://www.quora.com/How-long-does-it-take-for-a-thermal-po... [3] https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2015-11/documents/matsstartstsd.pdf https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2015-11/documents/ma... [4] https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-minimum-time-required-by-steam-turbines-running-on-coal-to-start-in-cases-of-cold-startup-and-hot-startup-And-is-hot-startup-inefficient https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-minimum-time-required-by-s... [5] https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/inflexible-fossil-fuels/ https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/inflexible-fossil-fuels/ [6] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=45956 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=45956
  - onlyrealcuzzo 5mo ago
    Contrary to popular belief, solar panels don't generate zero power on cloudy days. They typically generate 10-25% of their maximum output on the cloudiest of days. Most cloudy days are not maximally cloudy. We don't need solar panels everywhere to get even close to ~100% renewables (with nuclear, wind, new geothermal, and hydro). The areas where you put them are distributed enough that it would be exceptionally rare to ever encounter a meaningful need to ration. So, storage is an issue, but not as big of an issue as most people think, and we do not generate anywhere near enough solar energy for it to be a reasonable concern yet... There's also more solutions than just conventional batteries. There's pumped hydro, etc...
    - flumes_whims_ 5mo ago
      But they do generate zero power at night.
      - oblio 5mo ago
        And people use less energy at night. Yes, they do need heating/cooling and a few other things at night, but the peak is during the day and in the evening. This argument is almost closed at this point, with PV + batteries being quite price competitive. We're no longer in 2018.
      - deleted 5mo ago
        [deleted]
      - fragmede 5mo ago
        Solution? Send large mirrors into space so it never stops shining. https://www.reflectorbital.com/ https://www.reflectorbital.com/
        magicalhippo 5mo ago
        That surely won't interfere with the ecosystem at all! /s
    - Marsymars 5mo ago
  - brendoelfrendo 5mo ago
    It's not, grid-scale batteries are being deployed all over the world, and newer batteries keep getting better and cheaper. Storage hasn't been the issue for years.
    - ben_w 5mo ago
      To be fair, it depends if you were looking at "price/unit" or "sum of factory output". The former, even a few years ago, I agree. The latter, people were arguing about a year or two ago. (Though your point remains as the trend was clear).
  - pydry 5mo ago
    The fossil fuel lobbies want us to believe it is a way bigger problem than it is. The people who echo that sentiment without educating themselves are giving them a helping hand.
  - Schiendelman 5mo ago
    It turns out battery prices have dropped so much that this isn't difficult anymore either.
Retric 5mo ago
Total electricity produced by coal + gas is down over the last 20 years. Total electricity production is up, the difference is from wind and solar. This administration swapped to actively suppressing Wind and Solar via tariffs etc, and yet the trends continued because the underlying economic reality heavily favors battery backed solar.
- rtkwe 5mo ago
  I think that's part of what's notable about this. The administration hasn't been able to reverse the trend despite putting a massive thumb on the scale against projects like offshore wind and tariffs on solar panel imports. There's probably a delay in the effects though since projects started before they took office are probably starting to thin out and finish up. We'd have to look into the permitting of new projects or wait for to see how big the decline in new capacity turns out to be in a couple years.
  - tedggh 5mo ago
    A lot of comes from state initiatives too. Texas being conservative also happens to be very pro solar. I’m in the business and we have some great projects there. The US military is also pushing solar at their facilities. Then you have many private-state partnerships like tolls investing a lot in solar. The outlook in general is pretty positive in the US, a lot more than what people would think.
    - glenstein 5mo ago
      I also recall a New York times article from many moons ago suggesting that a lot of Texas oil wealth got repurposed into a large-scale wind energy infrastructure, but my info might be out of date.
    - rtkwe 5mo ago
      True though one of the major things they have been able to do because it's mostly in the federal purview is killing offshore wind.
mbgerring 5mo ago
It’s also from focused efforts to close coal plants, and rapid, massive deployment of solar in the last 20 years, and new technology emerging (better batteries and dispatch technologies) to make solar into a 24/7 resource. For whatever reason, there’s a strong motivation for people to dismiss the gigantic global effort to transition the energy system away from fossil fuels, and claim that all that effort isn’t really doing anything. Thankfully, this is not true — determined people can change things for the better.
- ToucanLoucan 5mo ago
  > For whatever reason, there’s a strong motivation for people to dismiss the gigantic global effort to transition the energy system away from fossil fuels, and claim that all that effort isn’t really doing anything. Because renewable energy is Communism, or something. But seriously: $$$$. The Fossil Fuel industry, before it finally dies, will make big Tobacco look downright merciful. The owners of these companies and their media co-conspirators should be tried in the Hague for what they have done to our planet just to keep making fucking money.
  - jwr 5mo ago
    > The Fossil Fuel industry, before it finally dies, will make big Tobacco look downright merciful. This should not be surprising when one realizes that this industry is the biggest industry that humanity ever created (in terms of monetary value). Nothing ever is or was bigger than energy from fossil fuels. Predictably, those who profit from this, behave like selfish [...] and fight tooth and nail to keep their profits.
    - pfdietz 5mo ago
      Energy is 10% of global GDP, about $10 T a year. I remember this when anyone complains large scale use of solar and wind would be expensive. So is large scale use of any energy source.
  - ZeroGravitas 5mo ago
    Putting the planet aside for a moment, the unnecessary death and illness they've inflicted on the human race will be staggering.
epistasis 5mo ago
No, this is actually solar's output increasing. Natural gas's share of electricity generation has been falling for five years straight: https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/gas-share-in-global-power-mix-has-declined-for-a-fifth-consecutive-year/ https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/gas-share-in-global...
- bryanlarsen 5mo ago
  That's a link to a global chart. The OP is talking about the US. It's not surprising that countries that have to import natural gas are moving away from it and countries with plentiful local suppliew are doubling down on it.
  - epistasis 5mo ago
    I'm not seeing that in US data either. Here's data from a top web hit: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-in-the-us.php https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-... The 10-year change 2015 to 2025 is: - Gas: +472 TWh, +35% - Renewables: +525 TWh, +97% Saying that this is more gas than coal is certainly not the case borne out by the numbers, even in the US, the one place where gas is as cheap as dirt due to it being a by-product of fracking.
bob1029 5mo ago
Some of these plants are being retrofitted for dual firing. They can burn coal & natural gas at the same time. I wonder how that factors into these statistics.
ViewTrick1002 5mo ago
Solar has also overtaken fossil gas. https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/clean-energy/renewables-beat-natural-gas-us-grid-march-2026 https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/clean-energy/renewables...
tolciho 5mo ago
> have little black particles all over it. Nobody likes that, no matter what the President says. Should you live near one of those big noisy "freeway" things you may note the little black particles over everything in the surroundings but nobody likes to tear down the interstate.
- kibwen 5mo ago
  > nobody likes to tear down the interstate Lots of urban areas in the US have been resisting, tearing down, and/or relocating major roads since the freeway revolts of the 1970s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_revolts_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_revolts_in_the_United_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeway_removal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeway_removal
- int_19h 5mo ago
  I have two things to say to that. First, I live 150 yards from a major freeway - I-90 in WA, it's three lanes in each direction here. There are no tiny black particles over everything in surroundings, and my outdoors AQI (from my own sensor) is normally in single digits and basically only ever gets above 50 if it's wildfire smoke or the neighbors are burning something. But second, if we developed a reliable and cheap way to, say, teleport people over long distances, why not tear it down?
  - Schiendelman 5mo ago
    How are you measuring your AQI, and what particle size? Tire particles aren't PM2.5 AFAIK and are very hazardous to your health.
  - tolciho 5mo ago
    Note the use of 'may'; the details of the car-hell vary. Perhaps the I-90 pollution instead spills into the lake and then bioaccumultes into larger organisms, Bon Appétit! My anecdote was a bit southwesterly of the I-5 bridge where there was, besides the horrific noise pollution, definitely a greyish black soot to clean off everything. A fine result of rolling a natural one and automatically failing the skill check for "copy the autobahn", probably. As to why some beings need to be whisked hither and yon with such haste, and thus spend quite a bit of time (and energy) trying to be somewhere, anywhere else, well, are they hungry ghosts? Or maybe they min/maxed for wizard and ended up with only three points in wisdom?

toomuchtodo 5mo ago

The world is, roughly, deploying 1TW/solar PV a year at current rates. It took a while to get here, it won’t take as long to get to 100%. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/installed-solar-pv-capacity https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/installed-solar-pv-capaci...

SoftTalker 5mo ago
Storage is the issue. You still need to supply base load (well, all load) at night.
- pstuart 5mo ago
  True, but battery advancements are ongoing at a rapid pace. Sodium-ion is now viable and will be a mainstay in grid storage. Ignoring ideology, this path is plain cheaper than anything else.
- idontwantthis 5mo ago
  Grid batteries are being deployed everywhere every day and the cost including storage is now lower than fossil fuels.
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
- Retric 5mo ago
  Not quite, current nighttime load is largely a function of cheaper nighttime rates. People don’t set their EV’s to charge from 11-5AM because that’s the only time their cars are plugged in. If rates crater at noon on Sunday, there’s many an EV happy to suck up power then. So yes batteries are going to continue to grow rapidly, but it’s a smaller role than it might seem.
  - Paradigma11 5mo ago
    Great, so now not only is power production nondeterministic, your cars tank also is. It was too expensive and the algorithm decided to wait charging, so no spontaneous road trip for you, sorry.
    - notahacker 5mo ago
      I mean, assuming you don't zero your charge out when returning home, you could just take a few minutes to use a rapid charger part way through the journey...
    - jaggederest 5mo ago
      As an electric car owner, this is absolutely the biggest non-problem ever. If you're planning a long journey, you push one button at some point over the preceeding week and it charges to full regardless of price.
    - Retric 5mo ago
      There’s nothing non deterministic about cheaper daytime rates as you scale solar production. Net result, lower average electricity prices but a slow rise in nighttime rates across decades. Similarly people respond to price changes, that’s the foundation for how capitalism functions. You don’t need to care, but many people will choose to save money when possible.
- hyperhello 5mo ago
  The main load is during the day when the sun shines anyway, and then the seasonally changing periods before and after, basically ramping when people are getting up, then dropping off while people are going to bed. On the west side of a continent, the power for the ramp can come from the east because the sun shines earlier there; on the west the sun shines later and the east can get power. At night, there are still nuclear and other plants, and it is very foreseeable that installations of ground battery technology will have been in place well before twentieth century plants are retired.
  - pdq 5mo ago
    High load in the day during sunlight is mostly true for summer heat, but in the winter you have cold evenings which requires base load or storage, combined with solar angle/efficiency being worse in the winter.
    - ssl-3 5mo ago
      Yeah, it's imperfect. Does that mean that it is untenable?
    - Broken_Hippo 5mo ago
      Actually, the US uses more power during the day in the summer - there is a dropoff in the night for both summer and winter. Night time use is somewhat similar. [1] Cooling takes more energy than warming, so the summer daytime use is higher. Summer = warm evenings. I'm from Indiana - it was almost always cooler at 10am than 7pm, even in the winter. It takes time to heat up or cool down. I'll also mention that nights and weekends use less power because business and industry tend to shut down during these times. Which would somewhat logically mean that despite the efficiency being worse during winter, it isn't as much of a strain because power demands are less. [1]https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915
      - fooblaster 5mo ago
        Cooling doesn't really take more energy than warming, because cooling is warming if you have a heat pump. Are you not just observing here the usage of fossil fuels for heating, which is extremely common?
- cduzz 5mo ago
  These days I think "at night" is mostly covered or at least could be mostly covered both by wind and batteries. The "base load" question may still be appropriate for deep winter, high (or low) latitudes, etc, but renewables are getting there pretty fast.
- horsawlarway 5mo ago
  LFPs are cheap and safe, with very good cycle counts. Sodium seems to be actually hitting real commercial production volumes (ex - GM just announced a sodium ramp up days ago, CATL has been producing them for a while). I expect we'll see sodium mature a good bit over the next decade (right now - it's just not quite as good as LFP, but it has a lot of promise in temperature extremes and cheap input materials) So sure - storage is an issue. But it's not THE issue anymore. It costs surprisingly little to get enough LFP storage to cover an entire house at modest usage for days at a time (ex - under 10k for 42.9KWh of storage, UL approved https://signaturesolar.com/eg4-wallmount-all-weather-lithium-battery-48v-280ah-14-3kwh-lifepo4-all-weather-energy-storage-ul1973-ul9540a-10-year-warranty/ https://signaturesolar.com/eg4-wallmount-all-weather-lithium...) So yes - storage remains something to consider. But I think pretending that storage is a constraint that should stop PV rollout is... cough... bullshit cough... Let industry that needs it pull from existing generation at night, convert residential to solar as fast as possible. Subsidize residential battery rollout the same way we do for insulation and other efficiency improving home improvements (which to be clear - we were doing prior to the current admin). China isn't fucking around on the solar front, and the continued excuses in US from entrenched interests tangled up in the oil industry are criminal.
  - michaelbuckbee 5mo ago
    I think it's your last point that's actually the strongest. There's always gaps between theoretical and practical, but to see China investing so hard in the future while the US digs in it's heels is infuriating.
    - toomuchtodo 5mo ago
      China exported 68GW of solar PV in March 2026, double the prior month and 14GW more than total solar PV capacity installed in Spain. Chinese solar exports double in a month to hit record high amid energy crisis - https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/chinese-solar-exports-double-in-a-month-to-hit-record-high-amid-energy-crisis/ https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/chinese-solar-export... - April 23rd, 2026 https://ember-energy.org/data/chinas-solar-pv-export-explorer/ https://ember-energy.org/data/chinas-solar-pv-export-explore... https://ember-energy.org/data/china-cleantech-exports-data-explorer/ https://ember-energy.org/data/china-cleantech-exports-data-e...
- jillesvangurp 5mo ago
  The whole point about modern gas/coal plants is that it's relatively cheap to shut them down and start them up again. They are backup power, not for providing inflexible base load. Batteries + renewables are taking a lot of market share and flexible backup power is much more important than baseload (inflexible power like nuclear)
  - pstuart 5mo ago
    Gas is faster to respond, coal, not so much. From the Goog: Starting up a coal-fired power station depends heavily on the plant's current temperature, taking anywhere from 2 to 48 hours to reach full operational capacity. Because of massive metal boilers and turbines, the heating process must be slow to prevent severe thermal fatigue and equipment damage. [1, 2] The startup time is broken down by the plant's previous state: • Hot Start (less than 8 hours offline): 2 to 4 hours. The boiler and equipment are still warm, allowing for a relatively quick resumption of steam production. • Warm Start (8 to 120 hours offline): 4 to 8 hours. • Cold Start (More than 120 hours offline): 12 to 48 hours. The plant must be heated from room temperature, which involves initially burning expensive natural gas or diesel just to safely warm the furnace and metal pipes before coal can be introduced. [1, 3, 5] To explore how these heavy thermal operations impact the broader electricity supply, you can review the U.S. Energy Information Administration's grid reliability data or dive deeper into the technical challenges via the Environmental Protection Agency's Coal Startup Report. [6] If you are interested in the broader power market, let me know: [1] https://www.quora.com/Why-its-not-that-easy-to-start-operating-power-plants-after-being-subjected-to-a-situation-where-Load-is-remarkably-higher-than-generation https://www.quora.com/Why-its-not-that-easy-to-start-operati... [2] https://www.quora.com/How-long-does-it-take-for-a-thermal-power-plant-to-hot-start-up https://www.quora.com/How-long-does-it-take-for-a-thermal-po... [3] https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2015-11/documents/matsstartstsd.pdf https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2015-11/documents/ma... [4] https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-minimum-time-required-by-steam-turbines-running-on-coal-to-start-in-cases-of-cold-startup-and-hot-startup-And-is-hot-startup-inefficient https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-minimum-time-required-by-s... [5] https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/inflexible-fossil-fuels/ https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/inflexible-fossil-fuels/ [6] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=45956 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=45956
- onlyrealcuzzo 5mo ago
  Contrary to popular belief, solar panels don't generate zero power on cloudy days. They typically generate 10-25% of their maximum output on the cloudiest of days. Most cloudy days are not maximally cloudy. We don't need solar panels everywhere to get even close to ~100% renewables (with nuclear, wind, new geothermal, and hydro). The areas where you put them are distributed enough that it would be exceptionally rare to ever encounter a meaningful need to ration. So, storage is an issue, but not as big of an issue as most people think, and we do not generate anywhere near enough solar energy for it to be a reasonable concern yet... There's also more solutions than just conventional batteries. There's pumped hydro, etc...
  - flumes_whims_ 5mo ago
    But they do generate zero power at night.
    - oblio 5mo ago
      And people use less energy at night. Yes, they do need heating/cooling and a few other things at night, but the peak is during the day and in the evening. This argument is almost closed at this point, with PV + batteries being quite price competitive. We're no longer in 2018.
    - deleted 5mo ago
      [deleted]
    - fragmede 5mo ago
      Solution? Send large mirrors into space so it never stops shining. https://www.reflectorbital.com/ https://www.reflectorbital.com/
      - magicalhippo 5mo ago
        That surely won't interfere with the ecosystem at all! /s
  - Marsymars 5mo ago
- brendoelfrendo 5mo ago
  It's not, grid-scale batteries are being deployed all over the world, and newer batteries keep getting better and cheaper. Storage hasn't been the issue for years.
  - ben_w 5mo ago
    To be fair, it depends if you were looking at "price/unit" or "sum of factory output". The former, even a few years ago, I agree. The latter, people were arguing about a year or two ago. (Though your point remains as the trend was clear).
- pydry 5mo ago
  The fossil fuel lobbies want us to believe it is a way bigger problem than it is. The people who echo that sentiment without educating themselves are giving them a helping hand.
- Schiendelman 5mo ago
  It turns out battery prices have dropped so much that this isn't difficult anymore either.

Retric 5mo ago

Total electricity produced by coal + gas is down over the last 20 years. Total electricity production is up, the difference is from wind and solar. This administration swapped to actively suppressing Wind and Solar via tariffs etc, and yet the trends continued because the underlying economic reality heavily favors battery backed solar.

rtkwe 5mo ago
I think that's part of what's notable about this. The administration hasn't been able to reverse the trend despite putting a massive thumb on the scale against projects like offshore wind and tariffs on solar panel imports. There's probably a delay in the effects though since projects started before they took office are probably starting to thin out and finish up. We'd have to look into the permitting of new projects or wait for to see how big the decline in new capacity turns out to be in a couple years.
- tedggh 5mo ago
  A lot of comes from state initiatives too. Texas being conservative also happens to be very pro solar. I’m in the business and we have some great projects there. The US military is also pushing solar at their facilities. Then you have many private-state partnerships like tolls investing a lot in solar. The outlook in general is pretty positive in the US, a lot more than what people would think.
  - glenstein 5mo ago
    I also recall a New York times article from many moons ago suggesting that a lot of Texas oil wealth got repurposed into a large-scale wind energy infrastructure, but my info might be out of date.
  - rtkwe 5mo ago
    True though one of the major things they have been able to do because it's mostly in the federal purview is killing offshore wind.

mbgerring 5mo ago

It’s also from focused efforts to close coal plants, and rapid, massive deployment of solar in the last 20 years, and new technology emerging (better batteries and dispatch technologies) to make solar into a 24/7 resource. For whatever reason, there’s a strong motivation for people to dismiss the gigantic global effort to transition the energy system away from fossil fuels, and claim that all that effort isn’t really doing anything. Thankfully, this is not true — determined people can change things for the better.

ToucanLoucan 5mo ago
> For whatever reason, there’s a strong motivation for people to dismiss the gigantic global effort to transition the energy system away from fossil fuels, and claim that all that effort isn’t really doing anything. Because renewable energy is Communism, or something. But seriously: $$$$. The Fossil Fuel industry, before it finally dies, will make big Tobacco look downright merciful. The owners of these companies and their media co-conspirators should be tried in the Hague for what they have done to our planet just to keep making fucking money.
- jwr 5mo ago
  > The Fossil Fuel industry, before it finally dies, will make big Tobacco look downright merciful. This should not be surprising when one realizes that this industry is the biggest industry that humanity ever created (in terms of monetary value). Nothing ever is or was bigger than energy from fossil fuels. Predictably, those who profit from this, behave like selfish [...] and fight tooth and nail to keep their profits.
  - pfdietz 5mo ago
    Energy is 10% of global GDP, about $10 T a year. I remember this when anyone complains large scale use of solar and wind would be expensive. So is large scale use of any energy source.
- ZeroGravitas 5mo ago
  Putting the planet aside for a moment, the unnecessary death and illness they've inflicted on the human race will be staggering.

epistasis 5mo ago

No, this is actually solar's output increasing. Natural gas's share of electricity generation has been falling for five years straight: https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/gas-share-in-global-power-mix-has-declined-for-a-fifth-consecutive-year/ https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/gas-share-in-global...

bryanlarsen 5mo ago
That's a link to a global chart. The OP is talking about the US. It's not surprising that countries that have to import natural gas are moving away from it and countries with plentiful local suppliew are doubling down on it.
- epistasis 5mo ago
  I'm not seeing that in US data either. Here's data from a top web hit: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-in-the-us.php https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-... The 10-year change 2015 to 2025 is: - Gas: +472 TWh, +35% - Renewables: +525 TWh, +97% Saying that this is more gas than coal is certainly not the case borne out by the numbers, even in the US, the one place where gas is as cheap as dirt due to it being a by-product of fracking.

bob1029 5mo ago

Some of these plants are being retrofitted for dual firing. They can burn coal & natural gas at the same time. I wonder how that factors into these statistics.

ViewTrick1002 5mo ago

Solar has also overtaken fossil gas. https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/clean-energy/renewables-beat-natural-gas-us-grid-march-2026 https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/clean-energy/renewables...

tolciho 5mo ago

> have little black particles all over it. Nobody likes that, no matter what the President says. Should you live near one of those big noisy "freeway" things you may note the little black particles over everything in the surroundings but nobody likes to tear down the interstate.

kibwen 5mo ago
> nobody likes to tear down the interstate Lots of urban areas in the US have been resisting, tearing down, and/or relocating major roads since the freeway revolts of the 1970s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_revolts_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_revolts_in_the_United_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeway_removal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeway_removal
int_19h 5mo ago
I have two things to say to that. First, I live 150 yards from a major freeway - I-90 in WA, it's three lanes in each direction here. There are no tiny black particles over everything in surroundings, and my outdoors AQI (from my own sensor) is normally in single digits and basically only ever gets above 50 if it's wildfire smoke or the neighbors are burning something. But second, if we developed a reliable and cheap way to, say, teleport people over long distances, why not tear it down?
- Schiendelman 5mo ago
  How are you measuring your AQI, and what particle size? Tire particles aren't PM2.5 AFAIK and are very hazardous to your health.
- tolciho 5mo ago
  Note the use of 'may'; the details of the car-hell vary. Perhaps the I-90 pollution instead spills into the lake and then bioaccumultes into larger organisms, Bon Appétit! My anecdote was a bit southwesterly of the I-5 bridge where there was, besides the horrific noise pollution, definitely a greyish black soot to clean off everything. A fine result of rolling a natural one and automatically failing the skill check for "copy the autobahn", probably. As to why some beings need to be whisked hither and yon with such haste, and thus spend quite a bit of time (and energy) trying to be somewhere, anywhere else, well, are they hungry ghosts? Or maybe they min/maxed for wizard and ended up with only three points in wisdom?