5 ms·

Utah produced more power from solar than any other source in May, a new first

118 points by toomuchtodo 3mo ago

toomuchtodo 3mo ago
https://ember-energy.org/data/us-electricity-data-explorer/?entity=Utah&date=2026-05-01&date_from=2020-01-01&mode=split&temporal_res=monthly https://ember-energy.org/data/us-electricity-data-explorer/?...
- laweijfmvo 3mo ago
  Sad to see coal going up (?)
  - toomuchtodo 3mo ago
    > In 2025, coal composes just 15 percent of U.S. electricity generation, and while 190 gigawatts (GW) of coal capacity remain online, the fleet is down 43 percent from 340 GW at its peak in 2010. This change is largely due to the fact that coal power is simply more expensive than cleaner power sources like wind, solar, batteries, and natural gas. > Electricity demand growth and new actions by the current U.S. presidential administration may slow this decline in the short-term, but with no proposals to build new coal plants anywhere in America and worsening economic competitiveness – particularly where policymakers are strengthening air and water standards to protect their constituents – its long-term share of U.S. electricity generation will continue to decrease https://energyinnovation.org/expert-voice/what-is-coals-future-in-the-united-states/ https://energyinnovation.org/expert-voice/what-is-coals-futu... https://www.sierraclub.org/coal/coal-plant-map https://www.sierraclub.org/coal/coal-plant-map https://www.energy.gov/ceser/2025-doe-202c-orders https://www.energy.gov/ceser/2025-doe-202c-orders
  - pulvinar 3mo ago
    The chart defaults to ending at 2025. Move the right timeline marker all the way to the right (today).
buckle8017 3mo ago
Utah isn't a power grid. They're on the western interconnect. Combined solar and wind are about 25-30% of production there. These articles about individual states are trash.
- Rebelgecko 3mo ago
  Fwiw I think Utah is the only state with legalized plugin solar (many more on the way though!)
  - toomuchtodo 3mo ago
    State plug in solar legislation tracker: https://www.brightsaver.org/legislation-tracker https://www.brightsaver.org/legislation-tracker (passed in 10 states, 2 awaiting signatures, as of this comment)
  - Xt-6 3mo ago
    A few more states have recently joined it. https://pluginsolarus.com/states https://pluginsolarus.com/states
- toomuchtodo 3mo ago
  Utah is about half of the Pacificorp East balancing authority. https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/US-NW-PACE/live/fifteen_minutes https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/US-NW-PACE/live/fif... Nevada Power serves a substantial amount of western Utah. https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/US-NW-NEVP/live/fifteen_minutes https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/US-NW-NEVP/live/fif...
  - buckle8017 3mo ago
    Cool, that's still not a grid for stability purposes.
    - nemomarx 3mo ago
      can you expand? I'm not sure I get it. isn't then having a wider interconnection better for stability and to handle solar? they can share cheap power in gluts and pull in other sources at night and so on.
epistasis 3mo ago
Also true for California for quite some time. https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/solar/california-solar-power-record-may https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/solar/california-solar-... What's going to happen in the future is that May will be a month of extreme electricity abundance, with a good chunk of the electricity just not being collected at all because the grid doesn't need it, and it will be cheaper to have unused electricity in May than to have too little solar in December.
- mekdoonggi 3mo ago
  And eventually that arbitrage will be big enough to justify a pumped hydro/gravity/iron-air storage.
  - kansface 3mo ago
    Or possibly the return of some heavy industry?
    - ljf 3mo ago
      I always wondered that - but will it be economical to have the plants not working in the months of the year that the energy isn't free?
      - colechristensen 3mo ago
        It's not "will it" it's just a series of balances, capital costs vs energy costs. If there's enough free energy and automation there gets to be a point where there will be people will start to disregard the capital costs as well and run 0ish input cost businesses with a vertical stack of stuff that they produced with 0ish input cost.
      - bluGill 3mo ago
        Maybe. Depends on the plant. Nearly every plant goes through shutdowns for maintenance. If energy is a large cost they work with the utility (and vice versa - when the utility needs to shut down a big power plant they need industry to shutdown something at the same time). Many of them take December off for maintenance. My company has long pour iron in the foundry only at night: we get enough of a discount on power as to be worth paying the workers extra to work the night shift (I last checked this 15 years ago - I would not be surprised if this has changed now that the local power is mostly wind and thus has different factors) Of course every plant is different. There is a big difference between "batch" processes where you can shutdown after any batch, and "continuous" processes where startup/shutdown is a large process since the machines depend on running. They have different abilities to respond. Some plants/processes use more energy than others - obviously if they don't use much energy they don't care about free energy much either. The more energy a plant uses the more they are interested in cheap energy. In some cases a less efficient process may suddenly become better when solar is "free"
ck2 3mo ago
good thing the President is pouring billions into restarting coal plants what a freaking horror show we are living in
- Rover222 3mo ago
  At least at this point solar can be driven by pure market forces, it doesn't need federal subsidies to make sense.
  - philipkglass 3mo ago
    It's unfortunately worse than coal subsidies. There are direct Federal orders that obsolete coal plants are not allowed to shut down. One example from Washington state: https://www.opb.org/article/2026/06/18/federal-order-keeps-washington-transalta-coal-power-plant-open/ https://www.opb.org/article/2026/06/18/federal-order-keeps-w...
    - bluGill 3mo ago
      There is open, and there is operating. This plant hasn't produced power in a while, but if someone wants to it is still open and so you just need to fire up the boilers again. The order just keeps it available to start again, it doesn't force it to burn coal. Closing the plant means they don't have to do maintenance, and perhaps they will tear it down.
- rainsford 3mo ago
  While the politicization of renewable energy isn't great, the interesting and positive thing to me is that it's entirely possible we're past the tipping point where the politics really matter. Republican politicians in the US publicly rail against renewable energy because it's red meat for the Fox News crowd, but in reality you see even very Republican states like Utah investing in renewables because economic reality ultimately beats political ideology on stuff like this. Maybe the worst aspect of renewable energy being turned into yet another political culture war issue is that while renewable energy resources themselves are probably inevitable, the political nonsense surrounding them has helped limit US investment in their development relative to places like China. As a result, the US and the West as a whole is likely to be far more reliant on Chinese technology in renewables than we otherwise might have been.
grahamerwin 3mo ago
Vaclav Smil would be quick to replace the word power with electricity in the title of this article. It is why Germany can say renewables supply 56% of its electricity while renewables supply only about 21% of its energy. The rest of energy generation won't quickly be replaced with renewables: diesel and kerosene moving freight and people, natural gas in furnaces and boilers, coke reducing iron ore into steel, methane feeding the reactors that fix nitrogen to make fertilizer, and coal that turns limestone into cement. I am fully on board with renewables! I have just found Smil's perspective quite useful here.
- epistasis 3mo ago
  Vaclav Smil has been so wrong on energy, that I'm a bit surprised to see his name mentioned at all. The idea of "primary energy" versus electricity is an important concept, but completely unconnected to Smil.
- ZeroGravitas 3mo ago
  You've learned well from Smil how to make problems seem insurmountable by intentionally not approaching them with an engineering mindset. We know how to do 80% of electricity, 80% of low temp hearing, 80% of transport all while saving money, reducing local pollution and delivering better products. The big problem isnt technical,it's the culture war that Smil is fighting on the wrong side of and which spreads lies about renewables, EVs and heat pumps.
sandalwarrior 3mo ago
Paid article by solar-energy lobbyist.

118 points by toomuchtodo 3mo ago

https://ember-energy.org/data/us-electricity-data-explorer/?entity=Utah&date=2026-05-01&date_from=2020-01-01&mode=split&temporal_res=monthly https://ember-energy.org/data/us-electricity-data-explorer/?...

laweijfmvo 3mo ago
Sad to see coal going up (?)
- toomuchtodo 3mo ago
  > In 2025, coal composes just 15 percent of U.S. electricity generation, and while 190 gigawatts (GW) of coal capacity remain online, the fleet is down 43 percent from 340 GW at its peak in 2010. This change is largely due to the fact that coal power is simply more expensive than cleaner power sources like wind, solar, batteries, and natural gas. > Electricity demand growth and new actions by the current U.S. presidential administration may slow this decline in the short-term, but with no proposals to build new coal plants anywhere in America and worsening economic competitiveness – particularly where policymakers are strengthening air and water standards to protect their constituents – its long-term share of U.S. electricity generation will continue to decrease https://energyinnovation.org/expert-voice/what-is-coals-future-in-the-united-states/ https://energyinnovation.org/expert-voice/what-is-coals-futu... https://www.sierraclub.org/coal/coal-plant-map https://www.sierraclub.org/coal/coal-plant-map https://www.energy.gov/ceser/2025-doe-202c-orders https://www.energy.gov/ceser/2025-doe-202c-orders
- pulvinar 3mo ago
  The chart defaults to ending at 2025. Move the right timeline marker all the way to the right (today).

buckle8017 3mo ago

Utah isn't a power grid. They're on the western interconnect. Combined solar and wind are about 25-30% of production there. These articles about individual states are trash.

Rebelgecko 3mo ago
Fwiw I think Utah is the only state with legalized plugin solar (many more on the way though!)
- toomuchtodo 3mo ago
  State plug in solar legislation tracker: https://www.brightsaver.org/legislation-tracker https://www.brightsaver.org/legislation-tracker (passed in 10 states, 2 awaiting signatures, as of this comment)
- Xt-6 3mo ago
  A few more states have recently joined it. https://pluginsolarus.com/states https://pluginsolarus.com/states
toomuchtodo 3mo ago
Utah is about half of the Pacificorp East balancing authority. https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/US-NW-PACE/live/fifteen_minutes https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/US-NW-PACE/live/fif... Nevada Power serves a substantial amount of western Utah. https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/US-NW-NEVP/live/fifteen_minutes https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/US-NW-NEVP/live/fif...
- buckle8017 3mo ago
  Cool, that's still not a grid for stability purposes.
  - nemomarx 3mo ago
    can you expand? I'm not sure I get it. isn't then having a wider interconnection better for stability and to handle solar? they can share cheap power in gluts and pull in other sources at night and so on.

epistasis 3mo ago

Also true for California for quite some time. https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/solar/california-solar-power-record-may https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/solar/california-solar-... What's going to happen in the future is that May will be a month of extreme electricity abundance, with a good chunk of the electricity just not being collected at all because the grid doesn't need it, and it will be cheaper to have unused electricity in May than to have too little solar in December.

mekdoonggi 3mo ago
And eventually that arbitrage will be big enough to justify a pumped hydro/gravity/iron-air storage.
- kansface 3mo ago
  Or possibly the return of some heavy industry?
  - ljf 3mo ago
    I always wondered that - but will it be economical to have the plants not working in the months of the year that the energy isn't free?
    - colechristensen 3mo ago
      It's not "will it" it's just a series of balances, capital costs vs energy costs. If there's enough free energy and automation there gets to be a point where there will be people will start to disregard the capital costs as well and run 0ish input cost businesses with a vertical stack of stuff that they produced with 0ish input cost.
    - bluGill 3mo ago
      Maybe. Depends on the plant. Nearly every plant goes through shutdowns for maintenance. If energy is a large cost they work with the utility (and vice versa - when the utility needs to shut down a big power plant they need industry to shutdown something at the same time). Many of them take December off for maintenance. My company has long pour iron in the foundry only at night: we get enough of a discount on power as to be worth paying the workers extra to work the night shift (I last checked this 15 years ago - I would not be surprised if this has changed now that the local power is mostly wind and thus has different factors) Of course every plant is different. There is a big difference between "batch" processes where you can shutdown after any batch, and "continuous" processes where startup/shutdown is a large process since the machines depend on running. They have different abilities to respond. Some plants/processes use more energy than others - obviously if they don't use much energy they don't care about free energy much either. The more energy a plant uses the more they are interested in cheap energy. In some cases a less efficient process may suddenly become better when solar is "free"

ck2 3mo ago

good thing the President is pouring billions into restarting coal plants what a freaking horror show we are living in

Rover222 3mo ago
At least at this point solar can be driven by pure market forces, it doesn't need federal subsidies to make sense.
- philipkglass 3mo ago
  It's unfortunately worse than coal subsidies. There are direct Federal orders that obsolete coal plants are not allowed to shut down. One example from Washington state: https://www.opb.org/article/2026/06/18/federal-order-keeps-washington-transalta-coal-power-plant-open/ https://www.opb.org/article/2026/06/18/federal-order-keeps-w...
  - bluGill 3mo ago
    There is open, and there is operating. This plant hasn't produced power in a while, but if someone wants to it is still open and so you just need to fire up the boilers again. The order just keeps it available to start again, it doesn't force it to burn coal. Closing the plant means they don't have to do maintenance, and perhaps they will tear it down.
rainsford 3mo ago
While the politicization of renewable energy isn't great, the interesting and positive thing to me is that it's entirely possible we're past the tipping point where the politics really matter. Republican politicians in the US publicly rail against renewable energy because it's red meat for the Fox News crowd, but in reality you see even very Republican states like Utah investing in renewables because economic reality ultimately beats political ideology on stuff like this. Maybe the worst aspect of renewable energy being turned into yet another political culture war issue is that while renewable energy resources themselves are probably inevitable, the political nonsense surrounding them has helped limit US investment in their development relative to places like China. As a result, the US and the West as a whole is likely to be far more reliant on Chinese technology in renewables than we otherwise might have been.

grahamerwin 3mo ago

Vaclav Smil would be quick to replace the word power with electricity in the title of this article. It is why Germany can say renewables supply 56% of its electricity while renewables supply only about 21% of its energy. The rest of energy generation won't quickly be replaced with renewables: diesel and kerosene moving freight and people, natural gas in furnaces and boilers, coke reducing iron ore into steel, methane feeding the reactors that fix nitrogen to make fertilizer, and coal that turns limestone into cement. I am fully on board with renewables! I have just found Smil's perspective quite useful here.

epistasis 3mo ago
Vaclav Smil has been so wrong on energy, that I'm a bit surprised to see his name mentioned at all. The idea of "primary energy" versus electricity is an important concept, but completely unconnected to Smil.
ZeroGravitas 3mo ago
You've learned well from Smil how to make problems seem insurmountable by intentionally not approaching them with an engineering mindset. We know how to do 80% of electricity, 80% of low temp hearing, 80% of transport all while saving money, reducing local pollution and delivering better products. The big problem isnt technical,it's the culture war that Smil is fighting on the wrong side of and which spreads lies about renewables, EVs and heat pumps.

sandalwarrior 3mo ago

Paid article by solar-energy lobbyist.