Based on current deployment rates, it is likely that solar will surpass wind as the third-largest source of electricity. And solar may soon topple coal in the number two spot.
Looking ahead, through July 2028, FERC expects no new coal capacity to come online based on its “high probability additions” forecast. Meanwhile 63 coal plants are expected to be retired, subtracting 25 GW from the 198 GW total, and landing at about 173 GW of coal capacity by 2028. Meanwhile, FERC forecasts 92.6 GW of “high probability additions” solar will come online through July 2028.
“Will pass wind”
Haha
Cool
Sodium-ion batteries are becoming more viable, which will be necessary to buffer the solar energy surge during the day and lack of energy production at night.
A recent article about the state of the coal industry in the usa…
Fossil Fuels and Fossilized Minds - Paul Krugman https://share.google/9gGFCB2MFShNzGJrp
Hell. In Florida, FPL is the electric provider, and they are fighting tooth and nail to keep people from installing solar on houses… In Florida, we would have almost free electric for everyone if all houses could install panels…
But FPL lobbied our GOP legislature and force anyone with solar to have a million dollar insurance policy payable to FPL in case something happens. Also got regulations passed to bar home windstorm insurance if any panels are bolted to the roof. So if you have panels, no hurricane insurance for you…and the mortgage holder gets to put their expensive policy on your home.
Fuck FPL
You couldn’t just have “free electricity for everyone” by having solar panels on your houses lol. Where’s the power being stored?
You guys still burning coal? We dumped that ages ago.
Preznit Numbnuts will be sure to start closing wind farms then, forcing us all back into using coal so he can slurp up lobby $$
Lol they’ve already announced funding (or intent to fund?) for reviving coal mining
The Republicans. They yearn for the mines.
Assuming Dear Leader Trump (and I hate calling him that even as a joke) don’t stamp it out, of course.
I also always call him Dear Leader. We can’t normalize these behaviors from a president, and using the “Dear Leader” title makes it unambiguously clear that his selfish actions are not presidential.
I call him Literal Sentient Piece of Shit. For real. Have done frequently. I’ve successfully turned it into a habit lol
I’ve already passed wind in 2025.
Would that be considered breaking news?
On fox news
No, but it is breaking wind.
Are you a renewable resource?
Username checks out.
Mmmmmmmmmm beefy!
Did you call me fat?
You’re not fat, you’re just festively plump!
That’s actually a problem.
All realistic plans for 100% renewable (or even 95% renewable, which is substantially easier) rely on a multipronged approach of wind, water, solar, and grid upgrades. Each one has upsides and downsides, but you can use the upsides of one to cover the downsides of another. Combined, you get a reliable grid based on intermittent but cheap sources.
Capitalism sees this plan and decides to deploy the one with the best immediate ROI. Which happens to be solar. Problem is that you can’t just rely on solar. The grid is hitting limits where electrical production is sending prices to basically zero at certain times, but not able to provide enough the rest of the time. That will shift the economic incentives. Eventually.
It’ll figure out what researchers have already written down, but it’ll take too long to get there.
Batteries
What batteries exactly? The capacity required is huge.
They can be distributed though. I Install solar, most of the systems we install with batteries end up selling back a significant portion of their charge to the grid (iirc our system wide average is 40% nightly resale)
So not only is each house with a battery not using grid power at night, its powering almost half of an equivalently sized house.
Granted, batteries are still on the expensive side, so these systems aren’t coming enough ( I think we’re at ~10% of our systems have a battery)
Yeah, that’s a step in correct direction, but can you guarantee that everybody can be powered 24/7 through renewables/batteries, specially during winter? Unless that’s the case you still need a shit-ton of non-renewable energy that’s coming either from fossil fuels or nuclear. And if you want to avoid (co2) emissions, then you need nuclear to cover everybody, and if you have nuclear then it has to run 100% 24/7. OTOH if you don’t have nuclear, you’ll emit all sort or crap during those periods. And so on. Also, it’s not just that batteries are sort of expensive, they are big. Also you are talking houses, but masses live in apartments where placing solar panels or batteries isn’t possible (at least in quantity).
Also not renewable, are incredibly environmentally destructive, and have short lifetimes - kinda the opposite of what the push for “renewables” is supposed to be about lol.
SoCal has a huge amount of wind and solar right now. Utility sized battery installations are going in to deal with the times those two aren’t producing.
Even home battery solutions. We have solar panels & a Powerwall. Were part of a Virtual Power Plant along with around 1500 other Powerwall owners in the region. During peak usage in the summer all our PowerWalls feed back to the grid so that our utility provider doesn’t have to spin up expensive (and dirty) peaker plants. We get paid a premium for the power we provide during these events.
I saw articles here on Lemmy just a month or two ago that Tesla successfully tested a VPP in California that consisted of 100,000 PowerWalls.
While your power company is taking your power from your battery, where does your power to power your house come from? How much do you pay for it, what are your daily charges etc?
Our house is still powered by the panels and/or battery as well. We typically use 1 to 5 kWh, and during these events the batteries are discharging up to 10 kWh. Whatever we don’t use goes to the grid. Last year we received a payout of $1450 for 45 hours worth of energy, probably in the neighborhood of 300-350 kWh.
The ones they’ve installed near us are Siemens and the only reason we even know they exist is we went by often during installation. The cabinets are now hidden behind a high wall. I’m guessing they’re going in all over the place. Strange that I’ve never seen them mentioned in the news anywhere.
It’s not really a ‘problem.’
If push came to shove, we could just wait before putting the panels online.
That’s actually a problem
Is it? Wind is 10% and solar is 4%
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-in-the-us.php
Yes, and we’re already seeing prices go negative with that mix. This shouldn’t happen (at least not very often) if it’s built properly.
Well that’s an average and it will differ greatly with seasons. What percentage is problematic?
Even with an admin as renewable-hostile as the current one, you just can’t beat cheap, I guess.
It’s not actually cheap though, that’s the problem. Basically every country that is pushing “renewables” are having their power bills increase over and over and over with no sign of slowing down because it’s not cheap.
No one wants to build them without giant subsidies and guaranteed returns. Why do you think that is?
That’s been the joke of Solar for a while. Engineers could have told you all the way back in the 1970s (really, the 1910s) that it costs less money to leave a big plate out in the bright sun than to drill a giant hole and hope there’s enough spicy rocks at the bottom of it to justify the expense.
We should have crested this hill a lot sooner, but the heavy emphasis on subsidized fossil fuels during the 80s, 90s, and 00s kept these fuels artificially cheap. Meanwhile, fossil fuel firms actually did invest in Green Energy R&D but only for the purpose of erecting “patent thickets” that would hinder competitive growth of these alternatives.
This “patent thicket” can create barriers to innovative low-carbon technologies, particularly in markets requiring expensive licensing fees or with complex patent litigation (Cannuscio 2008). A strengthened IPRP can increase market concentration and reduce competition (Liu et al. 2018), with large corporations able to maintain market control in such environments through patents on key technologies. This control not only restricts the entry of emerging low-carbon technologies into the market but also perpetuates the reliance on existing high-carbon technologies.
This has lead to big surges in the development and deployment of Green Energy grids outside of the countries doing most of the cutting edge research. Americans are only now catching up.
You’re really discounting that fossil fuels have hella bang for the buck, loads of power per gallon. tl;dr: Energy dense
I can run my little generator at camp all night long if there’s as little as 3 gallons in there. Space heater or AC unit, lights, all that. I’d have to have many panels and batteries to compare to that output. My best battery is a huge LIPO4, trolling motor can’t kill it, not even close. But leaving the LED lights on for a little over a day drained it dry.
We need way more solar infrastructure to get where we’re going, and I’m all about it. But since since the GOP has decided to go back in time, China is going to smoke America, both in renewables and the associated economic benefits.
Did not know about the patent thing! Know any examples?
You’re really discounting that fossil fuels have hella bang for the buck, loads of power per gallon. tl;dr: Energy dense
Coal is generally the worst of the lot. Oil and gas burn cleaner and have more combustible by weight. Coal is energy dense but also heavy af and dirty as hell. It’s also very common place and comparably safe to transport. And it is simpler to use.
Fine enough to warm your home or grill some meat. But you’re not putting a rocket into orbit with coal.
My best battery is a huge LIPO4, trolling motor can’t kill it, not even close. But leaving the LED lights on for a little over a day drained it dry.
Sure. Broadly speaking you want to be hooked up to the grid to benefit from electricity. Anything portable is very ineffective for a litany of reasons.
But you’re not putting a rocket into orbit with coal
And you’re definitely not with wind and solar lol.
Coal is cheap, abundant in supply, and easy.
This is why I have no problem [REDACTED] members of the ruling class.
Gotta love that headline.
Would have been better as “blow past wind” to match the sentiment of the “coal in the dust” joke.
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind.
All we are is dust in the wind…
Had to read it twice to understand what they WANTED to say
Phrasing.
It’s perfect
Another example of Big Media always twisting the narrative! They didn’t “pass wind,” they FARTED! Stop diverting the blame!
Well, considering how it’s breaking wind and passing gas, they didn’t really have a collision here.
I lol’d
Heh heh. Heh heh.
Well despite Trump wanting to reverse it coal has been being phased out for decades. I’d look at how it does vs natural gas.
