Solar's become dirt cheap - it's replacing coal not because of subsidies or policy, but just because it's cheaper. Bodes well for its continued usage.<p>The bottleneck for continued electrification is going to become storage shortly. Solar can <i>produce</i> all the electricity we need, but it only does it during daylight hours, while we <i>consume</i> the most energy between 4-10 PM. Natural gas is currently bridging the gap, but utilities can't install more base-load solar than is consumed during peak daylight hours. So the key to letting solar replace more gas is time-shifting consumption from 4-10 PM to 9 AM - 3 PM. Here's my plan of inexpensive solutions for this:<p>1. Subsidize workplace EV charging, and create a standard that lets workplaces pass along energy costs from it to employees.<p>2. Invest in smart grid-aware EV & home battery charging technologies. Instead of charging whenever you first plug them in (which is usually ~6 PM), load from EV charging should be distributed to whenever the grid has excess power available, with a random factor so that not all EVs charge at once.<p>3. Subsidize insulation upgrades for homes. This turns them into thermal batteries where you can heat/cool them during the day and they will retain that temperature at night. Insulation materials are also really cheap for what you get now; it's installation that's the bottleneck in many cases.<p>4. Subsidize heat pumps, to make all heating/cooling electric.<p>5. Adopt V2H/V2G charging technology on all EVs, so that energy already stored in the car's battery can power home electronics at night.<p>6. Meet demand for EV batteries.<p>There, you're done, at least as far as residential consumers are concerned. Transportation + HVAC are by far the largest energy draws in the consumer sector. Timeshift them so that they happen during peak solar hours, and the problem of creating enough grid-scale energy storage to shift production from 9-3 to 4-10 reduces to the problem of creating enough batteries so that everyone can have an EV. A Ford F-150 Lightning has as much battery capacity as 7 PowerWalls; take HVAC out of the equation and you can easily power a home for weeks off it.
We've very probably hit <i>global</i> "peak coal" and looking at future declining world use:<p><i>International Energy Agency Global Coal Report</i> December 2023 (released Friday 15th December 2023)<p><pre><code> Global coal production is forecast to have risen by 1.8% in 2023, with continued growth in India, China and Indonesia more than offsetting declines in the United States and the European Union.
Thus, 2023 marks another all-time high in global coal production, totalling 8 741 Mt. [...]
For the forecast period, we expect a net reduction in global coal production starting in 2024, which would mean global coal production peaking in 2023 in line with global coal demand.
Ongoing declines in the United States and the European Union are likely to be complemented by reduced production volumes in Indonesia, as Chinese demand for seaborne thermal coal is likely to decrease.
The last bastion of remarkable growth in production is India, serving the growing demand from its power sector.
Our model suggests that declines in other countries will more than offset this growth, resulting in global production of 8 394 Mt in 2026.
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<a href="https://www.iea.org/reports/coal-2023/supply" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.iea.org/reports/coal-2023/supply</a><p><i>Global coal use to reach record high in 2023, energy agency says</i><p><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/15/global-coal-use-to-reach-record-high-in-2023-iea" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/15/global-coal-use-to...</a><p><pre><code> But the IEA noted that overall coal use is not expected to drop until 2026, when the major expansion of renewable capacity in the next three years should help lower usage by 2.3 percent compared with 2023 levels, even with the absence of stronger clean energy policies.
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<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38652273">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38652273</a>
The US electrical grid is changing fast. I built a site to track instantaneous solar generation and other records in real time across different parts of the country.<p>New solar records are done until next summer but still interesting stuff happening. For example, California hit a new battery charging record a few weeks ago.<p>All the records and more real time information about US grid are here: <a href="https://www.gridstatus.io/records" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.gridstatus.io/records</a>
For those in the know:
- Is the adoption of wind and solar accelerating, or is it linear?
- When do you expect 90%+ electricity generation from renewable sources (hydro, wind, solar)?
- Will it be cheaper than nuclear? Will we still need nuclear?<p>Thanks!
This is because coal is dropping to 15%.<p>Here’s a direct link to the EIA document:<p><a href="https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/pdf/steo_full.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/pdf/steo_full.pdf</a><p>It says renewables already passed coal. Maybe I’m looking at the wrong page?
That’s all fine and good but I have not found any data supporting this good news for net 0 efforts. We’ve been transitioning away from coal power for a while but while the headline implies solar & wind are the beneficiaries, natural gas has benefited much more. While natural gas emits less CO2 than coal, it emits more methane which if I recall correctly means that they’re roughly comparable (natural gas is better for local air quality).
I think this has more to do with replacing coal with gas than about the growth of renewables: coal production has been dropping father than renewables have come online.<p>Still, good news anyway.
On November 20, 37 Gigawatt hours of excess wind were produced by wind turbines. That surplus occurred at night, when there is room to spare on the transmission lines running from West Texas to the urban centers in the East. If Texas had 3.7 million EVs they would have had their daily needs met with the wind electricity that was curtailed for lack of demand.<p>Let that sink in. Surplus like that is nuclear power plant levels of electricity. Now, admittedly, November 20 had wind potential that was near record-breaking. Further, many nights of the week, wind is not producing at surplus levels -- and the idea of million EVs charging would unleash dozens of natural gas plans to fill their nightly needs.<p>This problem of 'extra wind' plagues about 18 states covered by Southwest Power Pool and Midcontinent ISOs. Further, the cost savings in moving EV demand from wind-poor nights to wind-rich nights only saves about 1¢/kWh in wholesale electric costs. Accordingly, there isn't much of a price signal to get people to change their habits.
How about in terms of power consumed?<p>When I was a kid, it was cheapest to use electricity at night, because that’s when industrial demand was reduced. Now, my rates for electricity at night are significantly higher than during the day, because power output collapses from solar.
We spent 3 weeks this year driving all over Florida ('the sunshine state') and solar panels and wind turbines were pretty much non-existent, as far as we could see. So where does this US solar and wind power come from?
Honestly I'm starting to feel a bit alarmed by the growth of solar energy. I live in Midwest farm country and solar farms are just being built in place of food farms at a scary rate.<p>While I believe in the idea of cleaner renewable energy I'm concerned if it comes at the price of a reduced food supply.