For the first time ever, solar is set to generate more electricity than coal in the power market managed by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. Nobody is building new coal power plants in the state, but developers are adding more solar there than anywhere else in the country. As a result of those diverging trajectories, the federal government expects ERCOT will receive 78 billion kilowatt-hours from solar in 2026, and just 60 from coal.
This trend does have seasonal variations. Last year, solar output beat coal on a monthly basis from March through August, and this year it is expected to do so from March through December, per the US Energy Information Administration at the Department of Energy.
They can’t stop it, it’s hilarious. Good news.
They can’t stop it, it’s hilarious.
It is utterly sad that they want to stop it, to burn more coal.
Woke liberal nonsense! How do you get electricity from the sun?!
One of my friend’s fathers keeps telling everyone about how solar panels do more damage to the environment than coal because of how they are made. I asked him how they’re made. No clue, he said.
On another note, Florida was attempting to pass a bill to start using solar energy. The opposition mounted a campaign that claimed that solar panels would block out the Florida sun, chase away tourists, and be twice as expensive as other power sources. I cant remember if the bill passed or not.
Unfortunately, we have a long way to go when it comes to breaking people’s programming on renewable energy.
As someone who has never been to Texas, I associate Texas with unrelenting sun and vast tracts of uninhabitable land with little or no environmental value (ok that bit is hyperbole, I know deserts are in fact a delicate ecosystem but you get the idea).
Or in other words, perfect solar panel real estate.
So what’s stopping them taking advantage of all the almost free energy!
uninhabitable land with little or no environmental value
As I understand it, the partial shade created by solar panels will often be a plus for the ecology of the land below solar panels. Especially in a sun scorched place like Texas.
So what’s stopping them taking advantage of all the almost free energy!
It’s woke.
No one has ideology, morality or conscience, the millisecond renewables are cheaper, they will take over.
Renewables are already cheaper*, wind and solar.
*depending on where you are in the world.
Happened recently in conservative Romania
Electricity doesn’t fertilize crops or generate plastics or chemical feedstocks or fly you across the Atlantic in six hours.
Having free renewable electricity in a world of 8+ billion people and dwindling fossil fuels is like running your fridge for free, but it’s empty.
ehh, the actual technology where liquid oil / fuels are required are like 3% of all total energy consumption. the rest 97% can be electrified, and actually, using electricity is in many cases even simpler than using coal. for example in steel production. it’s easier to do with electricity than coal because coal contains sulfur and that introduces impurities into your chemical process. meanwhile electrolysis is simple and clean.
Uh…electricity makes fertilizers, runs water pumps for sprinklers and refines all the fuel.
Did you know that during the 18th and 19th century industrial revolution in Britain, coal never became cheaper than water power? All those new steam engines were used to make deeper mines more viable and to increase production. But water power remained cheaper throughout. But water power came with a downside. Available water power tended to be located in rural areas. The smaller population in these small towns consequently had a lot of labor bargaining power. Industrialists instead wanted access to the labor markets of the major cities, cities brimming over with new urban poor desperate for any scrap of work they could get. Cheaper labor overcame cheaper power. A coal plant could be put anywhere, while a water mill could only be positioned on high-flowing streams.
Renewables are cheaper, but we’ve been here before. There’s more to this than just energy cost.
Do you have any source for that? I find it difficult to believe that the only reason for using steam over water mills was the dastardly exploitation by capitalists.
The only reason was that coal power was available in cities, water power wasn’t. You can cast it as for exploitation, but exploitation of the urban poor was going to happen anyway, coal power allowed them to make factories in the cities
well said
that being said, china subsidized solar panel production heavily for 20 years until they became economically self-sustaining. so there was a large amount of ideology involved i’d say.
so this mostly applies to the buyers of solar panels.
That one probably isn’t really ideology so much as strategic necessity. To my understanding, China is a major energy importer, with a dependence on fossil fuels coming in via the South China Sea. They’re in an exceptionally vulnerable position because a blockade wouldn’t be particularly difficult to implement there (at least, if their opponent is the US), so any degree of energy independence they can give themselves is imperative.
They’ve also maintained a hundred-year plan since at least the 90s.
At any given moment, their strategic policy is looking so far ahead that everyone in the government will be dead and their grandkids will be old by the time it comes to term.
US politics can’t seem to past the four-year election cycle. Biden tried with the Green New Deal, Build Back Better, and CHIPS, but you see where those landed. Severely diminished bills that narrowly passed and were among the first things on the chopping block when his successor entered office.
And yet people call it a grift because it would have taken at least 8-10 years to see the results even if it hadn’t been dismantled.
The amount of systemic change that needs to happen in the political and economic landscape realistically cannot happen in under four years from start to finish. It will require long-term investments in infrastructure projects that take years to build, which means at some point voters are gonna have to be patient and stop flipping sides whenever conditions don’t materially improve overnight.
In other words, we’re fucked…
The amount of systemic change that needs to happen in the political and economic landscape realistically cannot happen in under four years from start to finish. It will require long-term investments in infrastructure projects that take years to build, which means at some point voters are gonna have to be patient and stop flipping sides whenever conditions don’t materially improve overnight.
In other words, we’re fucked…
yeah the US really needs to learn (possibly the hard way) that there needs to be a political plan for the industry. in the 20th century apparently it could do fine without that, but that just doesn’t work anymore. you can’t have efficient industry without a long-term plan.
Yup, I agree wholeheartedly. Major industries, especially ones that provide basic necessities and utilities (and I’m including web access in that, because let’s be honest), should all be considered public services anyway and should be provided for with tax dollars and centralized planning accountable to the constituencies.
i’ll include:
- water, food and healthcare
- housing
- transport
- energy
- and IT and education
all at the communal level, responsible to the citizens
I agree, but I’d also include heating (whether natural gas or otherwise) and internet access. Maybe even cell service
Makes sense, lots of open land and lots of sun. Just don’t tell MAGAs.
“Woke libtards are STEALING all the sunlight from Texas to power their satanic abortion machines!”
Solar energy just needs to rebrand to space coal or solar oil to cut through the red tape
Texas lines up with the Sahara desert. Cheap land. The economics are insane.
Now MAGAs will blame the cold winters on renewables because solar panels stole all the sunlight and warmth.
Please don’t give the idiots something new to complain about.
It will eventually take over everywhere because unlike every other form of energy each year it gets better and cheaper.
The problem is the storage… you still need a way to cheaply store all that eneegy to use at night, otherwise you still need all the other options like aeolic… anyway, its allways better to deversify instead of putin all your eggs in one basket
Already solved: batteries
