Solar’s growth in US almost enough to offset rising energy use

Over the course of 2025, electricity demand has gradually declined.

See full article...

 

[mschira]

meanwhile the Trump administration is actively trying to kill solar power with every lever it has to pull.

Well, as most of the things, stopping solar will fail.
The might be able to delay it in the US, but the entire rest of the world is pulling ahead.
And soon enough the data centre gang will be annoyed because electricity in the US is too expensive, compared to the rest of the world's.
I think this might ultimately be a good thing, that stink of AI datacenter companies complaining will make it loud and clear to everyone that solar is the cheapest.

Solar on your roof is like printing money.

I just pulled the trigger and ordered a 20kWh battery and a few extra panels for my existing 8kW solar system.
I was exporting twice as much electricity to the grid than I used (649kWh exported and 321 imported), and AGL wants $149 from me.
That’s it, no more.

 

[dio82]

I wouldn't want to use the Li-ion battery in my BEV for V2G, save the occasional grid emergency, just to keep wear to a minimum.

I'm currently waiting for Na-ion batteries for solar storage to really hit the market in force. My municipal utility caps residential solar installs to 5 kW w/o battery storage and 10 kW w/ battery storage. Na-ion cells seem to be the perfect fit for daily deep charge/discharge cycles and the 45+C temps we get here in the summer in the desert. I wouldn't be surprised if it makes more of an impact than V2G, at least until EVs make the switch away from Li-ion.

Nearly no car any longer uses Li-ion batteries. They use LFP.

Much safer and much more robust. Also, sorry to break it to you, but Na-Cells for stationary storage are a pipe dream for the time being. LFP prices will continue to crash while production capacity is increasing exponentially.

System integrators pay around 20-30$/kWh for LFP. These prices will decrease by at least a factor of 5, possibly factor of 10 until 2030. Experts expect the crossover point for Na-Cells to become cheaper than LFP to be after 2030 in the price region of 1-5$/kWh.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen. The jig is up. It's over. This topic is dead. PV + Batteries has won.

 

[mschira]

Nearly no car any longer uses Li-ion batteries. They use LFP.

Much safer and much more robust. Also, sorry to break it to you, but Na-Cells for stationary storage are a pipe dream for the time being. LFP prices will continue to crash while production capacity is increasing exponentially.

System integrators pay around 20-30$/kWh for LFP. These prices will decrease by at least a factor of 5, possibly factor of 10 until 2030. Experts expect the crossover point for Na-Cells to become cheaper than LFP to be after 2030 in the price region of 1-5$/kWh.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen. The jig is up. It's over. This topic is dead. PV + Batteries has won.

Sodium ion batteries for houses are around the corner. They just entered the market. But at this stage they are so new that there is still a couple of bureaucrats making it super hard to buy them.
I would prefer them for residential storage for safety, but LFP batteries are fine, too. I haven’t heard them blasting in flames, and battery I ordered is rated for 8000! cycles, which is plenty.
I would have not gotten a Lithium Manganese battery for my house.

 

[Amateur Nerd]

Nearly no car any longer uses Li-ion batteries. They use LFP.

What do you think the "L" in LFP stands for? Hint: it's not Lithium metal.

 

[zogus]

Nearly no car any longer uses Li-ion batteries. They use LFP.

Saying cars no longer use Li-ion, but use LFP instead is like saying you no longer eat meat, but eat pork instead.

 

[evan_s]

Nearly no car any longer uses Li-ion batteries. They use LFP.

Much safer and much more robust. Also, sorry to break it to you, but Na-Cells for stationary storage are a pipe dream for the time being. LFP prices will continue to crash while production capacity is increasing exponentially.

System integrators pay around 20-30$/kWh for LFP. These prices will decrease by at least a factor of 5, possibly factor of 10 until 2030. Experts expect the crossover point for Na-Cells to become cheaper than LFP to be after 2030 in the price region of 1-5$/kWh.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen. The jig is up. It's over. This topic is dead. PV + Batteries has won.

That's funny since LFP is a Li-ion battery. It's just one of many varieties of Li-ion chemistries. The L in LFP is literally for Lithium. Each chemistry has its advantages and disadvantages. Even within a given chemistry, say NMC, they will have different formulations and characteristics. For example, modern NMC batteries have a lot less cobalt in them and you might see references to 6-1-1 or 8-1-1 indicating the ratio of the three components.

LFP certainly is popular in China and Chinese manufactured BEVs but it's still a minority in the US market. In the US Rivan has a LFP pack for their delivery trucks/standard range vehicles, Ford has their standard range LFP pack in the Mustang MachE and that's it for the current market. Tesla used to have a LFP standard range pack but they killed it in the US due to the tax credit requirements. It might come back now that the credits no longer exist. The new Bolt will also have LFP batteries.

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for the lower cost but good enough batteries. Currently the leading candidate there is LFP but if Sodium or even Zinc ends up being even better then I'm all for that too. CATL seems to think there is a lot of potential for Sodium in particular and claims we will working packs in cars at the end of this year. If anyone can scale NA-Ion batteries CATL would certainly be in a good position to do so. I look forward to seeing user testing once those packs are in the wild in cars.

 

[mschira]

Nearly no car any longer uses Li-ion batteries. They use LFP.

Much safer and much more robust. Also, sorry to break it to you, but Na-Cells for stationary storage are a pipe dream for the time being. LFP prices will continue to crash while production capacity is increasing exponentially.

System integrators pay around 20-30$/kWh for LFP. These prices will decrease by at least a factor of 5, possibly factor of 10 until 2030. Experts expect the crossover point for Na-Cells to become cheaper than LFP to be after 2030 in the price region of 1-5$/kWh.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen. The jig is up. It's over. This topic is dead. PV + Batteries has won.

Mostly true what you say, except that LFPs are one subtype of Lithium-ion batteries.
Though they are one the more save side. LFP batteries are less effective than Lithium Manganese, or rather they weight a bit more per kWh.
But they have better cycle lifetimes and a little less likely to blow up.
Thermal runaway risk generally increases the lighter one is trying to make the thing.

Irony alert: If you go for extreme weight to energy ratios, such as a !petrol! it can even explode violently.
The thing that makes petrol acceptably safe is that it typically does not self ignite. But it burns VERY VERY violently, people tend to forget that.

 

[evan_s]

Terminology is important, Li-ion is a completely different chemistry and battery type compared to LFP.

Wikipedia lists LFP on their Lithium-Ion battery page right along side all those "other" chemistries like NMC or NCA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery#Oxoanionic/olivins

 

[mschira]

Terminology is important, Li-ion is a completely different chemistry and battery type compared to LFP.

Nope.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery

 

[mschira]

That's funny since LFP is a Li-ion battery. It's just one of many varieties of Li-ion chemistries. The L in LFP is literally for Lithium. Each chemistry has its advantages and disadvantages. Even within a given chemistry, say NMC, they will have different formulations and characteristics. For example, modern NMC batteries have a lot less cobalt in them and you might see references to 6-1-1 or 8-1-1 indicating the ratio of the three components.

LFP certainly is popular in China and Chinese manufactured BEVs but it's still a minority in the US market. In the US Rivan has a LFP pack for their delivery trucks/standard range vehicles, Ford has their standard range LFP pack in the Mustang MachE and that's it for the current market. Tesla used to have a LFP standard range pack but they killed it in the US due to the tax credit requirements. It might come back now that the credits no longer exist. The new Bolt will also have LFP batteries.

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for the lower cost but good enough batteries. Currently the leading candidate there is LFP but if Sodium or even Zinc ends up being even better then I'm all for that too. CATL seems to think there is a lot of potential for Sodium in particular and claims we will working packs in cars at the end of this year. If anyone can scale NA-Ion batteries CATL would certainly be in a good position to do so. I look forward to seeing user testing once those packs are in the wild in cars.

Sodium ion is happening.
It is in cars, they are building grid storage based of sodium ion batteries, and there are residential storage batteries entering the market in Australia literally TODAY.
https://www.powersafebatteries.com.au/

 

[sciccoso]

im in the UK, we haven't used coal for over a year now. Im always amazed to see other larger countries still burning the stuff, its just vile for all involved except the share holders. in the UK we use solar and wind and currently were at 40% renewable for the previous year, 30% gas and the rest nuclear and biomass.

the thing is, we all know renewables have downsides, solar during the night, wind when its not windy etc. so storage is the key thing..... the crazy thing though, every EV has a battery than can stop probably 5-10 days of average home electric use. If Vehicle to Grid, or V2G was widely available, we could store all the excess electric in those huge car batteries and feed back when demand rises, meaning much cheaper costs for everyone. but that needs mass EV take-up, something unlikely in the US under current policy....

but we are so close to finally being rid of these horrible polluting sources of power, so close!

That would work great if you could recharge your electric car cheaply and conveniently during the day while you're out working and/or doing your stuff but, currently, in most cases electric car ownership only makes sense if you can recharge it at home during the night, so the opposite of v2g when the sun is down. We'll get there but the process looks far more complex to me than "everybody, go buy an EV right now".

 

[zogus]

Terminology is important, Li-ion is a completely different chemistry and battery type compared to LFP.

No it’s not. LFP uses the exact same lithium ion, the exact same anode (usually graphite), the exact same electrolytic salts (such as LiPF₆), the exact same separator, and the exact same redox equation at the cathode, just with a different chemical composition. I defy you to find any text written by an expert in the field that describes LFP as something other than a lithium-ion battery.

 

[bjn]

It’s actually a very standard auction design. Looks nutty, but it means generators have the maximal incentive to get more efficient…

… as long as you have an actually competitive market. If one provider owns enough of the market, or a group colludes to that market size, then they can make the price go wonky.

It also takes time for the supply to adjust, which can have political implications. Currently in the UK over 90% of the time expensive foreign gas sets electricity prices and any new generation coming on line to reduce that is painfully slow. The fossil funded fash are bullshitting saying “High prices are due to all those renewables we have!”, which is gaining traction in some sections of the country.

 

[bjn]

It's not nutty, it's perverse. Try to see it from the perspective of the consumer. For the uninitiated, here's a very simplified version of how it works:

You split each day into half-hour blocks.
If for the entirety of that thirty minutes there's enough cheap (i.e. wind) power available to meet the needs of the entire grid a unit of electricity will cost whatever the wind farm charges.
If, at any point, there isn't enough wind power and we need to spin up a gas turbine to take up the slack every unit of electricity sells for whatever the company with the gas turbine charges.

So, there you are, paying gas prices even when the majority of your power comes from cheaper sources, just because those cheaper sources can't meet 100% of the nation's needs 100% of the time. This isn't a question of a big player manipulating the market; the rules of the market simply weren't drawn up with renewables in mind. There's no incentive for efficiency as you say. If I were an unscrupulous owner of a massive wind farm my incentive would be to generate 99.9% of the nation's power, leave the rest to gas, then make an absolute killing. The company that burns gas has an incentive to generate more power with less gas but a gas turbine can only be so efficient so there's not much more they can do.

Again, try to see it from the consumers' point of view. More and more of your power is coming from cheap renewables but your bills aren't getting any smaller. The wholesale market today is a kludge: it's attempting to pit one group of energy producers who have fairly steady maintenance costs against another group with wildly variable fuel costs. When it was mostly coal vs. gas it made sense, but when you throw in a lot of nuclear (as France did) or build renewables like mad (as we are doing) it just stops working.

In theory it’s meant to attract new people into the market to exploit the cost differential, which will eventually reduce the number of hours the expensive plants are run. But you need a functioning market for that and it can be very slow.

I still find the structure problematic (see my last post), and alternative approaches could be had to lower bills without throwing out market incentives, such as splitting the difference between prices.

 

[bjn]

So, the larger the project the more collective buy-in you need to have in order to implement it. If you have people working at competing goals, the legal and financial systems kick in to create veto opportunities.

Nuclear power is a collective action solution - but it requires collective agreement. Capitalism is deliberately at odds with that kind of effort - that's what competition is about. GM doesn't want to see Tesla succeed, and the coal industry doesn't want to see nuclear succeed. After WWII, everyone was rowing in the same direction - a rising tide was lifting all boats. But that's no longer the case.

As collective disagreement goes up (see Texas lawmakers both opposing renewables for political reasons while also building out massive renewable capacity for economic reasons - you have opposition within the same person, depending on who they are talking to) then the opportunity to do large projects goes down - because those projects require a degree of collective agreement, which doesn't exist. And it's not just agreement with voters, it's also in the industry, it's in the finance system, etc. Why would a bank finance a nuclear project with a 20+ year minimal return when there's Nvidia sitting right there? Or subprime autos, etc. The long term boring infrastructure projects in the US are also victims of the financial industry's opportunity space - and a nuclear plant represents a lot of points of failures that a comparable solar project won't have, and the solar project will start producing revenue in months, not a decade, so it's much less risky bet. The problem isn't so much government red tape, but securing private financing for such a project will be an exercise in hoop jumping.

But the real problem nuclear faces is that it's simply too slow to the game. I noted above that CA needs to build the equivalent of one nuclear plant a year for the next 10 years. If the state threw all of their money into it and broke ground on 10 of them tomorrow, what would the energy production graph look like over the next 10 years? It'd go down, because that construction consumes energy and produces none. The state would face increasing shortfalls to demand throughout that period, and then at the end there'd be this big spike. But if it takes a diversified approach of solar and wind it can build that much capacity much faster, with at least some of it coming online almost immediately and smoothing scaling up with demand. So even if there was collective agreement, it's still too slow to address the immediate problems. The hyperscalars aren't going to wait a decade, and climate change is nearly half a degree C per decade, so no matter what's driving the motivation, it's too slow.

Pakistan installed over 22GW of solar in 2024 alone. Pakistan is a lot poorer than California, 22GW, even taking in to consideration capacity factors, is several nuclear reactors worth of kWh over the year.

 

[bjn]

Well, as most of the things, stopping solar will fail.
The might be able to delay it in the US, but the entire rest of the world is pulling ahead.
And soon enough the data centre gang will be annoyed because electricity in the US is too expensive, compared to the rest of the world's.
I think this might ultimately be a good thing, that stink of AI datacenter companies complaining will make it loud and clear to everyone that solar is the cheapest.

Solar on your roof is like printing money.

I just pulled the trigger and ordered a 20kWh battery and a few extra panels for my existing 8kW solar system.
I was exporting twice as much electricity to the grid than I used (649kWh exported and 321 imported), and AGL wants $149 from me.
That’s it, no more.

To avoid Trump shenanigans, just build the data centres in Baja California, install some beefy fibre back to the US, and build fields of solar panels with batteries.

Also allows you to use tariff free Chinese panels.

Edit to add detail.

 

[Amateur Nerd]

That would work great if you could recharge your electric car cheaply and conveniently during the day while you're out working and/or doing your stuff but, currently, in most cases electric car ownership only makes sense if you can recharge it at home during the night, so the opposite of v2g when the sun is down. We'll get there but the process looks far more complex to me than "everybody, go buy an EV right now".

Charging at work could take care of that, while also making EVs feasible for people who can't (easily) charge at home.

 

[lurch1989]

im in the UK, we haven't used coal for over a year now. Im always amazed to see other larger countries still burning the stuff, its just vile for all involved except the share holders. in the UK we use solar and wind and currently were at 40% renewable for the previous year, 30% gas and the rest nuclear and biomass.

Yes, we also have the most expensive electricity in the world. More than twice that of the USA. The USA has vast natural resources that are mostly easily accessible and therefore cheap to mine, and one of the few employers in some smaller towns hence it's continued use from both a financial and political standpoint.

In the UK we have made the trade-off on the price of electricity, though this is mainly due to the generation price.

 

[lurch1989]

I suspect one reason is solar has gotten so cheap that it doesn't make economic sense to build the wind turbines.

Onshore wind can be unreliable, on a still day there's no generation, on a really windy day there's no generation. Solar will always generate regardless from sunrise to sunset, though in differing amounts based on the time of year/weather. Solar at one point was really quite expensive in the UK but now it's much cheaper, so that is likely a factor too.

 

[iim]

I think this is one of those things where there's a bit of inertia to the effects. I think Trump's hostility this year towards wind and solar will start showing up next year and the year after.

Although, part of that hostility was cutting federal funds (credits and other subsidies), and at this point, federal funds may not be that necessary for Wind and Solar to continue their growth, because companies investing in them are kind of minting money right now.

But where Trump's hostility may really screw things up is with permitting processes - his people at various agencies are rescinding permits already previously issued under Biden for not-yet-complete projects, and I think basically killing permits for future projects.

How can people build things without permits?

Well, one way is rooftop solar, which I think only requires local permits, not federal permits.

Also, Fed permits may largely only be required on federal lands and offshore? I'm not fully clear on that. Although Fed permits may also be necessary for the long distance grid transmission lines required to get the power distributed.

We'll see, but I expect we will start to see impacts on solar and wind next year.

Rescinding permits? I wonder how many government lawyers they had to burn through to get to the ones willing to tell them what they wanted to hear?

Real 4D chess going on right there.

I do wonder if Trump‘s brain is capable of comprehending its own incompetence? And how that is the greater hindrance to its desires more than any liberal ever was or will be?

 

[andygates]

It also takes time for the supply to adjust, which can have political implications. Currently in the UK over 90% of the time expensive foreign gas sets electricity prices and any new generation coming on line to reduce that is painfully slow. The fossil funded fash are bullshitting saying “High prices are due to all those renewables we have!”, which is gaining traction in some sections of the country.

To add a bit of subtlety to that, existing generation can also be curtailed where transmission isn't beefy enough. This is being addressed with the Grid build-out but it will take a few years.

In the meantime, the fossil-funded fash oppose all those mean old pylons because they've got a hardon for a Golden Age that never existed.

 

[danielravennest]

Its hard to understand why so many areas still use so much coal.

As recently as 20 years ago, coal supplied about half of US electricity. It simply takes time and a lot of money to replace that many power plants. Currently coal is down about 2/3 from its peak. So we can expect about 10 more years to eliminate it entirely. The UK was able to do it faster because it is surrounded by windy waters. Offshore wind has grown really fast there. US Offshore was poised for significant growth (30 GW) until the current administration has been trying to kill it. Small scale solar in the US is hindered by every county and city having different building codes. So you can't mass produce installation kits.

 

[danielravennest]

The point about home solar installations not showing up in the statistics other than lower grid demand is important. Most days, we are pretty near zero on grid use, and while we were on vacation for a couple of weeks, we sent many kwh to the grid, and I have no idea how that gets rolled into the numbers. And there are lots of others like me.

Small-scale solar does show up in the Electric Power Monthly report by the Energy Information Administration. It is an estimate though. Power plants over 1 MW are required to report to the Dept of Energy monthly. Small ones are not, but they estimate from things like installer activity, local permits, and aerial photography. When you have a grid connection, they can also get data from the utility as to how many customers have solar.

 

[Melon of Troy]

I think this is one of those things where there's a bit of inertia to the effects. I think Trump's hostility this year towards wind and solar will start showing up next year and the year after.

Although, part of that hostility was cutting federal funds (credits and other subsidies), and at this point, federal funds may not be that necessary for Wind and Solar to continue their growth, because companies investing in them are kind of minting money right now.

But where Trump's hostility may really screw things up is with permitting processes - his people at various agencies are rescinding permits already previously issued under Biden for not-yet-complete projects, and I think basically killing permits for future projects.

How can people build things without permits?

Well, one way is rooftop solar, which I think only requires local permits, not federal permits.

Also, Fed permits may largely only be required on federal lands and offshore? I'm not fully clear on that. Although Fed permits may also be necessary for the long distance grid transmission lines required to get the power distributed.

We'll see, but I expect we will start to see impacts on solar and wind next year.

A truly incredible act of national self sabotage...

 

[DarthSlack]

To avoid Trump shenanigans, just build the data centres in Baja California, install some beefy fibre back to the US, and build fields of solar panels with batteries.

Also allows you to use tariff free Chinese panels.

Edit to add detail.

Yeah, but then the Trump Maladministration decides that those are illegal alien photons and sends a backhoe to cut the fiber.

 

[Duffman3000]

If you add in nuclear, then the US has reached a grid that is 40 percent emissions-free over the first nine months of 2025.

Rooky numbers, the EU is at > 70 %

https://lowcarbonpower.org/region/EU

 

[iim]

Pakistan installed over 22GW of solar in 2024 alone. Pakistan is a lot poorer than California, 22GW, even taking in to consideration capacity factors, is several nuclear reactors worth of kWh over the year.

Pakistan is a strategic partner of China, the world’s primary source of all things solar.

It’s important to clarify this because Pakistan is able to procure solar from China well below cost for this reason. Something California would not be able to do.

 

[iim]

Rooky numbers, the EU is at > 70 %

https://lowcarbonpower.org/region/EU

Not to be cynical, but another way to look at that is that the logistical difficulties of gas supplies into Europe. Which the US and other nations are helping with LG container shipment.

So while the numbers are good, I won’t argue that, but I think it’s debatable about whether EU had much choice in the matter.

I would argue that it is going to be much more difficult for nations that have abundant sources of certain natural materials to refrain from using them. Not that this is an excuse it’s just what it is.

 

[bjn]

Pakistan is a strategic partner of China, the world’s primary source of all things solar.

It’s important to clarify this because Pakistan is able to procure solar from China well below cost for this reason. Something California would not be able to do.

Currently China sell panels to anyone and everyone for under US$0.09/W wholesale, not just Pakistan. The USA has chosen to hamstring itself my doubling down on fossil fuels and tariffing the hell out of renewable imports.

 

[bjn]

Not to be cynical, but another way to look at that is that the logistical difficulties of gas supplies into Europe. Which the US and other nations are helping with LG container shipment.

So while the numbers are good, I won’t argue that, but I think it’s debatable about whether EU had much choice in the matter.

I would argue that it is going to be much more difficult for nations that have abundant sources of certain natural materials to refrain from using them. Not that this is an excuse it’s just what it is.

Then you’d be wrong. For example Australia has an abundance of coal and gas, which are being squeezed out of the generation mix at an accelerating rate as solar, wind and batteries eat their lunch. The leading state, South Australia generated 75% of its electricity from wind and solar over the last 12 months, peaking at over 150% recently, with the excess exported to the eastern states.

 

[numerobis]

Kind of a distinction without a difference.

You see no difference between a plant that's torn down and one that's just off most of the year?

 

[Astro-CCD]

meanwhile the Trump administration is actively trying to kill solar power with every lever it has to pull.

He didn't kill our installation, he accelerated it.

I signed up for 21.5 Kw of panels the week after he was elected and they were completed in January. We should easily generate what we use and not only is it cheaper but it also means rate increases have no effect on us.

 

[andygates]

Pakistan is a strategic partner of China, the world’s primary source of all things solar.

It’s important to clarify this because Pakistan is able to procure solar from China well below cost for this reason. Something California would not be able to do.

Bzz! Pakistan is a poster child for badly-planned energy infrastructure with a huge amount of spontaneous, local solar taking up the reliability and electrification needs of the people. The state generators are hashtag-baffled. If there's a China angle, it's a very porous border allowing lots of cheap stuff, and solar becoming cheap through mean old mister mass production.

A similar sort of thing is happening in Puerto Rico where the grid never got properly rebuilt or upgraded after Maria and subsequent storm-fixing have been mired in inertia and the usual fossil corruption. So now neighbourhoods are popping solar/battery systems up.

 

[walnut close]

wind and solar remain a larger source of electrons,

It's pedantic, I know, but I do wish that supposedly science and engineering literate publications would stop referring to sources of electrical power as providing electrons. They don't. It's all AC from the generating station to the consumer, excepting a small number of closed high voltage DC loops. Electrons don't flow from the generator to the consumer, they slosh back and forth a minute distance in the wires in response to the alternating voltage, transmitting electrical energy, not electrons or any other mass, through the fields inside and around the wires, from source to consumer.

 

[DarthSlack]

It alarms me how many people continue to tout EVs and “grid scale” batteries and renewables.

Gee, that's a real bummer.

Those are nice to haves. We do not need them, and indeed both have some massive externalities that make regular peoples lives much worse.

Such as? And do feel free to compare those "massive externalities" to the existing externalities.

EVs are about the dumbest possible use for batteries. Dragging a few thousand pounds of batteries around is just pure entropy. We could have and should have subsidized solar roofs for regular people, along with batteries in the basement (where they don’t need to MOVE).

And yet, they remain a significantly more intelligent solution than the internal combustion engine. And since cars aren't going anywhere in the foreseeable future, EVs are the best option we have at the moment. And subsidizing solar and batteries for home has sweet fuck-all to do with EVs. We can have EVs and subsidized home solar. It's not a binary choice.

This would give regular working people access to cheap electricity, reliable power during outages, and would obviate the “need” to massively subsidize corporate utility owners with money and land to build out more transmission.

Regardless of how much solar is installed, we're still going to need that transmission capability because not everywhere can be self-sufficient on solar.

Subsidizing any part of car driving is a massive part of the problem, subsidizing a different form of energy to fuel that same pattern of transportation and land use is not smart. In fact, it is dumb.

So instead of ranting like a loon, maybe you should be talking about what we should be doing instead.

 

[odikweos]

You see no difference between a plant that's torn down and one that's just off most of the year?

Yes, because we aren't talking about one plant, or total disassembly versus shut down. We're talking about 200 plants across 350 million people and plants in various stages of both. So it's like talking about the quantum states of individual molecules in a solution, when the discussion is actually about production of a kilogram of compound.

 

[Frank C.]

As recently as 20 years ago, coal supplied about half of US electricity. It simply takes time and a lot of money to replace that many power plants. Currently coal is down about 2/3 from its peak. So we can expect about 10 more years to eliminate it entirely. The UK was able to do it faster because it is surrounded by windy waters. Offshore wind has grown really fast there. US Offshore was poised for significant growth (30 GW) until the current administration has been trying to kill it. Small scale solar in the US is hindered by every county and city having different building codes. So you can't mass produce installation kits.

It’s not economics and good investing/returns that’s keeping coal in the mix today. It’s direct political intervention that’s keeping it on life support for special interests. It simply can no longer compete with increasingly cheap renewables now paired with increasingly cheap battery storage. Follow the $$ for confirmation.