The U.S. solar industry expects to add a record 32 gigawatts (GW) of production capacity this year, up 53% on new capacity in 2022 and helped by investment incentives under the Inflation Reduction Act, a report published on Thursday showed.
32 GW is a lot. The average thermal coal generating station in the US is 1GW and these stations have an average capacity of 50%. That means that this colar prodution capacity enables us to displace 64 coal stations during the daytime if consumption does not grow.
The future of renewable energy is very promising. It’s easy to miss how fast it can turn around when growth it grows so much year-to-year but starts at a small place. Keep this kind of growth up and the grid will be clean a lot faster than seems possible.
Beyond solar I’m also very hopeful about offshore wind efforts in the US.
I think geothermal is the next big thing because oil and gas companies don’t just get to invest in it—they already have the knowledge and tools to make it happen. We could actually see them turn from one fuel to another.
Plus, there are power storage solutions that involve drilling into bedrock.
What’s the total power consumption of the USA? Just want to know how much this makes up.
For those who’re more familiar with solar, will there be an issue with solar panel farms taking up land (which may cause environmental issues)? Wonder if there’s a balance to be struck there.
Looks like 4200 gigawatts/yr. https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-in-the-us-generation-capacity-and-sales.php
So not quite 1% even. Progress is progress, I guess.
What is scary is that barely 1% represents a hella lot of coal plants.
Actually, it looks like renewables have overtaken coal, with the majority of fossil fuel energy being provided by natural gas plants. I’m personally fine with newer LNG plants, since they (1) are actually quite clean, and (2) burn a byproduct that we get from making gasoline.
Last i saw the US had just got to the point of having more solar generation than coal, it’s a great milestone because in this broken world it means we’ll have not solar lobbyists than coal lobbyists
I think you mean Twh not Gwh… For reference Norway produces about 150 Twh a year
I’m honestly not sure. Their mixed use of billions, trillions, kilo, giga, etc was confusing me.
That’s 4200 TWh/year, or 480 GW.
Though that ignores the power consumption that isn’t electrical yet, like transportation and heating.
Re: land use, see: agrivoltaics - dual, symbiotic use for solar + agriculture. They work very well together.
Great news. Let’s double that next year.
European here.
Great! Now double that yearly, over the next 5 years and keep us posted on how much that impacted the economy and everything else.
Good shit. We’re getting to this extremely late, but it’s at least good progress.
200w capacity in 1 square meter ? rather use windmills instead (especially offshore)
Or just put them in places where people can’t live easily, like the desert, which is what’s being done. Also, we can do both!
excessive heat makes panel inefficient. they need to be cool to reach maximum efficiency (at 26°c) … might as well install them offshore…but still, remote place is best place
Good point!
solar actually gets a greater power density. most wind projects in the US get about 2.5 MW/km^2
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That’s almost 26 and a half time machines!
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Energy consumption per capital was flat from 1970 to 2000, and has decreased from then.
https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/browser/index.php?tbl=T01.07#/?f=M&start=200001
Crazy to look at that CO2 per capita chart and see that we’re lower now than any time since the 40s at least.
About 25% down from 2008.
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I’m a layman in the subject but energy consumption tends to be diminishing on all fronts as technology becomes more efficient.
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Again, just a layman, but had a person in a thread tell me they ran an Opteron for some time and they noticed how warm the house was kept with that machine working.
After being put to rest, replaced by more modern machines, the eletric bill dropped, even when the heating was added in.
The designs for those have really improved too, also a lot of the stuff the internet has made obsolete was very energy intensive so when just looking at the whole picture numbers there can still be a trend down
