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Wind, Solar Surpassed 10 Percent of US Electricity In March, Says EIA (thehill.com)
According to the Energy Department's Energy Information Administration, wind and solar produced 10 percent of the electricity generated in the U.S. for the first time in March. The Hill reports: The Energy Information Administration's (EIA) monthly power report for March found that wind produced 8 percent of the electricity produced in the U.S. that month, with solar producing 2 percent. The two sources combined to have their best month ever in terms of percentage of overall electricity production, EIA said. The agency expects the two sources topped 10 percent again in April but forecasts that their generation will fall below that mark during the summer months. Due to the way geographic wind patterns affect the generation of electricity, the two sources typically combine for their best months in the spring and fall. Annually, wind and solar made up 7 percent of electric generation in 2016, EIA said.
How often do people ask why solar is so unpopular?
Almost never since about 2005, because solar has actually become extremely popular.
After being subsidized heavily in the USA for decades this is all we have to show for it. Perhaps we need to stop and think if this is in fact a good use of our tax money.
The price per watt of solar power drops every year and shows no sign of leveling out any time soon. If you don't like the price this year, wait until next year. If you don't like solar power period, at any price, that's fine too -- the world will continue to adopt solar power at an ever-increasing pace, with or without your support.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Oil is the reason we war in the Middle East, sacrificing lives and tax payer money; it's another form of subsidy. War a racket, as the great Major General Smedley Butler pointed out. We have reached peak oil, and future dependency on oil projects a bleak future, with more war, scarce resources and dire prices. Raytheon, Academi/Xe/Black Water, Lockheed Martin and others would love such a Dystopia. Not me.
Subsidizing alternate energies is a good idea. Wind, solar, water and yes, even other energy sources like fusion should be subsidized, encouraged and exploited.
More to the point, it aids the farm lobby, which, in a rarely photographed mating ritual, causes three-way co-recursive "backscratching" between farmers, lobbyists, and congress people. The bastard sproggs of this unholy activity include higher food prices, higher energy prices, bad land management, never dis-elected congress people, and extra congressional aids to keep track on ledgers of who is doing what to whom and how good it feels.
The problem is largely one of engine design. Most cars sold in the US are fairly low compression. Under those conditions, the burning ethanol just adds heat, no real power.
In a high compression engine, especially with a turbo is where ethanol works well. Australia sells a fuel mix that's 85% ethanol which is really popular with performance car owners as you get a lot more power from the same engine.
It depends. Corn ethanol is dumb. Sugar cane ethanol make sense, but that wouldn't help US farmers.
I suspect that solar power advocates don't like to talk about the cost of the solar watt-hour because if they did that then the charts would not look so great.
Utility-scale solar power is now selling for less than three cents per kWh. So that would be less than $.00003 per watt-hour.
This compares favorably to coal and other forms of traditional power generation.
My suspicion is that when you think about solar power, you are thinking only about residential rooftop solar power, which is indeed more expensive to due lack of economies of scale. That would be an error, since utility-scale solar power is where the advances in cost-effectiveness are occurring.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.