Slashdot Mirror
Solar Has Overtaken Gas, Wind As Biggest Source of New US Power (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Despite tariffs that President Trump imposed on imported panels, the U.S. installed more solar energy than any other source of electricity in the first quarter. Developers installed 2.5 gigawatts of solar in the first quarter, up 13 percent from a year earlier, according to a report Tuesday from the Solar Energy Industries Association and GTM Research. That accounted for 55 percent of all new generation, with solar panels beating new wind and natural gas turbines for a second straight quarter.
The growth came even as tariffs on imported panels threatened to increase costs for developers. Giant fields of solar panels led the growth as community solar projects owned by homeowners and businesses took off. Total installations this year are expected to be 10.8 gigawatts, or about the same as last year, according to GTM. By 2023, annual installations should reach more than 14 gigawatts.
The growth came even as tariffs on imported panels threatened to increase costs for developers. Giant fields of solar panels led the growth as community solar projects owned by homeowners and businesses took off. Total installations this year are expected to be 10.8 gigawatts, or about the same as last year, according to GTM. By 2023, annual installations should reach more than 14 gigawatts.
Solar had the largest share of newly installed capacity. But solar's capacity factor (ratio of actual energy produced to capacity) is abysmal. About 0.145 for the U.S. as a whole, 0.185 for the desert Southwest (these can be improved with panels which track the sun, at the cost of needing more land area). Contrast this with wind (0.2-0.35), hydro (0.4-0.5, mainly because it's used for peaking power rather than base load), natural gas (0.5, also used for peaking load), coal (0.6-0.7), and nuclear (0.9).
Put another way, 1 GW of PV solar capacity is worth about 600 MW of wind capacity, which is worth about 350 MW of hydro capacity, which is worth about 300 MW of natural gas capacity, which is worth about 230 MW of coal capacity, which is worth about 160 MW of nuclear capacity. Comparing power generation on the basis of installed capacity is like trying to eat enough to live based solely on the weight of food you're consuming completely ignoring the different caloric and nutritional content of the different foods.
Broken window fallacy
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
A lot of the more sensible investment schemes have already heavily divested from fossil fuels, so they won't be directly affected by such a crash.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
You don't know how investments work do you?
BTW there are plenty of retirement funds divesting from fossil fuels for this very reason, it will be impossible to time the drop in value of the existing fossil fuel companies. CalPEL and NY and several other major retirement funds have already began to divest because of this future risk.
Anyone smart realizes the risk and has either divested or keeps fossil fuel stocks at less than 5% of the portfolio so a collapse won't significantly harm investments. But these stocks won't collapse to zero overnight, it's going to be a long slide as people realize the value the stock holds for fuel in the ground is not there and consumption declines.
A large portion of the people that make ICE cars also make electric cars.
You assume that an electric car is similar enough to an ICE car that current car manufacturers can jump right in. However, the major manufacturing issue is the battery pack, and current ICE car manufacturers have no experience with that. Also, the vehicle control is much different with electric motors, and Tesla is gaining a lot of experience with that.
As far as natural gas, I don't think that would fly. Large parts of Europe depend on Russia for natural gas, and they wouldn't feel comfortable increasing that dependency. And if they can't sell them in Europe, it's not very interesting for car manufacturers. They don't want to make totally different cars for different markets.
How much electricity does an American home use?
In 2016, the average annual electricity consumption for a U.S. residential utility customer was 10,766 kilowatthours (kWh), an average of 897 kWh per month
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs...
897kWh/mo / 30 days is 30kWh/day
So the 40% stands.