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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.
The vast bulk of energy is still coming from fossil fuels, and an ever growing dependence on natural gas is not at all something to celebrate. Enormous spending aside, solar power still barely registers in production statistics; was this really money well spent? Slashdot (or other) propaganda is never interested in exploring this question, but you will find the answer in your increasing energy bills.
it's not just retirement. There's tons of fortunes tied up in those assets and it's not easy to divest. Ideally we should be doing something to help people move on, but there's a lot of laissez faire economics going around.
When it's brought up folks say you shouldn't pick winners and losers. They might have a point about picking winners but when it's clear somebody's going to lose that hard we should probably do something about it. For one thing sore losers on a global stage are dangerous. As the saying goes it's cheaper to drop food than bombs. For another thing it's just plain a humanitarian thing to do. But a lot of folks don't like humanitarianism without strings attached.
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About 15 years ago I spotted an extrapolated trend chart that predicted solar's energy-per-dollar-spent ratio would surpass petroleum in roughly a decade.
So, I decided to invest in solar. Sure enough, solar boomed, BUT the stocks I picked soured because the solar industry largely shifted to China. (China was later sanctioned for cheating.)
Sigh. Right church, wrong pew.
Table-ized A.I.
Annual average capacity factors are utterly irrelevant unless you're talking about roofs of limited size. If you want to talk about something actually relevant, talk about seasonal variations.
Ezekiel 23:20
Count me in as one who has heavily invested savings into "oil and gas" companies recently. In some cases due to price dips because of renewables hype.
Don't get me wrong, I think growing solar and wind options are great.. I'm just realistic. When I read summaries like this (having a background in math), I can immediately spot where they are using statistics to distort the facts. Energy consumption is additive as new technologies come online, and this growth is not at the expense of fossil fuel growth, which continues to grow as well. Remember, more energy used == higher quality of life. People aren't going to stop using any source of energy they find.
Second, what you think of as "oil & gas" companies largely don't exist, they have all long since diversified to "energy" companies. In most cases, the big "oil" players are the world's heaviest investors into renewable energy installations and infrastructure. Kind of funny to think the same companies you blast as "big oil" are probably doing far more for renewables than you or any activist I've ever heard of...
Interesting side note: some of these companies I have invested in have started in the last two years or so to sell their solar and wind assets. In not so many words, their reasoning is: current hype has these assets so overvalued it makes sense to sell them and reinvest that money elsewhere into something that makes better money.. usually back into Oil & Gas (natural gas is a popular one lately). In particular I hear reference to falling subsidies, which make the shaky economics even worse.
Lastly, rather than just hype about maybe making money in the future, most of these companies earn lots of steady cash, which you should count on for dividends far more than share price growth. If you understood any hydrocarbon market dynamics or fundamental uses of fuel, you'd realize it's not going anywhere. In the best scenario, say solar power replaces all transportation fuel; absolutely great! There will still be people lined up around the block to buy it for other uses. It will always be valuable.
I'm pro business. For businesses that pay their way. Solar is starting to do that and it's starting to take off for that very reason.
Except it's not. Solar to be competitive in most of North America requires massive FIT(feed-in-tariff) programs that pay above market rate to even cover the 30yr in cost. This is what Ontario did. It's what Illinois did. It's why businesses fled from both places to Michigan where they wouldn't get hammered with higher electricity prices. People in various states are just starting to get the taste of creeping electricity prices from FIT.
The people preaching that slapping giant solar panels on good farmland are just idiots. Because when the bottom falls out of FIT programs and the company that leased the land from the people who own it, are stuck with thousands of panels that they still have liability for. Then are left with the cost of the equipment lease in many cases, are still required to carry-over the contract for and in many cases also are required to pay the cost of grid connection. But that land which had been making them $20k/year before with various crops, is now costing them $20k/year or more in equipment maintenance.
Om, nomnomnom...
The big losers in the future will probably be gasoline producers and ICE car manufacturers.
A large portion of the people that make ICE cars also make electric cars. They won't be hurt by this, they'll just shift their production as the market shifts.
The people that produce gasoline also produce diesel fuel, heating oil, jet fuel, lubricants, and so much more. They'll just shift their production to less octane to more cetane, butane, and propane. They won't even flinch.
Gas stations and repair shops will either switch or go out of business (Teslas don't have many moving parts, and so don't need many repairs).
Cars need maintenance, even electric ones. They'll still replace tires, take out dents, fix window cracks, and so on. There's also a large market for diesels. Tow trucks, snow plows, and delivery trucks will burn diesel fuel for a long time.
Here's my prediction, electric cars will be replaced soon. As more electricity is produced by wind and solar that will make natural gas get cheaper. At some point someone is going to offer a real deal natural gas car instead of a crappy gasoline conversion. Early electric cars sucked because they weren't electric cars, they were gasoline cars with electric motors put in them. Natural gas cars of the past sucked because the pressure tank for the fuel could not fit in the same spot as the gasoline tank so the pressure tank tended to be put in the trunk. Given that by this time electric charging points will be more common than natural gas filling stations I also expect the first few natural gas cars to be electric hybrids. They'll offer the ability to fill up with cheap natural gas at home and charge up next to the Teslas on long trips. As natural gas catches on then filling stations will start to offer natural gas.
Does my prediction of natural gas replacing electric cars sound implausible? I'm guessing that it's more plausible than claiming Ford or GM having financial troubles because they can't figure out how to make an electric car to compete with Tesla. Think about that for a second. If Ford can't figure out how to compete with Tesla in the electric car market then why would they not simply take on the task of trying to compete with natural gas? What else have they got to lose at that point? If they make it work then they can take Teslas lunch with a car that fills up at home from the same natural gas people use to cook with. I've seen a lot of garages with natural gas heaters in them, it won't take much to hook up a spigot to fill up a car. The selling point for electric cars is never having to visit a filling station again, well natural gas offers that too.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
You assume Musk didn't release the battery patent for the Teslas to public domain a decade ago (he did)
You also assume that Musk isn't producing the battery packs for several other car manufacturers (he is)
I think these are two things that people miss when complaining about Musk. For all the legitimate complaints one might have about him, releasing the battery patent so the world could use it was a real commitment to supporting renewable energy and cleaner transportation.
Second, by investing in multiple gigafactories, he's positioning himself to be the sole supplier of batteries for much of automation, despite releasing those patents. Has his cake and eats it too.
I have some serious admiration for the ability to do that. Not a lot of CEOs have the balls to do that and the brains to make it work.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor