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.

Comments

Re: I forget who

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that's similar to the argument that technology is going to take all of our jobs while we are at 'full employment' and been made for 100s of years

Re:I forget who

[UnknowingFool]

. People's retirements are heavily vested in them.

Why would anyone with sense bet on one industry for their retirement? People should diversify for retirement. This is not a great argument against solar as a good argument against terrible investment advice.

More info

[Okian Warrior]

but somebody made a good point about this switch to solar & renewables: it's going to crash the economy.

Let me explain. We've got massive amounts of investment wealth tied up in fossil fuels. People's retirements are heavily vested in them. At the rate we're going their value, while not worthless, is going to be massively diminished. And it's happening fast. Plus there's no massive natural resource to replace it.

We're going to wipe out trillions in value and replace it with, well, nothing really. Now, from a practical standpoint we've still got power. But human beings aren't very practical. When that wealth shift happens it's going to make a mess of things. The people who lose their shirts in oil futures are likely to be abandoned. And that's before we start talking about what's going to happen to the middle east.

While I agree with your assessment, I think there's more context to this.

Tesla is about to come online at 5,000 cars a week (250,000 cars/year) and ramping up from there. Tesla is a highly desired car, and will probably be a big seller.

It's likely that Tesla charging will take up some of the slack. America (and much of China and a few other places like Canada) will transition away from gasoline and rely on electricity instead. The extra burden will be taken up by solar and other renewables, while gasoline use diminishes.

The big losers in the future will probably be gasoline producers and ICE car manufacturers. 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).

Once the country is largely running on electricity, we can look into replacing fossil fuel generation plants with something more eco-friendly.

Re:More info

[religionofpeas]

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.

Re:More info

[crypticedge]

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)

Re:More info

[Rob Lister]

Though he presented it as per person, it is actually per utility customer, i.e. household.

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.

Re:More info

[apoc.famine]

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.

No it hasn't

[Solandri]

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.

Re: No it hasn't

[c6gunner]

Solar with energy storage has a capacity factor that's near that of nuclear.

Now that's damn funny. Yeah, a power station which can only operate at anything near the rated output for maybe 7 hours per day is is going to be "near" nuclear which can operate at peak all day long. Hilarious.

Good storage tech would improve the capacity factor somewhat because we wouldn't have to "dump" energy at peak, but you're dreaming if you think it could possibly come anywhere close to nuclear. You can't have solar output when the sun ain't shining, and batteries don't change that. Physics doesn't work that way.

Re:No it hasn't

[blindseer]

Solar with energy storage has a capacity factor that's near that of nuclear.

That's only true if you redefine what capacity factor means.

Now imagine energy storage with nuclear power. That's cheap energy that does not rely on the sun shining to work. With a big honkin' battery on site for managing shifting demand through the day and night the nuclear power plant won't ever have to even slow down until it runs out of fuel. With next generation reactors capable of refueling while operating they'd not have to even shut down for that. Military reactors already run for 30 years without ever having to be shutdown. Much of this has to do with the rich fuel military reactors run but the same thing can happen with a civil reactor capable of refuel on the fly.

One complaint of nuclear power is its inability to load follow. This goes away with electric storage on site.

Another complaint of nuclear power is cost. We can add up the cost of a nuclear power plant and the storage it would need to manage the shifting demand through the day. We can also add up the cost of solar power and the storage to meet the same demand. Nuclear power has a capacity factor of 90%. Solar power, at best, has 30% capacity factor. How much generation capacity of each will we need? How much storage has to go with each?

If the goal is to replace natural gas peak power generation for load following with battery storage then that means solar will be at a huge disadvantage over nuclear. It is common for electrical demand to peak in the mornings and evenings when solar output is already diminished. That means more storage for this demand.

Coal is dead.

Is it? What happens if we add cheap battery storage to that 80 year old coal plant you mentioned? Right now capacity factor of a typical coal fired power plant is about 60%. If batteries allow for that to run at peak operating conditions regardless of the shifting demands then what does that mean for it's total costs at the end of the day? My guess is that it looks much better.

There is no doubt in my mind that grid scale storage is good for wind and solar power. I'm also quite sure that this kind of storage is even better for nuclear and coal.

Re:I forget who

[TheRealMindChild]

Broken window fallacy

Re:I forget who

[Trogre]

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.

Re:I forget who

[PopeRatzo]

Let me explain. We've got massive amounts of investment wealth tied up in fossil fuels. People's retirements are heavily vested in them. At the rate we're going their value, while not worthless, is going to be massively diminished. And it's happening fast. Plus there's no massive natural resource to replace it.

Well, it's a good thing that all the big energy companies are investing heavily in renewables then, right?

We're going to wipe out trillions in value and replace it with, well, nothing really. Now, from a practical standpoint we've still got power. But human beings aren't very practical. When that wealth shift happens it's going to make a mess of things. The people who lose their shirts in oil futures are likely to be abandoned. And that's before we start talking about what's going to happen to the middle east.

Most of the buying in actual fossil fuel stocks in the past decade has been institutional. Yes, a lot of day traders play the energy derivatives, but they'll make money either way.

Switching to more renewables isn't going to happen fast enough to crash the economy. Anyway, the bubble's got to pop. Corrections are good for everyone, and when it's done, we'll have cleaner energy (and in the case of renewables, cheaper too).

Re:I forget who

[rahvin112]

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.

Re:Because there's Trillions in assets

[UnknowingFool]

There's tons of fortunes tied up in those assets and it's not easy to divest

Oh really? I can pick any fund I want with my investment. I can also look at the makeup of each fund. I can pick fossil free funds. I can even pick funds that are full of fossil fuels. More like it's lazy investment used as a reason not to use solar. There were lots of money invested in housing at one time but you don't see any argument made against companies trying to make houses from cheaper/green materials/whatever.

The Big Almost

[Tablizer]

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.

Re:I forget who

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Crashing the economy by cheapening the energy would be a truly spectacular feat. A little bit like when the green revolution "crashed" agriculture.

Re:Because there's Trillions in assets

[Narcocide]

Oh, yes! Please do enlighten us on the desperate plight of all those wealthy oil barons and what we as the common man should be doing to save them and their poor fragile egos from financial discomfort.

Re:I forget who

[fatwilbur]

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.

Re:So you say the rate of installation has slowed.

[Hognoxious]

Not even close. I think it's going to double in about 7 Billion years or so.

Re:I forget who

[Joce640k]

My shares in buggy whips never recovered. I was ruined!

There should be firm laws against this sort of 'progress'.