Solar Adds More New Capacity To the US Grid In 2024 Than Any Energy Source In 20 Years 65
AmiMoJo shares a report from Electrek: The U.S. installed 50 gigawatts (GW) of new solar capacity in 2024, the largest single year of new capacity added to the grid by any energy technology in over two decades. That's enough to power 8.5 million households. According to the U.S. Solar Market Insight 2024 Year in Review report (PDF) released today by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and Wood Mackenzie, solar and storage account for 84% of all new electric generating capacity added to the grid last year.
In addition to historic deployment, surging U.S. solar manufacturing emerged as a landmark economic story in 2024. Domestic solar module production tripled last year, and at full capacity, U.S. factories can now produce enough to meet nearly all demand for solar panels in the U.S. Solar cell manufacturing also resumed in 2024, strengthening the U.S. energy supply chain. [...] Total US solar capacity is expected to reach 739 GW by 2035, but the report forecasts include scenarios showing how policy changes could impact the solar market. [...] The low case forecast shows a 130 GW decline in solar deployment over the next decade compared to the base case, representing nearly $250 billion of lost investment.
In addition to historic deployment, surging U.S. solar manufacturing emerged as a landmark economic story in 2024. Domestic solar module production tripled last year, and at full capacity, U.S. factories can now produce enough to meet nearly all demand for solar panels in the U.S. Solar cell manufacturing also resumed in 2024, strengthening the U.S. energy supply chain. [...] Total US solar capacity is expected to reach 739 GW by 2035, but the report forecasts include scenarios showing how policy changes could impact the solar market. [...] The low case forecast shows a 130 GW decline in solar deployment over the next decade compared to the base case, representing nearly $250 billion of lost investment.
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They've also added a buttload of coal power and are now so far ahead of everyone else in pollution that it isn't even a race anymore.
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A rather misleading headline (Score:5, Informative)
The numbers here are somewhat misleading because solar has such a low capacity factor. 50GW capacity probably equates to something like 10GW of average power output (ie about 10GWYr of output across a year - somewhere around five hours of peak output per day) though calculating the exact figure would require detailed knowledge of where it was all installed.
Is that why my electric bill is so high? (Score:2)
Seventeen-and-a-half freakin' cents a kilowatt hour. And I don't even live in California.
Re:Is that why my electric bill is so high? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's almost as if the free markets which depends entirely on competition doesn't function well with natural monopolies... I'm sure another round of privatization will fix this though. Thatcher approves.
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I'm on a time-of-use tariff because I have solar, so my rates range from around 42 cents in the middle of the night to 57 cents on peak.
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Be glad you *aren't* in California, where the average electricity rate is 30 cents / kWH. https://www.energysage.com/loc... [energysage.com]
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Wait... are you angry at that price? The national average was $0.17/kWh in February of 2024. You've got it GOOD.
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Better to list the 50% and 25% of peak values.
On a solar system I'm monitoring the 50% level gives 6 hours, 25% gives 7 hours.
This is on Gotland, Sweden.
Solar panel arrangements also plays a role here - east and west orientation supplements south orientation pretty well. The different orientations make a less pointy peak while giving more hours of production.
Add batteries and an electric car and you'll definitely have an advantage from more hours of production. Excess power is fed to the grid. Excess power
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In Texas, where summers are hot and the sun is scorching, that peak output lasts considerably longer.
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Solar panels also degrade in high heat like any other type of electronics.
Re:Probably? (Score:2)
Show your work.
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from 2015 data, for large-scale solar:
Installed capacity: 8,290 MWp
Annual generation: 18,291 GWh
Capacity factor: 25.2%
Old data, but since the number of hours of sunlight haven't changed, probably still accurate (except that some large installations have switched to tracking arrays, which increase capacity factor).
Source https://euanmearns.com/solar-p... [euanmearns.com]
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2015 data? You realize that data is over 10 years old, right?
You didn't even read the second sentence of my post where I addressed exactly that?
Old data, but since the number of hours of sunlight haven't changed, probably still accurate (except that some large installations have switched to tracking arrays, which increase capacity factor).
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Re:A rather misleading headline (Score:4, Informative)
Sure, but the point here is that solar is growing rapidly in the US, despite attempts by many different groups to kill it. And what's more, a lot of it is being manufactured in the US.
Here's a successful, rapidly growing part of the economy. If the government had any sense they would be trying to turbocharge it.
The manufacturing and installation creates lots of jobs, far more than any other source of energy. Decently paid jobs.
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Here's a successful, rapidly growing part of the economy. If the government had any sense they would be trying to turbocharge it.
If it's successful on its own, it doesn't need government help.
Has DOGE not made this clear? The US Federal Government exists as a means to launder money to elected and appointed officials, not to help businesses.
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The only thing DOGE has made clear is that they have no idea what they're doing. There's no way in hell they've had enough time to actually evaluate any of the government departments they're laying people off from and one can already see that in action with all the rehires they've had to do.
Then again, with claims like " The US Federal Government exists as a means to launder money to elected and appointed officials, not to help businesses." you seem to care more about philosophy then reality. Government cor
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If it's successful on its own, it doesn't need government help.
The oil and agriculture industries would like to see you outside to discuss this with you. There is a black van waiting for a private "conversation".
Re: A rather misleading headline (Score:3)
Good point.
DOGE (pronounced Dog E) needs to get on those Fossil Fuel subsidies. The congressional budget office estimates 25 % of subsidies went to fossil fuel and 59% to renewables. I'm fine with both being trimmed back. However it seems the GOP only wants to cut one, and often expands the other.
Electric vehicles (and Musk's fortune) got a big boost from tax credits and selling efficiency credits. There is a good chance Tesla car company wouldn't be here without massive government help.
The solar panel
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Has DOGE not made this clear? The US Federal Government exists as a means to launder money to elected and appointed officials, not to help businesses.
No, DOGE has made it clear that's what they want you to believe.
Simply shouting the same lies over and over and over again doesn't actually make the subject of the lie "clear" to the clear minded.
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Nobody is trying to "kill" solar power. Many are, however, questioning whether solar can really be the answer to the overall problem. The answer is that it can't. It can play a role, but it helps nothing with base load, and in some cases actually causes problems with base load when you can't ramp the other base load contributors up and down with demand.
That leaves a legitimate question: If solar (or even wind, etc.) operations don't include battery storage to average out their contribution to the grid o
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The numbers here are somewhat misleading..
Id agree. What we are missing is if there were no tariffs whatsoever on solar (thanks Obama, Trump, and Biden) and the world was flooded with solar that cost almost nothing. The cost to subsidize American solar would be nothing as we make nothing, maybe a few tens of millions but the cost savings would be in the billions to tens of billions over the lifetime of the panels. Panels so cheap homeless people sleep under discarded solar panels instead of cardboard. It’s a matter of national security an
Re:A rather misleading headline (Score:4, Interesting)
Some arithmetic (6,000,000 / 4,200) gives a multiplier of 1,428; dividing by 365 as a sanity check results in ~3.9 hours/day of nameplate output.
Scaling this pessimistic case up to 50GW gives 71.4TWh/year. Given that storage is also coming online at a frantic pace, that's fairly fungible power (or soon will be) and doesn't have to serve load right when it's generated.
We could get technical (I used to work in the electric utility industry), but those numbers are close enough for our purposes.
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So five AI data centers?
I like solar but it's very troubling that we added 10GW of solar and that was the most, and 80GW of baseload demand.
If we added 10GW of solar and 100GW of atomic energy then we'd be on the right track.
Working families shouldn't be priced out of electricity by chatbots on a grid that humans built.
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The numbers here are somewhat misleading because solar has such a low capacity factor. 50GW capacity probably equates to something like 10GW of average power output (ie about 10GWYr of output across a year - somewhere around five hours of peak output per day) though calculating the exact figure would require detailed knowledge of where it was all installed.
Solar can easily supply the same amount of kWh per year as Wp installed. So 50 GWp installed capacity (I assume that is what they mean) should deliver 50,000 GWh every year. Even at my high latitude of 51. The USA shows a general not less than 1.2 kWh/Wp and going up to 2 kWh/Wp. So I'd imagine it wil be better than 1. The 10GWYear that you mention would equate to 8,760 GWh (because 8760 hours in a year).
The main disadvantage about solar is that it delivers power in peaks and is therefore only useful if yo
W to Whr [Re:A rather misleading headline] (Score:2)
Solar can easily supply the same amount of kWh per year as Wp installed.
Since there are 8766 hours in a year, multiplying watts(peak) by 1000 hr/yr to get kWh/yr means you're assuming a capacity factor of 11.4 percent. This is very conservative (but might be accurate in cloudy northern locations). But in a decent location you should be able to get double that.
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And still, you can say that it's like something between 6 and 8 nuclear reactors.
For a year installation, It's a very good number.
Like in the best time of nuclear plant installation, around 197x.
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No nukular, it is too proliferationary.
And nothing instills as much fear in the hearts of the "brave" and the "free" as someone being able to claim an equal footing.
Look at how trump kowtows in front of russia, china and north korea for an idea of how deep the fear is.
The actions of Donald Trump should not be used as an example of what a sensible person (much less a world leader) would do.
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Nuclear can generate power reliably regardless of the weather or time of day. Nuclear or coal will be picking up the slack when the sun isn't out.
Soviets watching American propaganda film (Score:1, Offtopic)
The Soviet chief rocket designer Sergei Korolev wanted to know more about what the Americans were doing. Hence he arranged a screening of a film on the US rocket program for he and his deputies.
Midway into it, he angrily scolded the woman who was simulataneously translating the English-language narration. Apparently the translator was not only speaking the words in Russian, she was reproducing the excitement of the American narrator on how glorious the American rockets were. Korolev demanded that she
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Korolev demanded that she translate the rest of the movie narration with much less enthusiasm.
Of course! If he were to let slip that they were under his control it would spoil the surprise ending
So I think the point you're trying to make (Score:2)
But so it's kind of not a good look to use America's rocket program for that because well, it worked. Like really really well. Our rocket program has produced some of the best tech in human history and it continued to write up until we started to slash funding.
As for solar power it is currently the most profitable form of energy you can build out right now. On paper nuclear should be able to best it but it never can because it's difficult to build a
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This sounds more like one of the apocryphal Khrushchev stories than an apocryphal Korolev story.
Inverters (Score:4, Interesting)
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Would be interested if they produce them locally, too.
With parts from China? What would be the gain? Oh, you mean everything made locally. Well, maybe with a massive investment possible in 20 years and then much more expensive than with the current tariffs.
Now, in actual reality, these are large-scale inverters. They likely come with equipment from Siemens or the like, i.e. from Europe. If you wanted to make these domestically, say >30 years because the skills are not there in the US.
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They likely come with equipment from Siemens or the like, i.e. from Europe.
The company may be European but the production is not. Just like how some Teslas are subject to import tariffs. Not because they are American but because they are Chinese.
And yes Siemens does a lot of manufacturing in China. Companies are sensitive to the cost of their supply chains. Just like car companies in the USA are about to increase the costs of American made cars since they have been importing aluminium from Europe.
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That's goofy, I don't even know where to begin. You know companies like Siemens (who announced a plant for inverters in Wisconsin in 2023) are bringing production here, right?
And
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To use them inverters are needed.
Many of the chips do not come from China, and the rest of the component cost sourced in China is low compared to the current retail value. So it would cost more, but this is mostly in chassis and large component assembly labor which is not too intensive considering the circuit board manufacturing and population is so highly automated.
Re: Inverters (Score:2)
As you know, Taiwan IS part of China, so yeah, most of these chips come from China
Of course I'm mocking the CCP(äå½å...±äå...s) line about Taiwan. But Taiwan does say it is the "Republic of China.". äèæ'åoe
Note the left most characters
Re: Inverters (Score:2)
Dang it. Slashdot did not reproduce the characters. Oh well...
You fine folk can look it up on your own.
Re:"The Beating of a Liberal" (Score:4, Funny)
storage (Score:2)
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That happens to be untrue. If solar is distributed enough geographically, the question of storage becomes less important. Obviously the usual nay-sayers do not know that. Well, to be fair, they essentially know nothing so why would they know how renewables actually work.
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That happens to be untrue. If solar is distributed enough geographically, the question of storage becomes less important. .
Only if we had the transmission capacity to wheel power over literally intercontinental distances, which we don't.
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If solar is distributed enough geographically, the question of storage becomes less important.
The sun is always shining somewhere! Deep winter nights in Quebec just need Australian solar.
So, how is progress on the 50GW intercontinental power links?
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If solar is distributed enough geographically, the question of storage becomes less important.
Really? If you distribute panels so widely that the sun is always shining on them, I guess? Or maybe "distribute" them to orbit? Good grief.
Then there's the fact that here in California we're already encountering negative rates due to solar overproduction that has nowhere to go. Storage is in its infancy compared to PV generation and the parent post has a very good point.
It would appear you don't know how it works either.
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That happens to be untrue. If solar is distributed enough geographically, the question of storage becomes less important. Obviously the usual nay-sayers do not know that. Well, to be fair, they essentially know nothing so why would they know how renewables actually work.
Solar is a self-limiting play. You have some degrees of freedom to operate (over provision, distribution, storage) yet they all impose diminishing returns whose costs skyrocket as a function of overall energy mix.
We for example know how to go 100% nuclear in an economically viable manner. There is however no economically viable approach for 100% solar with current technology. It's great on the margins yet unfortunately beyond this all it really does is distort markets. As more solar is adopted energy co
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But a law of diminishing returns applies to all power systems. It applies to nuclear because nuclear keeps on producing power even when users don't need it, about half the time. Roughly, this means that if nuclear is your only power source, the power is twice as expensive when you need it, and costs nothing (marginal cost) when you don't.
The optimal solution is almost certainly a mixture of power sources.
We for example know how to go 100% nuclear in an economically viable manner.
Unfortunately we don't. Right now nuclear is the most expensive power source of all of the options. Th
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...with that said, I'll add that I'm cautiously optimistic about the potential for nuclear using a thorium cycle.
But only cautiously optimistic. So many proposals have sounded good until they moved from paper studies to actual production that I don't really believe cost projections until we have seen some operational experience, and have learned about the actual costs.
Re: storage (Score:2)
Plus, you pull back on hydro during the sunniest times and use more of that naturally stored water power when you really need it. It's unlikely we'll have a time when the sun is down, and all winds are calm and we have no water left to generate electricity. Maybe at that time we tell the crypto miners to take a break for a bit. Mining should be least favored use. Or perhaps that could be hair curlers, as Bitcoin is clearly more important than unnaturally curly hair. :) ( looking at you Frieda, and those re
Progress is hard to stop (Score:2)
Apparently even the die-hard stuck-in-the-past nuclear fanatics cannot do it. Cost matters and nuclear loses any advantage when maintenance of the nuclear arsenal is assured. This is, incidentally, why France plans a total of 4 (!) new reactors longer-term (except for the idiot asshole populists on the ultra-right side that will just promise anything that might get then votes) and the UK is building Hinkley Point with is abysmally bad economic profile: Nuclear material for the bomb. No other reason. No econ
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Apparently even the die-hard stuck-in-the-past nuclear fanatics cannot do it. Cost matters and nuclear loses any advantage when maintenance of the nuclear arsenal is assured. This is, incidentally, why France plans a total of 4 (!) new reactors longer-term
Everyone likes to rag on France, especially greenies for some reason. France with their stuck-in-the-past nuclear fleet have emitted far less pollution and CO2 than almost anyone else when it comes to electricity generation, and here's the key thing: conti
We need to fix this! (Score:3)
Surprise: Texas accounts for 20% (Score:2)
Despite the governor's crusade against green energy, its lack of regulation has allowed green energy companies to proliferate, making it by far the #1 state in green energy output, and new green energy installations. https://electrek.co/2025/03/10... [electrek.co].