Solar can be deployed by hundreds of thousands of individual efforts and financing at the same time, with almost no bureaucracy. It starts to produce electricity basically the same day.
I can't imagine anything being able to compete with that for speed and scale - or costs, for that matter. Once deployed it's basically free.
The issue is that works perfectly well when solar is a small % of the grid, but when that number grows, then you need grid scale solutions and coordination for things to continue working well. And that requires both technical skill and political will.
Solar is highly distributed. At the most basic level with a solar & battery system the production and consumption and CONTROL are all yours. You own it and it's literally on your property.
Refinements on ways to sell it to neighbours / recharge various EV's / use it for new purposes are all up to you.
There are lots of analogies to self hosting or concepts around owning and controlling your own data, when it's owned by you, you retain soverignty and full rights on what happens.
I'd expect most tech people will value the distributed nature of solar over equivilents, that by design require centralisation and commerical/state ownership and control.
Get your solar, back increasingly distributed approaches, let those pushing centralised agendas be the ones to pay for their grid. Eventually they are forced to change.
As we're finding in Australia, our high solar uptake by citizens.. is pressuring governments to respond, lest their centralised options become redundant. What we found is that as more people moved to solar, the power companies lumped the costs for grid maintenance onto those who hadnt moved yet, actually contributing to even further accelerated solar adoption and pressure to rework the system. Big corporates can lobby for themselves you dont owe them your custom.
Cost. Useful life.
I thought about an off grid system. Batteries are expensive. Also, unless you live in a dry place in the equator, You'll need to account for things like winter, long rainy spells, so either you add more batteries to account for multiple days (weeks? months?) of low generation, or you'll need a diesel/gas generator, or have a hybrid system instead, which basically means you're using the utilities gas generator instead.
Then, subsides are drying up. Systems have a useful life, your panels can be damaged by storms, for maximizing battery life you need to ensure you don't discharge it below 20%, and neither charge it over 100%.
So, in the end, the grid needs to be there anyway, but as most grid costs are fixed, whenever you use it now, it is going to be more expensive.
This is not the problem. The problem is that everyone moves to solar for most of the year not using or paying for the infrastructure, then in cold winter nights everyone expects the grid to be able to supply as normal.
(Home) batteries are quickly becoming cheap and per-hour electricity rates can be implemented at a reasonable time. With that, the grid owner can influence the grid stability without having to build capacity or generation itself.
My goal is to do wholly owned solar and batteries at home, only using the grid as backup, if I move out of the city. But I think the big problem with this new demand is that it’s for data centers. I can’t see that working for them.
We see that quite often here in the summer as the energy price sometimes drops to minus 60ct/kWh (more often it hovers around -5 to -10). It is pretty much "please use everything now" to avoid grid issues. It often happens on very clear days with lots of wind.
The bigger issue, at least in the US, is that there is a huge lack of supply in the equipment to connect to the grid at the moment. Backlogs are still 1-3 years after order, not terrible but still an issue deploying.
That is definitely not the bigger issue. If we had faster grid tie completions the problem would be even worse. If you don't believe me look at the very nearly daily negative power pricing inany areas of California.
We simply don't have the transmission and storage for significantly more grid tied solar. It's pointless to build more for purposes of grid supply, we need to build transmission and storage first.
So your implication that other sources of energy currently do not need scaling coordination somehow? I fail to see how that is true, maybe you can provide some insights?
i wonder if ppl's electricity consumption habits will change in response to this, idk like turning the heat way up during the day or using high power appliances more during the day
We have a solar electric plan - the price per kWh is much higher during the duck curve in return for cheap rates during sunshine hours. The rates are something like 1x during night, 0.5x during sunshine, 4x during the morning and afternoon peaks.
We have our heat pump water heater running during the cheap hours, and also change our use of air conditioning/heating to accommodate.
It would probably not work in our favor if we didn't work from home and were out of the home all day.
That is something you can reasonably do, but it's only useful in winter.
> or using high power appliances more during the day
Well, given that people have to work during the day, I doubt that that will work out on a large enough scale. And even if you'd pre-program a laundry machine to run at noon, the laundry would sit and get smelly during summer until you'd get home.
The only change in patterns we will see is more base load during the night from EVs trickle-charging as more and more enter the market.
At least in the US there is a push to make electric appliances smarter already. So for example, the electric hot water heater responding to the strain on the grid. The same could happen for AC, heat, EVs and other higher load appliances. At scale that can help out the grid immensely either in times of peak load or dip in demand.
Well as we all know the political will in this country seems to generally be "let's all commit suicide together", but perhaps mass installations of solar will provide material reason to improve conditions somewhat.
There should be a minimum level of expertise or commitment to the truth so that publication who certainly think of themselves as major league or factual don't publish blatantly false statements like this.
Yes, demand rose, and solar panels were installed whose capacity was about 60% of the new demand, but to say solar handled 60% of new capacity is blatantly false.
As someone who owns solar panels, I'm painfully aware that there can be days, weeks of bad weather when there's barely any generation. But even at the best of times, solar has a hard time covering for the demand of something like data centers which suck down insane amount of juice round the clock.
There's also no information about whether these data centers are located to be close to solar farms, and we know that in many cases, they're not.
Confusing headline (on purpose I'm sure). No, solar didn't handle 61% of total energy demand. It handled 61% of the so-called "surge" - 3% growth over the prior year.
So the increase was 3.1% and it was "fourth largest in the last decade", which means, "barely above average growth rate". Considering that economy growth rate was the fastest in a decade except 2021 which was a covid recovery year, it doesn't really show anything abnormal at all.
Where are all the "without nuclear power we're dooooooomed" people at the moment?
It's just like the eco nerds said all the time... solar not just works out on the technical side, it also works out on the build speed and financing side.
It's so frustrating discussing topics you know about on HN because you get so many software developers, which naturally know everything, that make comments like this.
Solar does not 'just work' - in the US it's a crisis in the making. Power prices in several areas of the grid routinely go negative because the grid is a zero sum game - there is very little storage so what goes in must exactly match what goes out or grid frequency deviations and eventually blackouts happen. This is much more likely to happen once undispatchable resources climb past a certain threshold in our generation mix.
To fix this we need massive storage and transmission investment, like moon landing and WW2 put together. We desperately need to do that before we add more non-dispatchable generation.
Solar with storage is an amazing resource. Without storage it's counterproductive if it's grid tied.
Solar can be deployed by hundreds of thousands of individual efforts and financing at the same time, with almost no bureaucracy. It starts to produce electricity basically the same day.
I can't imagine anything being able to compete with that for speed and scale - or costs, for that matter. Once deployed it's basically free.
The issue is that works perfectly well when solar is a small % of the grid, but when that number grows, then you need grid scale solutions and coordination for things to continue working well. And that requires both technical skill and political will.
Solar is highly distributed. At the most basic level with a solar & battery system the production and consumption and CONTROL are all yours. You own it and it's literally on your property.
Refinements on ways to sell it to neighbours / recharge various EV's / use it for new purposes are all up to you.
There are lots of analogies to self hosting or concepts around owning and controlling your own data, when it's owned by you, you retain soverignty and full rights on what happens.
I'd expect most tech people will value the distributed nature of solar over equivilents, that by design require centralisation and commerical/state ownership and control.
Get your solar, back increasingly distributed approaches, let those pushing centralised agendas be the ones to pay for their grid. Eventually they are forced to change.
As we're finding in Australia, our high solar uptake by citizens.. is pressuring governments to respond, lest their centralised options become redundant. What we found is that as more people moved to solar, the power companies lumped the costs for grid maintenance onto those who hadnt moved yet, actually contributing to even further accelerated solar adoption and pressure to rework the system. Big corporates can lobby for themselves you dont owe them your custom.
Cost. Useful life. I thought about an off grid system. Batteries are expensive. Also, unless you live in a dry place in the equator, You'll need to account for things like winter, long rainy spells, so either you add more batteries to account for multiple days (weeks? months?) of low generation, or you'll need a diesel/gas generator, or have a hybrid system instead, which basically means you're using the utilities gas generator instead.
Then, subsides are drying up. Systems have a useful life, your panels can be damaged by storms, for maximizing battery life you need to ensure you don't discharge it below 20%, and neither charge it over 100%.
So, in the end, the grid needs to be there anyway, but as most grid costs are fixed, whenever you use it now, it is going to be more expensive.
> their centralised options become redundant
This is not the problem. The problem is that everyone moves to solar for most of the year not using or paying for the infrastructure, then in cold winter nights everyone expects the grid to be able to supply as normal.
(Home) batteries are quickly becoming cheap and per-hour electricity rates can be implemented at a reasonable time. With that, the grid owner can influence the grid stability without having to build capacity or generation itself.
My goal is to do wholly owned solar and batteries at home, only using the grid as backup, if I move out of the city. But I think the big problem with this new demand is that it’s for data centers. I can’t see that working for them.
We see that quite often here in the summer as the energy price sometimes drops to minus 60ct/kWh (more often it hovers around -5 to -10). It is pretty much "please use everything now" to avoid grid issues. It often happens on very clear days with lots of wind.
Mine bitcoin, run LLM inference, smelt aluminum, make synthetic fossil fuels from atmospheric CO2.
> make synthetic fossil fuels from atmospheric CO2.
that would actually be my preferred solution (if only it was less energy inefficient, sigh).
If the marginal value of electricity is negative, what matters if it is energy inefficient?
The bigger issue, at least in the US, is that there is a huge lack of supply in the equipment to connect to the grid at the moment. Backlogs are still 1-3 years after order, not terrible but still an issue deploying.
That is definitely not the bigger issue. If we had faster grid tie completions the problem would be even worse. If you don't believe me look at the very nearly daily negative power pricing inany areas of California.
We simply don't have the transmission and storage for significantly more grid tied solar. It's pointless to build more for purposes of grid supply, we need to build transmission and storage first.
So your implication that other sources of energy currently do not need scaling coordination somehow? I fail to see how that is true, maybe you can provide some insights?
i wonder if ppl's electricity consumption habits will change in response to this, idk like turning the heat way up during the day or using high power appliances more during the day
We have a solar electric plan - the price per kWh is much higher during the duck curve in return for cheap rates during sunshine hours. The rates are something like 1x during night, 0.5x during sunshine, 4x during the morning and afternoon peaks.
We have our heat pump water heater running during the cheap hours, and also change our use of air conditioning/heating to accommodate.
It would probably not work in our favor if we didn't work from home and were out of the home all day.
This is already a reality with smart chargers in the UK. Your electric car can be charged when the electricity rates are lower (night usually)
> idk like turning the heat way up during the day
That is something you can reasonably do, but it's only useful in winter.
> or using high power appliances more during the day
Well, given that people have to work during the day, I doubt that that will work out on a large enough scale. And even if you'd pre-program a laundry machine to run at noon, the laundry would sit and get smelly during summer until you'd get home.
The only change in patterns we will see is more base load during the night from EVs trickle-charging as more and more enter the market.
At least in the US there is a push to make electric appliances smarter already. So for example, the electric hot water heater responding to the strain on the grid. The same could happen for AC, heat, EVs and other higher load appliances. At scale that can help out the grid immensely either in times of peak load or dip in demand.
This is good for water heaters for example. I wonder if storing chilled water for air conditioning would be a feasible strategy to do the same.
Well as we all know the political will in this country seems to generally be "let's all commit suicide together", but perhaps mass installations of solar will provide material reason to improve conditions somewhat.
> Solar can be deployed... with almost no bureaucracy.
It can be.
Unless existing bureaucracy doesn't want that.
Thank god it's not those pesky windmills...
Jevons paradox in action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
Also known as induced demand (as more is available)
There should be a minimum level of expertise or commitment to the truth so that publication who certainly think of themselves as major league or factual don't publish blatantly false statements like this.
Yes, demand rose, and solar panels were installed whose capacity was about 60% of the new demand, but to say solar handled 60% of new capacity is blatantly false.
As someone who owns solar panels, I'm painfully aware that there can be days, weeks of bad weather when there's barely any generation. But even at the best of times, solar has a hard time covering for the demand of something like data centers which suck down insane amount of juice round the clock.
There's also no information about whether these data centers are located to be close to solar farms, and we know that in many cases, they're not.
Confusing headline (on purpose I'm sure). No, solar didn't handle 61% of total energy demand. It handled 61% of the so-called "surge" - 3% growth over the prior year.
Curiously, TFA doesn't raise the question of why demand surged, it spends its 8 microparagraphs only praising solar.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say it has some thing to do with those data centers and LLM stuff.
Funny, I was thinking the same thing.
So the increase was 3.1% and it was "fourth largest in the last decade", which means, "barely above average growth rate". Considering that economy growth rate was the fastest in a decade except 2021 which was a covid recovery year, it doesn't really show anything abnormal at all.
All that work and we still have a broken economy, go figure.
Lying title
Remove this
Where are all the "without nuclear power we're dooooooomed" people at the moment?
It's just like the eco nerds said all the time... solar not just works out on the technical side, it also works out on the build speed and financing side.
> Where are all the "without nuclear power we're dooooooomed" people at the moment?
I haven't seen any on HN across multiple submissions discussing both solar and nuclear power (or both at once).
I have, however, seen people unreasonably characterized as such.
It's so frustrating discussing topics you know about on HN because you get so many software developers, which naturally know everything, that make comments like this.
Solar does not 'just work' - in the US it's a crisis in the making. Power prices in several areas of the grid routinely go negative because the grid is a zero sum game - there is very little storage so what goes in must exactly match what goes out or grid frequency deviations and eventually blackouts happen. This is much more likely to happen once undispatchable resources climb past a certain threshold in our generation mix.
To fix this we need massive storage and transmission investment, like moon landing and WW2 put together. We desperately need to do that before we add more non-dispatchable generation.
Solar with storage is an amazing resource. Without storage it's counterproductive if it's grid tied.