- While I'm concerned about the environmental challenges of reversing the trend and increasing energy consumption, I'm happy that people are living in more comfortable homes, that the Amercian industrial base is being restored, that more and better services are being provided (better healthcare, inexpensive and healthy food, comfortable, efficient and inexpensive transportation).
That is what we're using this electricity for, right?
- 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.
- Here's a good podcast (with written transcript) about what's happening in Australia.
https://www.volts.wtf/p/whats-the-real-story-with-australian
The difference in the permitting process between Australia and US is staggering.
- Jevons paradox in action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
- > the fourth‑largest annual rise of the past decade
Really doesn't sound like much of a surge then!
- Curiously, TFA doesn't raise the question of why demand surged, it spends its 8 microparagraphs only praising solar.
- What about behind the meter fossil fuel for datacenters? The underlying Ember one [0] is nearly all about the grid, with mention of behind the meter solar data being incomplete.
[0] https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/solar-met-61-of-us-...
- Did "demand surge" or was excess peak power sold of for nearly 0 to people that can spin up and turn off load on the turn of a dime (crypto)? We have had negative pricing (they pay you to take the power) to stabilize the grid due to solar/wind peaks.
- The cognitive dissonance around optimism regarding renewables and the fact that there are multiple military actions going on around the globe right now focused exclusively on extracting more fossil fuels from the ground is a bit much sometimes.
Why do people even pretend like we haven't signed up for "what's worse than the worse case scenario?" as far as climate goes?
The only way to reduce the already severe impacts of global warming are to keep fossil fuels in the ground. It doesn't matter how much energy is generated by solar so long as we continue to dig up and burn fossil fuels. It's quite clear that we have zero intentions of slowing down or even keeping our fossil fuel consumption steady.
If we had record electricity demand, and anything short of 100% of it was covered by renewables, that means we're burning more fossil fuels then we were before.
We have, pretty unequivocally at this point, signed up for seeing what the end game of civilization looks like rather than realistically exploring or even considering any alternatives.
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- The book Here Comes the Sun by Bill McKibben is a really great read on the changing economics of solar. It came out August 2025 so its fairly up to date too.
- I've thought about installing solar panels on my roof for years. But when I factor in installation costs, it never makes sense because the local energy rates are pretty reasonable... Also, I live in Southeast, a place with plenty of sun but nowhere near the Southwest.
Solar panel prices fell hugely in the past years. Is there anything that could significantly reduce installation costs?
- It really depends on how you write the headline. "US electricity demand surges in 2025 while new utility-scale solar installations decrease from 2024" is equally accurate. It's unclear what the future holds if the trend remains down or flat.
- »US electricity demand jumped by 135 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2025, a 3.1% increase, the fourth‑largest annual rise of the past decade. Over that same period, solar generation grew by a record 83 TWh – a 27% increase from 2024 and the biggest absolute gain of any power source. That single jump in solar output covered 61% of all new electricity demand nationwide.«
This article equates generation with consumption which is a fallacy.
Lots of solar and wind generation is actually produced without meeting demand meaning that the generated electricity often has to be wasted.
- Thank god it's not those pesky windmills...
- So, where's the emissions graph?
- So I'm reading it correctly, 39& of "the surge" was covered by traditional energy sources. Which still means use of traditional sources increased. Correct?
I guess the good news is, solar is available when demand is highest. Nonetheless, is it helping to solve a problem or is it serving more as an enabler of the status quo?
- The title is somewhat misleading.
First, US demand increased by 3.1%. That is bad - demand should be going down, since there is a need to conserve electricity while much of it is provided by CO2-emitting sources. That said - it is not such a huge "surge" that the fact that 61% of it was covered by an increase in Solar capacity is so impressive.
Second, Solar generation is said to have reached 84 TW. But if the increase in demand was 135 TW, and that's just 3.1% of total demand, then total demand is 4355 TW, and Solar accounts for 1.92% of generation. That is _really_ bad. Since we must get to near-0 emissions in electricity generation ASAP to avoid even harsher effects of global warming; and most of the non-Solar generation in the US is by Natural Gas and Coal [1].
You could nitpick and say that the important stat is "total renewables" rather than just Solar, and that the US has a lot of Nuclear, and that's technically true, but it's not as though Nuclear output is surging, and it has more obstacles and challenges, for reasons. So, the big surge to expect in the US is Solar - and we're only seeing very little of that. If you mis-contextualize it sounds like a lot: "60% of new demand! 27% increase since last year!" but that's not the right context.
[1] : https://www.statista.com/statistics/220174/total-us-electric...
- Lying title
Remove this
- 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.
- Contrary opinion: too much farmland is being turned over to solar. Our regulatory systems are not working. Land that once produced food now produces electricity. Turning a food farm into solar is too easy (ie cheap). The land is flat and there are nearby roads and electricity networks. And who is going to tell a farmer how to best use thier land? But the world needs more than datacenters. The world needs food.
Solar should be installed on unproductive land. Buildings should be covered in panels. Carparks should have solar roofs. If i were king of zoning, every new construction would be required to cover say 50% of thier footprint in panels. That is the direction to go. We should not continue to convert farmland.
A total parody, but on point. "Can I Beat Farming Sim WITHOUT FARMING?" - The Spiffing Brit
- 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.