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How could the government be so wrong, year after year, decade after decade about renewable energy?
Dangus with data from the EIA

Posted on 09/13/2025 9:58:11 AM PDT by dangus

Two months ago something happened that I was hesitant to crow about: the amount of electricity produced by solar and wind projects exceeded the amount produced by nuclear energy. A few months earlier, they outpaced energy produced by burning coal. So wind and solar are now the second largest source of electricity production in the United States, if combined.

I hesitated because the number of planned solar projects in development had suddenly leveled off, just as wind projects had done the year prior. And there was a plausible cause why this might not just be a one-month fluke: Pres. Trump has cut not only federal funding but motivation for transitioning to wind plus solar.

But here's the thing: it no longer matters.

See, solar energy got a well-earned, terrible reputation for being an economic boondoggle because earlier solar technologies cost scores times more money than carbon-emission-based energy sources. But the then the price came down, down, down, down, down, down, at a rate so steady that Moore's Law (regarding the price of microprocessors continually plunging) was superceded by Wright's Law (applied to technology in general... Wright defined his law way back in 1936, but it was far less famous than Moore's Law).

Let me be clear: the people who based solar power and wind power were correct; they were a terrible waste of money. Rather than focusing on a set of applications for which photovoltaic (PV) cells made set which would gradually expand as PV cells got cheaper, we spent billions upon billions of dollars on garbage solar technologies like concentrated solar power, solar water heating, etc., which only stole market share from PV cells.

But as PV cells costs came down, they were adopted for more applications, which brough costs down in a virtuous cycle. PV cells went from calculators to remote electronics to roadside lighting to off-the-grid homes to industrial plants to utility electricity production.

But rather than being beat back by sane cost arguments, government wasters exploited the cynicism generated by people noting how expensive solar energy was, and created the myth that the government must spend trillions to make solar energy affordable. Each and every year, for decades, the government has published projections of PV energy production. And every time, the government foresees a near complete collapse of the production of PV production.

It's like someone in government doesn't get that PV energy isn't a consumable like oil. Each factory doesn't just help create more solar energy; it expands the rate at which solar energy is produced. And as a result, the amount of solar electricity created has doubled on average every three years for several decades. As a result, ten times more solar electricity was produced last year than just nine years earlier.

And that brings me around to why I write this now: I've had a chance to review the information published by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) and confirmed that yes, the exponential growth rate is back on track.

Here's what that means: If the PV industry doubles just one more time, (and again remember it's doubled six times in the past 20 years), we'll be creating enough PVs to replace natural gas in just ten more years. We probably won't actually replace natural gas because instead we'll be significantly replacing gasoline, but the point is we are rapidly coming to a total collapse of carbon emissions in the next two decades.

(Petroleum-based fuels will probably persist in niche applications, much like vinyl records, snail mail, fax machines and home coal burners persist.)

For solar energy to become a dominant source of electricity, storage is necessary, which is why utility-scale battery storage is exploding at about 70% per year lately. Prices have come down so far, solar energy is cheap even with the costs of storage. Lithium remains very volatile; it's price is down 85% after an incredible surge peaking in late 2022. At current prices, it's too inexpensive to make recycling economically sensible or to fund huge improvements in extraction technologies, but it's very abundant. And ultimately, it's not consumed by the energy-creating processes. China's environmental-costs-be-damned approach to cheap lithium also undermines US development of lithium resources, so lithium may become a driver of geopolitics, but the notion of running out of it, or chromium (which is used but not consumed in the manufacture of PV panels) is absurd.

Who doesn't want development of solar energy? Simple: China and the Arab nations. You can expect more and more hatred from the Left, too, of the sort that drive Elon Musk to Republicans, as the Left realizes thet their impossible demands can actually be met and there will be no need for a globalist takeover of the economy. Don't fall for their propaganda.


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To: TexasFreeper2009

>> I honestly dont know about about energy or energy storage, but it seems like it would be fairly easy to make something extemely heavy that was lifted thoughout the day by solar and that fell and produced energy at night. <<

Yes. It’s done with fluid, and was formerly the second largest means of storing energy for electricity. The first was flywheels.


21 posted on 09/13/2025 10:58:08 AM PDT by dangus
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To: dangus

*bump for later*


22 posted on 09/13/2025 11:01:07 AM PDT by Yardstick
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To: dangus

There’s a reason why the vast majority of our congress-critters are so science illiterate: politics are the only area in which their limited ability to grasp anything complex greatly limits their job options. (And suprisingly, they all seem to gain great wealth...wonder how that happens, oh simpleton Bernie Sanders?)


23 posted on 09/13/2025 11:02:42 AM PDT by Da Coyote
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To: Tallguy

>> backup batteries are prone to overheating and catching fire — frequently. <<

As opposed to oil refineries which never catch fire! Battery storage is actually WAAAAYYY safer than relying on combustion.


24 posted on 09/13/2025 11:04:44 AM PDT by dangus
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To: dangus
How could the government be so wrong, year after year, decade after decade about renewable energy?

Are you kidding? It's a scam. It's a con. It's an excuse to get money out of the taxpayers and to sell legal influence for cash.

They're not wrong they're LYING.

25 posted on 09/13/2025 11:05:15 AM PDT by DiogenesLamp ("of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty.")
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To: SpaceBar

Yeah, I spent an entire paragraph explaining WHY they lied: to convince people that a massive takeover of global economics was necessary to transition to renewable energy. It wasn’t.


26 posted on 09/13/2025 11:07:02 AM PDT by dangus
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To: dangus; All

And yet, renewable energy is now cheaper than natural gas (even with battery storage) and more commonly used than coal.


Maybe, in some applications. Solar has always been affordable in some applications.

I suspect, as a general principle, this is simply incorrect.

Conflating natural gas and coal in the statement is a weird way to make a point.

“More commonly used than coal.” What does that mean?

More people use solar energy than coal?

By what metrics?


27 posted on 09/13/2025 11:07:55 AM PDT by marktwain
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To: dangus

Without electricity our manufacturing plants couldn’t operate, if the plants can produce tanks, planes, ships and arms we can’t win a war. But guess who can?


28 posted on 09/13/2025 11:19:21 AM PDT by Ronald77
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To: marktwain

Nuclear,coal.and fossil fuels can produce electricity 24/7,wind and solar can’t.🤔


29 posted on 09/13/2025 11:27:17 AM PDT by BiteYourSelf ( Earth first, we'll strip mine the other planets later.)
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To: BiteYourSelf; dangus

Exactly correct.

Storage of energy has to become much, much cheaper for solar and/or wind to be a major supplier of grid energy.

Dangus says it is getting cheaper. I would like to see the actual numbers. You have to be able to store months worth of grid level power. That is a huge amount of storage.

Here, in SW Arizona, I could do well with a weeks worth of storage. Most of the world needs much, much more. Yuma is the optimum place for solar power in the USA.


30 posted on 09/13/2025 11:31:11 AM PDT by marktwain
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To: dangus
Re: "So wind and solar are now the second largest source of electricity production in the United States, if combined."

If combined?

Why not compare to coal PLUS nuclear combined?

Maybe because coal PLUS nuclear would be #1 or #2?

By the way, coal and nuclear are basically illegal in half the states in the USA.

In the other half, building new coal and nuclear generation is financially crushed by environmental costs.

Final note...

The author forgot to mention that solar and wind power do not produce electricity 24-7.

Wind and solar must be backed up by carbon or nuclear energy sources, 24-7.

31 posted on 09/13/2025 11:36:25 AM PDT by zeestephen (Trump Landslide? Kamala lost the election by 230,000 votes, in WI, MI, and PA.)
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To: dangus

They’re not wrong, it’s working perfectly for the giant grift that it is.


32 posted on 09/13/2025 11:44:49 AM PDT by IYAS9YAS (There are two kinds of people: Those who can extrapolate from incomplete data.)
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To: dangus

How could the government be so wrong, year after year, decade after decade about renewable energy?

Then insiders are making $$$$$$ at taxpayers expense.


33 posted on 09/13/2025 11:50:27 AM PDT by minnesota_bound (Making money now. Still want much more.)
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To: dangus

“That doesn’t make your case. China loses money selling PV panels, which the Trump administration has correctly assessed is done to prevent the United States from developing its own PV industry. By doing so they simultaneously reduce American demand and ensure their own energy independence.”

Reduce American demand? Let’s see. China makes it cheaper and then our green religion leaders subsidize it and pay organizations to walk around neighborhoods selling subsidized rooftop solar. I grant you, in an economic technical sense, only the walking around money moves the demand curve. But heavy subsidies, from China and the US, greatly increase the amount of the product bought by Americans without even moving the demand curve.

So I have a very hard time understanding the argument that China and our greta-inspired-leaders have not both aggressively been working to make the US dependent on Chinese solar and to get their jiggered-time-bomb electronics to be ubiquitous throughout the US grid.


34 posted on 09/13/2025 11:55:59 AM PDT by ModelBreaker
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To: dangus

I should add one other thing. Even if Chinese solar gear were not a ticking-time-bomb, they would want us to vastly increase our dependence on solar because it profoundly fouls up our electric grid.

(1) Solar destabilizes the grid and contributes to blackouts by allowing US politicians to pretend that they can close baseline power generation like coal and replace it with the same number of Megawatts of solar. That is profoundly destabilizing to the grid because solar is NOT baseline power like coal, NG, nuclear, or hydro. When 6 PM rolls around, it’s gone and we have sacrificed our reliable energy for virtue signaling.

(2) Solar runs at a different frequency (oversimplification alert) than everything else and making that match up to the baseline power on the grid causes blackout causing spikes. A lot of money has been devoted to solving this problem and so far, no solution is in sight. This is true even when solar is actually producing energy.

In the short term, at least, we must reverse the closing of coal plants and in the near term aggressively build a bundle of new NG and nuclear plants. Solar will be a feel-good niche for people who follow the blessed greta.


35 posted on 09/13/2025 12:05:21 PM PDT by ModelBreaker
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To: Don W

No need for constructed reservoirs. There are well pun intended over 100,000 wells in the Permian basin that each one can be turned into a energy storage well. The earth mass itself is the “battery” the injected fluids lift the entire mass of the earth above it storing via gravity as pressure in the fluids the energy pumped down. When you open the valve the 10000 psi fluids come rushing back up the well and spin the 5000 kw motor backwards as a 5 megawatt generator the now atmospheric pressure fluid can be stored at ground level in a shallow pond. Every in flowing water is contingent on fluid pressures and flow rate. High pressure = low flow rate for the same energy transferred. The geothermal heat is just gravy.

https://newatlas.com/energy/sage-geosystems-huff-puff/

Here is another gigawatt hour or more scale energy storage that can be put anywhere no hills or special geology needed.

=https://highviewpower.com/news_announcement/highview-power-unveils-cryobattery-worlds-first-giga-scale-cryogenic-battery/

Why not use cryogenic energy storage and nukes....You betcha

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0306261913007216

Another fav of mine nuclear geothermal heat storage months or years worth of power storage.

https://canes.mit.edu/media/nuclear-geothermal-heat-storage-choosing-the-geothermal-heat-transfer-fluid/

Could do solar the heat source is irrelevant, you could just as easily do joule heating via any electron source be it solar PV, off peak wind, nuclear electric, tidal power, wave power...

https://www.solarpaces.org/100-gwh-of-long-duration-energy-storage-from-mit/

The energy storage market is just getting started, sodium ion and iron air both have sub $20 LCOS materials bill sheet potential at those costs it’s economical to buy power in the $10-$30 range per megawatt hour and sell it at even off peak $40 or $50 in the mid day part of the duck curve. Power hits rock bottom as the sun comes up in Texas usually under $10 per MWh and stays low till past the noon peak sun point. There is 6 solid hours to charge up energy storage and Texas has 13500+ megawatts worth already we will have 35,000 by 2030.

Look at the energy storage resources graph you will see 5000+ megawatts of charging from just after sun up till midday
Noon then look at the wholesale market price it was $14 over that period later today when gas turbines set the market it will be $60-80 because the break even price for $4 MMBTU gas is $50 MWh out of a simple cycle gas turbine plant.

https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards


36 posted on 09/13/2025 12:08:21 PM PDT by GenXPolymath
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To: zeestephen

No coal is 16.2% , nuclear is 18.6% of actual energy generated so combined 34.8% of power actually delivered. Natural Gas is 43% by itself.

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3


37 posted on 09/13/2025 12:13:17 PM PDT by GenXPolymath
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To: dangus

Because it was all a scam to line a few people’s pockets at taxpayer expense, is how.


38 posted on 09/13/2025 12:16:15 PM PDT by Albion Wilde (RIP, Charlie. Say hi to Andrew Breitbart. God protect your family. Justice for Charlie Kirk!)
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To: dangus

“Who doesn’t want development of solar energy? Simple: China”

This author might wanna check tape....

China’s cumulative installed solar power capacity surpassed 1,080 gigawatts (GW) by the end of May 2025, making it the first country to exceed 1 terawatt (TW) and account for roughly half of the global total.

That’s three Texas while grid’s worth of new capacity installed in 6 months.

[China installed 212 gigawatts of solar capacity in the first six months of the year, more than America’s entire capacity of 178 gigawatts as of the end of 2024,]

https://www.zmescience.com/ecology/renewable-energy-ecology/the-worlds-largest-solar-plant-is-rising-in-tibet-its-so-vast-its-the-size-of-chicago/

[As of April 2025, China’s cumulative installed wind energy capacity was over 561 GW, with 86,892 MW of new capacity added in 2024 alone]

That’s another Texas worth of just wind power installed just this year.

To put it in perspective...

The U.S. total installed electric power generation capacity was approximately 1,250 gigawatts (GW) as of 2024.

Remember china don’t do climate change they are adding huge amounts of energy harvesting machines that each one has a EROI of 40 or more to one.

Wind turbines pay off all their energy to mine the resources need to make them, install them and dispose of them in 6 months.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/05/240516122608.htm

[The study reviewed current literature on wind farms, as well as using real construction data to take into account everything from the manufacturing of individual turbine parts, to transporting them into place, to decommissioning the entire wind farm]

https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2022/07/05/energy-output-is-over-100-times-the-input-needed-to-manufacture-solar-panels/

[The test found that Maxeon 3 solar panels had an energy payback period ranging from 0.13 to 0.45 years for ground mounted module, and 0.27 to 0.92 years for a residential rooftop system. For ground mounted panels, the energy payback period can be as little as 47.5 days. ]

China is kicking butts and taking names with energy harvesting machines nothing more and they are run by engineers who can do Fing math.

Actual science, data and facts.


39 posted on 09/13/2025 12:20:03 PM PDT by GenXPolymath
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To: dangus
This writing is incoherent. It keeps praising solar and wind advancements then shoots them down.

"See, solar energy got a well-earned, terrible reputation for being an economic boondoggle because earlier solar technologies cost scores times more money than carbon-emission-based energy sources. But the then the price came down, down, down, down, down, down, at a rate so steady that Moore's Law (regarding the price of microprocessors continually plunging) was superceded by Wright's Law (applied to technology in general... Wright defined his law way back in 1936, but it was far less famous than Moore's Law). "

You reference Wright's Law but you don't explain what it is.

40 posted on 09/13/2025 12:24:32 PM PDT by yesthatjallen
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