Who would have thought that the glowing divine orb that has blessed the earth with holy light and warmth since its inception was the best path forward for our needs vs the crude filth locked away in the earth with the mark of the beast in the periodic table.
Solar is winning the energy race - The world’s cheapest power source is scaling at warp speed, pushing coal, gas and nuclear aside
Submitted 1 day ago by remington@beehaw.org to technology@beehaw.org
https://www.dw.com/en/solar-is-winning-the-energy-race/a-76517556
Comments
Spacehooks@reddthat.com 1 day ago
irotsoma@piefed.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
Too bad the US is owned by fossil fuel companies and weapons manufacturers who make money on wars fought over said fossil fuels. If we could at least eliminate the subsidies from taxes, then people might actually see how much more it costs. But as long as taxes pay for fossil fuel production, it will always appear cheaper to those not paying attention.
protist@retrofed.com 1 day ago
I disagree. Here in Texas, for example, even while politicians push new fossil fuel investments, property owners and private solar companies are deploying small and medium sized photovoltaic projects all over the state. Solar is a higher percentage of our total generation mix every year, 10% of the total last year (<1% 5 years ago), and its growth is dramatically outpacing that of fossil fuels. You won’t see headlines about this, but the market forces are real
Powderhorn@beehaw.org 1 day ago
Howdy, fellow Texan. Yeah, even we have realized fossil fuels are kinda a stupid way to power things. It doesn’t help that ERCOT is a shitshow.
irotsoma@piefed.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
Yeah, but most of the data centers recently brought online to feed the LLM/"AI” bubble have triggered a bunch of retired coal plants to be restarted as well as old “dirty” nuclear plant that generate fissile-material for the new nuclear weapons Trump ordered built and other nuclear waste that we already dont have anywhere to store longterm. Part of the excuse being that the demand of these centers is too volatile for green energy. Plus Musk and Trump killing off the programs to build a network of car charging stations mean electric car production for the US market has been drastically cut despite gains in other countries. And cutting the incentives for heat pumps and replacing natural gas furnaces and water heaters has reduced the boom that heat pumps were having as well as are having elsewhere.
And the general public believes that natural gas in homes and gasoline in cars is cheaper than electric although that is not true, it’s only that
Anyway, more “dirty” energy sources are in use than a few years ago, do any gains in clean energy have been outpaced significantly by increases in use of dirty energy in the US, though that isn’t the case in many other countries like China and many EU countries without such large tax subsidies for the general public to consume fossil fuels more cheaply out of pocket.
SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 1 day ago
Bought my first few panels today. Better late than never!
eleitl@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
For small values of “pushing aside” ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-primary-energy
Powderhorn@beehaw.org 1 day ago
I paid ~$800 for 1.2kW of solar panels on my van in 2023. The 600Ah of LFP was an additional $1,700. I’ve not paid a power bill in 2.5 years. How anyone could choose to not go solar baffles me. I was paying $3/kWh through the city-owned utility. Nominally, it was somewhere around 15 cents, but after all the fees that Austin charges, despite using only 20kWh/month, my bill was $60 at minimum.
The city has now raised rates five times since I went off-grid, so a straight $60 times 30 months undersells the ROI. It would now be $75-80, and $80 times 30 months means I’ll have broken even by May.
Less than three years, and when the power goes out in town, I’m unaware of it unless I run into a complaint on Reddit.
toynbee@piefed.social 1 day ago
… My power bill for February was $1900 …
hanrahan@slrpnk.net 15 hours ago
holy shit, mine was $15 here in Australia so that’s about 50c in US dollars (some sarcasm) AND that includes charging my ecar. i have 8.4kW of solar on the roof and I get paid a grid feed in tariff for the extra kW I don’t use. We are conscious about doing electric intensive things when the suns shining though eg oven for baking, charging the ecar and ebikes, hot water on from 11-5 only etc
its_me_xiphos@beehaw.org 1 day ago
Holy crap. Do you live in a bitcoin server farm? Thats insane.
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Uh, that’s really a lot.
Powderhorn@beehaw.org 1 day ago
You think using 2.2% of that is excessive?
sanzky@beehaw.org 1 day ago
that is an absurdly high price for energy. I pay on average between 20 and 30 euro cent per kwh