Solar generates more energy in US than coal for first time

The latest 2025 summary report[0] has some great information, some top-level call-outs

  - Solar power alone met 75% of the net increase in electricity demand. Together with wind, the two sources met almost all (99%) demand growth.
  - For the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, and only the fifth time this century, fossil generation did not rise, recording a small fall of 38 TWh (-0.2%)
  - For the first time in 100 years, renewables (33.8%, 10,730 TWh) overtook coal power (33.0%, 10,476 TWh) in the global electricity mix...

This administration swapped to actively suppressing Wind and Solar via tariffs etc, and yet the trends continued because the underlying economic reality heavily favors battery backed solar.

For whatever reason, there’s a strong motivation for people to dismiss the gigantic global effort to transition the energy system away from fossil fuels, and claim that all that effort isn’t really doing anything. Thankfully, this is not true — determined people can change things for the better.

Natural gas's share of electricity generation has been falling for five years straight:

https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/gas-share-in-global...

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/installed-solar-pv-capaci...

that obviously depends on time of use and the sun etc, but balcony solar in the USA can’t come fast enough. my electricity in NYC is almost $.40/kWh, a limited secondary source is still huge

it makes a lot of sense to me as someone who has casually researched as a way to make the load of an A/C vanish from the perspective of my utility, but i can’t see regulations catching up nationwide soon.

any real microinverters can detect the grid being down and shut off to prevent zapping people working on power lines, but the complexities of split-phase power (you can consume on one leg but backfeed on the other leg rather than consume what you generate, which is bad for billing etc) and risks of intra-circuit overload will all freak out americans.

we put outlets absolutely everywhere because of how scared we are of extension cords, there’s an education and “am i going to start an electrical file” consumer sentiment obstacle to widespread adoption in the US

Usage varies second by second, so the grid relies on physical inertia in the form of rotating turbines. Panels have no inertia; therefore, the more you have the less stable the grid gets.

That is however something which can be fixed by grid-scale batteries. Or home systems, for that matter, if they have batteries and some equivalent of Victron’s PowerAssist.

(Which limits the rate at which power draw can change. Very useful when you use a house-sized generator; it amounts to synthetic inertia. I have a 7kW generator, but a 7kW step load would stall it.)

The reason is: when you pull electricity from the grid, the fuse would blow if you tried to pull too much current (e.g. you connect four hair dryers on the same outlet). It blows to prevent the wiring in your home from overheating and catching on fire. With balcony solar, you plug it in your home outlet which is already behind the fuse, which means the fuse cannot react and cut off power if you try to feed in more than the capacity allows. You could be maxing out on the current you are pulling from the grid, and then on top of that you would be adding your balcony solar.

Why it's allowed at all in Germany and other places is because the fuse will blow above 10A and the wiring in the house is 16A, so there was always a buffer or overcapacity in the wiring, presumably just in case. So they allowed 800W of balcony solar which is roughly 3.5A and still there is some wiggle room left.

Also why pull from the grid at all: your appliances actually just use the electricity from the grid. In Germany and I guess most of Europe they run a three phase system, so your balcony solar might not be in the same physical circuit as your appliances in use. With balcony solar your meter just offsets your consumption with whatever you are feeding it at the moment. From the grid standpoint if you are running something using 800W and feeding in 800W, it's 0.

Of course it can work without this too, but this defeats the purpose of balcony solar, which is plug it in and it works simplicity.

We don't need a more plug and play system. A zero agreement interconnection for whatever UL certified 300W-ish scale is fine and should be widely deployed.

There needing to be interconnection agreements with your utility and an inspection is not a blocker that needs to be removed. Most places require a licensed electrician for complex work, having the electrician fill out a form and having a utility inspection is how things should be.

And total US GHG emissions are currently at about the same level as they were in 1988.

Quickly being in the next decade or two.

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67205

- Solar: +87 TWh/year (assuming 23% capacity factor, lower end of US range)

- Gas: +9TWh/year (6.3GW new, 4.6GW retirements, higher end of US capacity factor of 60%) https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67206

This is in the face of massive growth for grid demand for the first time in decades, so the trend will accelerate.

New gas turbine manufacturing capacity is tapped out, causing new gas CapEx to get more expensive:

https://www.woodmac.com/press-releases/gas-turbine-prices-so...

Meanwhile solar and storage are continually plummeting in price.

So the current trend of approximately all new generation being renewables is going to accelerate. And then it will start eating into older, existing generation assets, causing early retirements of existing gas generation capacity.

Most investors think that any new gas generation built today will be a stranded asset long before its end of life. That doesn't matter to the hyperscalers, who run them so poorly and hard that the turbine shafts die in a few years and can afford it, but for regular utilities, buying any new gas generation is a boondoggle meant to soak the ratepayers and capture the guaranteed profit rate.

And the numbers above ignore residential solar, which will further lessen demand for gas, and as the cost of transmission and distribution soar on the grid, residential solar becomes an always better deal, because it skips all that.

The global cost-minimum for a future grid will have gas on it for maybe 20 more years, but not much after that. We'll switch to lots of storage and tons of over-capacity of solar and wind.

Here we are reading about solar overtaking coal. Coal was producing more grid electricity than gas relatively recently, in 2015.

The rate of growth of solar-produced electricity is accelerating. Given another decade, there's every chance it can supplant gas as well.

> Solar generates more energy in US than coal for the last time

Then the actual title is what confused me for a second.

Let's not avoid assigning responsibility when it is so clear.

Oh, snap, did Turkey attack Cyprus again? :-p

What West Asian war? Isn't Iran firmly in the Middle East by any reasonable definition?