New data shows revolutionary change happening across US power grid: ‘We never expected it would happen overnight’
https://www.yahoo.com/news/data-shows-revolutionary-change-happening-101545185.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucmVkZGl0LmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAMhGBrZsCUUy0qRItRoKEbV4DjCxf2698gbqu0ZqepiZcVhPlfjWzY7Jqg4nNrHhdrsCJCMC1vhKQx6cIUF33ttqF4xCYg90xV3WDGc7MwwnPyZAHMyzKMKR6bBZV0QaRWxy_cfohWMFxTOjO205lo62u7tC5kTuZgdbuQGuTgMY
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From the article
According to the [Federal Energy Regulatory Commission](https://cms.ferc.gov/media/energy-infrastructure-update-october-2024) and the U.S. [Energy Information Administration](https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/), more than 30% of the nation’s [utility-scale electricity generation](https://www.publicpower.org/system/files/documents/Americas-Electricity-Generation-Capacity-2024.pdf) capacity comes from renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, biomass, geothermal, and hydropower. In other words, if all power plants in the country operated at full power capacity, 30% of the energy sources would be a blend of those renewables. That number is expected to climb to 37% by 2037, which shows how quickly renewables are proving to be viable in the marketplace.
Good, Oil Barons make enough as is and cause a lot of damage with plastics in oceans and rivers. Once we get off the oil kick, it should help cleanup the environment (outside of nickel mining).
Key word here is “capacity”.
Which is totally misleading because nameplate capacity is an engineering number known with absolute certainty even before any renewable project is even started.
There as absolutely nothing “revolutionary” and totally obscures the main criticism of renewables: their intermittency, time correlation and real produced energy.
Renewables are a way forward, but there is no need to blatantly lie about their problems.
Suspiciously sensationalist and spammy source…what is The Cool Down?
Science illiterate dreck. Connected capacity is not generating capacity.
Too little, too late. Enough warming in the pipeline for at least +10C by the end of the century, and that’s not accounting for tipping points and slow feedbacks. Oh well, at least we tried?
Surely the article was supposed to read 37% by **2027**, not 2037?
It makes zero sense to gain 7% in 12 years when we went from negligible renewables to 30% in the last 12 years, given the transition is accelerating.
Yes, but there is still one thing the corrupt have not allowed, and that is for you, if you generate your own power through solar, let’s say, to sell as much excess power as you wish to the grid, as opposed to limiting that amount.
Furthermore, instead of the baloney arrangements they have now, where instead of being paid cash for your power, as you would be for selling anything else, the utility ‘deducts the amount from your future utility bills’ (which you may not even have) or you get something like a tax credit.
I’m talking about money in your pocket. Putting solar on the roof and buying one or two batteries for energy storage is still very expensive, and one thing that would incentivize a lot of people to take the plunge is if they knew they could immediately start making money with it.
The utilities have always been a very corrupt affair. I think they are trying to protect their existence now, because in not too many years, all the different kinds of renewable will be producing more than enough power for the grid, with the rest stored in grid scale batteries. So first of all, I would like to sell my power to the grid, not to the utility, if you see what I’m saying.
Or maybe it could become possible for all the houses on a block to be wired together, as it were, so that when other homeowners on my street, go dark during a blackout, I could sell them some of my power.
Like I say, power is a commodity and should be treated like any other.
Only 30%? And that’s connected capacity rather than actual output? Those are rookie numbers.
Right now, right this second, the UK is generating 45.3% of its demand from renewables, with only 21.8% from fossil fuels. Yesterday we hit 61.6% renewables thanks to high winds with fossil fuels down to 14.8%.
On the 4th of January 2023 we hit a record of 87.6% renewable energy.
The UK has shut down all its coal power plants, some of them have been converted to burn biomass but that’s only 3.5% of our demand right now (biomass is NOT counted in renewable statistics, its listed alongside nuclear). The only fossil fuel plants we have now are natural gas.
30% is a step in the right direction and an important milestone to hit, but the US has a very long way to go.
Trump will be furious.
Deeply Republican counties are starting to ban renewable energy projects.