Wait this is actually amazing, I had no idea it was that high. I can’t even believe what the US admin is doing, this is clearly the winning technology.
US is divesting from renewables because it planned to go to war with the rest of the world, which it depends on for renewables (rare earth materials). As a result it's forced to focus on oil and coal instead because it can produce that within the northwestern hemisphere. New strategic plan is likely to take over greenland, drill in arctic, expand rigs in gulf of mexico, spin up coal plants, and do deals with govt they install in Venezuela. This is the "America First" plan - reject globalism, completely control the home turf like Russia, build up warfighting apparatus, use that to go take over more countries and extract wealth there. (Guess who came up with the plan? US isn't a threat to Russia if US stays on its side of the ocean)
Makes sense - solar especially. It's just more financially smart to buy something that will generate electricity for 20-30 years with little to no maintenance than a plant that requires constant fuel, and is fairly complex mechanically with fluids and heat exchangers and turbines and so on. Panel efficiency keeps going up and prices keep going down, it's a snowball at this point.
We got panels on our house, and a year later I posted the results, costs, savings, etc on the community facebook page.
Tons of people calling me names and saying I’m just virtue signalling.
My reply was that I spend $0, and over the next 20 years I’ll pocket $25k.
Who cares about the environment with free money.
Solar capacity is always misleading because it’s intermittent. Capacity of a gas power plant can’t be compared to capacity of a solar power plant, even though it sounds like you are comparing the same thing. Would love to know total kWh generated.
Clean generation is probably going to be 44% for 2025, up from 41% in 2024.
That's nuclear, hydro, wind and solar.
A glance at any chart showing that broken down reveals the solar and wind part to be growing at a surprising rate and the main hope for the future. There's no real limit to its growth leading to graphs like this:
It takes time for statistical agencies to compile reports. I haven't yet found reports covering the growth in renewable generation (actual terawatt hours) for all of 2025. But this covers 3 quarters of the year:
In the first three quarters of 2025, solar generation rose by 498 TWh (+31%) and already surpassed the total solar output in all of 2024. Wind generation grew by 137 TWh (+7.6%). Together, they added 635 TWh, outpacing the rise in global electricity demand of 603 TWh (+2.7%).
Ember is an absolute treasure. Often you'll see articles on HN from places like Elektrek which are blogspam linking back to Ember's original reporting.
Their electricity data explorer is to my knowledge the most complete on the open internet.
>At the global level, 2025 also saw a sharp rebound in non-renewable additions, which nearly doubled compared to 2024," IRENA noted. China led that drive, with 100 GW of non-renewable capacity added last year, most of which was coal.
Why is China adding so many new generation plants powered by coal? On this and other forums, I see claims all the time that solar is cheaper than coal. As the world's leading producer of solar panels, you would think that they would utilize it even more if those claims are true.
Is it just the need for power when the sun is not shining? Or is it something else?
Mostly it's that solar doesn't work at night. That means you have to use batteries, which are impractical to store more than a certain amount of energy, after which you need another very large and stable energy source. So a nation-state that can't go dark must have a constant load source, such as nuclear, hydro, or coal. There's also limitations of geography, industry, production capacity, and other issues.
> Why is China adding so many new generation plants powered by coal? On this and other forums, I see claims all the time that solar is cheaper than coal. As the world's leading producer of solar panels, you would think that they would utilize it even more if those claims are true.
Because reality is very different of propagandists and lobby reports.
Currently, not a single major country right now can afford to have energy storage capacity large enough to pass, even a single day, without sun if running exclusively on solar power.
Not even China, the biggest battery provider world wide.
Considering that to get a stable and reliable grid, the needed capacity would need to supply for weeks during Dunkelflautes, this is realisitically not going to happen before multiple decades.
China has an energy problem it need to solve now: The country is developing so its electricity consumption is growing, rapidly.
Their solution is the most pragmatic on short term: Building coal plants.
Their long term solution is also the most pragmatic on long term: Using Nuclear energy to support the baseload and a mix of hydro, solar, wind for the peaks.
The problem is in power transmission. Transmission fee is a big part of the cost. Anything helping for at home generation should be encouraged.
Right now plug in solar is starting to appear. It is big in Germany. Utah has passed a law to cut the red tapes to allow home owners to install plug in solar themselves. More states should follow.
Used to be this was almost entirely explained by hydro. Not a lot of new dams going in, and they take a long time.
The solar component is usually with caveats: the majority of growth. Because growth is slow otherwise. Solar is what part of renewables now? I couldn't easily see that stat in the noise.
Worked on the software side of increasing the rate of solar penetration in electricity networks between 2016-2020 via global solar radiation forecasting. The uptake of the software was slow the first year but then rapid once more electricity networks were struggling with knowing how much solar was in the network. Once it is easier to predict, the network becomes easier to manage, and more can be safely added, and make it economically profitable. Sucks this was a commercial operation, but excited to see all the hard work across various industries is solving problems to get more renewable energy into networks.
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[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 70.4 ms ] threadMy reply was that I spend $0, and over the next 20 years I’ll pocket $25k. Who cares about the environment with free money.
That's nuclear, hydro, wind and solar.
A glance at any chart showing that broken down reveals the solar and wind part to be growing at a surprising rate and the main hope for the future. There's no real limit to its growth leading to graphs like this:
https://www.carbonbrief.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/WEO24...
https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/solar-and-wind-growt...
In the first three quarters of 2025, solar generation rose by 498 TWh (+31%) and already surpassed the total solar output in all of 2024. Wind generation grew by 137 TWh (+7.6%). Together, they added 635 TWh, outpacing the rise in global electricity demand of 603 TWh (+2.7%).
Their electricity data explorer is to my knowledge the most complete on the open internet.
Why is China adding so many new generation plants powered by coal? On this and other forums, I see claims all the time that solar is cheaper than coal. As the world's leading producer of solar panels, you would think that they would utilize it even more if those claims are true.
Is it just the need for power when the sun is not shining? Or is it something else?
Because reality is very different of propagandists and lobby reports.
Currently, not a single major country right now can afford to have energy storage capacity large enough to pass, even a single day, without sun if running exclusively on solar power.
Not even China, the biggest battery provider world wide.
Considering that to get a stable and reliable grid, the needed capacity would need to supply for weeks during Dunkelflautes, this is realisitically not going to happen before multiple decades.
China has an energy problem it need to solve now: The country is developing so its electricity consumption is growing, rapidly.
Their solution is the most pragmatic on short term: Building coal plants.
Their long term solution is also the most pragmatic on long term: Using Nuclear energy to support the baseload and a mix of hydro, solar, wind for the peaks.
Right now plug in solar is starting to appear. It is big in Germany. Utah has passed a law to cut the red tapes to allow home owners to install plug in solar themselves. More states should follow.
The solar component is usually with caveats: the majority of growth. Because growth is slow otherwise. Solar is what part of renewables now? I couldn't easily see that stat in the noise.