The U.S. solar industry expects to add a record 32 gigawatts (GW) of production capacity this year, up 53% on new capacity in 2022 and helped by investment incentives under the Inflation Reduction Act, a report published on Thursday showed.
32 GW is a lot. The average thermal coal generating station in the US is 1GW and these stations have an average capacity of 50%. That means that this colar prodution capacity enables us to displace 64 coal stations during the daytime if consumption does not grow.
Considering the level of grift in this country, I'll celebrate once it's all actually built and not a second earlier
The future of renewable energy is very promising. It's easy to miss how fast it can turn around when growth it grows so much year-to-year but starts at a small place. Keep this kind of growth up and the grid will be clean a lot faster than seems possible.
Beyond solar I'm also very hopeful about offshore wind efforts in the US.
200w capacity in 1 square meter ? rather use windmills instead (especially offshore)
Or just put them in places where people can't live easily, like the desert, which is what's being done. Also, we can do both!
excessive heat makes panel inefficient. they need to be cool to reach maximum efficiency (at 26°c) .. might as well install them offshore..but still, remote place is best place
solar actually gets a greater power density. most wind projects in the US get about 2.5 MW/km^2
Good shit. We're getting to this extremely late, but it's at least good progress.
I don't think so, this piece says US has ~150 GW installed. Im not sure if that includes the 32GW or not.
eh... consumption will always grow, but probably half of those coal stations will close - presumably the owner/operators will be able to find new sources of income
