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.

  • ShimmeringKoi [comrade/them]
    ·
    1 year ago

    Considering the level of grift in this country, I'll celebrate once it's all actually built and not a second earlier

  • LetMeEatCake@lemm.ee
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    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.

  • zoe @infosec.pub
    ·
    1 year ago

    200w capacity in 1 square meter ? rather use windmills instead (especially offshore)

    • lntl@lemmy.ml
      hexagon
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      I don't think so, this piece says US has ~150 GW installed. Im not sure if that includes the 32GW or not.

  • tallwookie@lemm.ee
    ·
    1 year ago

    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