Discussion
Renewables reached nearly 50% of global electricity capacity last year
Ancalagon: 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.
toomuchtodo: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/installed-solar-pv-capaci...https://ourworldindata.org/renewable-energyhttps://ourworldindata.org/grapher/modern-renewable-energy-c...(global solar PV deployment is just a bit below ~1TW/year at current deployment rates)
cucumber3732842: Installed capacity is a misleading number. If you assessed the trucking industry by simply sum-ing the rated capacity of all the hardware you'd be rightfully laughed and and called a liar on the basis of all the times the trucks are empty and all the trucks that run out of volume before weight. Renewables is a similar situation.Some panel in a solar farm in Canada is not gonna see the conditions that let it produce rated capacity nearly as often as one in Arizona. So the guy in Canada installs more capacity to get the same power. Meanwhile the guy in Arizona doesn't have enough copper leading out of his site to handle the power he could produce at peak on the best days, because he over-provisioned too, in order to be able to produce a given amount earlier/later in the day. The actual generation hardware is so cheap that this is just the sensible way to deploy renewables, but it makes for stupid misleading numbers.
toomuchtodo: This is a common talking point, but not grounded in reality. Even assuming ~20% capacity factor, solar and batteries are the cheapest form of power to install. Current geopolitical events spiking LNG costs make the math even more favorable towards renewables.https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/24-hour-solar-now-ec...https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/solar-electricity-e...> Legacy power generation has much different numbers and isn't subject to the whims of the weather so installed capacity is a number that means something in that context.Legacy power is ridiculously expensive in comparison.https://www.lazard.com/media/eijnqja3/lazards-lcoeplus-june-...
lifty: 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.
recursive: Well see, we're sick of winning.
cbmuser: Capacity doesn’t matter, generation does.
pepperoni_pizza: > This is a common rebuttal, but not grounded in reality. Even assuming ~20% capacity factor for "apples to apples" comparison to legacy thermal and nuclear, solar and batteries are the cheapest form of power to install.I looked it up because I was curious, according to Wikipedia average PV capacity factor is 25 % in USA, 10 % in the UK or Germany.Nuclear has 88 % capacity factor worldwide. Meaning to replace 1 GW of nuclear installed capacity you need 8.8 GW of PV installed capacity in Germany or 3.5 GW of PV installed capacity in US.Which might still be economically worth it, I don't know. But it is a number that surprised it.
Night_Thastus: 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.
Gander5739: Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/3226/
_aavaa_: I understand why people are downvoting you, but we still have a bit to go before renewables make up 50% of yearly electricity generation.Not as far as you’d think though. According to [0] in 2024 it was 6.9% solar, 8.1% wind, and 14.3% hydro, I.e. 29% renewables. Given the trajectory I wouldn’t be surprised if that total was ~33% in 2025.[0]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-prod-source-s...
rendang: By your definition/chart, we were 0% solar, 0% wind, and 20% hydro in 1985 for 20% total renewables. So, 20% -> 29% in 4 decades
mentalgear: This is far higher than I expected: a much needed, remarkably good reason to be cheerful about the future after all !
jeffbee: The Trump administration is secretly the head of a renewable energy accelerationist front, or at least that's the effect in practice.
pepperoni_pizza: > The Trump administration is secretly the head of a renewable energy accelerationist front"accelerationist" yes, not sure about the other parts.
cucumber3732842: I didn't say they weren't cheap. I said you were being misleading.They're so cheap they get over-provisioned on purpose. Can you imagine some guy speci'ng switchgear and transmission lines for a coal or gas plant that can't handle the plant running full tilt? Yeah me either. But that's exactly how it's done for renewables because that's where the sweet spot of cost-benifit is.A dozen 10mw turbines might be fed through 100mw of transmission hardware. They can never produce their rated 120mw because liquid copper would happen if they did. But they were intentionally provisioned that way so that based on weather patterns and whatnot they'd be able to expect say 80mw a certain number of days per year.There are untold numbers of renewable installations out there that cannot supply their nameplate capacity to the grid in such a manner.
toomuchtodo: There is nothing wrong with over provisioning cheap renewable power generation when it is economically superior to building fossil assets that will end up stranded. As long as grid demand is met and it is cheaper to build renewables and batteries to do it, it will be done, and that is the path we're on.If gas plants cannot economically compete, they will not be built or fired. And the evidence shows they cannot compete, regardless of their competing capacity factor and dispatchability.
pepperoni_pizza: Do you have some links to how someone scaled up storage? I know that scaling up solar is easy, but I don't know of any nation that build significant storage.
joe_mamba: >it's a snowball at this point.That's why Putin attacked in 2022, and didn't wait any longer to build a stronger military. He knew he was on the clock as Europe slowly switched to renewables his fossil fuel leverage got weaker.Unrelated, but doomer version of me expects that China will wait for the US to exhaust it's cruise missile supply bombing Iran, then move over Taiwan. Hope I'm wrong about this.
kibwen: China would have no need to wait for the US to exhaust its cruise missile supply before attacking Taiwan. The amount of firepower that China can muster from the mainland is enough to completely overwhelm any amount of conventional firepower that the US can bring to bear in the region. All US ships and airbases closer than (and including) Guam are toast in a serious war.
JumpCrisscross: > The amount of firepower that China can muster from the mainland is enough to completely overwhelm any amount of conventional firepower that the US can bringA lesson we learn again in 2026: one can’t seize and hold territory with air power alone.
toomuchtodo: https://about.bnef.com/insights/clean-energy/global-energy-s...https://www.iea.org/commentaries/global-battery-markets-are-...https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
ashutoshmishr88: curious how this scales with larger datasets. anyone tried it in production?
philipkglass: [delayed]
myrmidon: Yes, but thats a bad extrapolation because per-capita electricity consumption was still rising then but is mostly flat/decreasing in western countries since 2000 or so, and the significant rise in reneably fraction mostly started after 2000.The hydro fraction is also a really bad indicator in general, because it basically just reflects geography of a country and not really its effort to reduce CO2 emissions.
cucumber3732842: A lot of people who are cheering right now are going to be screaming bloody murder in 10-20yr when the "below this population density generation and storage makes more sense than grid" threshold creeps up into the lower end of suburban population densities and some industrial users can just buy the fields or hills around their factories and put up panels or wind turbines rather than negotiate with a bunch of entities.Energy independence is a two way street. This is essentially a soft power lever that is going to go away.
myrmidon: I honestly don't see a big problem with that.First: The same argument applies to suburban population, where autarky is even easier/cheaper than for industrial consumers: Just slap panels on the roof and a bunch of batteries into a shed, done. We won't even need much cheaper panels nor cells, really; it's mainly labor, integrator-margins and regulations that make this less (financially) attractive than the grid right now.Second: If industrial consumers stop contributing towards electric grid costs and the general public dislikes it, you can just regulate against it, problem solved. But in practice governments already try to make the energy situation as appealing as possible for industry, so there is very little actually leveraged power that you really give up anyway.
toomuchtodo: It takes ~10 years to build a new nuclear generator from breaking ground to first kw to the grid, and tens of billions of dollars or euros. Germany deploys ~2GW/month of solar, the US ~4-5GW/month. Total global nuclear generation capacity is ~380GW as of this comment. At current global solar PV deployment rates, even assuming capacity factor delta between solar and nuclear, you could replace total global nuclear generation with ~18 months of solar PV deployment.
mustyoshi: Nuclear fills a base load role better than solar+battery though, imo.A healthy power network will have a variety of generations sources available.
lostlogin: > The hydro fraction is also a really bad indicator in general, because it basically just reflects geography of a country and not really its effort to reduce CO2 emissions.As a ‘clean green New Zealander’, your comment is perfect.We trash our country in such appalling ways. The fact they there aren’t many of us and that the easy way of getting power is hydro is coincidence, not a national conscience.
boringg: True but having capacity allows for generation - doesn't work the other way around.AKA the forward march of progress.
mhh__: You have to massively overprovision some renewables
cbmuser: Compare the price and carbon density of the French electricity grid with that of California to understand why that rebuttal is justified.
toomuchtodo: France had to nationalize EDF due to the exorbitant cost of their nuclear fleet, and they cannot get a reactor built within reasonable capital costs. Spain plans to deprecate their remaining nuclear for renewables for similar reasons. California will achieve a low carbon generation profile for far cheaper than it cost France (refer to the Lazard LCOE data product I've cited in my other comment in this thread).EDF fleet upkeep will cost over 100 billion euros by 2035, court of auditors says - https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/edf-fleet-upkeep-wil... - November 17th, 2025French utility EDF lifts cost estimate for new reactors to 67 billion euros - Les Echos - https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/french-utility-edf-l... - March 4th, 2024Explainer-Why a French plan to take full control of EDF is no cure-all - https://www.euronews.com/next/2022/07/07/edf-nationalistion - July 7th, 2022Spain’s Nuclear Shutdown Set to Test Renewables Success Story - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-11/spain-s-n... | https://archive.today/4fB7K - April 11th, 2025 (“Spain is a postcard, a glimpse into the future where you’re not going to need baseload generators from 8am to 5pm” with solar and wind providing all of the grid’s needs during that time, said Kesavarthiniy Savarimuthu, a European power markets analyst with BloombergNEF. Still, she said, there is a reasonable chance this goal may take longer than expected and “extending the life of the nuclear fleet can prove as an insurance for these delays.”) (My note: As of this comment, Spain has 7.12GW of nuclear generation capacity per ree.es, and assuming ~2GW/month deployment rate seen in Germany, could replace this capacity with solar and batteries in ~17 months; per Electricity Maps, only 15.45% of Spain's electrical generation over the last twelve months has been sourced from this nuclear: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/ES/12mo/monthly)
adev_: > France had to nationalize EDF due to the exorbitant cost of their nuclear fleetThat's just wrong.EDF nuclear fleet is highly profitable with around 92TWh exported in 2025 and more than 5 Billions of benefits for the country and the company.https://www.sfen.org/rgn/le-nucleaire-en-chiffres-923-twh-de...The reason EDF had to be nationalized is because the government used the company as a "price shield" to protect consumer against energy price rise on the European market in 2022 with a mechanism named TRV (Tarif Régulé vente). That digged up EDF dept tremendously.> Spain plans to deprecate their remaining nuclear for renewables for similar reasonsSpan deprecated their nuclear government because their current Socialist government is aligned with Ecologists that are, like everywhere in Europe, antinuclear.Additionally, the lack of spinning generator in Spain is currently partially what caused the Blackout in Spain in 2025 due to a lack of inertia in the system.> EDF fleet upkeep will cost over 100 billion euros by 2035, court of auditors saysThis is over 25 years and will prolong-ate the lifetime of the 56 reactors by 20 more years. These produce 70% of the country need in electricity.In comparison, the German energiewende cost 400 billions for 37% of electricity of 2025 produced by solar and wind. With production medium that will need to be entirely renewed in 20 years.> California will achieve a low carbon generation profile for far cheaper than it cost France (refer to the Lazard LCOEThat is also wrong.Because LCOE calculation does not take into consideration the price of the grid consolidating necessary for renewable nor the necessity of backup generation in case of dunkleflaute.
toomuchtodo: The electrical utility DTE, in Michigan, required Google to do this for their new datacenter ("Project Cannoli") to not increase consumer energy prices. They are building solar and battery storage to serve the load, as it is the cheapest and fastest new generation that can be built.I see nothing wrong with power users committing to clean energy and storage to accelerate their development plans, or to allow them at all.https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/infrastructure-and-clo...Regulatory filing: https://mi-psc.my.site.com/s/case/500cs00001amKTrAAM/in-the-...> Google’s data center operations will be served by 2.7 gigawatts (GW) of new resources for the grid, including solar power, advanced storage technologies and demand flexibility. This Clean Capacity Acceleration Agreement with DTE (the same structure as the Clean Transition Tariff) will bring new, clean resources online, while supporting the state’s transition away from coal-fired power. As part of our standard approach to building new data centers, Google will fully cover its electricity costs and infrastructure needs, helping to ensure that its growth protects local ratepayers and actively bolsters the long-term resilience of the state’s electricity grid.
epistasis: Can't have generation without capacity...
akamaka: What’s the point of saying one stat is better than another, when all of them are meaningful in a different way? When renewables reach big numbers of TWh, someone will say “total generation is misleading if doesn’t line up with demand; what matters is capacity for power when we actually need it”.
richwater: > what matters is capacity for power when we actually need ituh,...yea?
rembal: I'm too lazy to double check the numbers, but as far as I remember, Germany in order to increase it's average generation by 10% had to expand capacity by 70% in solar plus wind. With stats like this, there's a thin line between progress and waste. And all this while we have nuclear. (How the world really works, Vaclav smil if anybody is less lazy than me)
lnsru: I would say as electrician in Bavaria: there are enough empty roofs for solar. Especially in poorer neighborhoods. I saw similar numbers and they are scary: to reliably replace conventional power plant one needs 20x the power of wind and solar. And this hardware must be imported from China, there is no large scale production of solar equipment in Europe.
