How Solar Energy is Changing Power Generation

Why America's Biggest Oil State Is Racing to Build Solar Farms Imagine Texas in summer: Air conditioners running full blast, millions of homes drawing power, and energy demand hitting new records. A few years ago, this would have meant emergency alerts asking people to turn off their lights. But something remarkable just happened. This summer, despite record-breaking energy demand, Texas kept the lights on with ease. The surprising reason? The oil capital of America is increasingly powering itself with sunshine. Let's break down this unexpected transformation: 1. The Scale of Change - Texas now produces more solar power than California - Battery storage is set to double this year alone - Even oil companies are switching their drilling operations to electric power - The state could need twice as much electricity by 2030 2. What Made This Work - Solar farms provided massive power during peak heat - New battery systems bridged the evening gap when sun sets - Free market rules made renewable projects easier to build - Private companies rushed to invest without government mandates 3. Why It Matters Beyond Texas - Other states facing similar energy challenges - Data centers and new factories driving huge demand everywhere - Shows renewables can handle extreme weather reliably - Proves clean energy can thrive in traditional oil country Here's what makes this fascinating: The same state that made its fortune on oil is now leading America's renewable energy boom—not because of climate concerns, but because it makes economic sense. When the market speaks this clearly, everyone listens. Question for energy professionals: What lessons can other states learn from Texas's rapid renewable energy expansion? What surprised you most about their success? #EnergyTransition #Infrastructure #Innovation #BusinessStrategy

We are in the cold and dark days of December and our rooftop solar panels do not produce much power. But between March and October they have generated more than enough to meet our annual need. Thanks to our utilities policy of crediting us for power fed back into the grid we will not pay anything for our electricity! Our solar panel installation is like a long-term bond paying a high tax-free rate of return. We are not alone. Solar panels adorn the roofs of neighboring homes. Rainy Oregon has just approved one of the country's largest solar farms with a capacity of over 1 GW. Solar is now the cheapest source of new electric power including capital and operational costs. On average, new annual solar capacity installations have been three times higher than recurring five-year forecasts. We cannot overestimate the ramp of solar power! Sunlight is free and limitless, but its flow is intermittent at a given place. This constrains the quantity of usable solar electricity. Besides, electricity itself provides only about 20% of the total energy consumed by the world. There are three ways in which we can use sunlight more. 1.     Transition energy demand to electric energy which is cheaply obtained from solar. For example, the technology for electric cars and heat pumps is already here. The economics of scale underway will make them ubiquitous, cheap, and clean. 2.     Deployment of grid scale batteries for storing power. The price and volume of grid scale batteries is approaching that of lithium-ion batteries that we have been using in consumer electronics for over 30 years. Annually we are putting in new grid storage equal to about 20% of added solar energy capacity. Deployment must hit a hockey stick ramp to catch up with solar panels before we can rely on solar electrical energy exclusively. 3.     Converting solar generated electrical energy into chemical energy (synthetic fuels) for our non-electrical energy needs. Here we still have a long way to go on technical feasibility and cost. These three imperatives will operate at different time scales ranging from now for the first to a few decades later for the third. While reducing carbon emissions and limiting climate change is important the immediate bonanza from solar is the benefit of cheaper electrical energy. Free trade and economics made China a manufacturing behemoth and raised hundreds of millions out of poverty. In turn Chinese investment and scale is the major driver of the cost reductions for solar panels, EVs and batteries which provide and use cheap energy and will repeat the favor for millions who still live in poverty. In Oregon we will see little sun for the next few months, but we will exult in the knowledge that it has done its part for us in summer and will continue to pour its bounty and improve human lives across the world.

Over the past ten years, global electricity generated by solar increased 10x. Another 10x increase is possible by 2034, providing abundant clean energy. In today's episode, I detail how A.I. can help us get there. 10x ☀️ GROWTH: • Solar panels cover an area the size of Jamaica, providing 6% of global electricity. • Solar capacity doubles every three years, increasing tenfold each decade. • Projected to provide 60% of world's electricity by 2034 if trend continues. • Solar could become the largest source of all energy by the 2040s. VIRTUOUS ECONOMICS: • Cost of solar-produced electricity could drop to less than half of today's cheapest options. • Virtuous cycle: Increased production lowers costs, driving up demand. • No significant resource constraints unlike all previous energy transitions (i.e., wood to coal, coal to oil, oil to gas). • All of the main ingredients (silicon-rich sand, sunny places, human ingenuity) are abundant... so the virtuous economic cycle can proceed unhindered. KEY CHALLENGES (and how to address them with data science): 1. Energy Storage and Grid Management: • Complementary storage solutions needed for 24/7 energy demands. • A.I. can optimize battery management systems. • Machine learning can enhance energy-grid management. 2. Heavy Industry, Aviation, and Freight Electrification: • Machine learning can optimize battery architectures. • A.I. can enhance synthetic fuel (e-fuel!) production processes. 3. Solar Energy Production Optimization: • A.I. for discovering new photovoltaic materials. • Generative A.I. to predict successful solar project locations. • A.I. to optimize solar-panel production processes. IMPACT: • Cheaper energy will boost productivity across all sectors. • Improved accessibility to essential services for billions. • Breakthroughs in drinking-water access through affordable purification and desalination. • Opportunities for unforeseen innovations in an era of energy abundance. Hear more on all this (including about a dozen resources for learning more about how you — yes, you! — can address climate/energy challenges with data science) in today's episode. The "Super Data Science Podcast with Jon Krohn" is available on your favorite podcasting platform and a video version is on YouTube (although today's episode's "video" is solely an audio-waveform animation). This is Episode #804. #superdatascience #machinelearning #ai #climatechange #solar #energy

We just got some new US electricity data on Thursday. Net solar additions are way up. Wind and natural gas are falling. I’m talking about the new Electric Power Monthly report from the US Energy Information Administration. Data for July 2023 was just released. It’s one of my favorite reports to dive through each month. Just tons of really interesting data. The chart below shows trailing 12-month net capacity additions in Gigawatts (GW) from January 2011 through July 2023. We can clearly see how US power generation infrastructure is transforming under our feet. The growth in solar generation capacity is astonishing. In the last 12 months, we’ve added 14 GW of new solar. The next biggest add in that window is 7 GW for wind, followed by 3 GW of natural gas. In that same period, we’ve lost 13 GW of coal to retirements. It’s worth pointing out the trajectory of adds here. Trailing 12-month solar additions peaked in late 2021 and early 2022, fell a bit, but have now recovered back to their previous peak. But look at wind and natural gas. They’re both falling. Quickly. Wind peaked at 12 GW of net additions in the 12 months ending in October 2021. It’s been an aggressive ramp down to just 7 GW of net additions over the most recent 12 months. Something similar happened for natural gas. We had 15 GW of net additions in the 12 months ending in March 2019. But we’ve only added 3 net GW of capacity over the most recent 12 months. In aggregate, since 2011 we’ve added 105 GW of wind, 73 GW of solar, and 60 GW of natural gas. We’ve lost 101 GW of coal. That’s not exactly apples-to-apples though. These different technologies have meaningfully different capacity factors, meaning they generate different volumes of total electricity per GW of capacity. I weighted the net capacity addition for each technology by that technology’s reported capacity factor for the past 12 months. With this weighting, since 2011 we see that wind added 36 effective GW, solar added 18 GW, and natural gas added 24 GW. Coal lost 43 effective GW. Again, those last numbers are non-standard. They’re weighted by capacity factor. We know a GW of natural gas capacity produces more electricity than a GW of wind or solar. I wanted to account for that difference in the aggregate results. Still, even after adjusting the renewables downward relative to gas and coal, we see a strong remaking of US power infrastructure in the direction of wind and solar, with natural gas also growing, while coal continues to fall by the wayside. #energy #power #renewableenergy #wind #solar

It’s been over TWO DECADES since an energy source had a year like #solar did in 2024.    We just got the latest numbers... and wow.    According to the Solar Energy Industries Association and Wood Mackenzie’s Solar Market Insight 2024 Year in Review report, the United States installed a record-breaking 50 gigawatts (GW) of new solar capacity in 2024. That is the most new capacity added to the grid by any single energy technology in over two decades.    That’s not just a historic year for solar... it’s a historic year for the entire energy industry.    Solar and storage together accounted for 84% of all new electric generating capacity added to the grid last year.     Think about that...    Nearly 9 of every 10 new electrons added to the grid last year are from clean energy.    This is an essential data point for our industry.    At #CERAWeek 2025, we have heard one thing over and over: we need new capacity to meet skyrocketing demand.    Well, our industry is actually doing it.    Solar and storage added 5x more new capacity to the grid last year than all other energy sources COMBINED.    Solar and storage can be built faster and more affordably than any other technology.    And that is crucial to ensuring the United States has the power needed to compete in the global economy and meet rising electricity demand.    There is a ton in this report, and I encourage you to dive in. Check out all the latest solar and storage date: https://lnkd.in/ecHWeg27   

The headline that caught my eye this week was "Cheap Solar Panels Are Changing the World." Here's my take:   The numbers coming out of the solar industry continue to be impressive. This article cites a report suggesting a 29 percent increase in global solar capacity this year alone, with solar playing a pronounced role in energy-challenged parts of the world.    The interesting part of solar, also highlighted in this report, is that it is partially connecting the development of electricity systems to its origins of decentralized power generation. As Gretchen Bakke highlights in the book I'm currently reading - The Grid: The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future - the early days of electrification involved power generation on the premises of businesses and the homes of some wealthy families. That equation shifted as Samuel Insull built a system of utilities with centralized generation, which is what we are mostly accustomed to today.   The article notes that roughly 40 percent of the growth in solar is powering individual homes and businesses — something that especially makes sense in regions of the world with deficient energy infrastructure and where solar is able to stand on its own and where cost differences between utility scale generation and distributed generation are not as relevant.

Did you know around 1.5 million homes are now equipped with solar panels? This is a 14,000% increase from 2010.⚡️ —> The sunniest spring on record boosted solar generation by 42%, producing 7.6 TWh between January - May, accounting for over 10% of UK electricity in March and April —> As of early 2025, the UK hit 18 GW total capacity, up 1.3 GW in 2024 alone. Solar is evolving into a foundational element of modern energy systems, offering affordable, scalable, rapidly deployable, and readily adaptable power generation. When combined with energy storage and strategies for shifting demand, solar goes beyond simply being a green energy source to becoming a critical and integral part of the grid's structure. Credit: Tamma Carel Video: Cleo Abram

Solar and battery component prices fell 30-50% in a single year. Renewables are now outpacing fossil fuels at an unprecedented rate, with 10 times more investment in clean power than fossil electricity. In 2024 alone, the world installed 600 GW of solar, pushing renewables to the brink of overtaking coal as the leading global power source in 2025.   This shift is happening twice as fast in the Global South, where countries like Pakistan and Namibia have leveraged low-cost solar to nearly double their total electricity capacity in just two years. Clean energy is cheaper than ever. As the cost of renewable energy declines, the energy transition becomes an obvious economic choice. RMI: https://lnkd.in/eCm_DAPC