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.
So not quite 1% even. Progress is progress, I guess.
What is scary is that barely 1% represents a hella lot of coal plants.
Actually, it looks like renewables have overtaken coal, with the majority of fossil fuel energy being provided by natural gas plants. I’m personally fine with newer LNG plants, since they (1) are actually quite clean, and (2) burn a byproduct that we get from making gasoline.
Source: https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3
Last i saw the US had just got to the point of having more solar generation than coal, it’s a great milestone because in this broken world it means we’ll have not solar lobbyists than coal lobbyists