The biggest energy story of the last fifteen years is the rise of solar photovoltaics:
Solar PV was invented in the 1950s, and began to be used in appreciable volumes for utility-scale electricity generation in the US in the early 2000s, but only around the 2010s did it start to become a large share of planned generation projects worldwide.
Since then, solar generation capacity has grown incredibly quickly. By some metrics, solar PV has been deployed faster than any other energy source in history, going from 100 terawatt-hours of generation to 1,000 terawatt-hours in just 8 years, compared to 12 years for wind and nuclear, 28 for natural gas, and 32 for coal.
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But while solar PV is growing rapidly, in absolute terms it’s still fairly small potatoes. As of 2023, solar made up around 4% of overall electricity generation, and less than 1% of total US energy production.
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Since its invention in the 1950s, the cost of solar PV has fallen by a factor of close to 10,000. In the last 10 years alone, the cost of solar PV cells has fallen by more than 50%, and they’re projected to get even cheaper. This has made solar PV one of the cheapest methods of electricity generation.
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On Earth, sunlight reaches the top of the atmosphere with an irradiance of 1,360 watts per square meter, but this gets attenuated as it travels through the air, and at Earth’s surface irradiance is about 1,000 watts (1 kilowatt) per square meter when the sun is directly overhead and not blocked by clouds. So a 21% efficient solar panel will have a maximum output of 210 watts per square meter.
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The average capacity factor of utility-scale solar PV in the US is around 23%, meaning that on average they produce 23% of the power they would if they were exposed to 1,000 watts per square meter of sunlight 24 hours a day. This capacity factor varies by location, with sunny Southwestern states having higher capacity factors than Northeastern states.
Peak power generation for a solar PV system will be in the middle of the day, when the sun is highest in the sky. This doesn’t align particularly well with patterns of electricity consumption, which tends to be highest in the early evening.
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Not only will clouds sporadically reduce the power generated from our panels, but cloud cover tends to be higher in winter, further reducing our already-anemic wintertime PV output.
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There are a few different ways we can address this intermittency problem. The most obvious one is to just use other sources of power when the sun isn’t shining; either power sources that can be turned on and off on demand (such as gas turbines), or other intermittent sources whose peaks are offset from solar (such as wind).
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In practice, dealing with intermittency requires both increasing the power produced by our panels and adding storage.
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As we increase the amount of storage, we can supply greater and greater proportions of our household’s electricity demand, reaching over 99% with 42 kilowatts (~200 square meters) of PV capacity and 80 kilowatt-hours of storage. This is around four times our maximum household power consumption, and roughly 40% more storage than the capacity of a base Tesla Model 3.
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Overall US costs are slightly more than $1,000 per kilowatt. We see that thanks to 70 years of learning curve improvements, the solar PV cells themselves are less than 1/3rd the cost of the overall system. The shrinking fraction of the cost of PV cells vs the rest of the system are why there’s interest in things like ground-mounted solar which can eliminate racking entirely, and reducing installation costs by robotically installing solar panels.
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Because solar and storage systems don’t require purchasing fuel, and have almost no moving parts, operations and maintenance costs are low. NREL estimates that for utility PV, O&M is about $16 dollars per kilowatt per year, or about 1.5% of capital costs annually.
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We can see that without any sort of storage, and with low amounts of solar (where the power can simply be used immediately without any going to waste), our solar system costs around 5.7 cents per kilowatt-hour. This is smack dab in the middle of what Lazard lists as the current range for LCOE for utility-scale solar in the US, and slightly more than the average LCOE for recently built US utility-scale solar plants.
However, as we expand the size of our system to serve a greater fraction of our electricity demand, our cost per kilowatt-hour quickly rises. At 50% of electricity served, we’re at 13 cents a kilowatt-hour. At 70% we’re over 16 cents. At 90%, we’re nearly 25 cents.
Manhattan Contrarian has posted a large number of analyses of solar and wind generating plant. The short answer is that they make no sense whatever, except for a few, small niche applications.
The killer is battery costs. MC estimates that the batteries needed to offset intermittency if the whole US were powered by renewables would cost fully half the total US GDP, and the continuing (amortized) battery cost would amount to 5 to 10% of GDP annually.
Note that that battery cost alone. Costs for a massively expanded electrical transmission network and for the generators themselves is NOT included. Note also that because renewables are very low density power sources, both the generators and their associated electrical networks are very much larger than nuclear- or fossil-fuel based systems.
PS The capacity factors for large installations are much smaller than the 23% cited in the extract. Texas PUCO estimates the overall capacity factor for Texas renewable to be 9.8%. Such misrepresentations are standard practice among solar and wind advocates.
PPS Fossil fuel power plants are expandind at about the same rate as renewables, so the fraction of electricity sourced from renewables is not changing. Between them, China and India start up about 3 to 4 coal-fired power plants per month.
Very true, Bob. It is unfortunate that such obvious facts are not more widely known. The ignorance about electric power should shame every advocate of wind and solar schemes.
Wind has to be replaced every 10 to 15 years. Solar every 20. Batteries every 5 to 10 years. All expensive, and all destructive to the power grid in actual use.
Operating costs are all grossly understated and ultimately ruinous to rate payers.
Every square yard of solar panels on good ground is a square yard of farming land lost, probably forever.
Bob Sykes says:
They have sense as a way to put the real industry on a leash and raise fake industry (which starts on a leash, because it cannot exist on its own without state suppressing real industry).
Also, for costs the scale matters a lot. A modest rotor over a barn is one thing. Just make sure the bearings don’t clog with dust or something.
But large bird-grinders not only have starting costs with requirements like concrete foundation, they consume energy when there’s no wind. If a huge asymmetrically hung turbine is not rotating for too long, axles and bearings deform too much and will break on restart. Lubricant must be at the right temperature. Control circuitry for all this should not overheat. Negative net output is quite possible in the worst cases.
As to the storage, an electric train going uphill and generating when it’s allowed to go down was found to be no less practical option than accumulator banks.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=“rail+energy+storage”&ia=web
It’s reasonable to assume compared to this… Incredible Machine grade solution, no method so far was found to be better in every parameter which counts.
Here in South Africa there is a special case for domestic solar with adequate battery backup. We had electricity blackouts of four hours on and four hours off. I bought a 6500kW generator so we could cook and watch TV, but even running it four hours a day the gasoline cost a fortune. So I went rooftop solar. It’s almost fully paid off now, but even when I was paying installments it was a lot cheaper than gasoline, and we have power 24/7.
The biggest draw of solar and wind is psychological. Some people who never passed a calculus course in their lives, who get their ideas of nuclear waste from Hollywood movies with glowing green slime, think that nuclear power plants are ticking time bombs. These people want to live in a Chobani yogurt commercial.
For reference, here is a Chobani yogurt commercial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-Ng5ZvrDm4
These people *like* solar panels and wind turbines. These people do not like counting kilowatt-hours. They like the Chobani vibes.
Gaikokumaniakku says:
If so, do they act on this when the choice immediately costs them more than a tiny inconvenience?
Mostly virtue signaling. But it’s subsidized, so also deliberate collaboration with the looters, for a share. Then the first wave of loot dries up, in a surprising twist the bureaucratic robbery turns on them, and much wailing ensues: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/03/18/how-a-heat-pump-destroyed-one-consumers-perfect-energy-rating/
T. Beholder wrote:
I have great sympathy for technophiles who strive for self-sufficiency, even when they use unproven technologies to seek out that ideal. But if a government gives those technophiles a “certification” then it goes the way government usually goes.
Some ultra-green technophiles seem to have considerable success by emphasizing the physical self-sufficiency of their experimental homesteads. Example:
https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/about/the-solar-website/
It is virtue signalling, certainly, but it seems to be a robust technology.
Gaikokumaniakku says:
Well, yes. Minimizing external dependencies, especially controlled by whims of loons and thieves is just sane. But it gets warped easily.
My favourite example is European corruption of methane infrastructure: it’s something obviously useful turned into abomination.
What the actual people need: scalable solutions to turn existing waste (whether from cities or farms) into heat and electricity, it’s win-win. And mutual economy-of-scale bonuses with other methane options. What actually happens: oversized “monster digesters” eat crops, overuse roads and explode in toxic gunk.
Why? The design and usage are not driven by real-world forces like the end user demand or actual costs of externalities. There’s a distorted market, and then there’s broken market. Yet another fake industry of “green blob”.
I am actually doing some research on various forms of biofuels. I had not gone looking for horror stories, but now that you have mentioned it, I did find one:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4078820/The-great-green-guzzler-Monster-digesters-meant-guzzle-waste-churn-eco-friendly-energy-fed-CROPS-produce-pitiful-levels-power-cost-216m-subsidies-HARM-environment.html
Such horror stories will be useful to my discussions with green energy enthusiasts in the coming weeks, so if you have any to share, I am all ears. [Also if you have success stories or general advice for green energy entrepreneurs, let me know!] Comments should be free for all at:
https://gaikokumaniakku.wordpress.com/2025/04/05/disasters-of/
If I pushed the right buttons, you should be able to comment anonymously without logging in.
Gaikokumaniakku says:
DailyMail link is under the name in the previous post. A good overview, yes. =)
Generally, many links and even cross-posts appeared on wattsupwiththat.com over the years. Like stopthesethings.com (dedicated to bird swatters) etc.