Michael Tae Sweeney: What's kind of amazing is that we're actually living through a huge technology revolution where our entire power grid is being replaced by solar panels and battery storage and you hear less about it in the press than you did about the totally fake "tech" of NFTs

What's kind of amazing is that we're actually living through a huge technology revolution where our entire power grid is being replaced by solar panels and battery storage and you hear less about it in the press than you did about the totally fake "tech" of NFTs

Solar is amazing but it's not a sexy business and won't produce any charismatic billionaires. Just a bunch of boring electric utilities shutting off coal plants and turning on big boxes of batteries in electric substations. Seemingly no one is even noticing that it's happening!

Yup. Really embarrassing for California that Texas is kicking our ass in this because so many solar projects here are tied up in years-long permitting issues bsky.app/profile/bail...

There's a huge story line about the role Texas is playing in this but I feel like the rub would be if you dared to report on it they'd kill off the whole industry to own the libs

I keep pointing this factoid out but: the majority of solar capacity in the US has been installed since 2020. More capacity was installed just in 2023 than in every year before 2015 combined bsky.app/profile/enbu...

It's hard to get people to understand how radically it's changing year over year--many still think like 10 years ago where solar (i.e. most commonly panels / photovoltaics) is expensive & inefficient & rare and you can't store the power. ALL of that has changed radically & continues to do so.

That's encouraging to hear! bsky.app/profile/plug...

As one of the relative few people on this site who actually talks to venture capitalists, I can promise you the serious ones are way more excited by batteries than LLMs (while also acknowledging LLMs will change things whether we like it or not)

but the windbreaker says EXXON MOBIL instead of FBI

bsky.app/profile/rinc...

it also gets little attention, but the IRA has been a stupefyingly successful bill and is driving clean energy investment far beyond what its proponents hoped for the clean energy future still might not get here in time to stave off much of the damage but it’s coming faster than we thought

This is such fucking bullshit. You know what's one of the most used land types for solar farms? Landfills. We're not destroying virgin environments to build this stuff, it's literally being built on top of old garbage!

guy who was up in arms over a solar project on private land in rural Vermont also gives presentations about "effects of regenerative agriculture and of sustainable efforts to combat climate change and foster a healthier world for future generations." vtdigger.org/2023/01/18/c...

‘Contained fury’: Shaftsbury residents alarmed over 85-acre solar proposal - VTDiggervtdigger.org The project, which would rank among the largest solar arrays in the state, is in the beginning of its process with the Public Utility Commission.

quick question how many acres are used for oil and gas infrastructure does anybody know if the number is more than zero

To be fair, my understanding is that building solar panels on top of existing buildings side-steps a lot of permitting issues. (honestly my pipe dream is to start a company that builds solar panels over big box store parking lots)

Me whenever someone comments that we need Better Treatment For Wastewater but You Can’t Build Things That’s GHG Emissions And Bad

Lol, my Petro state of a province just banned a bunch of renewable energy projects under this mentality. No thoughts all vibes environmentalism sucks.

¿porque no los dos? www.coagrivoltaic.org

Visit | Colorado Agrivoltaic Learning Center | United Stateswww.coagrivoltaic.org The Colorado Agrivolatic Learning Center is the premier agrivoltaics research facility in the country. Sign up for a tour and learn more about the future of sustainable land stewardship with the co-lo...

What did they say? It's showing "Blocked" for me even though I've never interacted with them.

In that case, I will not follow up with the ratio of unserious VCs to serious ones.

Oh I think we can guess just from the products being offered.

We need more batteries to store the solar energy, pronto: bsky.app/profile/torr...

“California is grappling with a growing problem: Too much solar - As electricity prices go negative, the Golden State is struggling to offload a glut of solar power.” www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...

Rooftop solar panels are flooding California’s grid. That’s a problem.www.washingtonpost.com As electricity prices go negative, the Golden State is struggling to offload a glut of solar power.

Echoing that, there’s a lot of excitement in industry about this. The lack of chatter about it on social media is more a reflection of the heavy consumer tech bias of the space. Even in tech when was the last time you read much about Salesforce or SAP or Atlassian?

Grid storage capacity doubled in 2023, and is on track to almost double again in 2024. And until today's discussion with an anti-EV individual, I hadn't even heard that myself.

just curious, what were the anti-ev gripes or arguments?

The usual. Started with range and battery replacement. Then “still fossil fuel powered”. Then “renewables aren’t dispatchable” which is where I came across this.

And unfortunately Biden kept Trump's anti-solar-panel tariffs in place, but as a friend pointed out when Trump tried to protect his oil/coal funders by doing that, solar cell tech kind of follows Moore's Law, so that just delayed the process by a year or two.

the panels are now so cheap that they're a minor part of the total cost of projects so I don't really expect the tariffs to have a huge impact on total capacity installed (whether theyre a good idea overall or not idk)

I wonder how much of it was due to PG&E's absolute heel turn with regards to raising rates. All of a sudden getting solar panels became economically rational for lots of CA homeowners, plus the added potential of sticking it to the worst utility company I can think of.

This is not to say that California is the most important part of this, only that we're a very big and populous state and as such we can move the needle in major ways sometimes.

The solar company I work for has 1gw coming online in the next few years in the state I work in alone, it’s wild. And a lot of work.

Who do you work for, curious, because I was going to be an auditor, went to school (2007), but got fibromyalgia instead.

is it spread all around or more so in certain areas? I know CA and TX are adding a ton. But that doesn't affect my energy bills in gas powered NYC (I know they're working on building some wind and solar around here.....slow)

They should go for suburban shopping area parking lots. Lots of room & they can sell the idea as offering covered parking.

already happening (wal mart in particular has been really good at installing solar cover for their lots) but the cost of raising the panels up so cars can fit under them means its way more expensive than putting panels out in the desert on the ground

NYC's population is concentrated, which is good for efficiency (no driving, subways, more efficient heating) but means almost all the renewable power has to come from outside the city, in same way the water system is outside the city. Right now NYC is 95% fossil fuel (legacy of shutting Indian Pt.).

So, the challenge -- getting red counties to buy in to the huge amount of infrastructure that is coming their way to turn the lights on in NYC. Here's a solar-oriented plan: vibrantcleanenergy.com/wp-content/u... More offshore wind may be more likely, as in UK. Either way it's a lot of building...

permitting for this in NYC is an absolute nightmare

also California pays a lot more for energy than NY, so, really not sure this is the way forward if you want lower rates.

It’s everywhere. Florida is starting to ramp up quite a bit at utility scale. Iowa has been a per capita leader for years. Kansas, Ohio, Virginia, Wyoming, New Mexico, Idaho, Michigan and Utah are all sinking serious money into this.

There's glimmers of hope. Two of my neighbors put in rooftop solar in the last year.

oh I see multiple solar panels on rooftops from my window. It just seems to be at the owner's discretion.

In your neck of the woods, offshore wind has been a thing.

yes but also a very big offshore wind project was recently scrapped for not being profitable enough to the company that was doing it. I don't like Gov. Hochul is super competent or good at overseeing projects (last guy wasn't either) so we just kinda flail around

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