For the first time ever, solar is set to generate more electricity than coal in the power market managed by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. Nobody is building new coal power plants in the state, but developers are adding more solar there than anywhere else in the country. As a result of those diverging trajectories, the federal government expects ERCOT will receive 78 billion kilowatt-hours from solar in 2026, and just 60 from coal.
This trend does have seasonal variations. Last year, solar output beat coal on a monthly basis from March through August, and this year it is expected to do so from March through December, per the US Energy Information Administration at the Department of Energy.
The problem is the storage… you still need a way to cheaply store all that eneegy to use at night, otherwise you still need all the other options like aeolic… anyway, its allways better to deversify instead of putin all your eggs in one basket
Yes wind will have a place but like solar, wind on its own also needs storage but is not falling in cost at anything like the same pace.
Happily storage is not a problem. Like PV the storage tech is getting better and cheaper each year at a similar if not faster rate.
Large scale storage is already reshaping grids. Even those that run on conventional energy.
This article by that bastion of conservative thinking “The Economist” did a big spread on this topic at the last Summer solstice.
#solar
https://www.economist.com/interactive/essay/2024/06/20/solar-power-is-going-to-be-huge