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US electricity demand surged in 2025 – solar handled 61% of it

241 points8 hourselectrek.co
jordanb4 hours ago

While I'm concerned about the environmental challenges of reversing the trend and increasing energy consumption, I'm happy that people are living in more comfortable homes, that the Amercian industrial base is being restored, that more and better services are being provided (better healthcare, inexpensive and healthy food, comfortable, efficient and inexpensive transportation).

That is what we're using this electricity for, right?

andsoitis2 hours ago

> That is what we're using this electricity for, right?

Yes, amongst others.

> increasing energy consumption, I'm happy that people are living in more comfortable homes, that the Amercian industrial base is being restored, that more and better services are being provided (better healthcare, inexpensive and healthy food, comfortable, efficient and inexpensive transportation).

Over the last 25 years, we've the seen the following change across the dimensions you picked:

Energy consumption: +15%

Population: +21%

Hospitals (hospital sector size as a function using employment as proxy): +45-50%

Homes: +27-30%

Food production: +23-25%

Transportation (vehicle miles travelled): +14-16%

------

Some take-aways:

Population grew faster than energy and transportation, implying major efficiency gains.

Housing stock outpaced population, reflecting smaller household sizes and more single-person households.

Healthcare expanded far faster than population, a structural shift rather than demographic necessity.

Food production grew roughly in line with population, but without proportional land expansion productivity gains.

Transportation growth lagged housing growth, suggesting more remote work, urbanization, and efficiency.

Aurornis3 hours ago

There is a push to switch from fossil fuel to electricity across the board, and that’s a good thing.

Cars are the big one. However even heating is going electric (heat pumps, not resistive). Induction stovetops outperform residential gas cooktops. Some cities are even experimenting with phasing out natural gas hookups for new construction.

It all adds up, and it a good thing. It doesn’t explain 100% of the growth but it’s a lot of it.

> Amercian industrial base is being restored, that more and better services are being provided (better healthcare, inexpensive and healthy food, comfortable, efficient and inexpensive transportation).

Trying to put concepts like “better healthcare” on to the growth of electricity demand is unrealistic but generally speaking we’re putting electricity to good use. It’s not being wasted.

slashdev3 hours ago

In Vancouver, Canada natural gas was completely phased out as of the beginning of 2025 in most new construction.

seanmcdirmid2 hours ago

What is NG good for? Induction cook tops perform better than gas ones, heat pumps do better than gas heaters. The only gap I can think of are just in time hot water heaters.

vlovich1231 hour ago

Perform better as in more efficient electrically, not necessarily more pleasant or efficient in the cooking process.

For example, when cooking an omelette, a recommended technique is to angle the pan so the liquid part flows towards the hot part of the pan touching the flame as you slowly scrape the curds up to rest at the cooler part of the pan. AFAIK an induction cooktop is unable to simulate this technique. Now maybe there are similar ways of getting this, but there’s centuries of experience informing cooking on top of a fire in some form or another. The techniques for cooking on induction cooktops well have not been learned, taught and communicated.

nightski2 hours ago

I own an induction stove, and overall really enjoy it. But there are certain types of cooking it's not nearly as well suited to (still possible, but not as good). One of those is cooking on a wok.

But really it comes down to heating. Heat pumps are not universally better. We are currently sitting at -25C or so which is pretty common in the winter (it can even get a fair bit colder at times). Hardly any of the contractors around here work with heat pumps, and even the ones that do aren't aware of the latest tech. That said even if you could get a cutting edge system through sheer money/will I am not sure how it would perform without at least a gas backup. At least from an efficiency standpoint.

Not to mention we have had electricity go out in the winter which can be life threatening or at least cause substantial damage to property. I can't remember ever having the gas go out. (we have generator backup but that couldn't run an electric furnace for very long).

Lastly we have a gas water heater (tankless) and damn that thing is efficient. A few therms a month...

beached_whale59 minutes ago

Better is subjective here. Vancouver will be a bit different with it's warmer weather, but for the week or two at -30C to -40C(like I get) it provides a lot more heat at a lower price and in Canada, at least Ontario, it is still much cheaper to heat a home and water with. I'll probably go heat pump if my boiler goes as I can avoid the cost of adding ductwork(really expensive these days and more than furnace for install) and get A\C too.

+1
chongli2 hours ago
spockz2 hours ago

I think NG outperforms in high efficiency heaters when the outside temperature is around 1-4 degrees Celsius with humidity as it causes ice buildup on the external unit which then has to be cleared using resistive heating. Also if only little hot water is required sporadically, heating it just in time with gas is more efficient than keeping a buffer heated for long times.

Also, heat pumps do best when the temperature differential is lower. So in older housing without floor heating or duct heating, it is typically not as efficient to use a heat pump when the water to heat has to be above 55 degrees Celsius.

For any new residential construction I think there is very little value in natural gas.

walthamstow2 hours ago

Induction is better in some ways and worse in others. It's so efficient and boils water like crazy but at low settings it's almost always pulsed rather than continuous and I've never liked that. I have both in my kitchen.

+6
tastyfreeze2 hours ago
rdn2 hours ago

If the power goes out I can still cook and heat with gas.

*this is a regular occurence in some countries

+3
diego_moita2 hours ago
setgree4 hours ago

We are indeed living in more comfortable homes. Americans are migrating to the sunbelt because of ample AC in the summer and the winters are pleasant. that’s a big part of why we have many fewer heat deaths per capita than Europe: https://www.thetimes-tribune.com/2025/08/02/opinion-us-heat-...

Aurornis2 hours ago

You don’t realize how nice it is to live and work in air conditioned spaces until visiting a part of Europe where AC is viewed with disdain for reasons I still don’t understand.

Also the move to electric heat pumps is increasing electricity rates but reducing natural gas usage and improving overall efficient.

The GP comment was trying to do snarky doomerism but accidentally hit upon a lot of truths. It’s amazing how many things are getting better but some people are hell bent on being cynical about it anyway.

buckle80171 hour ago

> You don’t realize how nice it is to live and work in air conditioned spaces until visiting a part of Europe where AC is viewed with disdain for reasons I still don’t understand.

Most of Europe is poor. AC is expensive. It's actually that simple.

There's AC in Switzerland.

some-guy2 hours ago

I’m not from Europe but those sentiments I think are changing with the recent intensity and frequency of heat waves.

adventured2 hours ago

Europe is so backwards when it comes to annual heat deaths that they manage to have more heat deaths per year than the US has gun deaths + heat deaths combined. You won't hear about that from Europeans though, it'd make them seem barbaric. 175,000 heat deaths per year in Europe according to the WHO. It's a staggering genocide of technological primitiveness. Imagine having millions of people die because you can't be bothered to adopt 1950s technology (and of course I'm aware of the things the US is backwards on).

microtonal2 hours ago

I think there wasn't a culture of buying ACs, because in most of Europe the climate was much more moderate. The summers are much hotter now than when I was a kid and heat waves are more regular. Many more people are buying air conditioning now.

Much of the US already had warmer summers than Europe when the impact of climate change was smaller, so AC is far more common.

rpdillon2 hours ago

You sent me to the books because this is such a fascinating stat. It's true! Heat deaths in the US: 5 per million people. Italy: 500+ per million people. I had no idea.

CorrectHorseBat1 hour ago

I do think we'll need to change our view on airconditioning, every home should have airconditioning just like it has heating.

But I'm very sceptical of those numbers. They are apparently even worse for cold, and you can't attribute that to lack of airconditioning. I still think the huge difference can only be attributed to a difference in reporting.

rdn2 hours ago

Can their pension system afford A/C?

trollbridge3 hours ago

I spoke with two working class people last week who are facing power shutoffs because they got an unexpected $700 power bill. Not sure if it were a sneaky electricity supplier change or if costs have simply gone up.

But the problem of consumer rates just always ratcheting up needs addressed.

Aurornis3 hours ago

Electricity prices are heavily regulated. The largest increase I can find from a short search is around 20% for some customers in New Jersey. The average year over year increase is closer to 6%

Unexpectedly high electricity bills are almost always from actual usage. Unexpectedly high winter electricity bills are usually from resistive electric heating in one way or another.

You didn’t mention their normal December bill in this exact house, which is an important piece of information.

reylas1 hour ago

You are part of the PJM. Read into what the "Fuel Adjustment" actually is. Yes, prices are regulated, but if your area is short of power, they can buy it from the PJM, usually from other sources they own, at "market" rate not regulated rate.

The Fuel Adjustment is the legal loophole difference in the regulated rate vs the market rate. A few scheduled maintenance windows and oh look, we are short power.

seanmcdirmid2 hours ago

Texas is really different, it could be from there.

catketch3 hours ago

That happens when people are on variable rate or TOU plans, it's very common. "sneaky" may or not be part of it, since ostensibly there's a contract that defines the terms of the electrical service, so it shouldn't be a surprise. But for a lot of folks it's a lot to keep track of, there can be confusing terminology, and yes, some energy retailers are predatory in their plan marketing or contract terms. It's a double edged sword of free market choice in deregulated markets. People that have choices for their energy supply don't always have the time and knowledge to optimize their plan choices and electricity use to get "optimum" pricing. This is why there's pushback in some areas that have had deregulated energy markets to go back to regulated pricing, the "average consumer" isn't seeing the payoff of the free market (even if that is technically "their fault").

Aurornis2 hours ago

I kind of doubt a single surprise bill that happened to arrive in the winter is a TOU plan change.

If someone changes to a TOU plan and their bill shoots up, they’re smart enough to blame the plan change and cite that

Most surprise winter time bills are just excess electric heater usage, such as after the purchase of a couple space heaters without thinking about the overall cost.

> This is why there's pushback in some areas that have had deregulated energy markets

What areas have deregulated residential electricity?

blitzar3 hours ago

Prices only go one way. Without inflation, debt has to be repaid in more expensive $'s than it was created in and the whole system goes boom.

b65e8bee43c2ed04 hours ago

the US is not a planned economy. if it was, computers would exist only to guide missiles and operate industrial machinery, and you would be mining coal, farming wheat, or manning an assembly line for a living.

echelon4 hours ago

Some of the economy should be encouraged with heavy subsidy or though DoD purchases.

It's worked out well for us in the past.

Wind and solar, nuclear, EVs, manufacturing, robots, chips, and drones should be helped along by the state.

We would be stupid not to spend in these categories.

We should also build out chemical inputs manufacture, rare earths refining, pharmaceutical manufacture, etc. to support the work that happens downstream and to be less fragile to supply chain disruption.

A multi-polar world is inherently less stable and demands more self-sufficiency.

gchamonlive3 hours ago

Its not a planned economy by the government, because the US is an oligarchy. The billionaires are deciding how the government should plan investments in infrastructure and social policies.

They have been able to lower the taxes that affect the richest (big beautiful bill) and cut spending on social programs (Medicaid).

So it surely looks to me like the US economy is following a plan, just not the one that's in the best interest of the population -- which is OP's original criticism.

gruez3 hours ago

>Its not a planned economy by the government

This just seems like a quibble over wording, given that "planned economy" is generally assumed to refer to economic planning by some governmental authority. Nobody thinks the opposite of a "planned economy" is everyone just going based off vibes, for instance.

stevenwoo3 hours ago

The available selection of automobiles available for sale feels like a good example of huge distortion caused by regulatory capture and tariffs imposed for same industries.

Fraterkes4 hours ago

…and I wouldn’t have to read this kind of drivel. Sounds like a blessing.

browningstreet2 hours ago

I’m guessing there’s a strong “/S” after this post..

blell3 hours ago

It’s a political imperative to get rid of everybody who thinks increasing energy consumption is a bad thing.

justin664 hours ago

Better: advertising!

gtirloni4 hours ago

Forgot /s

le-mark4 hours ago

That’s what I was thinking, clearly sarcasm because none of that is true.

pton_xd2 hours ago

> That is what we're using this electricity for, right?

Ok, I'll say it: it's for AI datacenters to train chat bots.

spwa42 hours ago

You know, we don't have any choice! We need more power. It's getting so tough to get something to tell Trump he isn't totally fucking up America.

Kon5ole7 hours ago

Solar can be deployed by hundreds of thousands of individual efforts and financing at the same time, with almost no bureaucracy. It starts to produce electricity basically the same day.

I can't imagine anything being able to compete with that for speed and scale - or costs, for that matter. Once deployed it's basically free.

danmaz747 hours ago

The issue is that works perfectly well when solar is a small % of the grid, but when that number grows, then you need grid scale solutions and coordination for things to continue working well. And that requires both technical skill and political will.

reactordev5 hours ago

This isn’t remotely true. Solar / wind / nuclear / coal / gas / any electrical source including from neighboring grids can be inbound or outbound from your grid using, the grid. There are capacitors and transformers, relays and transmission lines. Any energy source can provide power. Solar used to give money back to its owners by selling power back to the grid but they killed that initiative quickly and will just use your energy you provide.

The issues you describe are from coal, oil, and gas lobbyists saying solar isn’t viable because of nighttime. When the grid is made up of batteries…

If every house had solar and some LiFePo batteries on site, high demand can be pulled from the grid while during low demand and high production, it can be given to the grid. The energy companies can store it, hydropower or batteries, for later. We have the ability. The political will is simply the lobbyists giving people money so they won’t. But we can just do it anyway. Start with your own home.

bob10295 hours ago

> Any energy source can provide power.

Not all prime movers are the same with regard to grid dynamics and their impact.

Solar, wind, etc., almost universally rely on some form of inverter. This implies the need for solid state synthetic inertia to provide frequency response service to the grid.

Nuclear, coal, gas, hydropower, geothermal, etc., rely on synchronous machines to talk to the grid. The frequency response capability is built in and physically ideal.

Both can work, but one is more complicated. There are also factors like fault current handling that HN might think is trivial or to be glossed over, but without the ability to eat 10x+ rated load for a brief duration, faults on the grid cannot be addressed and the entire system would collapse into pointlessness. A tree crashing into a power line should result in the power line and tree being fully vaporized if nothing upstream were present to stop the flow of current. A gigantic mass of spinning metal in a turbine hall can eat this up like it's nothing. Semiconductors on a PCB in someone's shed are a different story.

+2
quickthrowman4 hours ago
+1
ViewTrick10023 hours ago
+1
reactordev4 hours ago
raddan5 hours ago

Also, power companies did not necessarily kill energy export incentives. Here in Massachusetts my meter “runs backward” when I export to the grid. This does not earn me money but it does earn me kWh credits, which means that if I am net negative for energy import in the summer and net positive for import in the winter, I can be net zero (or close to it) for the year.

In MA and a few other states, polluters are also required to buy “renewable energy credits.” Since I have a solar array I can sell my RECs whether I export energy or not. It’s my first year with a solar array, so I’m not sure how much to expect, but neighbors tell me that they earn between $500-$1000 a year.

+3
londons_explore4 hours ago
mort964 hours ago

Well there are real challenges here. Generators which rely on massive spinning things naturally provide the grid with inertia; they resist changes to grid frequency. Power sources which rely on inverters or otherwise dynamically adapt to grid frequency don't naturally provide the same inertia.

This is a solvable problem, but it requires a solution nonetheless.

reactordev4 hours ago

Very good point!!!

The frequency (50hz or 60hz) comes from those rotational forces from the generators and until we can eliminate them, we have to play nice with them.

Luckily, we have GFMI’s. Grid-forming inverters that can emulate 60hz push pull but you’re right that it’s more than just voltage since we are dealing with high voltage alternating current.

+1
sandworm1014 hours ago
Spooky235 hours ago

It's hard for people to really understand this because utilities and grid operators are using this is a headline justification for electric capital projects. In New York, they've deferred capital projects for decades and we're absorbing a massive distribution charge increase. I think my electric delivery portion of the bill is up 40%.

evolve2k6 hours ago

Solar is highly distributed. At the most basic level with a solar & battery system the production and consumption and CONTROL are all yours. You own it and it's literally on your property.

Refinements on ways to sell it to neighbours / recharge various EV's / use it for new purposes are all up to you.

There are lots of analogies to self hosting or concepts around owning and controlling your own data, when it's owned by you, you retain soverignty and full rights on what happens.

I'd expect most tech people will value the distributed nature of solar over equivilents, that by design require centralisation and commerical/state ownership and control.

Get your solar, back increasingly distributed approaches, let those pushing centralised agendas be the ones to pay for their grid. Eventually they are forced to change.

As we're finding in Australia, our high solar uptake by citizens.. is pressuring governments to respond, lest their centralised options become redundant. What we found is that as more people moved to solar, the power companies lumped the costs for grid maintenance onto those who hadnt moved yet, actually contributing to even further accelerated solar adoption and pressure to rework the system. Big corporates can lobby for themselves you dont owe them your custom.

rr8086 hours ago

> their centralised options become redundant

This is not the problem. The problem is that everyone moves to solar for most of the year not using or paying for the infrastructure, then in cold winter nights everyone expects the grid to be able to supply as normal.

phil211 hour ago

> I'd expect most tech people will value the distributed nature of solar over equivilents, that by design require centralisation and commerical/state ownership and control.

I do, but I do not find value in rich folks who can afford solar wanting their cake and eating it too.

If you get a solar setup, get batteries. Then disconnect from the grid entirely. You should not be able to use the grid as a free backup energy source for the last 5% of the time you'll need it. Those last digits of reliability are the expensive hard problem to solve. That, or be charged appropriately for adding your potential usage to the capacity market. I understand that this is not legal in many places, and that folks disconnecting from the grid also cause the grid to collapse at some point as well. But at least there would be less of an individual perverse incentive involved.

Home solar folks seem to love their free battery though. Or even worse - getting paid to dump power to the grid when it's value is the smallest. Net metering is not the way to go - home solar should be being paid something around instantaneous wholesale pricing at best, plus fees to manage the more complex management of the grid they cause via being thousands of kilowatt-scale install vs. a single 50MW solar farm.

So far in the US at least, many solar programs have simply been a handout to relatively rich folks subsidized by poorer grid consumers. It's really put a sour taste on something that should be for the greater good. I don't mind that those subsidies were used to jump-start the industry, but that time has long since passed.

tldr; if your total system cost to be fully off-grid and never have to worry about a power outage is not substantially more expensive than being grid-connected, you are likely being highly subsidized by other electricity consumers.

elzbardico6 hours ago

Cost. Useful life. I thought about an off grid system. Batteries are expensive. Also, unless you live in a dry place in the equator, You'll need to account for things like winter, long rainy spells, so either you add more batteries to account for multiple days (weeks? months?) of low generation, or you'll need a diesel/gas generator, or have a hybrid system instead, which basically means you're using the utilities gas generator instead.

Then, subsides are drying up. Systems have a useful life, your panels can be damaged by storms, for maximizing battery life you need to ensure you don't discharge it below 20%, and neither charge it over 100%.

So, in the end, the grid needs to be there anyway, but as most grid costs are fixed, whenever you use it now, it is going to be more expensive.

evolve2k2 hours ago

No need to go off grid. You getting solar and battery already positions you to be able to ‘exit the grid’. The experience in Australia has been that the major retailers keep charging infrastructure costs to those who still rely on them. The mass of solar adoption grid and off-grid shifts the playing field.

+1
fpoling4 hours ago
+2
raddan5 hours ago
evolve2k5 hours ago

From what I’ve been reading, sodium ion batteries are about to land later this year and look set to drop costs upwards of 60%.

That and they can be cold booted and stand much more temperature diversity bitter and into frozen temps too.

Just saying, the tech and solar expansion is at run away global growth right now, despite American centric machinations.

79525 hours ago

Weirdly in the UK it seems to be best to charge battery overnight from the grid and sell back during the day alongside any solar generated.

youngtaff57 minutes ago

Wouldn’t it be better to fill any shortfall from solar before selling back to the grid?

raddan5 hours ago

That appears to be true in places in the US that have time-of-use rates. Sadly where I live, there are no time-of-use rates for residential customers, otherwise I would absolutely do this.

jillesvangurp5 hours ago

You are not wrong.

The Australian grid shows that when solar is the dominant part of the grid, it can still work pretty well. But you need to plan for when the sun is not shining and adapt to the notion that base load translates as "expensive power that you can't turn off when you need to" rather than "essential power that is always there when needed". The notion of having more than that when a lot of renewables are going to come online by the tens of GW is not necessarily wise from a financial point of view.

That's why coal plants are disappearing rapidly. And gas plants are increasingly operating in peaker plant mode (i.e. not providing base load). Also battery (domestic and grid) is being deployed rapidly and actively incentivized. And there are a lot of investments in things like grid forming inverters so that small communities aren't dependent on a long cable to some coal plant far away.

The economics of all this are adding up. Solar is the cheapest source of energy. Batteries are getting cheap as well. And the rest is just stuff you need to maintain a reliable energy system. None of this is cheap but it's cheaper than the alternative which would be burning coal and gas. And of course home owners figuring out that solar + batteries earn themselves back in a few short years is kind of forcing the issue.

Australian grid prices are coming down a lot because they are spending less and less on gas and coal. The evening peak is now flattened because of batteries. They actually have negative rates for power during the day. You can charge your car or battery for free for a few hours when there's so much solar on the grid that they prefer to not charge you than to shut down the base load of coal/gas at great cost. Gas plants are still there for bridging any gaps in supply.

yen2235 hours ago

Australia is lucky, we get hot summers and mild winters, which means our electricity demand is highest precisely when we get the most solar.

That's why something like 30% of Australian houses have solar.

That said, grid prices spiked recently. Both a combination of subsidies expiring, and fewer people buying grid power (because of solar) causing fixed costs to be shouldered by fewer people.

It should be pointed out that while electricity prices went up on paper, a lot of people aren't paying those higher prices because they are on solar!

BLKNSLVR5 hours ago

When you say 'Australian grid prices are coming down a lot' I don't think you're talking consumer prices.

I don't have the exact 'before' numbers on me, but our peak electricity costs went up from around 42c/kWh to 56c/kWh around 18 months ago.

At the same time that feed-in was halved from 4c/kWh to 2c. Having said that, I'm pretty sure 'Shoulder' and 'Off-Peak' went down slightly.

(I'll update this when I can access my spreadsheet with the actual numbers and dates)

I should also say that I'm fairly insulated from this price rise having recently gotten a battery installed, plus moving to a special EV plan, so I charge the car and the house battery at the very cheap off peak rate (special for EV owners) and run the house entirely off battery, topped up with solar.

It's a privileged setup, but one that I planned and worked towards for a fair while, having seen ever increasing electricity prices always on the horizon (even before AI started eating all the resources).

+1
api5 hours ago
Fronzie7 hours ago

(Home) batteries are quickly becoming cheap and per-hour electricity rates can be implemented at a reasonable time. With that, the grid owner can influence the grid stability without having to build capacity or generation itself.

DrewADesign7 hours ago

My goal is to do wholly owned solar and batteries at home, only using the grid as backup, if I move out of the city. But I think the big problem with this new demand is that it’s for data centers. I can’t see that working for them.

consp7 hours ago

We see that quite often here in the summer as the energy price sometimes drops to minus 60ct/kWh (more often it hovers around -5 to -10). It is pretty much "please use everything now" to avoid grid issues. It often happens on very clear days with lots of wind.

JuniperMesos7 hours ago

Mine bitcoin, run LLM inference, smelt aluminum, make synthetic fossil fuels from atmospheric CO2.

creato2 hours ago

This ignores capital and opportunity cost. Building a GPU data center or chemical plant costs a lot. If you only use it 20% of the time, you're effectively paying 5x more for that capital equipment.

mindslight2 hours ago

The problem is the capital cost of any of that type of equipment sitting around idle or under-capacity, ready to go when the electricity price goes down. It's likely more profitable to run them most of the time, even with positive electric rates, and then only stop using them when rates are exceptionally high ("load shedding").

This is why you see most opportunistic electricity consumption systems doing resistive heating - this equipment is inexpensive.

+2
chii6 hours ago
infecto6 hours ago

The bigger issue, at least in the US, is that there is a huge lack of supply in the equipment to connect to the grid at the moment. Backlogs are still 1-3 years after order, not terrible but still an issue deploying.

idiotsecant6 hours ago

That is definitely not the bigger issue. If we had faster grid tie completions the problem would be even worse. If you don't believe me look at the very nearly daily negative power pricing inany areas of California.

We simply don't have the transmission and storage for significantly more grid tied solar. It's pointless to build more for purposes of grid supply, we need to build transmission and storage first.

infecto2 hours ago

Disagree. Taking 3-5 years to get new plants online is a huge issue, renewable or otherwise

ViewTrick10023 hours ago

Storage exists? Now down to $50/kWh.

Same method. Massive scale, trivial to deploy, works with barely any maintenance.

taminka7 hours ago

i wonder if ppl's electricity consumption habits will change in response to this, idk like turning the heat way up during the day or using high power appliances more during the day

kalleboo6 hours ago

We have a solar electric plan - the price per kWh is much higher during the duck curve in return for cheap rates during sunshine hours. The rates are something like 1x during night, 0.5x during sunshine, 4x during the morning and afternoon peaks.

We have our heat pump water heater running during the cheap hours, and also change our use of air conditioning/heating to accommodate.

It would probably not work in our favor if we didn't work from home and were out of the home all day.

fgkramer6 hours ago

This is already a reality with smart chargers in the UK. Your electric car can be charged when the electricity rates are lower (night usually)

mschuster916 hours ago

> idk like turning the heat way up during the day

That is something you can reasonably do, but it's only useful in winter.

> or using high power appliances more during the day

Well, given that people have to work during the day, I doubt that that will work out on a large enough scale. And even if you'd pre-program a laundry machine to run at noon, the laundry would sit and get smelly during summer until you'd get home.

The only change in patterns we will see is more base load during the night from EVs trickle-charging as more and more enter the market.

bruce5115 hours ago

I've got solar. We switched things like pool pump, hot water and so on (things already on timers) from night to day.

Dishwasher can also gave a programmed start, so that can also shift from after-dinner to after-breakfast.

I also work some days from home, so other activities can be moved from night to day. We use a bore-hole for irrigation, laundry in the morning etc. Even cooking can often be done earlier in the day.

Aircon is the least problematic- when we need it, the sun is shining.

So yes, habits can shift. Obviously though each situation is different.

+2
infecto6 hours ago
yunohn6 hours ago

So your implication that other sources of energy currently do not need scaling coordination somehow? I fail to see how that is true, maybe you can provide some insights?

bluGill2 hours ago

Wind and solar are not in ur control. I can turn on a generator and get power. Some plants might need weeks to start up - but this is in my control. I have no idea how windy it will be in five days.

fwip5 hours ago

It's easier to coordinate N electricity suppliers when N is small.

+1
yunohn5 hours ago
GrowingSideways6 hours ago

Well as we all know the political will in this country seems to generally be "let's all commit suicide together", but perhaps mass installations of solar will provide material reason to improve conditions somewhat.

zahlman6 hours ago

> Solar can be deployed... with almost no bureaucracy.

It can be.

Unless existing bureaucracy doesn't want that.

Saline95154 hours ago

Solar can't produce electricity at night, it's hardly a a credible sole competitor if the power surge requires a constant power supply. Renewables are most of the time coupled with gas power plants to handle this.

polyterative4 hours ago

You don't need solar to be 100% perfect to be useful

LightBug13 hours ago

It's really a shame, a damned shame, that we haven't invented batteries yet.

graemep4 hours ago

Combined with batteries it is also very resilient

exabrial3 hours ago

It’s too bad solar degrades over time. I think it’d be more of a no-brainer if we could actually manufacture it at scale domestically without it losing its efficiency over a 15 year period.

nicoburns3 hours ago

> It’s too bad solar degrades over time... without it losing its efficiency over a 15 year period.

Google says they degrade to 80-90% capacity over 25-30 years, which is ~double your 15 year time period. I've also previously seen people claiming that they then stabilise around the 80% level, and that we don't really know how long their total possible lifespan is because many extant solar panels are outliving their 25 year rated lifespans.

Capacity reduced to 80% won't work for some high-performance use cases, but is pretty decent for most.

gruez3 hours ago

>without it losing its efficiency over a 15 year period.

Why is this such a dealbreaker like you make it out to be? It's easily fixed by over-provisioning to account for future losses. Not to mention that power grids almost always have more capacity than what's needed, to account for future growth and maintenance downtime.

chiefalchemist4 hours ago

Yes, great feature. Unfortunately, to the status quo, it's a bug.

api5 hours ago

A lot of the opposition to it is vibes based at this point.

Big industrial projects. Big power plants. Big finance. Real men.

It’s silly. If you want a real men trip get into body building and MMA or something and use solar power.

ztetranz4 hours ago

Here's a good podcast (with written transcript) about what's happening in Australia.

https://www.volts.wtf/p/whats-the-real-story-with-australian

The difference in the permitting process between Australia and US is staggering.

cbmuser2 hours ago

Australia is still highly dependent on coal. They’re not a prime example of how to decarbonize an electricity grid.

If you want a good example, rather look at France!

ZeroGravitas2 hours ago

Since 2005 France has deployed as much solar and wind generation as they've removed nuclear, about 10-15%.

You probably meant late 20th Century France, when better renewable alternatives didn't exist, not current 21st century France.

gregbot1 hour ago

Ahh yes. France’s investment in replacing carbon free nuclear with… carbon free intermittents. Fortunately that hype-driven waste is not stopping France from building out new EPR2 reactors.

PeterStuer2 hours ago

Did "demand surge" or was excess peak power sold of for nearly 0 to people that can spin up and turn off load on the turn of a dime (crypto)? We have had negative pricing (they pay you to take the power) to stabilize the grid due to solar/wind peaks.

baking2 hours ago

It really depends on how you write the headline. "US electricity demand surges in 2025 while new utility-scale solar installations decrease from 2024" is equally accurate. It's unclear what the future holds if the trend remains down or flat.

ZeroGravitas2 hours ago

The USA had a pull forward effect in 2024 because some tariffs applied to anything completed after the end of that year.

This pumps the numbers for 2024 and depresses them for 2025.

jna_sh7 hours ago
consp7 hours ago

Also known as induced demand (as more is available)

MonkeyClub7 hours ago

Curiously, TFA doesn't raise the question of why demand surged, it spends its 8 microparagraphs only praising solar.

mcny7 hours ago

I'm going to go out on a limb and say it has some thing to do with those data centers and LLM stuff.

anovikov6 hours ago

So the increase was 3.1% and it was "fourth largest in the last decade", which means, "barely above average growth rate". Considering that economy growth rate was the fastest in a decade except 2021 which was a covid recovery year, it doesn't really show anything abnormal at all.

MonkeyClub2 hours ago

Granted, that wee bit 3.1% increase corresponds to an extra 135 TWh of demand.

T for tera. The mind boggles.

hackable_sand6 hours ago

All that work and we still have a broken economy, go figure.

xeromal2 hours ago

What's broken about it?

MonkeyClub7 hours ago

Funny, I was thinking the same thing.

jennyholzer45 hours ago

[dead]

londons_explore4 hours ago

> the fourth‑largest annual rise of the past decade

Really doesn't sound like much of a surge then!

kowbell2 hours ago

Hey, that still means it's higher than the median annual rise AND higher than most years!

londons_explore2 hours ago

> higher than the median annual rise

Of that we cannot be sure... Because maybe 6 years saw a fall - so there would only be 4 rises, of which this is the smallest!

cbmuser2 hours ago

»US electricity demand jumped by 135 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2025, a 3.1% increase, the fourth‑largest annual rise of the past decade. Over that same period, solar generation grew by a record 83 TWh – a 27% increase from 2024 and the biggest absolute gain of any power source. That single jump in solar output covered 61% of all new electricity demand nationwide.«

This article equates generation with consumption which is a fallacy.

Lots of solar and wind generation is actually produced without meeting demand meaning that the generated electricity often has to be wasted.

xeromal2 hours ago

I'm a luddite so forgive me when I ask this. How does the grid "waste" electricity to avoid overfilling?

glimshe5 hours ago

I've thought about installing solar panels on my roof for years. But when I factor in installation costs, it never makes sense because the local energy rates are pretty reasonable... Also, I live in Southeast, a place with plenty of sun but nowhere near the Southwest.

Solar panel prices fell hugely in the past years. Is there anything that could significantly reduce installation costs?

apexalpha5 hours ago

PV is wildly expensive in the US.

Apparently you even need a permit from the grid operator for it.

Here in NL they come to your house a week after you call and your panels are up and connected in 4 hours or so.

briHass3 hours ago

Labor for anything is expensive in the US.

Parts/materials costs in contractor quotes are often padded so they aren't completely overshadowed by the labor portion. In any job where there's specialized knowledge or license restrictions (HVAC) or risk (walking on a roof), the floor for labor rates is usually 2-4x the materials cost.

But, the real issue is that almost nobody pays cash upfront for their solar install. Between incentives, loans, and/or predatory PPAs, the prices lose touch with reality. See healthcare, college tuition, housing prices, etc. for similar scenarios where credit or third-parties distort the market.

maxerickson5 hours ago

Residential is expensive anyway, larger installations are plenty viable. My town in a northern Michigan is installing solar to help stabilize the rates they offer (I pay about 11 cents per kWh).

raddan4 hours ago

It is definitely true that the labor cost of a solar installation is the largest driver of cost. In my area, there are solar incentives to offset this. For example I was able to cover a large portion of the loan with a 0% interest rate through a state program. For the remaining portion my bank had a low(er) interest loan (like 5%) specifically for solar. And neither of these loans were home equity loans which psychologically made me happier to apply for them.

Another thing, if you have the space, is to consider a ground mount. Ground mount hardware adds a little cost, but it is a lot easier for a solar installer to set up, so they finish faster. Since labor is the biggest driver of cost, then it makes sense to build a very big array that doesn’t just offset your operating costs but completely eliminates it (well, net-eliminates it anyway).

testing223212 hours ago

I’m in Canada, in a tight valley with tons of snow. The panels on my roof make $1000 a year, and over their lifetime I’ll save around $20,000.

Complete no brainer.

deepsquirrelnet4 hours ago

Where I live in the west, the time to break even was projected at 7.5y for panels rated that run at 85% for 25y and expected lifetime of 30y.

I think the main consideration where I live is whether you can make the investment and if you plan on staying in your house long enough to realize the benefit. Also nearly all of the power I offset is from coal.

roland355 hours ago

Yeah solar viability is highly dependent on your local conditions and electricity costs. Also on your utility’s buyback program.

I have low electricity costs, no time of use pricing, and I don’t think I can sell back. I also live in a very cloudy city. So solar doesn’t make much sense!

fulafel4 hours ago

So, where's the emissions graph?

integricho6 hours ago

Thank god it's not those pesky windmills...

BLKNSLVR5 hours ago

Don 'Quixote' Trump

chiefalchemist4 hours ago

So I'm reading it correctly, 39& of "the surge" was covered by traditional energy sources. Which still means use of traditional sources increased. Correct?

I guess the good news is, solar is available when demand is highest. Nonetheless, is it helping to solve a problem or is it serving more as an enabler of the status quo?

listenallyall6 hours ago

Confusing headline (on purpose I'm sure). No, solar didn't handle 61% of total energy demand. It handled 61% of the so-called "surge" - 3% growth over the prior year.

greenacred4 hours ago

[dead]

mschuster916 hours ago

[flagged]

zahlman6 hours ago

> Where are all the "without nuclear power we're dooooooomed" people at the moment?

I haven't seen any on HN across multiple submissions discussing both solar and nuclear power (or both at once).

I have, however, seen people unreasonably characterized as such.

timeon4 hours ago

Not saying this is relevant in solar vs nuclear debate but "eco nerds" are probably not happy about new demand of additional 52TWh or part of it that is not covered by renewables/nuclear.

idiotsecant6 hours ago

It's so frustrating discussing topics you know about on HN because you get so many software developers, which naturally know everything, that make comments like this.

Solar does not 'just work' - in the US it's a crisis in the making. Power prices in several areas of the grid routinely go negative because the grid is a zero sum game - there is very little storage so what goes in must exactly match what goes out or grid frequency deviations and eventually blackouts happen. This is much more likely to happen once undispatchable resources climb past a certain threshold in our generation mix.

To fix this we need massive storage and transmission investment, like moon landing and WW2 put together. We desperately need to do that before we add more non-dispatchable generation.

Solar with storage is an amazing resource. Without storage it's counterproductive if it's grid tied.

energy1235 hours ago

> Solar with storage is an amazing resource. Without storage it's counterproductive if it's grid tied.

Solar creates the economic incentive for storage. Without solar coming first, storage cannot occur.

You can see this in California. In the beginning, it made sense to install only solar, because energy developers are compensated at the margin. Once the grid is saturated with solar, then the marginal economics changes in response to the duck curve, and storage starts to make economic sense.

If you block solar, you block storage. To believe otherwise is to be ignorant of the temporal aspect of the economics.

fundatus4 hours ago

> undispatchable resources

Solar is not dispatchable like a gas power plant is as the sun needs to shine to produce electricity. But it can very much be curtailed to any percentage you want. And that is being done globally every day exactly when it would be uneconomical to generate that electricity.

Interestingly this is as opposed to nuclear energy, which is basically never curtailed and always runs at 100% unless needed for maintenance or safety. Which is one of the main factors why nuclear energy is not economical anymore in a modern grid that values flexibility over constant generation.

zozbot2343 hours ago

Nuclear can be curtailed, it's just uneconomic to do so unless the price is literally close to zero or negative.

79525 hours ago

But respectfully isn't the crisis more in the American political system and regulation? And surely large scale solar farms/batery storage connected to a supergrid (or whatever they are called) are a relatively good fit for this kind of legacy grid.

jokoon6 hours ago

Lying title

Remove this

sandworm1014 hours ago

Contrary opinion: too much farmland is being turned over to solar. Our regulatory systems are not working. Land that once produced food now produces electricity. Turning a food farm into solar is too easy (ie cheap). The land is flat and there are nearby roads and electricity networks. And who is going to tell a farmer how to best use thier land? But the world needs more than datacenters. The world needs food.

Solar should be installed on unproductive land. Buildings should be covered in panels. Carparks should have solar roofs. If i were king of zoning, every new construction would be required to cover say 50% of thier footprint in panels. That is the direction to go. We should not continue to convert farmland.

A total parody, but on point. "Can I Beat Farming Sim WITHOUT FARMING?" - The Spiffing Brit

https://youtu.be/MaJvrGHJoAQ

daemonologist4 hours ago

I'll bite: the US dedicates about 5 billion bushels of corn a year to ethanol production [0], which is basically solar with extra steps. At a generous yield of 190 bushels/acre [1], this is 26 million acres dedicated to ethanol production (WRI puts it at 30m [2]).

Depending on who you ask, it would take somewhere between 2.5 [3] and 13.5 million acres [4] of solar to supply total US electricity demand, including storage and maintenance etc. We could double it to be safe and account for the reduction in ethanol production, and it would still all fit within the land currently used for corn ethanol. (btw this works out to a >10x increase in efficiency over ethanol.)

Of course I do agree that there's lots of less productive land (desert in the west, grazing land in the plains, and parking lots/rooftops everywhere) that should be used when available. But even in the midwest and east the land use is not a problem.

[0] - https://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/pub-details?pubid=1057...

[1] - https://www.ncga.com/stay-informed/media/the-corn-economy/ar...

[2] - https://www.wri.org/insights/increased-biofuel-production-im...

[3] - https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/energy/2015/05/21/fact-checking-elon...

[4] (PDF) - https://docs.nrel.gov/docs/fy08osti/42463.pdf

bluGill2 hours ago

that ethanol leaves leftovers that are used for other things so your numbers are misleading.

Aboutplants4 hours ago

But there are also millions of acres of corn being grown solely for the purpose of ethanol. A lot of that acreage could be better off utilized as solar farms

fpoling4 hours ago

There are a lot of places where solar panels can increase yield for specific plants by providing a shade. They also can generate electricity to run electrical pumps for targeted irrigation saving a lot of water.

sandworm1014 hours ago

Ya, but that isnt as widespread as fields being rededicated from crops generally to solar exclusively. And mixed use doesnt mesh well in a world of crop rotation and crop-specific harvesting equipment. I have yet to see a combine that can drive over solar panels without touching them.

fpoling1 hour ago

Vertical solar panels allows combines to drive unmodified.

g8oz4 hours ago

Agrivoltaics are a thing.

torginus6 hours ago

There should be a minimum level of expertise or commitment to the truth so that publication who certainly think of themselves as major league or factual don't publish blatantly false statements like this.

Yes, demand rose, and solar panels were installed whose capacity was about 60% of the new demand, but to say solar handled 60% of new capacity is blatantly false.

As someone who owns solar panels, I'm painfully aware that there can be days, weeks of bad weather when there's barely any generation. But even at the best of times, solar has a hard time covering for the demand of something like data centers which suck down insane amount of juice round the clock.

There's also no information about whether these data centers are located to be close to solar farms, and we know that in many cases, they're not.

jakobnissen5 hours ago

No, you are reading the article wrong. It is indeed 60% of new electricity generation that is from solar, not capacity

torginus2 hours ago

I think it's incredibly fishy. If I add a 1MW coal plant to the grid, I can pretty much run it at nominal capacity all year round, so 1MW * hours in the year is afair calculation.

If I add the same 1MW for solar, needless to say even assuming perfect weather, I'm lucky to get 1/3rd of that. Under real circumstances, the numbers are probably much worse.

When looking at marketing, I think it's always safe to assume they picked the most flattering numbers when they didn't specify how they made the calculation.

That's why it's very meaningful to talk about adding kWh - 1 kWh peak solar means more in Texas than in Chicago. It's even less meaningful for batteries - they can sustain incredible currents, to the point it's very rarely the meaningful bottleneck.

Yet that's exactly that what the cited 'global think-tank' Ember did, which the article cites as source. So they either misled on purpose, or like a lot of people, they confused GWh and GW, which is such a grave error for a supposed expert, that their whole analysis should be disregarded.

phendrenad22 hours ago

Then shy doesn't the article literally say that? Why does it take three carefully-crafted sentences to say it? Because they're fooling you.