Hurrah for heavy metals! Hurrah for gigawatt AI datacenters! Hurrah for battery materials mining! Hurrah for Chinese manufactured solar panels! Hurrah for megawatt air conditioning! Hurrah for overall peak power demand in Texas up 20% in the last 10 years!

Yeah, when the panels degrade, seriously, what will happen to runoff into streams and groundwater? Have we all been on a farm and seen what weather does to abandoned vehicles and structures?

Still, remarkable how much solar capacity has been installed, I had no idea. 18 GW seems like quite a lot. Is that figure for electrical power, or does that also generously include all solar gain on all structures?