alt Hacker NewsInstalled capacity is a misleading number. If you assessed the trucking industry by simply sum-ing the rated capacity of all the hardware you'd be rightfully laughed and and called a liar on the basis of all the times the trucks are empty and all the trucks that run out of volume before weight. Renewables is a similar situation.
Some panel in a solar farm in Canada is not gonna see the conditions that let it produce rated capacity nearly as often as one in Arizona. So the guy in Canada installs more capacity to get the same power. Meanwhile the guy in Arizona doesn't have enough copper leading out of his site to handle the power he could produce at peak on the best days, because he over-provisioned too, in order to be able to produce a given amount earlier/later in the day. The actual generation hardware is so cheap that this is just the sensible way to deploy renewables, but it makes for stupid misleading numbers.
Legacy power generation has much different numbers and isn't subject to the whims of the weather so installed capacity is a number that means something in that context.
Replies
> Installed capacity is a misleading number. If you assessed the trucking industry by simply sum-ing the rated capacity of all the hardware you'd be rightfully laughed and and called a liar on the basis of all the times the trucks are empty and all the trucks that run out of volume before weight. Renewables is a similar situation.
OK, but what if someone looked at the rated capacity of all trucks and noted that in the last 5 years it went up by 24%, 22%, 28%, 54%, and 45%? That would strongly suggest that the amount trucks actually being used is growing rapidly because people aren't going to be buying new trucks unless they have to.
This is a common rebuttal, but not grounded in reality. Even assuming ~20% capacity factor for "apples to apples" comparison to legacy thermal and nuclear, solar and batteries are the cheapest form of power to install. Current geopolitical events spiking LNG costs make the math even more favorable towards renewables.
https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/24-hour-solar-now-ec...
https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/solar-electricity-e... ("104$/MWh: Achieving 97% of the way to 24/365 solar in very sunny regions is now affordable at as low as $104/MWh, cheaper than coal and nuclear and 22% less than a year earlier.")
> Legacy power generation has much different numbers and isn't subject to the whims of the weather so installed capacity is a number that means something in that context.
Legacy power is ridiculously expensive in comparison. Who will invest in fossil gas generation when ~20% of LNG exports have been taken offline for the next 3-5 years?
https://www.lazard.com/media/eijnqja3/lazards-lcoeplus-june-... (page 8)
Strikes on Qatar's LNG Ras Laffan plant Will Reshape the Future of Fossil Gas - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47484246 - March 2026
Fossil fuels are over, it's just how fast we get to "done." Enough sunlight falls on the Earth in 30-60 minutes to power humanity for a year. Solar PV and battery manufacturing continues to spool up, and year by year, more fossil generation is pushed out.
California is routinely operating at 80% renewables, 90% low carbon generation during daylight hours as they work towards installing battery storage to replace their fossil generation (~52GW target by 2045), for example, while having plans for 10s of GWs of additional solar to come online over the next decade.
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/US-CAL-CISO/live/fi...
https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/califo...
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/solar/were-harvesting-t...
Refer to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electrici...
The largest electricity consumers all have good places to put solar farms.