alt Hacker NewsThat shift is going to happen a lot quicker than people expect, here's the expected 2026 US grid additions:
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67205
- Solar: +87 TWh/year (assuming 23% capacity factor, lower end of US range)
- Gas: +9TWh/year (6.3GW new, 4.6GW retirements, higher end of US capacity factor of 60%) https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67206
This is in the face of massive growth for grid demand for the first time in decades, so the trend will accelerate.
New gas turbine manufacturing capacity is tapped out, causing new gas CapEx to get more expensive:
https://www.woodmac.com/press-releases/gas-turbine-prices-so...
Meanwhile solar and storage are continually plummeting in price.
So the current trend of approximately all new generation being renewables is going to accelerate. And then it will start eating into older, existing generation assets, causing early retirements of existing gas generation capacity.
Most investors think that any new gas generation built today will be a stranded asset long before its end of life. That doesn't matter to the hyperscalers, who run them so poorly and hard that the turbine shafts die in a few years and can afford it, but for regular utilities, buying any new gas generation is a boondoggle meant to soak the ratepayers and capture the guaranteed profit rate.
And the numbers above ignore residential solar, which will further lessen demand for gas, and as the cost of transmission and distribution soar on the grid, residential solar becomes an always better deal, because it skips all that.
The global cost-minimum for a future grid will have gas on it for maybe 20 more years, but not much after that. We'll switch to lots of storage and tons of over-capacity of solar and wind.
Replies
The US has literally double its total electricity production in solar and batteries stuck in the now 5 year FIFO permit hell we require for grid additions that will cause most proposals to pull out before completion
It will be interesting to see how solar evolves in the coming decade in US, maybe it could reach the current share of gas produced electricity, 40% . The country with the highest share of solar electricity is Hungary 27%, but they are part of the European electricity grid with lot of export and import.
https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/hungary
Gas turbine manufacturing factories are very expensive and gas turbine manufacturers have already experienced turbine market crashed in 2018. Nobody wants to sit on loans for expensive idle factories in 5 years when the AI hype stops.
https://www.primary.vc/articles/the-gas-turbine-bottleneck-r...
Per MWh costs of residential solar are usually 2x per MWh costs of utility scale solar. Utility scale solar power plants buy and install solar panels at larger scale and cheaper.
Most places can't run on residential solar + battery 365 days in year and need grid connectivity. As more homes install residential solar + battery the grid costs, which are independent of the number of hours when the grid is used, will stay the same. The amount of consumed gas will be lower. The costs of building gas power plants will stay the same (they are the backup), the costs of maintaining gas power plants will increase (more frequent ramping up and down).
"Ramping damage in gas turbines refers to the wear and tear or stress that occurs as a result of frequent changes in the operating load, also known as load cycling. Gas turbines are designed to operate efficiently at steady-state conditions, and deviations from these conditions can lead to various issues"
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jeff-shan-a8962b36_ramping-da...