Washington state is something of an outlier with ~60% hydro. The eastern side has tons of flat sunny area that seems perfect for solar, but so far I don't see much. I think the hydro keeps the prices too low to justify investment; my parents pay less than 4 cents per kwh.
It's less exciting when you notice that solar barely edged out hydro for "second-to-last place" honors.
I wonder how much of that was driven by drought. There's a kinda-obvious complementary duality between hydro and solar - heavy precipitation is good for the former and bad for the latter; fair skies the opposite.
What is exciting, in my opinion, is rate of change. We are right above the hockey stick inflection point headed upward. Global solar deployment is almost at 1TW/year. US solar deployment is ~50GW/year. Battery deployments are similarly ramping, California battery storage is currently ~13,248M, and is causing a material amount of fossil gas demand destruction for electrical generation every evening. These numbers will continue to increase. Texas can't find anyone who can get a fossil gas generator built in the next five years, for comparison.
Could backward policy slow this down? Certainly, but broadly speaking, there is too much momentum to stop the energy transition at this point. That's not a call to let up of course, but to keep grinding harder towards success (imho).
https://findenergy.com/wa/chelan-county-electricity/
I wonder how much of that was driven by drought. There's a kinda-obvious complementary duality between hydro and solar - heavy precipitation is good for the former and bad for the latter; fair skies the opposite.
US EIA: Utility Scale Generating Units Planned to Come Online form April 2025 to March 2026 - https://web.archive.org/web/20250523162037/https://www.eia.g... (yellow = solar, green = wind, gray = batteries)
Solar, battery storage to lead new U.S. generating capacity additions in 2025 - https://web.archive.org/web/20250523183331/https://www.eia.g... - February 24, 2025
https://www.interconnection.fyi/ (scope to solar and batteries)
What is exciting, in my opinion, is rate of change. We are right above the hockey stick inflection point headed upward. Global solar deployment is almost at 1TW/year. US solar deployment is ~50GW/year. Battery deployments are similarly ramping, California battery storage is currently ~13,248M, and is causing a material amount of fossil gas demand destruction for electrical generation every evening. These numbers will continue to increase. Texas can't find anyone who can get a fossil gas generator built in the next five years, for comparison.
Could backward policy slow this down? Certainly, but broadly speaking, there is too much momentum to stop the energy transition at this point. That's not a call to let up of course, but to keep grinding harder towards success (imho).