What's going to happen in the future is that May will be a month of extreme electricity abundance, with a good chunk of the electricity just not being collected at all because the grid doesn't need it, and it will be cheaper to have unused electricity in May than to have too little solar in December.
mekdoonggi 34 minutes ago [-]
And eventually that arbitrage will be big enough to justify a pumped hydro/gravity/iron-air storage.
epistasis 26 minutes ago [-]
Doubtful, the tradeoff is solar cost versus storage cost. Pumped hydro and gravity are waaaaaaaay too expensive compared to excess solar panels. Pumped hydro takes massive construction projects, which are very very expensive these days. Gravity storage (non-water, meaning non-hydro) never made any sense at all, the material costs are just way too high.
Iron-air storage is still being proven out, but it still requires so much material that only getting 1-2 cycles per year just won't justify it, because electricity is going to be so cheap.
It's hard to overstate how cheap solar panels are these days. Even in the US, which has costs 3x-5x the rest of the world because of failed protective tariffs.
toomuchtodo 23 minutes ago [-]
Lithium is the way, almost as cheap as sodium for a superior capability profile. Like solar, it just got cheap enough incredibly fast.
Large-scale battery storage is already expanding rapidly, and is way cheaper than pumped storage.
bryanlarsen 9 minutes ago [-]
pumped storage is still significantly cheaper for seasonal storage. The cut off is about 2 weeks now -- if you need to pull from storage more than twice a month batteries are cheaper. If you need to pull from storage less than twice a month pumped storage is cheaper.
kansface 32 minutes ago [-]
Or possibly the return of some heavy industry?
ljf 21 minutes ago [-]
I always wondered that - but will it be economical to have the plants not working in the months of the year that the energy isn't free?
epistasis 10 minutes ago [-]
I think the challenges for heavy industry aren't as much the cost of energy, as it is the capital cost, and a workforce that has lots of options for higher paying jobs.
Heavy industries are usually pretty low on the value chain in economies. They do not provide much return on capital, compared to the high tech options and service options that are available in the US, but not available anywhere else in the world.
The rest of the (non-European) world dreams of the economic opportunities that are possible in the US, from Silicon Valley tech, to biotech, to the financial opportunities. China has been trying to climb up the value chain ladder for decades, and is slowly getting there.
It's mystifying to me why people are fantasizing about climbing down the value chain in the US, to being poorer, and allocating capital to things with lower return on investment. I just don't get it! What's the appeal?
8note 59 seconds ago [-]
> I just don't get it! What's the appeal?
its the k shaped economy. the big opportunities are great if you can get into them, but otherwise all there is is serving coffee to the wealthy. People are already poorer without a ladder or fulfilling work at the bottom
dylan604 20 minutes ago [-]
Except the water is in short supply, so where's that magically coming from? The Great Salt Lake is shrinking and specific to Utah. Just look at Lake Meade and Hoover Dam as an example.
bryanlarsen 12 minutes ago [-]
The water requirements for pumped hydro for seasonal storage is a lot less than for generation.
- pumped hydro reuses the water in a loop rather than sending it downstream like generation
- pumped hydro only needs to produce power a few times a year rather than 24/7/365 like generation.
ck2 23 minutes ago [-]
good thing the President is pouring billions into restarting coal plants
what a freaking horror show we are living in
Rover222 17 minutes ago [-]
At least at this point solar can be driven by pure market forces, it doesn't need federal subsidies to make sense.
The chart defaults to ending at 2025. Move the right timeline marker all the way to the right (today).
toomuchtodo 2 hours ago [-]
> In 2025, coal composes just 15 percent of U.S. electricity generation, and while 190 gigawatts (GW) of coal capacity remain online, the fleet is down 43 percent from 340 GW at its peak in 2010. This change is largely due to the fact that coal power is simply more expensive than cleaner power sources like wind, solar, batteries, and natural gas.
> Electricity demand growth and new actions by the current U.S. presidential administration may slow this decline in the short-term, but with no proposals to build new coal plants anywhere in America and worsening economic competitiveness – particularly where policymakers are strengthening air and water standards to protect their constituents – its long-term share of U.S. electricity generation will continue to decrease
Cool, that's still not a grid for stability purposes.
nemomarx 45 minutes ago [-]
can you expand? I'm not sure I get it. isn't then having a wider interconnection better for stability and to handle solar? they can share cheap power in gluts and pull in other sources at night and so on.
> Balancing authority (electric): The responsible entity that integrates resource plans ahead of time, maintains load-interchange-generation balance within a Balancing Authority Area, and supports Interconnection frequency in real time.
> Definition & Scope: A BA is a NERC-certified entity responsible for matching electricity supply and demand in real-time within a specific geographic area. An ISO is an independent, non-profit corporate entity that manages regional transmission grids and runs competitive wholesale power markets.
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/solar/california-solar-...
What's going to happen in the future is that May will be a month of extreme electricity abundance, with a good chunk of the electricity just not being collected at all because the grid doesn't need it, and it will be cheaper to have unused electricity in May than to have too little solar in December.
Iron-air storage is still being proven out, but it still requires so much material that only getting 1-2 cycles per year just won't justify it, because electricity is going to be so cheap.
It's hard to overstate how cheap solar panels are these days. Even in the US, which has costs 3x-5x the rest of the world because of failed protective tariffs.
https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2026/07/27/global-battery-storag...
https://www.spglobal.com/energy/en/news-research/latest-news...
Heavy industries are usually pretty low on the value chain in economies. They do not provide much return on capital, compared to the high tech options and service options that are available in the US, but not available anywhere else in the world.
The rest of the (non-European) world dreams of the economic opportunities that are possible in the US, from Silicon Valley tech, to biotech, to the financial opportunities. China has been trying to climb up the value chain ladder for decades, and is slowly getting there.
It's mystifying to me why people are fantasizing about climbing down the value chain in the US, to being poorer, and allocating capital to things with lower return on investment. I just don't get it! What's the appeal?
its the k shaped economy. the big opportunities are great if you can get into them, but otherwise all there is is serving coffee to the wealthy. People are already poorer without a ladder or fulfilling work at the bottom
- pumped hydro reuses the water in a loop rather than sending it downstream like generation
- pumped hydro only needs to produce power a few times a year rather than 24/7/365 like generation.
what a freaking horror show we are living in
> Electricity demand growth and new actions by the current U.S. presidential administration may slow this decline in the short-term, but with no proposals to build new coal plants anywhere in America and worsening economic competitiveness – particularly where policymakers are strengthening air and water standards to protect their constituents – its long-term share of U.S. electricity generation will continue to decrease
https://energyinnovation.org/expert-voice/what-is-coals-futu...
https://www.sierraclub.org/coal/coal-plant-map
https://www.energy.gov/ceser/2025-doe-202c-orders
They're on the western interconnect.
Combined solar and wind are about 25-30% of production there.
These articles about individual states are trash.
(passed in 10 states, 2 awaiting signatures, as of this comment)
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/US-NW-PACE/live/fif...
Nevada Power serves a substantial amount of western Utah.
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/US-NW-NEVP/live/fif...
> Balancing authority (electric): The responsible entity that integrates resource plans ahead of time, maintains load-interchange-generation balance within a Balancing Authority Area, and supports Interconnection frequency in real time.
https://www.nerc.com/glossary-of-terms
> Definition & Scope: A BA is a NERC-certified entity responsible for matching electricity supply and demand in real-time within a specific geographic area. An ISO is an independent, non-profit corporate entity that manages regional transmission grids and runs competitive wholesale power markets.
https://www.ferc.gov/electric-power-markets
A balancing authority is quite literally a federally certified entity for maintaining grid stability.
(Utah only has ~2.5GW of coal generation capacity remaining, as of this comment)
https://www.gem.wiki/Utah_and_coal#Existing_coal_plants
https://www.gem.wiki/Utah_and_coal
https://utahnewsdispatch.com/2025/12/05/intermountain-power-...
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67427