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In this situation I would assume that the political/internal pressures from the member companies and advisory board were dominating factors as opposed to the forecasters being total dummies. There must have been some reasons why it was not appealing to assume the growth could keep ramping like that. Because it’s an obviously insane forecast after the first few data points are in.

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It seems like the World Energy Outlook report the fossil fuel industry gets a lot of airtime. In the 2018 report[1] most of the sections are dedicated to oil and gas topic and the section on renewables is very skeptical on the viability of renewables.

[1] https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-outlook-2018/

Based on the recent history of the Texas power grid, the skepticism is more than warranted. The cost per megawatt of capacity for renewables is lower than other sources, but the power only gets generated when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing, which means more reliable energy sources are priced out of being added to the grid.

Our most recent near-miss at a statewide outage happened because of unexpectedly low wind. It’s happening in Texas first because we have a smaller grid and it’s deregulated to the point where cheap but unreliable renewables can crowd out other sources of generation. The eastern and western grids will face the same problems in the long run the more and more renewables come to replace other sources of power.

That’s how the fossil fuel industry describes it, yes, but that’s just them trying to avoid competition. For example, the 2021 winter outages were caused by power plant operators not wanting to spend money making their plants more robust. During this summer’s heat dome, solar was reliable on days when gas, coal and nuclear power plants were offline due to the heat.

> That’s how the fossil fuel industry describes it, yes, but that’s just them trying to avoid competition.

Renewables, especially construction of new renewables, is a big, lucrative, growing business of its own. That’s actually a direct implication of the triumphant statistics people keep sharing about how much renewable power generation gets built out every year. So the “fossil fuel industry” is not unique in its vested interest to propagandize against its competition. And this incentive is only increased by the movement towards ESG in finance. But if we’re done accusing each other of being shills, let’s get to the substance of the matter at hand here.

> For example, the 2021 winter outages were caused by power plant operators not wanting to spend money making their plants more robust.

This included the renewables too, of course, along with the entire rest of the state’s infrastructure. But the near outage this summer was directly caused by low wind. There are probably issues with solar as well—heat, and cooling demand along with it, peak in the early evening just as sunlight starts to diminish—but usually wind manages to cover that gap. That doesn’t always happen though.

The near outage this summer was more accurately described as wind being low enough that it almost wasn't able to fill the gap caused by the gas, coal, and nuclear plants going offline. Unlike wind and solar those are quite heat sensitive so you can get nasty correlated failures at peak summer demand, especially if the same weather system causes any kind of interruption to the cooling water supply.

And, yes, renewables are becoming a big industry but it’s nowhere near as big as the fossil fuel industry and orders of magnitude less lavishly subsidized. Texas Republicans tried to ban wind and solar expansion because that party has been owned by the oil industry for decades and the renewable industry has nowhere near the same level of lobbying clout.

> The near outage this summer was more accurately described as wind being low enough that it almost wasn't able to fill the gap caused by the gas, coal, and nuclear plants going offline.

I can’t find any good source about your claim of thermal plants going offline in the September incident. ERCOT’s statements consistently blame the combination of high demand and low wind. The federal Department of Energy even issued an order authorizing Texas power plants to exceed normal emissions limits in such an emergency, which is inconsistent with your claim that they “go offline” in these conditions: https://www.ercot.com/about/legal/doe202c

> And, yes, renewables are becoming a big industry but it’s nowhere near as big as the fossil fuel industry and orders of magnitude less lavishly subsidized.

I thought we were done accusing each other of being shills. I’ll just point out that there’s significantly more propaganda in favor of renewable energy than in favor of natural gas or nuclear. But this is Hacker News and I am assuming good faith of you rather than accusing you of parroting talking points that were fed to you by Chinese photovoltaic manufacturers or annoying Swedish teenagers. And I am simply asking the same courtesy from you.

> Texas Republicans tried to ban wind and solar expansion because that party has been owned by the oil industry for decades

I think there is a good faith reason for such a policy. And while I do live in Texas and usually vote for Republicans, I am asking you to engage with me in good faith instead of calling me a shill. Are you capable of that or is the idea that someone can disagree with you about energy policy in good faith beyond your comprehension? Because you seem to be using this idea as a thought-terminating cliche.

Here’s one example of news coverage:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-08-29/texas-ask...

Paywalled and published before the September incident I’m discussing.

Seems like recent IEA reports have taken a more upbeat and optimistic view in renewables:

https://www.iea.org/reports/renewable-energy-market-update-j...

I'd love to hear someone chip in with what it takes to make a solar panel and the rate limiting factors.

E.g. if a solar panel factory (simplifying into a single entity) already exists, is there any reason not to run it at 100% production capacity? What consumables are used?

Solar panels are just doped silicon, some wiring and support frames.

Silicon for solar panels has to be 99.999999 percent pure—six 9s after the decimal. Computer chips are even more demanding. Their silicon needs to be 99.99999999999 percent pure—eleven 9s.

How consumable-intensive is doped silicone production?

Afaik, it's more strict metallurgy (materialurgy?): temperature, time, some physical process.

Point being, I'd be curious on the actual cost of material inputs, if the price of solar panels crashes. How low can they go... and still be worth making?

> How consumable-intensive is doped silicone production?

From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38150735, it’s very energy intensive.

> if the price of solar panels crashes. How low can they go... and still be worth making?

Boules are very storable, so it’s the financials of pausing production and storing materials until the price (or new tech) makes it profitable. Not the most socially responsible thing to do in decarbonisation times, but done with aluminium and other energy intensive storables all the time.

The irony of intermittent solar's excess power potentially being soaked up by intermittent boule-manufacturing (followed by storage) is too delicious.

They are running at full capacity. Chinese factories will produce more panels this year than what was the total world solar install 5 years ago. The problem today is not supply of solar but demand it faces similar problems as chip manufacturing as once new capacity is brought up the world needs time to train more workers as well produce equipment to use that capacity

Looked into getting solar panels last year and the problem wasn't getting the actual panels, but the hardware that let you integrate the panels to the electrical system. Spoke to several people who had had panels on their roof for months, but couldn't get the hardware that would let them connect them.

Depending on what you want, it might be very simple hardware, using panel provided DC for lighting and a 12V DC system and switching to utility provided AC when the sun isn’t providing enough power, all the way to house batteries and selling power back into the grid.

That definitely seems to be a little better now - in Europe at least lead times on inverters and batteries are tiny.

The rate limiting is basically factory capacity, yes. Simplified process:

- Czochralski purification of silicon to produce a "boule"

- saw boule into "wafers" (surprisingly important, see "reduced kerf diamond wire saw")

- wafers can be used for microchips, or doped into solar cells

- apply contacts to top face

- package into a panel with glass and aluminium frames

The "wafer" market is somewhat independent. Purification depends on the price of energy (it's very energy intensive). Better sawing reduces waste and increases wafers per boule.

More factories come online all the time. Panels themselves are now extremely cheap, and it's worth looking at "balance of system" (labour, permitting, frames and racks, inverters).

I believe market data firms track all the relevant info, although they don't necessarily give the resulting info away on the internet.

Similarly, anyone get the feeling the forecast for Hydrogen uptake (as an alternative fuel) has more to do with a self-serving politically and commercially motivated hype train than an honest assessment of its effectiveness that then drives organic uptake?

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