Solar adds more new capacity to US grid in 2024 than any source in 20 years | Hacker News Reader

Solar adds more new capacity to US grid in 2024 than any source in 20 years

electrek.co

2 pointstoomuchtodo7 comments

50GW? About 1250GW total in traditional generation.

So in 25 years solar may match that, if we don't run out of acceptable places to put it.

No, we won't just put solar anywhere; we don't have unlimited room for them. Takes agricultural land out of production; ecological disaster to put it in deserts; cities already objecting to solar farms, trying to zone them out of existence.

> According to research from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, powering the entire United States with solar energy would require approximately 22,000 square miles of land dedicated to solar panels, which is roughly the size of Lake Michigan, representing about 0.6% of the country's total landmass.

https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/how-much-land-power-us...

> How Solar Could Free Up 29.8 Million Acres of Prime US Farmland

> Corn is a Shitty Solar Panel: 160x more energy from an acre of solar than an acre of corn ethanol

~30 million acres (~46,875 square miles) of corn is currently harvested for corn ethanol. There is a material amount of ag already wasted today for energy, that could be utilized more efficiently.

https://leahy.substack.com/p/how-solar-could-free-up-298-mil...

Forward looking renewable projects:

https://www.interconnection.fyi/ [My note: There is currently 979.12 GW of solar in interconnect queues]

https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/images/figure_6_01_c... (yellow = solar, green = wind, gray = batteries)

Apples and oranges. Ethanol is for portable refillable energy. Like comparing a battery to a generator. Entirely different purposes.

But I get it; we did it for ethanol (valuable as a mobile fuel) because it was commensurate with gasoline, not because it rivaled the electric grid.

Using expensive land to make solar electricity may not rival other forms of electric generation, which is the real measure of solar's viability. Grid energy is cheaper, and needs to be generated by cheaper means.

So again, not all land is suitable for solar generation, not so it would pay.

Ag land is not expensive, and will likely be cheaper as more farms go under. Average farmer is ~60 years old. If the land was expensive, the economics wouldn’t work for solar, but they do.

http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/chart-de...

https://www.terrainag.com/insights/examining-the-economic-cr...

Land I just sold went for $12,000 per acre. Where are you buying land?

This is well within the bounds of affordability for a utility scale solar install, which is usually a 25 year lease of the land at ~$1000/acre/year. I’m unsure why you believe this is expensive for solar. At $12k/acre, I’ll take as much as I can get (assuming proximity to distribution or transmission lines, or commercially reasonable costs to extend that infra).

Report: https://seia.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/USSMI-2024-YIR-E...

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