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Comment by khuey | Hacker News Reader

> There were a few summers leading up to that where all of the major metro areas shared concurrent record high heat days, and sometimes coincided with poor air quality from wildfires (meaning more people closed their windows and ran AC even if they wouldn't have otherwise.)

This is underselling it, if anything. The multi-day heatwave around Labor Day 2022 extended across most of the western US, not just California. The electricity demand during that event set what was at the time the all time record for the entire Western Interconnection (since surpassed in 2024) and set what is still today the all time record for CAISO.

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I didn't want to overstate it given I wasn't bringing any data to the conversation, but your account matches my recollection as well.

https://www.publicadvocates.cpuc.ca.gov/-/media/cal-advocate... has some data.

Yep. The previous high was in 2006(!). Overall, statewide energy consumption seems to be flat or declining.

In 2020, there were extremely high heat days in August, with wildfire smoke covering the state. Thankfully I was out of town, but my wife was suffering, unable to cool the house OR open a window. In 2021 or 2022 I finally broke down and bought a window-mounted AC unit for my office, as I work from home. In 2024 and 2025 I didn't even bother installing it, the summers have been so mild.

https://www.caiso.com/documents/californiaisopeakloadhistory...

Statewide grid demand is somewhat declining because distributed small-scale solar is massive. It now has an aggregate capacity of 20GW. This is usually ignored by people who are only looking at ERCOT v. CAISO grid statistics. Texas basically doesn't have any small-scale solar.

Are you saying Texas doesn't have much rooftop solar? That's surprising. I suppose largely due to low electricity costs making the investment not worth it? (And, I suspect, secondarily, utilities not really incentivizing it)

In Dallas where I grew up, it wasn’t necessarily rare but it wasn’t a given by any stretch. Maybe 10% of homes the last time I lived there (2022)? The neighborhood also made a difference.

Where I live now in the Netherlands, it feels like 30-40% of private homes have solar and 80%+ of business and government buildings that use more energy during the daylight hours so the payoff is much more realizable.

Texas has rooftop solar, but it doesn't have the same incentives as California, and in fact, the Texas grid itself has a million little different franchises that repackage Centerpoint and/or Texas and New Mexico Power generated electricity with different usage plans you have to renew annually to semi-annually.

Our dear leader has been busy decimating small businesses that rely on federal incentives to build renewable power generation lately. This hit particularly hard in Texas.

The boss move is buying a plan with cheap to free electricity at night in exchange for a ludicrous day rate, bonus points for buying batteries to self-consume and/or charge at night as needed.

Going strictly by the numbers, it's a judgment call as to whether it's "worth it" or not, but the power independence for doing so is fantastic IMO YMMV. My Maslow hierarchy may not match yours.

And the hail, I suppose.

I'm in a hail-prone region, and the general wisdom is that solar panels are more resistant to hail than typical shingles are.

Gardens and vinyl siding get shredded by hail and vehicles get smashed up, but solar panels generally do fine.

I never thought about the impact of Texas hail storms on solar energy. Is there an industry standard practice to shield the panels during hail storms? Or do they use stronger glass? I am curious to learn more.

Tracker systems with "hail stow"[0] mode. They bring the panels as vertical as possible.

[0]: https://www.energy.gov/femp/hail-damage-mitigation-solar-pho...

UL has a standard, this article goes into some details https://www.ul.com/news/manufacturers-say-hail-yes-solar-pan...

The title of the article gave me a real laugh!

    > Manufacturers Say Hail Yes to Solar Panel Testing

Equipment dies and needs to be replaced. When that happens a more energy efficient unit is usually available and is often the best option for replacement.

That's the whole other side to this curve which isn't seen very clearly in grid analysis.

This definitely plays a huge factor. Even people who get airco for the first time are already beginning with a different mindset. They also tend to run the units very conservatively because they aren’t used to living in an air conditioned space and often find it uncomfortable after a certain point.

I moved to Western Europe from a US state where airco is mandatory. I purchased a split unit here and on the worst summer weeks, it still only cost me €10 to run the unit on its coldest setting for a week (almost continuously since I was using it with a fan to blow cooler air around the rest of the house). Back in the US, I had summer electricity bills of hundreds of dollars every year.

Sure, the weather is a bit more mild here, but there have been heat waves, and I’m definitely an outlier when it comes to usage. But that just goes to show how efficient these new units are!

What's the kWh price in these two places? That's a huge variable.

That happens on a larger scale too. When an energy-intensive facility reaches some sort of lifetime limit, it too is replaced with something more efficient -- but also it will be replaced in a location where costs, including energy costs, are lower. So over time such facilities will tend to migrate to places where energy costs aren't too high.

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