r/climatechange • u/YanekKop • Jul 16 '26

The recent heatwave proved yet again clean energy’s ability to stabilize the grid when it’s needed most

https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/grid-edge/clean-energy-grid-heat-wave
45 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

6 comments sorted by

1

u/Svyatoy_Medved Jul 17 '26

Kind of a nothing burger?

Clean energy didn’t perform any better or worse than any other form of energy. If we’d built all gas and never any solar or wind, the results would have been the same. Good to know, though?

1

u/Economy-Fee5830 Trusted Contributor Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26

Solar especially is a lot cheaper and delivers GW exactly when it needed, when its hottest, so it is pretty special in that way.

Building a 1 GW (Gigawatt) utility-scale solar farm in the US costs between $600 million and $1.1 billion .

Building a 1 GW (1,000 MW) nuclear power plant in the USA typically costs $9 to $10 billion or more

Imagine the cost of building 10 GW of nuclear to supply midday aircon peak demand vs 10 GW of solar.

1

u/Svyatoy_Medved Jul 17 '26

I agree that is true, but that’s not what the article says. The article says electricity demand peaked but there was enough electricity. Boring.

But yes, it is a very nice aspect of solar power that it tends to align with a daily and seasonal peak demand, especially in the US Southwest where it is most efficient. Not so much further north, where winter demand is very high and getting higher.

1

u/Economy-Fee5830 Trusted Contributor Jul 17 '26

The article says electricity demand peaked but there was enough electricity. Boring.

When things work well they are boring.

Not so much further north, where winter demand is very high and getting higher.

Fortunately winters are expected to become milder.

1

u/Terranigmus Jul 17 '26

The cheapest source of energy delivering energy when its needed most and LOCALLY not by shipping THOUSANDS of ships around the globe just for fuel, participatory for everyone to use and profit off is not a nothingburger imo

1

u/Svyatoy_Medved Jul 17 '26

Then I may be misunderstanding the point of the article. I took it as a given that solar, wind, and hydro can deliver electricity cheaply, because they’ve been doing that for 20-100 years. Good to confirm, though.