Sign up for CleanTechnica's Weekly Substack for Zach and Scott's in-depth analyses and high level summaries, sign up for our daily newsletter, and/or follow us on Google News! How much is renewable energy dominating new power capacity worldwide? That’s how much! 92.5% of new power capacity added to the grid ... [continued]
Hmmn, as far as I can tell they’ve not presenrted any de-rated capacity data. I much prefer de-rated capacity for planning electricity supply. Unless you’re doing detailed half-hourly despatch simulations. It’s probably still a large share but I doubt the exagerated growth shown here. Solar in particular needs to be scaled down in relation to say hydro and nuclear for planning purposes.
Hydro and nuclear and geothermal will scale near 1:1 from capacity to output. So they are a lot better. Solar will only average 4:1 and wind at about 3:1 from memory.
Here in the UK where there is a lot of wind gen they’re already runnung some pumped storage motors into effectively operating as inertial stabilisation most of the time. It is very interesting that the grid is preferring frequency stabilisation instead of the “battery” function that pumped storage is really designed for. We really need more hydro and pumped storage capacity a lot more than wind and solar. If you only like uplifting news please don’t lookup the recent news about Cruachan power station.
Hmmn, as far as I can tell they’ve not presenrted any de-rated capacity data. I much prefer de-rated capacity for planning electricity supply. Unless you’re doing detailed half-hourly despatch simulations. It’s probably still a large share but I doubt the exagerated growth shown here. Solar in particular needs to be scaled down in relation to say hydro and nuclear for planning purposes.
That’s why the green bit in this supply chart most likely won’t grow as sharply as the OP graph. (Ok it’s change in stocks vs total flows too.) https://www.iea.org/reports/electricity-2025/supply
Hydro and nuclear and geothermal will scale near 1:1 from capacity to output. So they are a lot better. Solar will only average 4:1 and wind at about 3:1 from memory.
Here in the UK where there is a lot of wind gen they’re already runnung some pumped storage motors into effectively operating as inertial stabilisation most of the time. It is very interesting that the grid is preferring frequency stabilisation instead of the “battery” function that pumped storage is really designed for. We really need more hydro and pumped storage capacity a lot more than wind and solar. If you only like uplifting news please don’t lookup the recent news about Cruachan power station.