October 7, 2023, 6:35 p.m
PiataAuto.md editors
Many states in the USA were known for their reluctance towards new and renewable energy sources, but even the USA started at a galloping rate of development in this direction. The first large offshore wind farms are just being installed, the land ones being present for more years. But the data for the first 7 months of this year, recently revealed by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), show an exceptional increase in the energy generated by photovoltaic panels, which ended up exceeding that from hydropower plants.
The increase in the first six months was exponential, with the biggest jump achieved in July 2023. The increase in electricity production from solar sources, compared to the same period last year, was 22.3%. Of all the new electricity generation capacity connected to the grid in July 2023 in the US, 67.2% were photovoltaic panels, which totaled a previously unprecedented figure of 1,824 MW, so 1.82 GW of new capacity, added in a single moon through photovoltaic panels!
I was saying previously that in Texas, the state richest in oil, the growth trend of solar energy is even more pronounced, sometimes reaching over 15% of electricity in the network. Well, the records at the level of the entire country are also due to Texas, and in July, at the level of the entire country, solar energy quantified 6.2%. It’s a lot more than anyone would have imagined just a few years ago in the US, but there’s still a lot of work to do. If in Australia solar panels installed on the roofs of houses have grown beyond any imagination and sometimes reach to cover completely needs to balance the electrical grid, then in the US large-scale photovoltaic parks contribute the most. For example, in July 2023, household panels generated 7.8 TWh of electricity throughout the country, while large parks produced 18.6 TWh. Together, the total energy produced from photovoltaic panels meant 26.4 TWh of electricity produced in a month, to which is added 0.38 TWh of electricity produced at solar power plants using the thermal method of mirror reflection. For comparison, Romania consumes about 50 TWh annually, and the Republic of Moldova — about 4.2 TWh annually. The production figures above, however, are monthly.
And they exceeded the production from hydropower plants, which was only 21.5 TWh in the same period. Last year, for example, in July, the energy from hydropower plants was 24.2 TWh, and that from photovoltaic panels only 21.6 TWh. Therefore, the change is obvious.
But, of course, we cannot fail to mention that hydropower plants do not exactly represent a majority share in the production of electricity in the USA, gas plants are still the majority, generating 200 TWh in the same period. The nuclear energy generated in the same interval of type a constituted 69.9 TWh, and the wind energy — 27.7 TWh. It is clear that there is still a lot of electricity produced by burning hydrocarbons and emitting CO2 in the USA, but the evolution of the last two years is one that has already taken a geometric progression, and in a few years, after the inauguration of several large design parks or already approved, the balance will change even more for the better. And that’s because investments in these large wind and solar parks in the US have become super profitable and attractive, both thanks to subsidies and energy prices, which recover the investment faster.
In fact, in recent months there is also a tendency for those who build large wind farms to cancel the contracts with the distribution networks, which guaranteed them a fixed price when buying electricity from them, and re-sign them at more expensive and more variable market conditions, because they know that the electricity produced by them will be requested and bought anyway. So in many parts of the world, renewable energy is not just an investment made out of necessity, and as an increasingly profitable business.
And probably 10 years or 15 years from now, looking back, we’ll be impressed by how quickly some countries have been able to change the way they produce their electricity and their preferences for types of cars. It’s one of those situations when everything seems impossible until things actually start moving.
0
3,143
NEWS YOU MAY BE INTERESTED IN
2023-10-07 15:37:04
#Energy #generated #photovoltaic #panels #surpassed #hydroelectric #plants #record #increases #PiataAuto.md #website #car #world #Moldova
