by toomuchtodo | 2025-10-30 16:50:33+00:00
Gas generation manufacturing has a 7-10 year backlog [1] [2]. You can build ~1GW of solar in under a year [3] (1GW of solar is deployed every 15 hours globally, as of this comment, tangentially). As you can see with Intermountain in Utah, supplying power to Los Angeles (via Path 27), you can site batteries and renewables in the middle of nowhere and leverage existing transmission to get utility scale solar to load centers [4]. Again, there is lots of land everywhere, and it is straightforward to get solar generated to the load. It doesn't matter that solar takes more land than gas, nuclear, or other legacy generator technologies; its cost makes it a non issue. Also, solar, backed by battery storage, is cheaper than gas in most cases [5] [6] [7] [8].

No dodge, solar won, and it is going to steamroll fossil fuels globally as battery storage deployment comes up to speed [9] [10].

> To call solar power’s rise exponential is not hyperbole, but a statement of fact. Installed solar capacity doubles roughly every three years, and so grows ten-fold each decade. Such sustained growth is seldom seen in anything that matters. That makes it hard for people to get their heads round what is going on. When it was a tenth of its current size ten years ago, solar power was still seen as marginal even by experts who knew how fast it had grown. The next ten-fold increase will be equivalent to multiplying the world’s entire fleet of nuclear reactors by eight in less than the time it typically takes to build just a single one of them.

> Solar cells will in all likelihood be the single biggest source of electrical power on the planet by the mid 2030s. By the 2040s they may be the largest source not just of electricity but of all energy. On current trends, the all-in cost of the electricity they produce promises to be less than half as expensive as the cheapest available today. This will not stop climate change, but could slow it a lot faster. Much of the world—including Africa, where 600m people still cannot light their homes—will begin to feel energy-rich. That feeling will be a new and transformational one for humankind.

[1] Gas-Turbine Crunch Threatens Demand Bonanza in Asia - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-10-07/gas-tu... | https://archive.today/z4Ixw - October 7th, 2025

[2] AI-Driven Demand for Gas Turbines Risks a New Energy Crunch - https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2025-bottlenecks-gas-turb... | https://archive.today/b8bhn - October 1st, 2025

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45746627 (Solar PV project timeline citations)

[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45569054 (Path 27 transmission citations)

[5] Solar, battery storage to lead new U.S. generating capacity additions in 2025 - https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=64586 - February 24th, 2025

[6] Solar+storage is so much farther along than you think - https://www.volts.wtf/p/solarstorage-is-so-much-farther-alon... - July 16th, 2025

[7] In Solar vs. Gas Matchup, It Was Energy Storage That Killed The Beast - https://cleantechnica.com/2025/03/02/in-solar-vs-gas-matchup... - March 2nd, 2025

[8] Solar electricity every hour of every day is here and it changes everything - https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/solar-electricity-e... - June 21st, 2025

[9] The exponential growth of solar power will change the world - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40746617 - June 2024

[10] Global battery industry grows 83% in last five years, boosting deployment to over 300 GW - https://www.ess-news.com/2025/10/28/global-battery-industry-... - October 28th, 2025