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  • Hacker News
  • We're getting to a point where we can stop boiling water for electricity.

    What a time to be alive.

    by k__
  • On a monthly basis. News articles about solar power tend to quote maximum capacity, confusing the issue. This is about energy rather than power, aggregated over a month, so it's a somewhat more meaningful statement.
    by jfengel
  • You know what I call solar--fusion power. There's a giant fusion reactor running for free. We simply need to extract the useful energy. Want to build a terrestrial fusion reactor? A conventional nuclear reactor? You still need to extract useful energy and deal with excess heat. The way I see it, from an economic perspective, long-term, solar wins. Of course, this is just my long-view
    by jostmey
  • It's too bad about nuclear power.

    From wikipedia energy density:

      Coal, anthracite... 26–33 MJ/kg
  Natural gas........ 53.6 MJ/kg
  Diesel fuel........ 45.6 MJ/kg

  Plutonium-239...... 83,610,000 MJ/kg
    also: :)

      Antimatter......... 89,875,517,874 MJ/kg
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density

    or:

    In light-water reactors, 1 kg of natural uranium - following a corresponding enrichment and used for power generation - is equivalent to the energy content of nearly 10,000 kg of mineral oil or 14,000 kg of coal.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#Fission_reactor...

    by m463
  • Always good to see the future arriving, but the job is not done yet by far. We need to be sure not to take our foot off the gas (figuratively of course).

    We need to accelerate clean energy generation even more so we can replace not just dirty electricity sources but dirty energy sources entirely, and produce synthetic petrochemical feedstocks. Modernity runs on hydrocarbons-as-chemicals, not just hydrocarbons-as-fuels, so despite electrolysis and synthesis being hugely energy inefficient, there is literally no alternative. We just have to brute force it at petascale.

    by jl6
  • It is a shame that nuclear power has stagnated - we could have been moving towards fossil fuel free grid half a century ago. We've lost decades of progress there. But it's a good thing that solar power is coming into its own more and more.

    Late is better than never.

    by ACCount39
  • > From March 2025 through June 2026, either solar or wind individually generated more electricity than nuclear every month. In March, April and May 2026, both technologies independently surpassed nuclear generation.

    > Global solar capacity increased by 510 GW to 2,383 GW, up 27% year on year, while wind added a record 159 GW to reach 1,291 GW, an increase of 14%. By comparison, installed nuclear capacity rose by just 1.5 GW to 399.5 GW, while operating nuclear capacity declined by 0.5 GW to 368.6 GW.

    > More recent data from IEA PVPS indicate that global PV additions reached around 690 GW in 2025, about 180 GW more than the figure used by WNISR. This suggests the gap between solar and nuclear capacity – and their respective growth rates – was even wider than indicated in the report.

    > The report identifies falling battery costs as a potential enabler of continued PV expansion, particularly as grids contend with growing volumes of variable renewable generation and periods of low or negative electricity prices. Grid-scale battery deployment accelerated sharply in 2025, with 104 GW and 257 GWh connected during the year. More than 78% of cumulative battery energy storage system (BESS) capacity was installed between 2023 and 2025.

    by gryfft
  • Note that this is actual generated terawatt hours. Nuclear power has a substantially higher capacity factor, but solar has been growing so rapidly that it has taken the lead on generated output too. Wind is just about to surpass nuclear generation also, though solar is racing ahead much faster. The next big milestone, not to be reached for several years at the present rate, would be solar generation overtaking hydroelectric generation. You can see data up through 2025 here:

    https://ourworldindata.org/electricity-mix

    Even though solar power has been a significant part of the energy conversation for decades, the majority of solar growth is very recent. Nuclear power generated 2762 TWh in 2021, when solar generated 1054 TWh. Solar power generated 2779 TWh in 2025.

    by philipkglass

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