The coming electricity crisis - $ impact

[Libs]

Alarm bells are being rung about this. Rolling blackouts seem inevitable. My question is- how does this shape our investing.  What is at risk? Do we buy Generac stock? 

 

 

“I am extremely concerned about the pace of retirements we are seeing of generators which are needed for reliability on our system,” Willie Phillips, a Biden appointee who chairs the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), testified last year. According to fellow FERC commissioner Mark Christie, a Trump appointee, “The red lights are flashing.”

States in the Midwest are likely to be among the hardest hit. In a February report, Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), a high-voltage transmission system that provides power to 15 states in the central U.S., warned of “urgent and complex challenges to electric system reliability,” citing a “hyper-complex risk environment.” NERC, which oversees electricity supply across North America, expects MISO to face a staggering capacity shortfall of 4.7 gigawatts (GW) — equivalent to above five average-size nuclear-power plants — by 2028.

Edited June 16 by Libs

[ICUMD]

@Libs seems a bit dramatic.

 

But hard to anticipate solutions.

 

My bet would be on using EV cars to power the grid during surge demand.

[Eng12345]

It's truly not dramatic. The sad thing is that it is all entirely self-manifested too. 

 

I guess when people start dying from rolling blackouts, we will wake up to the true costs of all this green business. 

 

In the meantime, I'll be cashing the overtime checks and dumping them into some of the ideas here. 

Edited June 16 by Eng12345

[rkbabang]

11 hours ago, Eng12345 said:

It's truly not dramatic. The sad thing is that it is all entirely self-manifested too. 

 

I guess when people start dying from rolling blackouts, we will wake up to the true costs of all this green business. 

 

In the meantime, I'll be cashing the overtime checks and dumping them into some of the ideas here. 

The green anti-nuclear movement has stolen our future and set humanity back by half a century and we are about to start paying the price. Of course this will be blamed on capitalism, greed, big business , not enough government funding for windmills & solar panels, and just about anything other than the green-left and their anti-progress propaganda, fear tactics, and activism over the last 50 years.

 

[Gregmal]

I heard all you need to do is follow the science and wear a mask!

[Cigarbutt]

This thread could be a really interesting topic to constructively (and objectively) discuss.

[Eng12345]

1 hour ago, Cigarbutt said:

This thread could be a really interesting topic to constructively (and objectively) discuss.

I mean to be fair - saluki already started this topic a few weeks ago here 

 

 

From my long only position it seems like a lot of the opportunity has been closed in terms of value. 

 

If we want to just talk about the grid then that's a whole different game, one which I could write for days on. 

 

Edited June 17 by Eng12345

[hasilp89]

@Eng12345 Would love to hear more on your perspective re grid.

 

in terms of opportunities, are you saying value you gap has closed given recent run up in certain utilities (Vistra/Constellation etc.), or some other reasons. The industry opportunity here seems straight forward. More demand for power than supply. Making an investment based on that has been more difficult for me (regulatory risk - gvt limits returns, technological risk - Gates spending Billions on small Nuclear reactors and it actually works).

 

 

[Libs]

If we want to just talk about the grid then that's a whole different game, one which I could write for days on. 

 

Edited 3 hours ago by Eng12345

 

Yes please. Not just from an investing standpoint. How bad do you think this will get?

[Eldad]

15 hours ago, Gregmal said:

I heard all you need to do is follow the science and wear a mask!

Ha now masks are for anti-semites and are to be banned by Hochul.

 

idiocracy 

[Eng12345]

I mean where do I start?

 

The thing that gets missed in all of this green energy debate is that energy is local. One area such as the southwest may be great for solar while in the northeast that is not so true. Why we continue as a nation to pay major subsidies for green energy generation sources in areas that don't make sense is beyond me. Why are we putting solar panels on roofs in the upper northeast? For that matter - every rooftop in Florida should be covered in solar, but it's not because of BAD policy. At this point I'm part convinced its a big capital destruction scheme propagated by propaganda - but ill reign it in. The truth is from an energy stand point - we can do whatever we want technologically the only question is cost and politics. We could cover the sahara in solar panels and feed europe solar power but the cost of doing so and the political risk involved is why you never hear about it. I'm of the mind that electricity generation should be a utility - you shouldnt have to be rich to have reliable 24/7 electricity. 

 

Understand when you see something from MISO as the above quote does these are guys who don't have any financial benefit in what generation source is on. They are paid to keep the lights on across the grid, period. The grid is broken up into a few various segments/markets and the simplest way to think about it is PJM is the northeast, MISO the midwest, the infamous ERCOT is Texas, and CAISO is the western us etc. These are the RTO/ISOs which are charged with keeping the lights on. Heres a good resource if you care to learn more about the management structure: Electric Power Markets | Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (ferc.gov) Each one of these RTOs have their own independent regulations that member utilities have to follow and are heavily dominated by various local politics. 

 

 

Understand the electric grid has to run at 60 Hz all of the time. There is more electrical engineering gobledey goop crap to it than that such as reactive power and power factor. But I'm a mechanical, generation side guy so I will keep it simple to avoid the risk of being wrong. In the absence of significant energy storage solutions what that fundamentally means is that load must match generation exactly. So, when you go home at night and flick on your lights or the factory down the road kicks on a big pump, somewhere somehow there must some incremental generation. In the case of you flicking on your lights it probably won't be noticeable, but if the whole city does it at the same time or there is a large change in load because the plant manager down the road came in drunk and started everything up and ran it balls out then it can become noticeable. So what happens if you have too much generation? The frequency starts to rise above 60 Hz - but ultimately the controls will start kicking generators offline causing them to have to go through restarts etc. The opposite is true with low frequency - so you will have to start adding more generation to the grid, but understand even spinning reserves take a couple minutes to ramp up. If a gas turbine is offline, it may take 5-10 minutes (for a modern one) to spin up to full load and really support the frequency. 

 

This can be seen to the extreme today in california:

 

 

Understand the scales that graph is showing are nothing to sneeze at! That is dropping 10 gigawatts of solar generation in the course of an hour! 15 gigs in 4 hours. Understand a singular large scale nuclear reactor-steam generator is usually about 1 gigawatt. So now all of that lost solar generation has to be made up for with dispatchable power. If there's not enough available, then the grid operators will have to simply shut areas down to shed load (rolling blackouts) in order to maintain frequency to prevent a total collapse of the grid.

 

Understand this happens every time a cloud passes over a solar field, or the wind stops blowing. The hidden cost of this whole wind/solar crap is what the utilities are now having to do to maintain frequency! They are having to build synchronous condensers and statcoms like crazy to account for the electrical crap that essentially comes down to maintaining grid frequency! You never see those figures in the cost per megawatt hour. 

 

 As I type this out I realize nuclear is also probably not the silver bullet that people want it to be. Modulating steam valves to ramp like that is tricky and does severe damage to the valves. Steam is harsh shit and at the speeds it moves will eat away a lot. Im not sure how much NERC would allow that - for good reason. Which is why you always hear nuclear referred to as baseload power, but now certain areas of the country are in a position where they don't need baseload - they need dispatchable power, and I personally don't think that fits. It seems to me certain areas are severely overbuilt in terms of intermittent generation and other areas are severely underbuilt - all due to local politics. 

[Longnose]

 

1 hour ago, Eng12345 said:

I mean where do I start?

 

The thing that gets missed in all of this green energy debate is that energy is local. One area such as the southwest may be great for solar while in the northeast that is not so true. Why we continue as a nation to pay major subsidies for green energy generation sources in areas that don't make sense is beyond me. Why are we putting solar panels on roofs in the upper northeast? For that matter - every rooftop in Florida should be covered in solar, but it's not because of BAD policy. At this point I'm part convinced its a big capital destruction scheme propagated by propaganda - but ill reign it in. The truth is from an energy stand point - we can do whatever we want technologically the only question is cost and politics. We could cover the sahara in solar panels and feed europe solar power but the cost of doing so and the political risk involved is why you never hear about it. I'm of the mind that electricity generation should be a utility - you shouldnt have to be rich to have reliable 24/7 electricity. 

 

Understand when you see something from MISO as the above quote does these are guys who don't have any financial benefit in what generation source is on. They are paid to keep the lights on across the grid, period. The grid is broken up into a few various segments/markets and the simplest way to think about it is PJM is the northeast, MISO the midwest, the infamous ERCOT is Texas, and CAISO is the western us etc. These are the RTO/ISOs which are charged with keeping the lights on. Heres a good resource if you care to learn more about the management structure: Electric Power Markets | Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (ferc.gov) Each one of these RTOs have their own independent regulations that member utilities have to follow and are heavily dominated by various local politics. 

 

 

Understand the electric grid has to run at 60 Hz all of the time. There is more electrical engineering gobledey goop crap to it than that such as reactive power and power factor. But I'm a mechanical, generation side guy so I will keep it simple to avoid the risk of being wrong. In the absence of significant energy storage solutions what that fundamentally means is that load must match generation exactly. So, when you go home at night and flick on your lights or the factory down the road kicks on a big pump, somewhere somehow there must some incremental generation. In the case of you flicking on your lights it probably won't be noticeable, but if the whole city does it at the same time or there is a large change in load because the plant manager down the road came in drunk and started everything up and ran it balls out then it can become noticeable. So what happens if you have too much generation? The frequency starts to rise above 60 Hz - but ultimately the controls will start kicking generators offline causing them to have to go through restarts etc. The opposite is true with low frequency - so you will have to start adding more generation to the grid, but understand even spinning reserves take a couple minutes to ramp up. If a gas turbine is offline, it may take 5-10 minutes (for a modern one) to spin up to full load and really support the frequency. 

 

This can be seen to the extreme today in california:

 

 

Understand the scales that graph is showing are nothing to sneeze at! That is dropping 10 gigawatts of solar generation in the course of an hour! 15 gigs in 4 hours. Understand a singular large scale nuclear reactor-steam generator is usually about 1 gigawatt. So now all of that lost solar generation has to be made up for with dispatchable power. If there's not enough available, then the grid operators will have to simply shut areas down to shed load (rolling blackouts) in order to maintain frequency to prevent a total collapse of the grid.

 

Understand this happens every time a cloud passes over a solar field, or the wind stops blowing. The hidden cost of this whole wind/solar crap is what the utilities are now having to do to maintain frequency! They are having to build synchronous condensers and statcoms like crazy to account for the electrical crap that essentially comes down to maintaining grid frequency! You never see those figures in the cost per megawatt hour. 

 

 As I type this out I realize nuclear is also probably not the silver bullet that people want it to be. Modulating steam valves to ramp like that is tricky and does severe damage to the valves. Steam is harsh shit and at the speeds it moves will eat away a lot. Im not sure how much NERC would allow that - for good reason. Which is why you always hear nuclear referred to as baseload power, but now certain areas of the country are in a position where they don't need baseload - they need dispatchable power, and I personally don't think that fits. It seems to me certain areas are severely overbuilt in terms of intermittent generation and other areas are severely underbuilt - all due to local politics. 

 

Very thoughtful and lots to unpack in your comment. Dont necessarily want to turn this into a crypto thread. But it made me think of this podcast episcde where they discuss the many uses of excess energy being produced in emerging country such as africa. 

 

Im curious if BTC mining will or can help smooth the energy demand curves in developed nations such as America, Canada, western Europe? I personally am in favor of more nuclear energy. But we are a long way off from that being available or accepted. 

 

AI TLDR of the podcast

• Bitcoin mining can be a good way to use stranded energy, which is energy that is produced but not used because there is no infrastructure to transport it.
• This can be beneficial for places in Africa that have a lot of geothermal energy but lack the infrastructure to use it all.
• Bitcoin mining can also help to bring financial freedom to Africa by providing people with a new way to earn money.
• Alex Gladstein believes that Bitcoin mining has the potential to help Africa develop its own financial infrastructure and reduce its dependence on foreign aid

 

 

[Eng12345]

28 minutes ago, Longnose said:

 

 

Very thoughtful and lots to unpack in your comment. Dont necessarily want to turn this into a crypto thread. But it made me think of this podcast episcde where they discuss the many uses of excess energy being produced in emerging country such as africa. 

 

Im curious if BTC mining will or can help smooth the energy demand curves in developed nations such as America, Canada, western Europe? I personally am in favor of more nuclear energy. But we are a long way off from that being available or accepted. 

 

AI TLDR of the podcast

• Bitcoin mining can be a good way to use stranded energy, which is energy that is produced but not used because there is no infrastructure to transport it.
• This can be beneficial for places in Africa that have a lot of geothermal energy but lack the infrastructure to use it all.
• Bitcoin mining can also help to bring financial freedom to Africa by providing people with a new way to earn money.
• Alex Gladstein believes that Bitcoin mining has the potential to help Africa develop its own financial infrastructure and reduce its dependence on foreign aid

 

 

 

Yeah I don't know about the whole crypto thing - I don't know much about crypto or ecoins, but I'm sure there's money to be made there in terms of using the stranded energy. It doesnt seem all that different than what TLNE is doing selling power from Susquehanna Nuclear Station to AMZN for an onsite data center.

 

What's interesting though is in some places we have TOO much generation - you can see this via the LMPs (locational marginal pricing) going negative. Just today I looked at the CAISO LMP map and almost all of them were negative thereby indicating if you were an operator and you added generation to the grid you would be required to pay money for adding generation! 

Edited June 17 by Eng12345

[hasilp89]

4 hours ago, Eng12345 said:

I mean where do I start?

 

The thing that gets missed in all of this green energy debate is that energy is local. One area such as the southwest may be great for solar while in the northeast that is not so true. Why we continue as a nation to pay major subsidies for green energy generation sources in areas that don't make sense is beyond me. Why are we putting solar panels on roofs in the upper northeast? For that matter - every rooftop in Florida should be covered in solar, but it's not because of BAD policy. At this point I'm part convinced its a big capital destruction scheme propagated by propaganda - but ill reign it in. The truth is from an energy stand point - we can do whatever we want technologically the only question is cost and politics. We could cover the sahara in solar panels and feed europe solar power but the cost of doing so and the political risk involved is why you never hear about it. I'm of the mind that electricity generation should be a utility - you shouldnt have to be rich to have reliable 24/7 electricity. 

 

Understand when you see something from MISO as the above quote does these are guys who don't have any financial benefit in what generation source is on. They are paid to keep the lights on across the grid, period. The grid is broken up into a few various segments/markets and the simplest way to think about it is PJM is the northeast, MISO the midwest, the infamous ERCOT is Texas, and CAISO is the western us etc. These are the RTO/ISOs which are charged with keeping the lights on. Heres a good resource if you care to learn more about the management structure: Electric Power Markets | Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (ferc.gov) Each one of these RTOs have their own independent regulations that member utilities have to follow and are heavily dominated by various local politics. 

 

 

Understand the electric grid has to run at 60 Hz all of the time. There is more electrical engineering gobledey goop crap to it than that such as reactive power and power factor. But I'm a mechanical, generation side guy so I will keep it simple to avoid the risk of being wrong. In the absence of significant energy storage solutions what that fundamentally means is that load must match generation exactly. So, when you go home at night and flick on your lights or the factory down the road kicks on a big pump, somewhere somehow there must some incremental generation. In the case of you flicking on your lights it probably won't be noticeable, but if the whole city does it at the same time or there is a large change in load because the plant manager down the road came in drunk and started everything up and ran it balls out then it can become noticeable. So what happens if you have too much generation? The frequency starts to rise above 60 Hz - but ultimately the controls will start kicking generators offline causing them to have to go through restarts etc. The opposite is true with low frequency - so you will have to start adding more generation to the grid, but understand even spinning reserves take a couple minutes to ramp up. If a gas turbine is offline, it may take 5-10 minutes (for a modern one) to spin up to full load and really support the frequency. 

 

This can be seen to the extreme today in california:

 

 

Understand the scales that graph is showing are nothing to sneeze at! That is dropping 10 gigawatts of solar generation in the course of an hour! 15 gigs in 4 hours. Understand a singular large scale nuclear reactor-steam generator is usually about 1 gigawatt. So now all of that lost solar generation has to be made up for with dispatchable power. If there's not enough available, then the grid operators will have to simply shut areas down to shed load (rolling blackouts) in order to maintain frequency to prevent a total collapse of the grid.

 

Understand this happens every time a cloud passes over a solar field, or the wind stops blowing. The hidden cost of this whole wind/solar crap is what the utilities are now having to do to maintain frequency! They are having to build synchronous condensers and statcoms like crazy to account for the electrical crap that essentially comes down to maintaining grid frequency! You never see those figures in the cost per megawatt hour. 

 

 As I type this out I realize nuclear is also probably not the silver bullet that people want it to be. Modulating steam valves to ramp like that is tricky and does severe damage to the valves. Steam is harsh shit and at the speeds it moves will eat away a lot. Im not sure how much NERC would allow that - for good reason. Which is why you always hear nuclear referred to as baseload power, but now certain areas of the country are in a position where they don't need baseload - they need dispatchable power, and I personally don't think that fits. It seems to me certain areas are severely overbuilt in terms of intermittent generation and other areas are severely underbuilt - all due to local politics. 

great insight. Thank you for sharing. Two follow ups.

 

- the points you make regarding baseload power, dispatchable power and the need to instantaneously match supply to demand are very simple, make sense and should be easy to understand. So why have we gone of the rails with renewables? Maybe it just gets back to the local needs and politics as you say.

 

- regarding nuclear not being a solution for disptachable power. Doesn’t it make sense to keep adding nuclear as baseload and having gas / coal as the dispatchable? Additionally do the small reactors terraform/gates is working on solve this problem.

[sholland]

I am glad this thread was created because there must be opportunities driven by dumb government mandates that overrely on intermittent, weather dependent renewables, but I am having trouble finding any.  I have spent a lot of time looking at CEG/VST/TLNE, but in my opinion the FCF yields are too low at prevailing rates.  I believe their investment theses are too speculative and too dependent on future AI energy demand driving a premium on green baseload electricity.

 

Small modular nuclear reactors are too speculative. 

NPWR is very interesting, but again too speculative. 

Natural gas is a widow maker although probably will end up solving the problem. 

Coal?

I do have a position in uranium. 

 

Anyone have any other ideas?

[Eldad]

Coal is the best for base load. 
 

When Russia cut off the gas, Germany tore down a wind farm to expand a lignite mine. Lignite is the worst btu and dirtiest coal. 
 

[Eng12345]

- the points you make regarding baseload power, dispatchable power and the need to instantaneously match supply to demand are very simple, make sense and should be easy to understand. So why have we gone of the rails with renewables? Maybe it just gets back to the local needs and politics as you say.

Yes - ultimately it goes back to local needs and politics. The electric grid is a fragmented thing and has a lot of interested parties who all form their own opinions. Like I said we can do almost anything - the question is cost. How much are you willing to pay for your electricity? I know personally I don't want to pay much more than I am currently, and I know people who simply can't afford to pay more. On a cost per megawatt hour basis natural gas is simply the cheapest right now - especially once you start considering in all of the various quality factors. 

 

- regarding nuclear not being a solution for dispatchable power. Doesn’t it make sense to keep adding nuclear as baseload and having gas / coal as the dispatchable? Additionally do the small reactors terraform/gates is working on solve this problem.

Absolutely - the solution to the problem is going to be multipronged. I think of SMRs as essentially breaking up the chunks of ramp rate required similar to an integral. Nonetheless I don't get excited about SMRs - it's not really a new concept, just being flashed around as new. Our forefathers were just as smart, if not smarter than us and there's a reason they didn't go this route. It's not like they didn't have fab shops and stuff to prefab in the 60s. That said - if they can reduce the capital requirements to deploy more nuclear I think we will see a lot more development. 

 

Additionally, there's a lot of hub bub around the development costs of nuclear generation. A lot of blame has been fairly put on the NRC, but I think erring on the side of caution is the correct thing to do. I haven't been involved in a nuclear development project but I have a 2x1 combined cycle plant. I once heard a nuclear guy lament and use as an example of NRC incompetence that when they built the steam piping system, they built it from both ends and met up in the middle. He used that as an example of NRC ineptitude because the NRC made them redesign all the piping when it didn't meet up in the middle and was off by 2 feet. But the truth is that was for damn good reason. Steam piping is heavily stressed components and specifically engineered for location. When I was building a 2x1 we started at one end of the steam system and made damn sure everything was on location before moving forward - for specifically that reason the construction must meet design when it comes to any sort of safety critical item. We knew that if it wasnt on location it would have to be restressed. That's why I tend to think a lot of the cost overruns from Vogtle were simply due to poor design and contracting operations less so NRC incompetence. From a high level and without looking closely - theres a reason once bechtel got involved they were able to build it from essentially foundation to firing in 6 years. 

Edited June 18 by Eng12345

[Saluki]

Well, in Bill Gates' book on climate, he mentions investing in companies where the technology isn't currently feasible in order to move the ball forward.  So some of his bets may not be economic, but more like a charitable investment. Maybe the nuclear stuff is in that basket? 

 

The obvious names that will benefit from upgrading the grid have run up a lot, so that ship probably sailed.  I think you might have luck in some of the smaller names or adjacent tech.  

 

Tantalus systems is a very small cap so my broker won't let me trade it, but they make smart meters and sell them, plus recurring revenue, to utilities. If using your Tesla as a battery for the grid becomes a thing, companies like this will probably benefit.   I own some ATEX, which has FCC licenses that are used for 4G/ internet of things, for grid reliability (like being able to deactivate a broken wire before it hits the ground).  NextNav is a company that I don't own, but they have some frequencies that are used for emergency services and GPS.  They are not profitable, but one of the selling points for their bandwidth is that it's less susceptible to hacking than current GPS.  Maybe that has some applicability to prevent North Korean cyberattacks on our grid? I'm sure there are some companies besides Tesla that will be making whole house battery backups.   

 

 

[treasurehunt]

20 hours ago, Eng12345 said:

This can be seen to the extreme today in california:

 

 

Understand the scales that graph is showing are nothing to sneeze at! That is dropping 10 gigawatts of solar generation in the course of an hour! 15 gigs in 4 hours. Understand a singular large scale nuclear reactor-steam generator is usually about 1 gigawatt. So now all of that lost solar generation has to be made up for with dispatchable power. If there's not enough available, then the grid operators will have to simply shut areas down to shed load (rolling blackouts) in order to maintain frequency to prevent a total collapse of the grid.

 

Aren't you ignoring the role of batteries here? CAISO has over 10GW/40GWh of battery storage. That should help a lot with handling the deeper duck curve, right? I don't see why load shedding will be necessary.

https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2024/04/30/california-batteries-dominate-evening-grid-with-10-gw-40-gwh-of-capacity/

[hasilp89]

@Eng12345 Really interesting stuff. Thank you for sharing.

[Eng12345]

22 hours ago, treasurehunt said:

 

Aren't you ignoring the role of batteries here? CAISO has over 10GW/40GWh of battery storage. That should help a lot with handling the deeper duck curve, right? I don't see why load shedding will be necessary.

https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2024/04/30/california-batteries-dominate-evening-grid-with-10-gw-40-gwh-of-capacity/

Whatever the solution is - it will likely be multipronged. Batteries will likely play a big role. To be honest - I didn't realize California has deployed so much batteries this year. There's a lot of other things that can be done besides the generation side - think demand response like shutting stuff down to flatten the curve. 

 

The funny thing is that everyone is trying to tell a story. I found this blog to be a good read regarding this when I was trying to catch up on that (frankly I don't trust any source that's touting one generation method over another like pv-magazine). Batteries Taking Charge of the California Grid (gridstatus.io)

[Eldad]

I believe Greg Abel said the batteries that are economically viable at this time give you 4 hours of storage. 
 

It is something and will get better, but currently can’t get you through the night let alone through a week of rain. 

[Eldad]

Also, CA has a cost of 0.30 per kWh. 
Some of the coal heavy states like MO and KY pay 0.13. That is a big difference. 

[JRM]

On 6/17/2024 at 4:44 PM, Eng12345 said:

 As I type this out I realize nuclear is also probably not the silver bullet that people want it to be. Modulating steam valves to ramp like that is tricky and does severe damage to the valves. Steam is harsh shit and at the speeds it moves will eat away a lot. Im not sure how much NERC would allow that - for good reason. Which is why you always hear nuclear referred to as baseload power, but now certain areas of the country are in a position where they don't need baseload - they need dispatchable power, and I personally don't think that fits. It seems to me certain areas are severely overbuilt in terms of intermittent generation and other areas are severely underbuilt - all due to local politics. 

 

In the United States nuclear power plants do not load follow.  It is not allowed.  They operate all or nothing.  They may operate at reduced capacity due to maintenance limitations, but they are generally operating at 100% output. 

[treasurehunt]

The Economist has jumped on the solar bandwagon with both feet. They are predicting a future (some decades out) of very cheap electricity, quite the opposite of an electricity crisis. I think the articles are behind a paywall, unfortunately.

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/06/20/the-exponential-growth-of-solar-power-will-change-the-world

https://www.economist.com/interactive/essay/2024/06/20/solar-power-is-going-to-be-huge

 

The Economist doesn't really address seasonal fluctuations or problems with long duration storage. On the other hand, solar electricity production is only 6% of total global electricity production, so there is some time to solve these issues.