You are being misled about renewable energy technology.

What Hacker News said

Strong rec mapontosevenths · 2026-02 · on “The Modern Toyota That Lost 65% of Its Value in One Year”

> And no, there's no mention of batteries there; it's literally a straw man fight, showing their applicability to daily solar power generation cycles while almost completely ignoring their applicability to annual cycles. Why is it every single time someone in this thread speaks up they are just plain wrong? Here is a direct link to the part about batteries. He talks about them for about 15 minutes which is something like a quarter of the video. There is even a chapter mark to take you to that part. He also mentions them half a dozen more times throughout the video and warns in the beginning that people like you will chime in with misinformation without watching the video. You proved him righ

Strong rec Wistar · 2026-02 · on “Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid”

Related: Alec Watson’s recent, and excellent, Technology Connections YouTube piece on renewable energy. “You are being misled about renewable energy technology” [this video]

Strong rec anon7000 · 2026-04 · on “Solar and batteries can power the world”

Yeah, the technology connections video on this was fantastic. If one was to cover that land in solar, you’d produce far more than the current energy demands of the US. Relying on an energy source which requires constant, continuous resource extraction is fucking stupid when we can spend resources up front and get reliable energy (solar + battery) for decades with minimal operating cost & maintenance. And then we’ll have a recycling loop to minimize future resource extraction. If you want to debate that, spend some time with this video first: [this video]

Strong rec simoncion · 2026-04 · on “Maine Is About to Become the First State to Ban Major New Data Centers”

> in effect you've basically hamstrung green sources of energy around the country by being very smart for your own state. > The question is, should you be allowed to this. "...you've basically hamstrung green sources of energy"? Well, after we stop growing corn to feed exclusively to cars and start using solar panels deployed on that land to harvest electricity for cars and houses and everything else that runs on electricity [0], if we're still short on power we can have the discussion you're itching to have. [0] The immediately relevant discussion starts here < [this video] > and runs through to about 38:29, but the entire video is very, very well worth watching.

Strong rec id34 · 2026-06 · on “In a first, wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026”

I recommend this video from YouTuber Technology Connections: [this video] I appreciate his ability to talk renewables for almost an hour and barely mention climate change. This video has a bit of a twist ending, but he gives you a solid out before he becomes political if you're showing it to someone who won't be receptive to that messaging.

Strong rec ak217 · 2026-06 · on “Fossil Fuels Are 40% of Freight Shipping Tonnage, but Half Its Fuel Use”

Highly recommend everyone watch this video [this video] Briefly, the most important reason an EV is better because it unlocks energy portability . You gain the flexibility to source your energy in many more ways than with a gas car. Oil energy is about as optimized as it's ever going to get. With electricity, we're just getting started.

Recommends Rebelgecko · 2026-02 · on “FERC: Renewables made up 88% of new US power generating capacity to Nov 2025”

If you like (VERY) long form videos, you might enjoy the recent video about renewables from Technology Connections: [this video] Some of the interesting take ways for me, as someone who was already pretty hung ho about solar and batteries: * Solar has gotten so cheap that it's still profitable in the shady northlands * The amount of land it would take to run the US primarily on solar is "a lot" in absolute terms. But it pales in comparison to the amount of land we currently use to grow corn for feeding gas cars.

Recommends goda90 · 2026-02 · on “Cubans rendered powerless as outages persist and tensions with US escalate”

This really illustrates how important it is to switch to renewable energy. I know it's not an easy task for impoverished communities to get the startup capital to install solar+batteries, especially one in such a politically tumultuous position, but that really is a path to stability for so many people around the world. A YouTuber known for talking about dishwashers and Christmas lights recently put out a long rant about how ridiculous it is that humanity still leans so much on single use fuels: [this video]