Lowering the bar? Put it wherever you want so long as i can drink at it
this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2026
257 points (97.8% liked)
Share Funny Videos, Images, Memes, Quotes and more
3326 readers
4 users here now
#funny
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
Holy shit.
At this point I feel ashamed admitting I find this astonishing. Everyone come point and laugh because I'm somehow still not jaded enough.
Usually before I write something stupid I go back and proof read it. Apparently the DOE doesn't do that.
Growing up in the American education system I met a number of intelligent and decent people. None of them that stayed in this country are doing particularly well professionally. I also met a number of trust fund brats and amoral monsters. They are doing quite well for themselves. This is America.
The lack of morality is a feature.
The 1% of solar producing power at night scares me
Moonlight and starlight is indirect and distant solar power, respectively.
Could also be as simple as them using the wrong cutoff time for when the Sun goes down
That light has way less than 1% of the intensity of sunlight.
Edit: from here you get that the brightness of moonlight is 0.05 - 0.3 lux whilst that of direct sunlight is 32,000–100,000 lux
Our eyes deceive us (our pupils dilate or contract and we have different more sensitive cells in our retina for seeing in low light conditions) and make it seem brighter than it actually is whilst making sunshine during the day be less bright than it actually is.
You can use any light of the right frequencies to produce electricity, but the amount of current you can get on a solar panel from moonlight and starlight is minuscule.
My bet is that the 1% comes from things like molten salt solar power plants which during the day use sunlight to heat up some kind of salt (which is used to produce steam that powers a steam turbine), some of which will only be used to actually generate power during the night.
load more comments
(20 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
Please tell me this isn't a real thing someone published. It really needs to be a joke. My opinion of humanity is so very low, and I don't think I can handle lowering it any further.
I’m sorry, buddy. It’s real.
By sunset, despite still high temps, 99% of solar power also failed.
They think high temps is what generates the electricity.
For some of them it actually is, not all are photoelectric.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_tower
They have trade offs, like every power solution. One perk is that they generally cleaner to produce, since shiny metal is simpler than modern complex solar panels.
That being said, I have little faith in any report issued under the current administration.
That still requires sunlight to work…
It requires sunlight to charge, not to produce electricity. Because liquid salt doesn't cool the moment it goes dark the plant can continue to use it to boil water to spin a turbine for a fair bit of time without sunlight. I believe one implementation only produces power at night, and spends the day collecting heat.
But yes, solar power does require sunlight at some point.
It's kinda moot however, because having now read the original post I was correct to assume they (the doe) was being disingenuous. The heat they seemed to be referring to was "the weather". As in "despite the high temperature, the sun still went down causing solar generation to ebb in a predictable fashion that grid operators were unsurprised by. This is why it's good we forced them to keep 150 year old coal plants burning".
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
Damn it. I think that was the last little bit of faith in humanity I had left.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Seems like the official DoE account on LinkedIn posted it;
Remember when the DoE used to be all boring engineers and physicists, not adeptus mechanicus?
load more comments
(4 replies)
As a point of comparison, here's a press release from PRC's government on the same day: https://english.www.gov.cn/news/202607/23/content_WS6a617ed3c6d00ca5f9a0c5e8.html
China is building yet another 300 GW of renewables by 2030, meanwhile the US is struggling to understand the word "solar" in "solar panel".
China is basically the only major economy that invested into making a transition off fossil fuels actually possible.
The point is to focus on the future. Fossil fuels don't disappear, but new energy sources can replace them in pieces, small or large. Also, equally importantly, personal solar is a life changing tool for millions of people around the world already.
For sure, I expect once the process will accelerate now with Gulf energy exports collapsing making it a necessity for a lot of countries. And Pakistan is a great example where people took initiative themselves to start importing the panels, and now there's large scale solar available. This kind of stuff does make me cautiously optimistic.
Honestly, it's impressive that they still managed 138MW after sunset.
Some of them positioned under bright streetlights or something?
load more comments
(2 replies)
Incidentally, this is why I'm heavily invested in battery technology.
Kinda looks like a sunrise 🌅
load more comments
(10 replies)
Sun Sets
Republicans: Huddle nervously in the darkness uncertain if the magic sky fire will ever return.
Solar
Sunset
If those kids could read meme
Sometimes I wonder if my whole worldview is incorrect. Perhaps I am in an insulated leftist echo chamber. Maybe these people who I have vilified have reasonable positions that I cannot comprehend.
Then I see the Department of Energy lamenting how solar panels failed because they don't work at night.
load more comments
(1 replies)
US education
4th Grade School Textbook
That's from a private religious education textbook. It is not representative of the U.S. education system.
Yes, but a big part of the population in the US are in school with this and similar. I remember an interview with a passerby in Alabama, I think, asking him about climate change caused by pollution. Answer: It Is a big lie that man can change anything in God's Creation.
The US Bubble
Autoritarian govs only can work with ignorant citizens, religion is always usefull for it. Search: List of Banned Books in US Schools.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Wait until they hear about my car when it has no gas.
not gonna have to wait long the way things are going in the Gulf
load more comments
(1 replies)
Anything can be true when words have no meaning.
If you kill all the Nazis this will stop being a problem.
view more: next ›