“Very sunny” is doing a lot of work there. The storage required goes up dramatically once you run the numbers for somewhere that has seasons. The long-range HVDC lines between hemispheres idea is cute but probably geopolitically impossible; I don’t think the US will let its ability to literally keep the lights on depend on South America.

Storage could get there, but I don’t think it’s credible that manufacturing scale alone will solve the problem. We probably need some new, qualitatively different chemistries to become viable for solar to be viable for the whole grid. From a technical perspective the nuclear plants we could build in the 1960s could do it, whether we can still build them (no matter if the barrier is regulatory or practical) is another question.

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ViewTrick1002 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

The other side of the question is:

How will you get me with rooftop solar and a home battery to buy your extremely expensive nuclear powered electricity when I have my own imperfect solution almost the entire year?

Scale this up to a society adding onshore and offshore wind and you quickly realize that the nuclear plant will have a capacity factor at 10% or so.

Vogtle with a 20% capacity factor costs somewhere like 85 cents per kWh, or $850 per MWh.

Nuclear power due to the massive CAPEX is the worse solution imaginable to fix renewable shortcomings.

Take a look at France. They generally export quite large amounts of electricity. But whenever a cold spell hits that export flow is reversed to imports and they have to start up local fossil gas and coal based production.

What they have done is that they have outsourced the management of their grid to their neighbors and rely on 35 GW of fossil based electricity production both inside France and their neighbors grids. Because their nuclear power produces too much when no one wants the electricity and too little when it is actually needed.

Their neighbors are able to both absorb the cold spell which very likely hits them as well, their own grid as the French exports stops and they start exporting to France.

	▲	seec 11 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Electricity self-sufficiency is only realistic when: your needs are quite low, you own a house, you have capital to invest for both panels and storage, your heating is not electricity dependent (so most likely fossil fuel or wood, which isn't better) Yet, most people live in cities, with plenty of appartement or shared houses where most of the requirements are just not feasible. And the trend isn't going in reverse. So yes, YOU, may have your own individualistic solution but clearly, it's not something that is suitable for most people. Considering you do not have a real horse in the race, you should quit arguing and enjoy your own egotistical "solution" and let people who want to live collectively decide what's best for them.
	▲	johncolanduoni 3 days ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		I’m sure the French are crying about having much lower energy prices than e.g. Germany, even with the importing. I don’t see why we’d expect they’d pay more if the natural gas plants were in their borders.
	▲	idiotsecant 3 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		You sure wrote a lot here to make one point. Yes, if you're willing to operate your own disconnected microgrid you have enormous advantages. Not every entity can do that or is willing to accept the loss of reliability that comes with.

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Dylan16807 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

In most of the US, the minimum solar power in winter is still more than half the average amount. We can set up enough panels within the country.

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triceratops 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> “Very sunny” is doing a lot of work there.

The price dropped 22% in a year. Next year it could be the same price in "somewhat sunny" places.

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johncolanduoni 3 days ago | parent [-]

The additional storage needed when you need to store energy from the summer to feed the grid in the winter (instead of just for day/night and a few cloudy days) is not only orders of magnitude higher in raw capacity, but requires different battery chemistries that can hold charge for that long. 22% cheaper is a drop in the bucket.

	▲	triceratops 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		> when you need to store energy from the summer to feed the grid in the winter Surely you don't need to power 100% of winter hours with summer sunshine. Electricity isn't grain to be stored in a silo. Most places humans live in also get sunshine in the winter. Less sunshine admittedly, but that's where overbuilding panels and interconnecting grids comes in. And even dark, cold places get windy.