Solar is a great technology. Cheap modules, fast to deploy, low marginal cost. No argument there.
But why the near religious obsession with it?
Solar has a very specific profile it produces when the sun shines and it creates a structural problem it doesn’t produce when demand peaks evenings, winter, bad weather. That gap doesn’t disappear just because panels are cheap.
To make a solar heavy system actually work, you need one of two things massive overbuild accepting curtailment and wasted generation, or
large scale storage firming batteries, hydro, gas, etc. Neither is free. This is where the conversation usually goes off the rails. People point to low LCOE and say solar is the cheapest. That’s only true at the asset level. It ignores system costs storage to shift energy in time backup generation for reliability transmission upgrades to handle peak output Once you include those, the cheap story gets a lot more complicated. Solar is a tool not a solution. It works well as part of a balanced system. But treating it as the backbone of a grid without acknowledging its gaps is just bad engineering.
Posted by staghornworrior
6 Comments
Depends how it’s done, if it’s massively distributed and decentralised, almost every building is almost always self powered by its own solar/batteries then the infrastructure barely needs to change as currents don’t increase beyond the capability of existing cables.
If it’s done like old school power plants then yes, an infrastructure shift is necessary.
>It works well as part of a balanced system. But treating it as the backbone of a grid without acknowledging its gaps is just bad engineering.
Is anybody actually doing this? I agree with all of your other points.
What other form of electric generation can you bolt to your roof and generate electric from?
Like you say, solar is cheap, over build isn’t expensive, it can be put pretty much anywhere with limited disturbance. Most places are combining industrial solar with some level of battery storage. I don’t think anyone is saying it alone will solve all issues with energy generation.
If your alternative is gas, then any amount of solar power means you don’t need to be burning gas!
It’s the fastest, cheapest, most environmentally friendly way to generate electricity. I am not an engineer, but those factors seem important! And mass battery storage deployment seems to solve a lot, though admittedly not all, of the problems you identified. There’s no perfect solution, but from what I’ve seen, it’s the best of the lot.
Solar + Storage without subsidies is now cheaper than gas. Check out Lazard’s to verify this.
You seemed to be obsessed against solar! Solar can really be the backbone of residential energy consumption when paired with good energy management and batteries, in many places around the world. We are not very far from that. Solar remains the cheapest option to reduce generation from others, even if not being the backbone of the system. And yes, we definitely need more wind, hydro, batteries, and as many clean energy solutions as we can develop, but we need to start with solar.