3 ms·

I don't share your optimism. It'll be a while before we can produce useful, grid sized batteries for this kind of use. The hybrid approach you describe would r

• taneq 10y ago
  The whole point is that solar thermal power costs 2x - 5x what solar photovoltaic power costs, so you use solar photovoltaic when possible and back it up with solar thermal. It does increase the area required but that's the price you pay for fully renewable baseload power. You could just use thermal but it'd be much more expensive and still require the same footprint for similar power output. Of course, there's nothing wrong with the photovoltaic part being distributed in the form of rooftop solar, which is what's already increaslingly happening. Home storage batteries for load leveling are picking up nicely too, which is good because they're going to become mandatory within the next decade if we want metropolitan power grids to survive tens of megawatts of sometimes-rapidly-fluctuating solar power being dumped into them.