You're just describing capacity factor extremely poorly. I'm very sorry you had wildly unrealistic expectations about your home solar panels, but that doesn't c

You're just describing capacity factor extremely poorly. I'm very sorry you had wildly unrealistic expectations about your home solar panels, but that doesn't change the fact that a mix of around 50-70% net renewable capacity is cheaper than any other source in raw energy terms without any storage and more competitive for total system cost than a similar carbon reduction via nuclear. > Here's today so far. It's horrible. Again, clouds. > https://i.imgur.com/breTHQd.png https://i.imgur.com/breTHQd.png So you're getting around a 8-10% capacity factor on a cloudy day in winter. Sounds pretty good to me especially if you're somewhere like NY. Using curtailment, medium distance transmission between uncorrelated sources, short term storage and OCGT or CCGT backup can eliminate more carbon more quickly and with fewer resources and less strain on the grid than any other option. Once you've funded the cheap stuff that removes 50-70% of the carbon, then it's time to think about the stuff that costs 10x as much. Before then, moving a dollar from the renewable pile to the nuclear pile is 30kg of carbon left on the table right now to save 3kg later. Additionally both electrolysis and batteries are plummeting in price, and waiting six months, then ordering 100s of megawatts a year of $60/kWh iron or sodium batteries or $300/kW electrolysers is much better than starting a sticker price $5000/kW nuclear project that might be complete for double that in 12 years (and still requires just as much gas backup even then). > The only real solution I see is a large amount of new nuclear power generation and, yes, some solar and wind. I don't think there's another way to do it. Part of me think that manufacturing, transporting and installing that many panels and batteries is likely to create a far greater ecological disaster than most people imagine. Just a hunch, haven't done the numbers on that one. Well please do the math. Then compare it to mining the low grade Uranium ore with lower energy density than oil which will be required for massive nuclear expansion in countries where the mining industry has more power over environmental regulations than the government. PWRs are an important part of the mix, but they're limited to about 1TW before they require technologies to acquire fuel that are not considered safe, have never been commercialised or haven't even left the lab. Additionally compare it to using fossil fuels for an additional 50 years while the required nuclear infrastructure is funded and then built. Also why 1.2TW? That's roughly 4kW per car or more than triple the energy content of every barrel of oil that enters the US (and also triple the net electricity consumption). Surely 'charge the car where it happens to be or convince the owner to charge it on a timer' is an easier problem than spending $12k to $40k per person on redundant capacity.