This is a good quality post except for the dig in the last paragraph. I would, however, be curious if you can run the numbers for the UK or Germany. How much s

This is a good quality post except for the dig in the last paragraph. I would, however, be curious if you can run the numbers for the UK or Germany. How much solar and battery would you need to be able to have no brownouts during winter? Trying some very rough numbers myself: Currently Germany seems to use around 3.3 trillion kwh[1] of energy per year. Likely around 300 billion kwh for December. Having a look, the solar irradiance in the sunnier parts of Germany in December seems to be around 20-30 kwh/m^2.[2] Cheap PV solar is generally around 30% efficient and 1.5m^2 costs around £91 retail[3]. So the order of magnitude solar cost needed for Germany in December to not need more than a week's storage is probably around €2 trillion. Amortised over 20 years that's €200 billion per year... This doesnt take into account many things like installation and maintenance and the reduced prices from not buying retail, but it still seems pretty doable, though noticeably higher than current spend of around €100 billion/year. (Which is also roughly what you'd get with French style nuclear) [1] https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/germany https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/germany [2] https://www.dwd.de/EN/ourservices/solarenergy/maps_globalradiation_sum_new.html https://www.dwd.de/EN/ourservices/solarenergy/maps_globalrad... [3] https://shop4electrical.co.uk/panels/9905-ja-solar-jam54s30-410-mr-photovoltaic-solar-panel-half-cell-410w https://shop4electrical.co.uk/panels/9905-ja-solar-jam54s30-...