The good news is that it’s very possible to “run the math,” and people run power generation capacity expansion models and production cost/dispatch models to loo

The good news is that it’s very possible to “run the math,” and people run power generation capacity expansion models and production cost/dispatch models to look at these things. And then 15-25 years of solar irradiance and other weather data, at hourly resolution or shorter intervals, is available for most of the world. Maybe the general public extrapolates from their own experience, but grid planners and researchers do much more than that.