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The OP was saying: "I don't get why solar is so popular" based on the fact it doesn't work as well in extreme Northern regions where only a tiny fraction of th

• switchbak 3y ago
  I literally started with "I get that it's a great solution for much of the world - and that is fantastic." ... so I think I'm on board with what you're saying. I do agree that the OP sounded a little too sour on it though. And yes, I think we can all agree that Solar works well where .. it works well. The issue is many folks are pronouncing it as some kind of a panacea. The reality is that there's a lot of places where it's marginal (and needs effective dispatchable fallbacks) and others where it's just not suitable. Luckily there's comparatively few people that live in those places, so it won't make much of a difference on the environmental bottom line. But for folks like me, these distinctions are important. And "just add more solar" actually isn't a great idea, as it reduces the ROI on each panel, and there's a minimum amount of dispatchable capacity you need to keep online anyway. Sounds like it really does come down to storage at that level, most of which is still progressing to full productization.