3 ms·
The intermittency is really bad/hard to deal with unless you have a large geographic distribution with long distance transmission that can handle that level of
by ericd 2y ago
The intermittency is really bad/hard to deal with unless you have a large geographic distribution with long distance transmission that can handle that level of power.
Even if you can handle weeklong cloudy stints, winter is especially rough due to shorter and less intense sun with much longer shadows potentially knocking out whole strings. Right now our home array gets maybe 4-6 hours of reasonably good generation per day, and it’s simultaneously the highest amount of load we see all year, due to heating needs.
We could try to overpanel so that winter load is met, and overcast generation is more sufficient, but it’s still challenging and would need an extreme amount of energy storage and land.