> We're at a point where even "free hot water" is not competitive with solar for power generation. You're making the obvious mistake here of equating 1 GW sola

> We're at a point where even "free hot water" is not competitive with solar for power generation. You're making the obvious mistake here of equating 1 GW solar with 1 GW of any other source with a 95-99% baseload capacity. To achieve the equivalent result, you'll need to have at least >2 GW actual solar power to equally compare the two. Granted, in most developed places, solar still beats coal, but this is why in many developing economies with ample coal resources, it makes more sense economically to go with the coal plants. Take any other resource, say hydel or geothermal - solar and wind quickly go down in economic efficiency terms compared to these, in most cases almost doubling or tripling in costs.