Power consumption only drops to about 50% of the daytime peak at night[1]. Unless you have somewhere to store that solar, you have to plan on "other sources" pr

Power consumption only drops to about 50% of the daytime peak at night[1]. Unless you have somewhere to store that solar, you have to plan on "other sources" producing at least 50%, and more likely significantly more. I consider Utah to be a pretty sunny place, but it is still cloudy nearly a third of the year[2]. Sure, you can couple wind and solar, but that still doesn't help when we get a valley fog inversion for most of January that reduces sunlight to 30% of already short days and no wind is blowing anywhere nearby. Utah doesn't really have the spare water capacity to use it as a potential energy store, either. The point being that, as great as renewables are, without a way to cheaply store vast amounts of renewable energy or a way to shuffle energy from great distances, it isn't going to work on its own. We need a solid baseline, which, of course, is coal today, but I'd much rather keep looking for better nuclear. There's a lot of energy in those bonds; I have a great deal of confidence we can find a way to leverage it without all of the nasty side-effect. We just need to get past the knee-jerk reaction of "nuclear is bad" and to a better place of "today's nuclear leaves a lot to be desired, but it doesn't mean tomorrow's will"[3]. 1. http://www.mpoweruk.com/electricity_demand.htm http://www.mpoweruk.com/electricity_demand.htm 2. http://www.currentresults.com/Weather/Utah/sunshine-by-month.php http://www.currentresults.com/Weather/Utah/sunshine-by-month... 3. http://www.quaker.org/fep/CES1.html http://www.quaker.org/fep/CES1.html - You can see that Nuclear is far less deadly than coal, but, when things go wrong, it costs a whole lot more than coal.