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> Even in Texas/California photovoltaic output in the winter is measly, anywhere more to the north and it's effectively inexistent. The northernmost point in T

> Even in Texas/California photovoltaic output in the winter is measly, anywhere more to the north and it's effectively inexistent. The northernmost point in Texas would be at the extreme southern edge of Europe. The northernmost point of California is level with the sunny French Riviera. Hell, even frozen Minnesota has about the same solar potential as northern Spain... If Europe can make solar work, so can the states (assuming a similar level of investment)

friendzis 2mo ago
> If Europe can make solar work Can you cite a region in Europe that physically independently covers its energy needs with solar+storage alone? </snark> Stress on physical. Even if some regions claim renewables fully covering energy needs, that's at best on accounting level, those regions are still fully dependent on power import/export and simply could not function in an island mode for any extended period of time without at the very least brownouts. Quite importantly, it's always renewables, not solar. The dispatchability problem is a real pain. Pool together wind + solar + hydro and the variability in power (!) output drops to levels possible to tame with realistic grid-scale storage sizes. I am not talking about intra-day balancing here. It's the yearly cycle that comes to bite you. In my corner of Europe, if I wanted to go completely off-grid with solar+storage I would need storage well into the mid single-digit MEGA watt-hours, for the house needs (HVAC and DHW taking the lion's share) alone. That's laughably unrealistic. > The northernmost point of California is level with the sunny French Riviera. Hell, even frozen Minnesota has about the same solar potential as northern Spain... Yes, the southern states could probably make do with something like 3-4x overprovisioning, but that's still massive. So massive that any sort of windmill capability will outcompete any sort of COTS storage.
- Toutouxc 2mo ago
  In my corner of Europe, I have vacationed in a house that’s completely off-grid with solar and a bit over 20 kWh of storage (it does use about half a ton of wood pellets for heating during the coldest months of winter). Link in Czech: https://www.csdum.cz/jak-jsme-postavili-cesky-sobestacny-dum-a-cena.html https://www.csdum.cz/jak-jsme-postavili-cesky-sobestacny-dum... I wonder how it would fare with just 100 kWh of storage, something you can still easily put together.
- flir 2mo ago
  > Pool together wind + solar + hydro Plus stored power, plus biomass, plus nuclear, plus gas. 90% renewables is better than 80% renewables. Throwing up our hands and saying "we'll never reach 100%, lets pack the whole thing in" isn't a sensible approach.
- swiftcoder 2mo ago
  > Can you cite a region in Europe that physically independently covers its energy needs with solar+storage alone? That is substantially moving the goalposts - nowhere in the world has built out sufficient solar to make that claim yet. The question is whether they can get there. If you look at the table[1] for installed solar per capita, 9 of the top 10 countries are in Europe (the odd one out is Australia), so they are definitely giving it the old college try [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country

friendzis 2mo ago

> If Europe can make solar work Can you cite a region in Europe that physically independently covers its energy needs with solar+storage alone? </snark> Stress on physical. Even if some regions claim renewables fully covering energy needs, that's at best on accounting level, those regions are still fully dependent on power import/export and simply could not function in an island mode for any extended period of time without at the very least brownouts. Quite importantly, it's always renewables, not solar. The dispatchability problem is a real pain. Pool together wind + solar + hydro and the variability in power (!) output drops to levels possible to tame with realistic grid-scale storage sizes. I am not talking about intra-day balancing here. It's the yearly cycle that comes to bite you. In my corner of Europe, if I wanted to go completely off-grid with solar+storage I would need storage well into the mid single-digit MEGA watt-hours, for the house needs (HVAC and DHW taking the lion's share) alone. That's laughably unrealistic. > The northernmost point of California is level with the sunny French Riviera. Hell, even frozen Minnesota has about the same solar potential as northern Spain... Yes, the southern states could probably make do with something like 3-4x overprovisioning, but that's still massive. So massive that any sort of windmill capability will outcompete any sort of COTS storage.

Toutouxc 2mo ago
In my corner of Europe, I have vacationed in a house that’s completely off-grid with solar and a bit over 20 kWh of storage (it does use about half a ton of wood pellets for heating during the coldest months of winter). Link in Czech: https://www.csdum.cz/jak-jsme-postavili-cesky-sobestacny-dum-a-cena.html https://www.csdum.cz/jak-jsme-postavili-cesky-sobestacny-dum... I wonder how it would fare with just 100 kWh of storage, something you can still easily put together.
flir 2mo ago
> Pool together wind + solar + hydro Plus stored power, plus biomass, plus nuclear, plus gas. 90% renewables is better than 80% renewables. Throwing up our hands and saying "we'll never reach 100%, lets pack the whole thing in" isn't a sensible approach.
swiftcoder 2mo ago
> Can you cite a region in Europe that physically independently covers its energy needs with solar+storage alone? That is substantially moving the goalposts - nowhere in the world has built out sufficient solar to make that claim yet. The question is whether they can get there. If you look at the table[1] for installed solar per capita, 9 of the top 10 countries are in Europe (the odd one out is Australia), so they are definitely giving it the old college try [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country