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A comment on Solar Power/Batteries are 60% of planned new U.S. electric generation capacity. Parent comment

Re:Solar Power/Batteries are 60% of planned new U.S. electri... by sytse on Tuesday March 08, 2022 @08:51AM (#30599832)
You need to overbuild solar with a factor of 5 to get to a practical amount of batteries. See https://twitter.com/sytses/status/1441605024887427073?s=21

One side benefit of that is that energy will be free 90% of the time. Great for carbon extraction and desalination.

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Re:Solar Power/Batteries are 60% of planned new U.S. electri... by bigfudge on Tuesday March 08, 2022 @09:09AM (#30600033)
That presumably ignores the fact that other industries would adapt to respond to energy that was essentially free for even shorter periods. The economics of heavy industries might change if the energy input was free for 3 hours a day (e.g. offsetting great capital spend to overbuild infrastructure there).
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Re:Solar Power/Batteries are 60% of planned new U.S. electri... by Ajedi32 on Tuesday March 08, 2022 @09:53AM (#30600527)
Overbuilding by 5x means you also need to multiply the cost by 5x. Is solar still cheaper than nuclear once you factor that in? (Not to mention the cost of energy storage.)
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Re:Solar Power/Batteries are 60% of planned new U.S. electri... by pydry on Wednesday March 09, 2022 @07:06AM (#30613574)
In Iceland probably not, in Hawaii hell yes.
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Re:Solar Power/Batteries are 60% of planned new U.S. electri... by mrep on Wednesday March 09, 2022 @07:47AM (#30613848)
Has he never heard of power to gas [0]? We already have lots of storage and generators for natural gas. I doubt you'd need more than twice the capacity using power to gas.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-gas

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