wexler88

The implication is that one needs to contribute a detailed response to any statement, no matter how shallow and foolish, or else accept it to the discussion as though it had some validity.

It's true that hydrogen is more practical for storing energy for months, but I think that storing energy for a few hours each day between daytime and nighttime (and transporting it from hot, sunny states to freezing, dark ones) is the important problem to solve.

Did you miss the part where Michigan is already connected by a transcontinental electricity distribution grid to places like Las Vegas (8 average hours of sunlight in January, average temp 9C in January)?

First sentence absolutely correct, second sentence absolute garbage.

Was the particleboard really the operative constraint? Or is the explanation about extra demand the correct one?

It seems plausible that golf cart manufacturers aren't ready to handle extremely spiky demand. Also, that the toilet paper explanation begins as a joke or a guess, and takes hold because everyone likes it as a story.

Solar is an excellent replacement for home heating oil during the Michigan winters.

The vast majority of people in Michigan are already connected to an extremely efficient distribution network for electricity. The marginal cost of delivering additional energy through this network does not round to zero, it is zero. Meanwhile heating oil is delivered by trucks with a large cost in depreciation, labor, and fuel (further fossil fuels burnt in support of a system which was designed to make economic sense with <$10 oil). Whereas domestically produced oil can never drop below $40-50 a (marginal) barrel at the refinery, and imported oil never realistically below $30 + the cost of fighting forever wars for resources, there is a clear and feasible convergence of the marginal cost of solar energy generated in the Southwest US to $0. All this would make solar a viable replacement even without the role of heat pumps, which reduce the raw energy cost of heating with solar to around 20% of that of burning fuel.