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1970-01-01today at 5:24 PM2 repliesview on HN

Solar with a modern LFP battery system is a no-brainer solution for 21st century energy infrastructure. The safety record beats pretty much everything else, and as long as the sun is out, it just works.


Replies

eigenspacetoday at 5:38 PM

Focusing on Solar+Battery is only effective when the solar is not accounting for a majority of electricity generation (at least in geographies significantly north of the tropics). The problem is that while the sun shines, solar will drive everyone else out of business, but then leaves you stranded in the winter, and no practical amount of electricity storage will save you.

Fortunately, wind energy generation also exists, and is a nearly ideal complement to solar power, because it's nearly as cheap as solar, and its energy peaks are mostly anti-correlated with solar energy peaks (typically the winter and sunset are the windiest parts of the year / day).

Wind's main problem is that it's more reliant on large scale projects (rather than solar which scales all the way from a pocket calculator to an installation the size of city), and wind is also more susceptible to regulatory / NIMBY sabotage than solar.

Especially with China currently flooding the market with cheap solar and batteries, I think it makes sense for governments to focus much more of their attention and efforts on promoting (or at least getting out of the way of) wind projects, and let the market drive solar adoption.

porneltoday at 5:33 PM

In the UK just having batteries already helps. There's a surplus of wind at night. Shifting it to 5pm peaks pays back the cost of the battery quicker than solar panels pay for themselves.