Technology

Solar doesn’t perform at its nameplate capacity, so you have to overbuild the capacity by about 200% in order to achieve the same baseload as a constant output thermal plant.

And that doesn’t even touch on the fact that solar doesn’t work at night, and the capacity is much lower during the different seasons in Northern latitudes.

So you either build a shitton of batteries, provide backup power sources, or tell people not to use energy during the winter. According to Tesla, they sell their Megapack batteries for around $1/watt-hour of storage. Still, lets figure a 1 Ghwr battery for every 1 GW of installed capacity of solar. That should give the system a few hours of runtime after it gets dark.

So instead of your 500 GW solar capacity, we need 1,000 GW. And 1,000 Gwhr of batteries. $68.50 Trillion worth of solar + $1 Trillion for batteries.

However, I’m a little skeptical on your solar costs. Utility scale solar is typically cited as between $1-$2/watt installed. So for 1,000 GW that gives you $1 Trillion installed. Which is a lot of money, but less than Biden’s student load forgiveness plan.

I personally believe, after spending 3 years listening to the Energy Gang podcast, that decarbonizing the energy system is an ‘all-hands on deck’ emergency that will require every trick in the book to tackle. We will likely max out every type of cheap and readily financeable energy system on this road.