alt Hacker News> Sweden is just about the worst case, there's very few countries/people that far north.
Sweden is worse but it's still a significant issue in e.g. New York or Paris or Auckland.
> There's genius invention called "wires". HVDC has transmission losses on the order of 3.5% per 1,000km. You don't have to colocate the solar.
It's more than 1000km from the places that get cold to a part of the world where it isn't winter.
Suppose we ignore that it's winter in the US Northeast and Southeast at the same time and run HVDC 2000+ km to Florida because it gets an extra hour of sunlight. Long distance transmission can't be used to counter seasonal output and regional weather at the same time because one requires the generation to be spread everywhere and the other requires it to be concentrated closer to the equator. If we concentrate the solar in Florida to mitigate winter in New England then we're screwed when Florida is overcast.
> it's still a significant issue in e.g. New York or Paris or Auckland.
No it isn't.
Wires still might be worth it, but these are all close enough to the equator that you can just over provision locally without issue if you prefer.
> It's more than 1000km from the places that get cold
Solar panels work better in the cold. The issue is with how far from the equator Sweden is, not how cold it is.