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Retrictoday at 9:48 PM1 replyview on HN

You can generally solve seasonal shortfalls cheaply by simply adding more solar / wind until you no longer have a seasonal shortfall just a massive surplus in a different part of the year.

Put another way if you want to store power say 1GWh for the worst month, well a solar panel provides a lot of power over even the worst month. 20MW of solar panel averaging even 40MWh/day * 30 days = 1.2GWh and cost way less than 1GWh of batteries.

Near the arctic circle Wind fill the same niche.


Replies

skybriantoday at 10:53 PM

I don’t believe the “cheaply” part. You end up building storage that only gets used for one cycle a year, so the capital cost is very high per watt.