alt Hacker NewsSerious citation needed that there are week-long stretches of continuous wind-free heavy cloud covering thousand mile stretches of the United States.
Also, it’s weird to talk about Florida when, say, Arizona and Utah, etc. are right there. Even Wyoming despite being further north has over half of the month sunny in the winter. One thing to remember is that we could power the entire country using solar with a fraction of the land currently used to produce corn for ethanol so we don’t even need to substantially change land use, just stop subsidizing inefficient fuel generation.
Here's your serious citation - the polar vortex.
These usually drop ambient temperatures across Canada and the northern US to below -20 C, and produce generally high winds. This combination of extreme cold, cloud cover, and high winds last for multiple days, often longer than a week.
The wind plus cold means that many wind turbines cannot operate and the cloud cover and shorter days mean that solar is barely generating any energy.