Darkness is temporary (in the sense of nights) only when close enough to equator. Here in Finland even as far south as you can go solar efficiency drops to almost nothing for a good 4 months a year. And in the north it goes to literally to nothing. And it isn’t very safe to rely on other counties for electricity over this period. Doing that basically hands the keys to freeze a sizable portion of our population to an external entity (government)
Though even now we aren’t independent when it comes to heating over the winters. We have to import oil, gas and coal. But with those one can have strategic stockpiles to last over the next/current winter at least if things go bad. Kind of similar for nuclear fuel. We have stockpiles for years but don’t mine it here (we could but economically much cheaper to buy from Sweden and Russia). Just much easier to stockpile that stuff.
But yeah for the vast majority of the whole planets population solar with batteries should work just fine.
>Darkness is temporary (in the sense of nights) only when close enough to equator.
But cloudy weather isn't. Ultimately that's the problem with doing a straight cost comparison between solar and wind. You have to build much more capacity to account for times when they aren't producing at 100%.
With a lot of energy efficiency, heat/cold storage, electricity storage and demand-response you can go a long way while limiting the extra "capacity to account for times when they aren't producing at 100%"...
.
But of course, having different (renewable) source of energy on the grid always make sense and often make it easier
Sure, but you still have to account for the cost of that storage and demand response. And when you're talking about days worth of energy storage things get very expensive.
Our energy hungry industries are building nuclear with their own money. And even with the delays of olkiluoto 3 they want to build more (but are having a hard time getting the permit).
TVO Teollisuuden voima (heavy industries power) is the company that built, operators and owns half of the nuclear plants in Finland (one of the owners of TVO owns the rest)
If they can get the financing from private markets to build more I say let them. None of the current/future plants were built with government money outside of them being the backer for the insurance.
You do not contradict what I wrote. Yes, your industries are going with nuclear. No, they will not be able to compete toe-to-toe with equatorial countries getting solar at $0.01/kWh, as they will likely be able to in a few years.
Will the equatorial countries have the skilled workers, raw resources, logistical infra (roads etc) required to run the plant? Energy is not the only thing you need to run a plant.
I doubt prices will never reach $0.01/kWh. At least here in Finland transmissions fees are a larger part of the bill then the energy itself already. So unless every plant builds an absolutely massive solar farm next to it (and never plans to sell its overproduction from the day) the network fees alone will be much more then that.
As cost of living rises, more people will migrate to cheaper countries, including the skilled labour that moves with their spouses to a country more favourable to raising a family.
The people left behind will be the poor who can’t afford to relocate and the excessively wealthy who don’t care about living expenses.
Why should they not? Is this something that dark skinned countries cannot do?
I think your position there is showing a thinly cloaked racism. I suspect much anti-solar talk has that as a motivation. The idea that white skinned boreal countries will become the future's "third world" may be intolerable.
The idea that white skinned boreal countries will become the future's "third world" is pure fiction.
The third world is characterized by not having, for example, a functioning transportation infrastructure. If Finland can't realistically charge their cars from solar and their choice is between paying somewhat more per kWh than Venezuela by using nuclear or some other non-photovoltaic power generation method vs. not continuing to have a transportation infrastructure, they're not going to stop having a transportation infrastructure.
And it's a damn stretch to frame this as a racial issue. You can expect places like India and Mexico to benefit from cheap solar, but only to about the same extent as "white people" places like the US and Australia. You would have to be an especially silly racist to hang your racial animus on solar power when you can reasonably expect more of the industry to set up shop in Arizona than Zimbabwe.
This is rather beside the point, but this is the population divided by the land area, which accounts for things like the large spike at about 22 degrees East (Reykjavik, and not much else.)
Though even now we aren’t independent when it comes to heating over the winters. We have to import oil, gas and coal. But with those one can have strategic stockpiles to last over the next/current winter at least if things go bad. Kind of similar for nuclear fuel. We have stockpiles for years but don’t mine it here (we could but economically much cheaper to buy from Sweden and Russia). Just much easier to stockpile that stuff.
But yeah for the vast majority of the whole planets population solar with batteries should work just fine.