It can be, and traditionally has been. But how fast do you think you can bring a solar farm online? Securing the land and zoning is probably the biggest delay, followed by running lines to the grid.
Huge is subjective, but there are many solar farms today running on just a few acres. Some quick googling says that community-based and commercial farms typically run on 10-40 acres, generating between 50-200 megawatts. If you consider 40 acres to be a huge farm, then sure. But it doesn’t make much sense to run these in a decent populated area anyway. This is no different than coal, gas, or other power plants today, albeit for different reasons.
As for huge batteries, yes, we will need them once solar power capacity reaches a point where generation in the day exceeds the demand. As it stands, many places still have off-peak pricing at night. Solar would need to counterbalance that completely before we need huge batteries for solar.
Expanding energy grid is a slow process. Like really slow.
Is it? Seems data centers are able to do it quite quickly, and all at the cost of local taxpayers.
It can be, and traditionally has been. But how fast do you think you can bring a solar farm online? Securing the land and zoning is probably the biggest delay, followed by running lines to the grid.
You would need huge farms and huge batteries. The first can’t be built in the city or in any densely populate area and the later is a big challenge.
Huge is subjective, but there are many solar farms today running on just a few acres. Some quick googling says that community-based and commercial farms typically run on 10-40 acres, generating between 50-200 megawatts. If you consider 40 acres to be a huge farm, then sure. But it doesn’t make much sense to run these in a decent populated area anyway. This is no different than coal, gas, or other power plants today, albeit for different reasons.
As for huge batteries, yes, we will need them once solar power capacity reaches a point where generation in the day exceeds the demand. As it stands, many places still have off-peak pricing at night. Solar would need to counterbalance that completely before we need huge batteries for solar.
Just like replacing all cars.