eli5: Why do we not run heavily on solar energy as a society or at least in sunny places?
In: 8
Because they don’t produce a stable output(eg clouds,dust,snow, seasons, time of day) and don’t run at night. It’s really important for the grid to have reliable power otherwise you get brownouts and blackouts. Also, energy infrastructure takes time to switch over and affordable solar panels are a recent trend. Lastly their true output per dollar is much lower than reported since we can’t store the excess energy a panel may produce at midday so you are essentially paying for nothing when the supply is higher than demand while with other power plants you can reduce the number of turbines and save that energy for later when it’s needed.
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