eli5: Why do we not run heavily on solar energy as a society or at least in sunny places?
In: 8
Energy producers rely on long-term resource plans, or in other words they plan for what they’ll need in 10-20 years. Solar has only really become commercially viable (meaning cheap and reliable) in the last few years, so we’re still catching up on updating our plans.
There’s also the issue of priorities. The number one priority is making sure you get power when you need it, the second priority is making sure it’s affordable, and the third is sustainability. Reliability is difficult and it gets more difficult the more you put inconsistent energy sources like solar and wind into the mix, so making the switch to renewables takes quite a bit of time and expense. We don’t really get second chances here, after all, because if we screw up and your power goes out for any major period of time, you could very well die.
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