eli5 Why is there no giant solar farm in Australia?

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My cursory Google says that it’s not impossible. So why?

EDIT: Answer seems to be that (politics aside) practically it’s cost prohibitive and the tech can’t transfer the energy over the distance required.

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Anonymous 0 Comments

> Answer seems to be that (politics aside) practically it’s cost prohibitive and the tech can’t transfer the energy over the distance required.

Don’t underestimate the influence of the fossil fuel lobby. They have spent vast amounts of money over the years promoting the idea that other energy sources are unworkable. Much of this goes on beneath the surface – they don’t run ads saying “Solar is bad, sponsored by Shell” – instead they schmooze politicians and journalists, set up fake environmentalist groups to muddy the waters, and even work to infiltrate existing environmentalist groups. In recent years they have also run lots of ads claiming that they are already switching to other energy sources – for a while, BP even called itself “Beyond Petroleum”.

The biggest technical problem with solar is that its output doesn’t correspond closely to demand. It peaks in the middle of the day and drops to zero when it goes dark, but in most places, demand peaks in the evening, when the lights are on and people are cooking, watching TV, etc. Its output is also greatly reduced on cloudy days. This means you need either (a) a lot of storage or (b) other energy sources that can complement it. Since energy storage is difficult at large scales, and most of those other energy sources can happily run throughout the day too, this reduces the attractiveness of solar. Not that it’s bad or useless – it just has some significant drawbacks, like all energy sources.

> cursive

You mean cursory. Cursive means joined-up handwriting.

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