The sunlight hitting even a small portion of the United States has enough energy to power the whole country—that simple calculation was the subject of the last post. All this shows on its own is that running the country on solar power is physically possible. With photovoltaics it may be not just possible but practical, but photovoltaics on their own left open the question of what to do at night. Now it seems that the answer may be battery energy storage. Here's Tesla's sales of battery energy storage systems again, but updated since my last post to include 2024 Q4:

It's natural and popular to believe that solar will either "win" or "lose", that declining panel and battery prices will bankrupt the competition or that they'll be revealed as a ruinous environmentalist fad. The reason I say this dichotomy is natural is because naively it seems that the solar+batteries [...]

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Outline:

(02:32) The economic niche of battery energy storage

(05:59) Economic comparison to natural gas peakers

(09:16) The niche pays better

(10:50) The near future of electricity generation

The original text contained 7 images which were described by AI.

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First published:
February 1st, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mnaEgW9JgiochnES2/2024-was-the-year-of-the-big-battery-and-what-that-means-for

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“2024 was the year of the big battery, and what that means for solar power” by transhumanist_atom_understander

LessWrong (30+ Karma)