frezik

It's not that bad. This is an actual technique in use, and it drastically decreases how much storage you need.

The biggest problem has been convincing capitalism to do it. They've been building solar like nuts because that's the cheapest per MW of anything on simple Excel spreadsheets. More mathematical nuance would show that if everyone does this, it's just going to cause overproduction and wasted potential on very sunny days. You need all three, and toss in some hydro and geothermal, as well.

Wind kinda has to go big for efficiency. It's hard to beat the laws of physics on this. Not really feasible for individuals to do in a meaningful way unless you have a whole farm.

Solar panels are workable-ish. Residential rooftop is OK, but the real cost benefit is from filling big, flat fields with racks. Homes have to be a boutique setup every time, and labor cost adds up.

If you want to be (semi-) independent of traditional power utilities, the way to go is co-ops. You and all your neighbors go in on buying a field and putting solar/wind/storage on it

Yeah, they do, and they pretend to be wise adults while doing it. Like they're the only ones who thought of this.

EVs, too. No, we don't have to wait until they can all do 1000 miles and charge in 5 minutes. 350 miles and 20 minute 10-80% charge is fine for the vast majority of the market.

No, none of that has much to do with CO2 output besides transportation.

Nuclear power needs a lot of concrete. Concrete releases a lot of CO2 during production. It does eventually reabsorb it as it cures over a decade or two. IIRC, it might even be CO2 net negative eventually.

What you do is get weather data for sunlight and wind. The two combine to cover some of the lull in the other. From historical data, you can calculate the maximum lull where neither are providing enough. Double that as a safety factor, and that's how much battery you need.

Doing this is by far the cheapest way to get to 95% clean energy everywhere. That would be a total game changer.

What's the power source that doesn't do that? How do I advocate for it?

Then get it from the sources that already exist. 97% coverage is a great milestone.

Correct. The trick is that liberals like to think of themselves as good people. Good people don't have slaves, so they're still paid a bit. Problem solved as far as liberals are concerned.

And ICE just got a big budget bump to send that number to the stratosphere.

HDR would have oversaturated the colors of the little green plants popping up. I don't know what people are on about there.

Personally, I think HDR works best for images that are almost devoid of color. Like I did the one below of the pillars at the Wisconsin state capitol:

Frankie MacDonald?

What would be the alternative?

The energy used by a window AC unit would be easily offset by a single 300W solar panel (even on hot days, they don't run 100% of the time). They tend to be needed most on sunny days, so that's not a problem for solar.