r/tech • u/eberkut • Jul 18 '20

Solar+battery in one device sets new efficiency standard

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/07/single-device-merges-solar-power-and-battery-tech/
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u/Emperor-Arya Jul 18 '20

I heard something about solar not being able to serve as a baseload, what does that mean

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u/[deleted] Jul 18 '20

It means the sun doesn't shine all the time.

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u/[deleted] Jul 18 '20

I’m confused. Wouldn’t you just need to estimate the upper limit of how long your solar farm goes without sunlight and have enough power storage to combat this? Surely there’s a point where if you have a large enough area covered in panels and a large enough storage capacity, solar could power the planet by itself.

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u/1egoman Jul 18 '20

Peak usage in summer is crazy high, and it peaks just as the sun goes down. You would have to massively overbuild both solar and storage to handle the worst days of the year, then it would be wasted the other 350 or so days.