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hunter

(39,664 posts)
2. The capacity factor of solar plants in the California desert is about 25%
Mon Sep 16, 2024, 10:20 PM
Sep 2024

It's bound to be much worse in Minnesota.

Last year about 62% of Minnesota's electric supply came from fossil fuels. Coal power isn't being replaced by solar power, it's being replaced by gas.

https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/US-MIDW-MISO

Gas power plants can entirely displace coal power plants but solar power plants cannot entirely displace fossil fuel power plants. Only nuclear power can do that.

Fossil fuels power plants and nuclear power plants can run at full power whether or not the sun is shining.

Adding solar panels to a fossil fuel power grid, even a natural gas fueled grid, doesn't make that grid "green."

Solar depends on fossil fuels for its economic viability. If we did replace the coal power plants with nuclear power plants we wouldn't need solar or natural gas power plants. The gas industry know this.

The solar enthusiasts know this too except for those who haven't done (or can't do) the math. There's a lot of magical thinking about conservation, efficiency, and energy storage.

I think the most despicable people are those who think we should abandon our high tech, high energy civilization and let nature have her way with the "excess" human population, hopefully not in their own backyards.

To save this world from environmental catastrophe and humanely halt human population growth we'll need more energy, not less.

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