> In 1972 alone, 13 new nuclear plants were ordered.

You are making my point. We can't build them.

> Or for solar, mean solar flux in CA is about 5 kWh/m^2 over a day, solar panels are about 20% efficient, that's 1 kWH/m^2/day = 24 m^2 / kW of panels = 24 km^2 / GW * 8.75 GW = 210 km^2 = an approximately 21 x 10 km solar array in the Mojave desert.

I am so incredibly tired of this argument. The only people who reach for this are those who know nothing about the reality of solar. They think in terms of the fantasy they've been sold and, therefore, know nothing about what happens in real life.

> and then we build one nuclear power plant, or 2 km^2 of solar, or 100 wind turbines, each year until the transition is complete.

Please. I beg you. If you have a Excel or something equivalent and have at least a high school understanding of Physics and mathematics, slow down, do some research and try to understand. You really do not. You are confusing a google search for reality.

I'll provide with a quick fantasy vs. reality education as a starting point. The rest is up to you. You can either continue to believe in fantasies or start to understand.

Here's a graph showing the power output of my 13 kW array about a month ago:

https://i.imgur.com/aNnbmDp.png

Notice the parabolic shape with a peak at about 8 kW.

Wait, what? Not 13 kW?

Right. Output changes through the year. I have yet to see it reach the full rated panel output. The most I've seen is around 10 kW. Do you know why? Because the fantasy you quote in terms of efficiency (and everything else) is a rating had under ideal laboratory conditions, starting with an operating temperature of 25 degrees C. This is great for marketing and laughable for real-life conditions.

It doesn't end there. Check this out:

https://i.imgur.com/pB1WgQ0.png

This was the very next day!

What happened? How did the array go from 8 kW all the way down to 2 kW, then back up to about 7, down again, up again, etc.? How did that happen?

Clouds!!! That's how that happened. F-ing solar idealists make me sick. I was one of them, BTW, until I built this system and learned that my fantasy did not match reality at all.

Clouds!!!

Do you think that's it? Check this one out. One day later:

https://i.imgur.com/FiaENVI.png

Clouds. Again! Are you starting to understand? Does this start to paint an image of why all these hand-wavy solar flux arguments are complete and utter nonsense?

Do you know when peak solar production occurs? Which month of the year? Most people will say June/July.

Nope, it's April/May. Here's a full year:

https://i.imgur.com/EQc8EDD.png

Because solar panels have a negative temperature coefficient. That's why! Which means their output is reduced as the panel temperature increases. In June/July it's just too hot. April/May happen to be the right balance between solar input, temperature and other factors.

Remember the graphs showing power generation loss due to clouds? What does that look like through the month. Well, here's what my output looked like this last April:

https://i.imgur.com/8lYKImD.png

See that? On any given day your power output can be reduced by anywhere between 25% and 50%. And that's in a good month. Look at what happened in January:

https://i.imgur.com/bGuCH2F.png

80% reduction in power output! 80%!

For goodness sake, abandon this fantasy and take the time to learn about reality. What's even more frustrating is that people like you will actually engage in intense arguments armed with nothing more than fantasies. Please.

I have no problem with someone not knowing something. We all have tons to learn. I certainly did not have the level of understanding I have today until I built my own solar array and started to try to understand why my output did not match my expectations. What a lesson that was.

What rubs me the wrong way is when people pretend to know something. I have never acted in that manner in my life. If I don't understand something to a good degree I keep my mouth shut and try to learn from those who actually do. That does not mean I don't make mistakes, but I try really hard not to say anything I don't know or have researched to a reasonable depth.

Let's talk about the consequences of the above graphs and your "and then a miracle occurs" calculations (because that's what they are when compared to reality).

The parabolic power output curve means you have to build a solar array 1.5 times larger in order to deliver the same energy over a roughly 12 hour period as that of a constant-power system (nuclear) producing your peak power.

Why?

Because energy is the integral of the power curve over time. The integral of an inverted parabola is 2/3 the area of the enclosing rectangle (the constant power curve). Therefore, my solar array produces 2/3 the energy of a source that can deliver constant power in the 8 kW to 10 kW range. In order to deliver that energy I have to grow my system by the reciprocal of that, which is 1.5. And, of course, I would have to add batteries if what I am after is power. In other words, I have to fill the areas outside the parabola with power I have stored in batteries.

Wait. There's more. This only covers, say, 12 hours of the day. Now I need to overbuild the system yet again in order to provide power at night. That means, at a minimum, a 2x multiplier. I am now up to 3x (1.5 * 2). In other words, my humble 13 kW system would have to triple in size to 39 kW.

Are we done?

No.

Why?

Remember the damn clouds? Here's a graph from March of this year:

https://i.imgur.com/yvTdNX0.png

Horrible stuff. You have to account for this. Believing that one is going to have perfectly shape parabolic output 365 days per year is part of that fantasy I have been referring to. That's not reality.

How do we account for that? If there are no nuclear power plants and no coal (whatever) power plants and we depend 100% on solar (please don't say "wind"), well, there are days when you could fully lose 80% of your output. Heck, you could lose 80% of your output for days or weeks due to weather or fires.

How to size a system to mitigate such events if an entire city and all of the EV transportation in that city depends on locally generated solar energy to exist?

This is where statistics comes in. If we had to mitigate that day when output was 1/5, we would have to build a solar power plant 5 times larger yet. That's not sensible. Reality probably lies somewhere around 50% to 100%, this being a guess and something that is very highly dependent on geography, weather and statistical probability of fires and other events. Build it in the desert? How much output do you lose to sand storms and sand on the array? Build it where there's lot of rain? You might need to overbuild by 10x to get constant power at the required level.

If I assume a 50% overbuild, we go from 3x to 6x.

So now, in order to be able to deliver 1 GW of power 24/7, you need to build a 6 GW photovoltaic solar array with a massive amount of storage.

The real number, when other factors are taken into account, is likely to be closer to 10x overbuild or more. What factors? Failures, maintenance, fill ratio, etc.

Connecting it to my prior post, if you need to add a true 10 GW of power generation capacity that is available 24/7 to support EV's you probably have to build at least 100 GW worth of photovoltaic solar generation and so many batteries I hesitate to count them.

Instead of this fantasy, we need to get our heads out of our collective behinds and build nuclear power plants. That's the only way. Solar alone can't do it, it can (and should be) be a supplemental add-on.

There's more to the story, of course.