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353 points dmazin | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.41s | source
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arh5451 ◴[] No.44509839[source]
Nice article explaining solar energy policy. I think the article still doesn't address the mismatch between solar energy production and consumption, which needs to be filled by storage mechanisms. Also would have been nice to have a critical look at how the Chinese were able to corner the Solar market via state sponsored means.
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zmmmmm ◴[] No.44517244[source]
> I think the article still doesn't address the mismatch between solar energy production and consumption, which needs to be filled by storage mechanisms

There's going to be a beautiful synergy here between electric vehicles and solar. Because an EV battery is already easily enough to power most houses through 14-16 hours of darkness, so if it can be a sink for solar during the day it can then be a source during the night. The future will have a combo of residential battery storage and V2H/V2G which has an attractive property that it scales naturally with population (every new person that moves to a location brings their EV battery with them).

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lawrenceduk ◴[] No.44518821[source]
We usually drive to work. That means that when the sun’s shining, the car isn’t home.

Conversely, if we didn’t drive to work, we probably wouldn’t have a car.

On the other hand, we have a big solar array at work so if we had on-site parking (we don’t) we could drive our power home.

It’s probably impractical in reality though, the tax treatment would be chaos and we use the power we generate at work during the day on-site.

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1. cycomanic ◴[] No.44519918[source]
Nobody said that you have to use your home or work solar. If you fill up part of your car using some fast charger network (which would still be solar powered), it would still work.

Moreover, even if we take the top 25% percent of commute distances (which is >40km per day), that still leaves you with 10 days until you have to recharge. If you recharge every weekend, you still have plenty of battery capacity for your needs outside of sun hours (you likely will need only 1-2 kWh per day anyway).