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From: Rich <rich@example.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: Remember "Bit-Slice" Chips ?
Date: Sat, 7 Dec 2024 18:24:17 -0000 (UTC)
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D <nospam@example.net> wrote:
> On Sat, 7 Dec 2024, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>> Windmills and solar panels are useless for the same reason.  - there 
>> is no storage able to meet the intermittency problem.
> 
> Jesus christ...  don't get me started!  In the mainstream press 
> people _still_ write and say that 100% solar or 100% wind is the only 
> viable way.  I cannot bear to read it!  And when I ask how much a 
> battery storage system would cost that could store all the power for 
> a country, for x days, there is never an answer.

They are ignoring the "storage problem".

100% solar is possible, provided either:

1) you ignore the storage problem and are willing to accept no power 
   when the sun is not shining (note, interpret broadly enough to 
   encompass "14+ straight overcast days" as well)

2) are actually talking about "some day" far in the future when energy 
   storage tech.  has advanced to the point that storing enough excess 
   solar to continue running past those days when the sun isn't shining 
   is feasable (and affordable)

But today, no, it is not feasable today, other than on a very small 
scale (single household) to be 100% solar and have sufficient storage 
to cover for some amount of "sun isn't shining" days.

> Maybe, just maybe, it might be possible to have 100% solar in africa 
> somewhere, but it would still need storage capacity for the night.

Nighttime is the big one.  Until the world's electric grids are 
sufficiently interconnected that power generated in the Saraha Desert 
at noon can be shipped to the other side of the world where it is dark 
to supply power to that location there *must* be some storage, somehow, 
to account for night/twilight/a run of 14+ overcast days/etc.

And, even if the world's electric grid was interconnected sufficient to 
ship solar power from Africa to the other side of the globe, we measly 
humans would simply use those interconnnects to try to enforce 
geopolitical rules on other locations we don't like by attempting to 
deny them "night time power".

>> Yet the advance of photolithography and quantum theory made the 
>> integrated circuit a possibility, the Cold War mandated the need for 
>> small light electronics for missiles, and here we are.

Throughout history, a great many of human's technological advances have 
came about because the "war machine" needed a more efficient way to 
strike fear in their opponents.