Thanks for the great comment. Something I don't understand is why Solar wouldn't work near the poles?
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Thanks for the great comment. Something I don't understand is why Solar wouldn't work near the poles?
My guess would be that the nearer to the poles you get, the more severe the daylight difference is. For example, the 40 days of darkness in areas of populated Canada during the winter. Here is where we really need to work on mixing the types of alternate power, i.e. having solar, but also a windmill for dark, rainy days. And batteries, lots of batteries.
Makes sense. Thanks for the explanation!
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Yeah, like @jennswall said mostly the extreme shifts in day lengths and the long periods without light. In order to be effective you would either need huge battery capacity to store the energy for the months that pass without sunlight or you would need huge infrastructure overhauls to bring solar power in from closer to the equator. I don't know very much about batteries or power lines, but I do know that in general the more you use of each, the lower your energy yields are as you lose a good amount to heat. Also, I believe batteries still require the use of a lot of precious metals that we get through pretty exploitative methods in poorer countries. So imo why not just throw up a bunch of windmills in the arctic circles and save the headache?
Like in pretty much everything else, diversification is our best bet.
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