Comment by chrisco255
6 months ago
Before you drop a trillion dollars, you do a cost benefit analysis and you factor for switching costs, the unique geography and population distribution of the U.S. the expected lifespan of solar panels, the battery install capacity necessary to facilitate nighttime and 100 to 1000 year weather event emergencies, the capacity to keep the grid online in the event of a world war, the cost to install HV lines to transport from solar hubs, etc.
You don't dogmatically order $1 trillion of something and sacrifice a functional independent, diverse, weather resilient, geographically distributed energy grid thats served the nation that invented the light bulb for over 125 years, because you read a clickbait headline about China.
> the capacity to keep the grid online in the event of a world war
If I'm learning anything from Russia, its that fossil fuel plants are hella vulnerable in a war. Solar would be much safer.
Fossil Fuel Plant: Knock out the right machine or building and you knock out the plant. The plant is literally storing explosives. The plant must be resupplied which leaves supply trucks/boats/pipelines vulnerable.
Solar: Distributed over a large area. Made of many independent complete power-generating devices so if you knock out 5% of them, all you've accomplished is reducing power output by 5%. Does not need a constant flow of supplies.
> sacrifice a functional ....
Who said we are sacrificing anything? We only gain, and we gain a distributed, diverse, < $1watt of generating capacity.
Your comment makes no sense.