Comment by ben_w

> To be fair, you end up needing insane amounts of batteries if you want to run 24/7/365 just on solar, particularly if you insist on building your data centres in places with dark winters.

Not "insane", just "lots". Everything in a nation of mere single-digit millions is "lots", let alone the whole world. The quantity isn't far off what's needed anyway to electrify road transport.

But also, the other option besides batteries, for people who want specifically PV to supply power at night to specifically high latitude locations with long winter nights, is to have a long power line going to somewhere less silly to put the PV:

Many such power lines already exist, upgrading them was already necessary even without any questions about the sources putting tension on the lines because they're just so old now, the only question is the *delta* in cost between what would have been needed with no changes in supply and demand vs. what is needed given those have both changed.

And before anyone says "what about grid losses?", right now, China (and only China, and yes I have checked) makes enough aluminium they could put a girdle around the earth with 1 Ω resistance the long way around using a bit less than 5% of their recent production in about 20 years.

The rest of us would need to massively increase our aluminium production to get close to that; it's not immediately obvious why we couldn't given they did.