[chrisco255]

Solar depends on weather, location and battery storage. Solar cells also require massive amounts of physical area to produce the same amount of energy as a nuclear power plant. And you can't compare a "2 gigawatt" solar installation to an equivalent nuclear installation because nuclear will produce power 24/7 at peak capacity, rain or shine. A solar plant sees a huge amount of variability and only hits peak efficiency for a brief part of the day on clear days.

[aplummer]

Solar power in the desert produces power 24/7 by keeping the molten sand hot overnight. It’s also always sunny

[Accujack]

That technology is far more expensive than photovoltaic panels.... for example, the solar thermal Ivanpah project is now obsolete for that exact reason.

Additionally, The storage density of molten salt is far lower than the generation capacity of a reactor.

[hajile]

Solar panels may be cheap to produce, but they are terrible for the environment because of the complex manufacturing process. Parabolic reflectors can be melted down and reformed without huge additional environmental costs. If you're interested in the environment, this is the real benefit.

Cutting-edge solar panels have about 23% theoretical efficiency. Stirling dish systems have about a 30% theoretical efficiency and about a 25% real-world efficiency.

[ZeroGravitas]

Solar plus battery near the equator can be sized for 24/7 power with relative ease.

But no one would do that, because we don't need power at the same rate all the time. Near the equator, where most people on the planet live, our need for energy is correlated with when the sun is shining and air con is running and people are awake.

This is why solar is better even at the mythical "baseload" than nuclear is.

[Accujack]

>Near the equator, where most people on the planet live

Nope.

In fact, a minority of people live near the equator... for good reason:

https://www.datagraver.com/case/world-population-distributio...

Also, the base load most of us are talking about isn't created by people for the most part... it's created by industry, without which life on the equator or anywhere else would be rather primitive.

In any case, the equator is going to become unlivable in the next few decades to the point where populations in equatorial areas will drop drastically.

[reitzensteinm]

Do you have any data on power consumption near the equator, or where does this assertion come from?

Anecdotally, it doesn't ring true to me from my time in Thailand and Malaysia, where inefficient air con would be left on in poorly insulated houses overnight to help people sleep. I couldn't find any graphs like you can trivially find for power grids in the west.

But I did find this article[1] which indicates the record power consumption occurred at 9:35pm, beating the previous record which occurred at 10:28pm a few years prior, and both of these are times where it's all going to be coming from batteries.

But this isn't necessarily representative. Even if your reference is a book I'd be happy to purchase it, I find solar penetration in developing countries particularly interesting.

[1] https://www.thaipbsworld.com/power-consumption-in-bangkok-su...

[chrisco255]

You are hand waving the complexity, cost, feasibility and trade-offs of doing this.

[chrisco255]

I hate to break it to you but night time hits the desert as well. They don't magically escape earth's rotational spin in the desert.