| >> A single tornado let alone a hurricane could wipe out gigawatts of solar or wind capacity. > That sounds like a problem with planning permission or construction if the plants can't cope with wherever they happen to be installed. It appears you do not live somewhere with extreme weather. How do you plan to protect hundreds or thousands of square meters during events? Is there some kind of new glass? Panels made of unobtainium? https://cowboystatedaily.com/2023/06/27/baseball-sized-hail-... As the Earth heats up, weather events like this will become more common, not less. It's not just a matter of the world's thermostat going up or down, truly destructive natural events already happen in these areas and are poised to become worse. > There are weather conditions that interfere with safe running of nuclear plants Yes, BUT those weather conditions will not substantially damage the plant itself, and soon after the extreme weather event is over, it can start delivering power again in short order (provided the power lines were buried and not on poles, but that's indeed a planning issue). If 80% of the panels in a solar farm have been rendered inoperable due to hail, even after the event is over, you're looking at a long-term outage with the erosion of public goodwill that goes along with that it in regions of the country that are already skeptical of the government's ability to get stuff done. No, thank you. I want something that can provide base load no matter what. |
Yes, every other year thanks to the phone market.
We also have transparent aluminium (oxynitride) now.
Not there this should be a particularly hard challenge relative to "people live in these places, do their roofs and windows survive?" (even if you have to use shutters, NDB, do that for the PV also).
There's also the option to have transmission lines and can put the panels elsewhere in the places without whatever… and they already exist and are in place: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wide_area_synchronou...