[candiodari]

Why would consensus against renewables work? Renewables work from pretty small-scale all the way up to industrial deployments (well, not in Alaska/Siberia but in Australia ...)

So consensus shouldn't matter because if Joe the hairdresser or Jane the mechanic decide they, personally, want to do renewables, they can. Just by themselves. Hell, in most Australian cities ... I bet it would work in anything but the CBD.

[threeseed]

We are talking about major renewable projects not small scale solar panels on your roof.

Even small scale needs stability in government support because you need to invest in the grid and energy storage to handle the excess in power generated by solar panels during the day.

[rbanffy]

You don’t need to invest in the grid for that. You can use batteries. There are chemistries that work really well for large building batteries.

[defrost]

"The grid" is literally the thing that joins battery parks (eg: the massive one in Adelaide South Australia) to rooftop providers, wind farms, household and commercial electricity consumers

"Investing in the grid" means expanding capacity in order to meet increased electricity demands as electric vehicles replace fosil fuel vehicles and increasing switching and grid intelligence to better handle a more distributed supply and demand.

More solar + more batteries and thermal storage + better grid are all things that grow hand in hand.

Of course investment in the grid is required to meet large scale population demands.

[threeseed]

Yes you can use batteries.

But you can also invest in the grid and have excess energy shifted to other regions that can make use of it.

[candiodari]

You could also just waste the power. Why not?

[rbanffy]

It might be cheaper to waste it than to reclaim it, if integrating that source to the grid is too expensive. When generation significantly exceeds demand, that scenario will happen.

[rbanffy]

Small-scale solar and wind is relatively inefficient and expensive when compared with large deployments.

One thing solar excels for is providing shade and reducing water loss from the soil. Australia might reclaim some land that way.