[zdragnar]

> There's never been an hour in recorded history where there's no sun or wind somewhere in the continental US.

But is that sufficient to handle the full load across the entire continental US? And how do you do that without the really expensive long distance high voltage transmission lines?

Where I live, bad winters can see us go for weeks of full cloud cover and little wind in January. If we really get away from fossil fuels and run heat pumps, that means electrical use in winter will rival that in summer.

[bryanlarsen]

No it isn't. That's why I said that modelling is tool #1. The whole US might not go an hour without sun and wind, but your area might go 3 weeks. But the combination of your area and a neighboring area might max at 3 days. So thus instead of building a continent wide interconnect and no storage, you build a regional one and 3 days of storage.