[nradov]

For a lot of industrial processes, being limited to running during sunny periods would cause costs to go up by a lot more than a factor of three. The grid scale storage necessary to make solar power work for heavy industry remains extremely expensive and capacity limited. Costs are starting to come down but it will take decades.

[specialist]

Solar + battery is now the cheapest. Except in the USA, where natural gas is heavily subsidized. Happily, deploying new gas plants is constrained by supply of turbines. So solar + battery wins by default.

[nradov]

Batteries (plus all the other associated equipment and maintenance) are hardly cheap in the quantities needed to keep heavy industry running 24×7. Battery storage holds promise for the future but so far it's only been used on relatively small demonstration projects. And some of those have been plagued by fires and outages.

[testdelacc1]

> relatively small demonstration projects.

California has got really good at building giant batteries - At peak times they provide 30% of the state’s electricity (https://www.economist.com/united-states/2025/05/22/californi...) - The Economist.

California is the 4th largest economy in the world by the way. A bit larger than a “small demonstration”.

[specialist]

https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/solar-electricity-e...

https://www.volts.wtf/p/solarstorage-is-so-much-farther-alon...

What's your next objection?

[nradov]

I don't have any objection, I'm just stating a reality: it's going to take decades to build out enough battery storage to make renewable energy practical for the base load required for heavy industry. This stuff doesn't scale up quickly regardless of costs or incentives. The places where battery storage is used today generally have high electricity prices and low industrial capacity. If we want to have cheap stuff then we need to have cheap electricity (and cheap industrial heat) available to make that stuff 24×7.