[donttrustatoms]

That makes sense given those numbers tabulated, but the real question is cost of solar plus backup or storage. One means nothing without the other in terms of both cost and carbon.

Above I illustrated my calculations on just one hour of battery backup for US grid with lithium ion- would require 10x annual global production of lithium. Generally cost of battery backup looks like 35c/kWh and has limitations on duration so it must come back to fossils.

Solar makes a lot of sense if backup/storage/smoothing weren't needed since pv has gone down in cost. It still makes a lot of sense in many off grid applications, and for instance in my home we have solar concentrator lights and I would love to have solar water pre-heaters in the summer. But for on grid the capital requirements are much more complicated than generally illustrated, and ultimately the environmental impacts are greater than apparent at first glance.

[jsprogrammer]

Lithium ion makes no sense for storage. Something like large-scale flywheels would probably be much better. Using gravity for storage is even more sustainable. Flywheels for night use and stored water for long term use (storms, fog, prolonged winter at poles [would need to keep from freezing]) all powered by solar or other low-ongoing-input sources should provide a pretty nice environment.

[dredmorbius]

Flywheels have proved extremely expensive with massive engineering challenges. When you have to account for precession due to Earth's rotation, things get tough.

For short term very high flux power conditioning they've got uses. For long-term storage not so much.

Seconds to minutes is likely their effective range. Not hours to days.