rbos

From a utility perspective, you may be right. Given the existence of an already-extant fossil fuel distribution infrastructure, I could see it being simpler.

But that said, the “amount of space used” isn’t a great metric to compare the two, since the space used by solar is very different and can overlap with space used for other things.

Getting away from utilities, solar is something that individual people can install on their properties to electrify their own little baby power grid, feeding back to the wider grid or not. This will effect the demand curve in the aggregate, leaving utilities to cover the difference somehow. With load dropping to zero or near-zero during sunlight hours, and increasing in the off-peak and winter hours, they have to consider options to balance the grid that aren’t appropriate for fossil fuel plants.

The niche that gas peaker plants fill is rapidly going away as battery technology improves. I think the calculus, in ten or so years, is going to be that it’ll be “a lot simpler, easier to buy a plot of industrial zoned land, and stick a” battery farm on it to harvest surplus power during the daylight/windy hours and discharge it at other times.

Why does that matter? Solar can go where coal can’t.

Put PV above a parking lot, you’re not using that land for anything else useful anyway.

Lotta places it can go. Doesn’t matter if it takes up more space.

Coal and gas plants can only go in specific spots. Need a water supply, needs logistics, needs a clear zone to vent. So it needs more space than a trivial accounting would indicate.

Sticking coal power generation on your roof, are ye?

Some should. There will be lactose and caramelized sugars, unfermentable.

I can’t imagine the video transcoding is very good. Is that an issue?

It makes more sense if you hit ‘world’. It was the first war involving the whole world. A sea change in the nature of warfare at the time. Very few places were untouched by it.

Before, wars were regional affairs at worst. This was the first WORLD war.