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If God had wanted us to have nearly unlimited clean energy, He would have placed a fusion reactor into the sky.
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this post was submitted on 06 Feb 2026
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Not really. Unless there are some breakthroughs in technology that significantly lower capex & opex for grid scale energy storage, they'll be sticking around for a long time.
There is an asterisk on the 1TW number, and that asterisk is capacity factor. In practice it means that depending on the time of year and location, the effective output of your solar panel will be between 0-40% of label capacity .
In my country for instance, you can expect 0-2% output from a panel in the winter time, which also happens to coincide with the peak demands (heating). Luckily, our politicians had some foresight in the 70s & 80s and built lots of hydro and nuclear power, which has been the backbone of our grid ever since (despite attempts to dismantle it).
I can confirm this. My family is off-grid and there have been extended periods the last two winters when it has simply been too dark for too long to depend on the solar without installing 50x more panels.
Also, the problem with having larger battery capacity to span these periods is that if they don't get fully recharged or cycled properly the batteries get damaged and eventually die. We learnt that the hard way.
Solar is the undisputed champion for 80-90% of the year but needs the complemented with something else for the remainder, if you want uninterrupted on-demand electricity.
laughs in ultrahigh-voltage power lines connecting deserts to populated areas
Seriously, China is already implementing this technology, we just need a few socialist revolutions and we can go full solarpunk
What part did you miss about "off grid"?
Well, if you want energy access, don't live in an off-grid house in a region of the planet without sunlight for 3 months a year
0 and 40 depending on location? We get 6Wh per W installed per day annual average here. We couldn't get that is 40% was the max. We get 1 to 3Wh/Wi/d in winter and 6 to 12Wh/Wi/d in summer
At midday on a cold sunny spring day we'll get 105% the nameplate power
Wh/Wi/day is Watt hours per Watt installed per day
1W of installed capacity would yield 24Wh of energy at 100% in 1 day at capacity. (1W * 24h = 24h)
Hence, you are getting an average of 6Wh / 24Wh * 100% = 25% capacity. Your winter numbers end up being 4-12% and summer 25-50% of capacity.
Wh/Wi/h is your capacity factor.