@calmeilles as regards short versus longer term storage, it's a matter of numbers. To supply the load for 14 days takes 28 times more kWh storage than for 12 hours. Depending on battery characteristics, you might use the same batteries for both but you'd only be short-term cycling 1/28th of the capacity you'd paid for. If the batteries have limited charge cycle life, you could rotate through different battery banks for short term storage and level the wear.

@calmeilles it would be expensive to build enough solar to supply the full load when the wind isn't blowing plus enough wind to do the same when the sun doesn't shine and there would still be periods when neither was producing much. Batteries might be even more expensive but their prices are falling and maybe sharply as types using only common elements (sodium) are introduced. Hydrogen is another approach but seems to have fallen out of favour.

@gerrymcgovern It's funny how the basic operation of a market eludes people who invest in markets every day. It's supply and demand. A machine that produces almost unlimited amounts of something - in this case verbiage and images - is going to make that something almost worthless which in turn makes the machine itself worthless.

@calmeilles Maintaining electricity supply during a period of low sun and wind which might last for several weeks. Matching peak solar output in summer with peak heating demand in winter. It's a mid-latitude, maritime climate thing.

@calmeilles That's reasonable for batteries that'll be cycled more or less daily. Say you need 10% pa to cover capital cost, depreciation and (very low) operating costs. So that's $6 per kWh per year. At say 200 cycles per year, it's 3 cents per kWh stored and there's probably a good profit to be had. But longer term storage remains a problem. Cycle 3 times a year and it's $2 per kWh which is hopeless (and there's probably not enough lithium in the world). Maybe a different chemistry?

@EndIsraeliApartheid "deleted due to...". Yeah, sure. Anyone want to buy a bridge?

@muppeth I recently saw a suggestion that the Spanish blackout was because their renewables weren't configured to cope with reactive load. That's where, for part of the AC cycle, energy is being transferred from the load back to the generator. With a spinning alternator, the energy goes back into its rotation but there's no such thing with solar panels. There would be ways to fix this but it'd cost money and the beancounters who negotiate the contracts probably didn't know it was an issue.

@gerrymcgovern I can see AI working when the object is to produce acres of verbiage that nobody is actually going to read. Reports. Forms. Project bids of necessity full of guesswork. Lots more that I'm unaware of. In a sensible world we'd just stop writing them but this isn't a sensible world and millions of office drones are churning out this guff every day. Mostly as a CYA exercise for some senior manager.

@EndIsraeliApartheid George Galloway (like or loathe) tried to explain this. He reckons it's cash and kompromat and I tend to agree. So many political leaders seem to have been associated with Epstein and his island and camera-stuffed mansion. Now we've seen the photos of those young Ukrainian men apparently connected with Starmer, another piece clicks into place.