Solar Energy Saves Europeans $135M a Day

That's evening peaker gas plants in most places. After batteries push gas out of that market they go on to morning peaks and so on.

This is being done at scale in California and Texas.

48 hours in Scandinavia is roughly equivalent to turning all their road vehicles electric. And that's even with Norway using the second highest per-capita rate of electricity in the world let alone Scandinavia (second to Iceland, whose electricity is 100% renewables thanks to abundant geothermal): https://www.statista.com/statistics/383633/worldwide-consump...

Given nobody is suggesting an instantaneous transition, this is not at all unrealistic, and I don't know why anyone might consider it to be.

Good luck with new nuclear, but with all the politics in that domain, I don't expect that to work out even if e.g. Helion Energy supplies working shipping-container-sized aneutronic fusion.

This family[0] appears to be 90% agriculturally self-sufficient: they occasionally eat out, but grow most of what they eat. They store a lot of food in their basement, critically, with a DIY ventilation system. If you're building a home from scratch, and you're independently minded, it's the ideal time to build in some food storage and ventilation access in your floor plan.

When I showed this video to a coworker who also eats mostly off her own land, she recommended beginning by experimenting with preserving store-bought produce before planting an ambitious garden that yields more food than you know how to store.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uz7OVfaYeSA

For your equity comment, it reads like astroturfing. Every single report with real-world data shows that it's positive equity and that homes with installations sell for more than those without. It's not a "vibe" I have, it's a cold hard fact. There's a million things you maintain when you own a house, and free energy is literally the easiest thing to want to maintain. Compare that to siding, or septic, or anything else....

Your comments aren't in good faith at all.

My parents put up solar in 2005 when it was very expensive. The original panels, inverters, cables are all still there, nothing had to be replaced in the last 21 years. The only maintenance task is a recommended (not mandatory) yearly cleaning that is probably in the 300€ range and takes maybe 1h, but since 5 years they have 2x EVs and 2x Powerwalls and are self-sufficient for 80% of the year, so that cost is negligible. The area where they live also has enough rain that if they skip cleaning for 1 or 2 years, the average total output is still close to the max they can get.

That's not at all true where I live (Seattle): the cost of a solar system goes almost straight over into home equity. Solar energy is a feature - a real selling point. No idea what maintenance liability you could have in mind; one can have panels cleaned once a year, for maximum output, but they still just work if you don't. Other than that there is literally nothing to maintain.

Can you cite sources please.

I’ve had my system in Canada for 2.5 years, flawless, not one second of maintenance.

Family in Australia have had systems for over 10 years with zero maintenance

Also electricity here is ore approved to increase by a minimum of 5% a year, so a solar install on a house is huge for equity. Most people here spend around $2k to $3k a year on heat. I spend $400.

It's all about the all-in cost of the system vs the reduction in utility bill.

If your system runs 20% of your usage, it still has whatever ROI it has.

Building to cover 100% usage isn't a typical goal if you're planning to keep the utility anyway. Most net metering doesn't pay you if you make more than you use, so if you go over, you spent too much on your system.

Nuclear energy wouldn't even be a thing without heavy govt subsidies. And it keeps needing subsidies. No nuclear plant is economical without subsidies. (The operators admit this themselves.) In contrast, the solar and wind industry is eventually carrying itself without subsidies. In many parts of the world that's already the case since tech and market have matured.