Brought to us by the same people who can predict with 90% accuracy, last nights lotto numbers? Cause poke your head up and look around. We've got at least 4 main means of power generation going on in the US that I'm aware of. Coal, natural gas, nuclear, and hydro.
The (or even two) part made me lol.
"4 main means"doesn't even impact most markets, which makes what you say somewhat meaningless. The US isn't just one giant grid FYI, and even in the regional grids many utilities only rely on outside energy when they're forced to and normally only have one or two types of power generation for the bulk of their production. This is exactly why most need to diversify, and indeed, are diversifying.
More like the wind don't blow all the time, same reason Solar is pretty shitty outside of the Sunbelt.
That's a terrible way to look at it. Yes, you gain more at lower latitudes due to insolation, but that doesn't meant that solar is worthless outside of "sunbelts". In fact due to the nature of solar, even if you're far enough north/south that your irradiance drops, you can simply...wait for it...wait for it...create larger arrays! The only problems at that point are proper system design and the actual economics of output versus cost.
If you want an example of solar being used outside of 'sunbelts', look at Norway for example. Norway has so much hydroelectric capacity, not to mention their location, that one might wonder why they have the solar capacity that they do - but that hasn't stopped the Norwegians. And if it works for the Norwegians, I'm pretty sure that brings in to question your claim that solar is
"worthless outside of sunbelts".
http://www.ife.no/en/ife/ife_news/20...hus-energipark
The solar heating system of Akershus Energi is unique in Norway, and the size makes it interesting also on the international level. 13,000 square meters of solar collectors and an accumulator tank of 1.2 million liters of water will supply heat to the central heating system of Lillestr?m.The plant will produce approximately 4 GWh heat energy over the year.
Also don't forget that Canada has the world's largest solar plant, at least until some of the others under construction now are completed. And last I checked Canada wasn't in a sunbelt, so please explain why Canada can make a solar plant work when you say that solar should be worthless up there.
People also have mentioned storage - yeah it's an issue but one they've been working on for a while now. Some expect the battery market to assplode if homeowners with small PV setups (utility interconnected or not) actually start increasing on their own w/o massive inducements. This way the onus for storage could/would be distributed to homeowners, rather than having to build battery farms. The other thing is that there are ways to store energy right now. Wind turbines could store energy by pumping water (already exists, look up pumped-storage hydroelectric for example) without the development of new tech, and with solar they've been experimenting with stuff like molten salt thermal storage (more for non-PV solar).
