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Geometry and storage of intermittent solar power translate into costs of replacement power, capital costs, and O & M costs of equipment. Don’t forget that government subsidies cost twice: 1) the wealth to transfer comes from somewhere; 2) the market distortions caused by the resulting faulty price signal.

If zero-cost solar cells were available, all these other costs would have to be taken into account and compared to the cost of burning coal or oil. But this is exactly the same economic issues with respect to nuclear power, a source that it was supposed to be so free it would not be worthwhile to meter. Now we know that this free power source is crippled by the capital, regulator compliance and security costs. Consuming $5-10 billion to build a plant producing free power is not free. Even so, it can be costed out given a model of consumption. And that is exactly what happens.

With solar, by definition, we will have to have a mirror capacity to replace the power when the sun doesn’t shine enough. Since that replacement plant only runs part of the day, instead of recovering the capital costs over a 24x7 production period of power sales, it will have to be recovered for the times it is used. This only means one thing: a higher cost per KWH. We pay for the production capacity twice, even if daylight power is “free”, and even if the replacement power comes from big batteries charged by sunlight.

We are going to have to be told quite often how great solar power is so that when we get our utility bill, we won’t fell the pain of writing the bigger check as much as we rationally should. But we are dealing with government, and leftist media, so rationality is not part of this discussion.

With solar, by definition, we will have to have a mirror capacity to replace the power when the sun doesn’t shine enough...

In the south, much of the consumption of power from the grid comes when the sun is shining the brightest, causing A/C units to labor the hardest. If nothing else, solar would serve to avoid brownouts and/or blackouts during peaks.

I understand your points regarding the capitalization of power generating assets, and the fact that they have to be paid for somehow. Do you think that because of the possibility of higher costs of power company-generated power, that this will only serve to drive consumers more toward solar, thus accelerating the increase in costs for power company-generated power? What happens then? Do we end up with centrally-generated power being so expensive that it is no longer viable, at least in the south?

Or perhaps the decreased demand for centrally-generated power will reduce their variable costs (fuel) so much that things balance out. I dunno.

For the reasons you cite, using the grid in “backup” mode becomes non-viable fairly quickly. You’re maintaining a huge infrastructure with fixed costs that will have to be recovered in “use rates” in order to maintain it’s viability, which means per-unit charges will escalate drastically. Economies of scale are what makes grid-based power economically viable. You simply can’t run a grid system primarily in “standby” mode. The costs are too high.

But this is exactly the same economic issues with respect to nuclear power, a source that it was supposed to be so free it would not be worthwhile to meter.

No one who understood either nuclear power or the power generation industry in general, would have ever said such a thing. In fact, in the 1950s when the quote originated, the nuclear industry was not at all sure they could ever be competitive with other sources of power.

If you're interested, here's an explanation of how that misleading term came into use. It was a government bureaucrat being quoted by the NY Times. That combination most always gets it wrong but the anti-nuke Luddities have used that quote to mislead the public ever since.