Solar is more useful in the north than it may appear at first glance, because of longer sunlight hours during the summer. And because ambient temperatures there are lower, so modules operate at a higher efficiency. There vertically mounted bifacial modules make a lot of sense. There is no snow accumulation on them and if not north-south aligned the start proding earlier in the day and stop producing later in evening.

For seasonal load leveling it would make sense to store hydrogen from water electrolysis from energy surplus harvested during the sunnier parts of the year.

Curious, is it the type of rock in that area which will lead to the increased oscillations?

In the UK it's apparently around 4-5x better in summer. That's a bit situation dependent. However, even at 10x, solar still competes well with wind. A useful turbine is still over 10x the cost of an equivalent winter output of solar panels. The only advantage they have is space efficiency. However, if space is that much of a premium, then it's likely messing up low altitude wind as well.

It's also worth noting that solar panels are effectively a rock that makes electricity. Wind turbines have moving parts. They can ice up, and have to shut down in winter storms.

I would love wind to be a viable home companion to home solar, but the maths just doesn't add up. It's amazing at grid scale, but crap at home scale.

I'm guessing that means monopiles and not jacketed foundations. I wish the installation crews luck because those oscillations are going to be horrific.

It starts sounding better when you go further north. I'm not that far north, but further north than pretty much anyone in North America as far as percentage of population is concerned. Edmonton, Canada's northernmost city with a proper population count is still multiple degrees south of me because Europe's climate is different and we can live further north than NA folks without our winters getting quite as bad in terms of temperature and snow. Anchorage is about a comparable latitude. But there's an entire country (two if you count Iceland, which I forgot about) that's located north of me and three that have more than half their landmass to the north of me (two of which also have most of their population north of me - Russia's population centers are fairly southish). So they have it even worse than I do.

A small 3kW nominal, 5kW max wind turbine is on sale for ~1300 EUR plus VAT so around 1600 EUR. That should get you like 700-800 watts an hour, right? A 7 kWh battery starter kit that should also last you through the night at a similar drain rate for most of the year (just not in the winter when night is 18 hours and the rest of the time is barely sunny either and you need electricity the most because heat pump which is also the time of the year where electricity costs money) is about 4k (VAT included). At this level, the batteries and solar might still sound good, because wind turbines are annoying and big and not that efficient at home usage scale.

Now the other problem is that the panels that would take a day to fill that battery pack in a day in the summer would take nearly a month to fill it in the winter. It's not JUST fewer hours of sunlight, the sun angle itself is super low. So you're going to need a fuckton of panels.

In the end, if you want to stay on your own power reliably (e.g because you have a heat pump for heating and you live in an area where a power outage could be several days) and you get short winter days with barely any sunlight like I do, that turbine starts sounding pretty darn good, it'll be an order of magnitude cheaper, though you should still have SOME battery. It's just that if I wanted to power my house all on my own produced electricity, and heat my home with a heat pump (ideally geothermal because less energy), with only solar + battery, at ~2 kW of power into the geothermal pump, an 18 hour night is 36 kWh of battery required. There's like an hour or two of actually useful sunlight a day and a few hours of "the sun technically exists". Then up to 18 hours of darkness. If I add a wind turbine to my hypothetical solar + battery array, the battery capacity doesn't need to be nearly as big.

This is only really required, though, if you want to be entirely self-sufficient. If you live in a town where you can rely on the grid being functional 99.9% of the time and are OK with using something dirtier than coal for your main electricity source at night, you'll be fine with much less and the wind turbine sounds useless again. It's only in my "oh I'll go all green and all self-sufficient" fantasies where it's useful.

The below text I marked as a spoiler so it can be ignored because it's my ADHD ramblings on what I envision as a future utopia if there was tech and funding for this. It would reduce the need for wind turbines even on grid scale and everyone could have green energy without having their own production unless they need it for reliability.

Basically there is almost nowhere that wind wins over solar. At least at consumer scale.

Anything between late october and early march?

I can't be arsed to find it again, but there's a company that does solar installs in my country (which to me sounds like they'd be the last people to downplay solar's capabilities) and they have production statistics from some of their installations on their website. I checked out a couple and May or June tended to be about 30x higher than December. I think May was actually the peak production month which in hindsight makes sense because in June the midday sun is really high in the sky and the morning and evening are somewhat more north than you'd normally get so they don't give you much extra.

December, meanwhile, gets about an hour of useful sunlight a week.

This is only around 60 degrees north too, it's gonna be worse for anyone that lives in an actually northern area.

Right I'm an idiot, it should have stuck out to me that I was dividing by time twice.

Probably wiser to just slap on a few more panels and add a battery for the same price

Yeah the windspeed ones are like. <5cm.

That's kinda wild. Not too crazy, knowing sailing folk damn near every boat that's over a month old has had some weird homebrew modifications done to it. Just seems like not the best plan.

Seen similar ones on holiday buildings along others with solar panels too though. Aren't the windspeed ones much smaller? These were probably close to 1m diameter.

I mean was it actually a windmill generator? I have windmill-looking things on my boat for measuring wind speed and such (they are small). It's just that using the actual sails to pull your boat along, and then using the speed to turn a water turbine on the hull is way more efficient. Especially since there's no meaningful difference between a motor and a generator, apart from which way the power flows.

Edit: also solar. Been waiting for reliable flexible solar panels for the sole purpose of replacing my sails with solar panels. That would be dope as hell.

Yeah, not sure what it powers. Maybe radio battery and if you are sailing you probably have wind at least.

https://www.removepaywall.com/search?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.technologyreview.com%2F2026%2F10%2F21%2F1146137%2Fsolid-state-batteries-impossible-issue%2F

Solid-state batteries

Alexander C. Kaufman

5 - 6 minutes

The rise of the lithium-ion battery, which powers everything from the smallest personal electronics to gargantuan energy storage systems, has been nothing short of revolutionary. But as anyone who’s boarded a plane in the last decade could tell you, storing and pumping out energy by moving charged lithium ions through a liquid electrolyte soup has its drawbacks, not least that the batteries have a troubling tendency to catch fire. Enter the solid-state battery, which swaps liquid for a solid ceramic or polymer, creating power packs that charge faster, last longer, cram more energy into smaller spaces, and (crucially) run cooler. A new generation of companies aim to bring such batteries to market, and if their bets pan out, the tech could substantially ease the shift away from fossil fuels. 

The sticking points

Solid-state batteries have been “just a few years away” for more than a decade now. In laboratories, the technology works. But there have been challenges. In designs that pair the solid electrolyte with a lithium-metal anode (the side of the battery that releases electrons into an electrical circuit), needlelike filaments called dendrites tend to grow during charging, and they eventually push through the electrolyte and short the cell. Solid electrolytes are supposed to physically block the formation of dendrites, but many of them crack as the treelike projections break through like roots in a concrete foundation. 

Then there’s the problem of manufacturing at scale. Mass production requires large quantities of defect-free sheets of ceramic-like material to make the electrolytes as well as dry rooms for assembly, since those electrolytes have a tendency to react with water. Would-be manufacturers quote a range of potential prices for solid-state batteries, but most expect them to fall in line with lithium-ion packs sometime in the mid-2030s. 

The progress

Nascent as the technology is, solid-state batteries have already seen high-­profile missteps. But one of America’s most advanced solid-state-battery companies says it’s closing in on being able to bring its product to market. The Bill Gates–backed QuantumScape launched in Silicon Valley in 2010 and built its battery around a class of ceramic materials that it says is compatible with lithium—meaning no dendrite formation. “We spent, then, like 10 years learning how to process it to satisfy all of the other requirements,” says Tim Holme, QuantumScape’s cofounder and chief technology officer. In 2025, the startup announced a proprietary, large-scale manufacturing method for quickly producing and heat-treating the ceramic electrolytes used in its batteries. “Nobody has ever done this in the field of ceramics before,” Holme claims. For 10,000 years, producing ceramics has involved slowly cooking the starting materials in an oven over the course of days. “We figured out a way to shorten that down to several minutes,” he says. 

Plenty of other companies are pushing the tech forward as well. Toyota, the world’s biggest automaker, launched a research program on solid-state batteries way back in 2010. It’s now partnering with the global energy and petroleum company Idemitsu Kosan on a pilot plant, promising cars that can travel up to 745 miles after charging 10 minutes or less—a huge leap, if it works out. In China, CATL, the giant behind roughly 40% of the global battery market, is aggressively pursuing solid-state batteries too, pumping nearly $2.6 billion into a research program in 2024 alone. Mercedes, meanwhile, equipped one of its EQS sedans with solid-state batteries last fall; after driving nonstop for 750 miles, the car still had some range to spare. 

Will the tech gain traction? Investing in vehicle batteries makes sense given the size of the potential market. But any little uptick in cost typically gets passed on to buyers, so the first solid-state EV batteries will inevitably be more expensive. 

Grid storage buyers, who are working to meet the increasing demands posed by data centers, may also hesitate to purchase new technologies that still haven’t come down the cost curve. Then again, the promise of energy storage that lasts longer than lithium-­ion’s typical eight hours could make them easier to persuade. 

Some companies are taking a page from a playbook employed by outfits pursuing fusion: Focus on near-term markets with better margins to help fund development and bring down costs. Solid-state firms including California-based Solid Energies and Arizona-headquartered Sion Power are looking at selling batteries to the aviation industry or the military. “Those are sectors that are less sensitive to cost, and they typically require lower volumes as well,” says Evelina Stoikou, head analyst for battery technologies and supply chains at the consultancy BloombergNEF. “It’s a good way to prove your concept, then go through and fund the pilot plant where you can make that and eventually scale up.”

On sailboats? Huh. I was just looking into converting to electric, a lot of them do regenerative charging through the prop.

I see them from time to time, usually on sailing boats or coastal beach cabins where I presume they can slowly charge a battery over a long time with probably not much power production.

All true across the board. We can also add that LFP batteries are technically a fire hazard but are already so thermally stable that thermal runaway is not possible.

I would qualify that range anxiety is still a minor issue. We've already far exceeded the 80/20 rule in most cars. But SS batteries will blow it away.

Your cost summary is correct. The technology is expected to be in supercars and premium cars only. Either way, the energy density issue also opens up new markets and applications. A lot of places ban ebikes and scooters because of fires on appartment balconies or from a bike on a commuter train. This battery technology is important.

Edit: lets see what this 2-3x increase in density does for farming tractors and ev tractor-trailers. Or natural gas and propane forklifts, heavy equipment etc...

End range anxiety and fire hazzards with amazing longevity

Current batteries can be DC fast charged. Range anxiety is a Gas and Oil media term and real EV users do not define this as a problem.

Fire hazards -EVs already catch fire at a fraction of the rate of ICE cars. If you are worried about fires, keep away from any ICE BMW or Ford, where in Ford's case, the gas tank can fall out.

Longevity - CATL packs are seeing over 700,000 kms in taxis already. The EV motors fail much more frequently due to coolant leaks.

Solid state requires clean room manufacturing, so they will have a place in specialized applications because they will always cost a lot more.

Indeed. My point wasn't that wind is better than solar. But having both is nice. Solar isn't available 100% of the time, and if the periods of low solar are longer than battery capacity, then you wind up back on the grid.

Diversifying your power sources means that even if it's cloudy, you still have wind. Is it a good idea financially? No. Is it a good idea if you are committed to the idea of maximizing time off the grid, yeah. Cost per kWh isn't the only factor in why someone might want home power.

The technology is great. A bit of a holy grail of ev batteries. The key feature is energy density two to three times as good, so you can pack more range with less weight and volume.

There are a few competing chemistries and all have their merits, but they are all not fire hazards. The highest performance chemistry has an unfortunate toxic gas problem if the cells are breached exposing the materials to moisture, but the others are chemically inert. (Like garnet). Long lasting. Can leave charged at 100% for long periods, no fire hazzards, and dense enough to give cars either lighter weight, or 1000km ranges. 1k to 3k charge cycles leave 80-95% capacity so they are very long life too.

Only bad news is they are still is early testing and have been 5 years away from production for 10 years, and still are. They are not fiction. There are small production lines for testing and optimization. They are coming. When and how much is the question.

Also China has a very close tech of mostly solid state batteries with a small amount of gel that has most of the benefits already in mass production in some of their cars.

The tech is awesome. End range anxiety and fire hazzards with amazing longevity, performance. Sweet.

It would be closer to 4.8kWh/day. That is assuming a strong steady wind. Real world conditions would take a significant cut. Cut windspeed in half with clutter (trees, buildings etc) and you're down to 0.6kWh/day.

Basically there is almost nowhere that wind wins over solar. At least at consumer scale.

Yeah, sadly this nothing new for us.

Just came back from hauling 4x 500 Wp modules from a nearby solar vendor. When installed, this will double my already present capacity. In terms of net usage hitherto I was making about 2/3rd of our electricity demand. No storage yet, since grid acts as a backup.

200Wh average per month, or 0.27Wh.

Is my math wrong or is that absolute garbage? A desktop solar panel could compete

Edit: yeah my math is garbage, solar is better (under certain conditions), but not 50,000x better

Looks like a deliberate act of sabotage, which Germany has done before. See solar.

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