The backup for turbines and coal plants failing is more turbines / older, less efficient turbines though, right? If our existing power infrastructure is spun up overnight only, that's a huge improvement. Turbines for flexible capacity will always be a thing, but solar to provide baseline capacity is just good business.

There's another strategic benefit: batteries have a fixed cost that doesn't rely on a variable input cost. With current events in the strait, countries without abundant natural gas are advantaged because they're less reliant on geopolitical conditions. This is why we've seen such growth of solar in china, which is not oil-rich, and was already importing a lot of coal.

Solar was the cheapest source of power YEARS ago. Solar plus storage was also the cheapest form of dispatchable power years ago, but for some reason these idiots are just reporting it now.