Past a point it is cheaper to overbuild solar than to add batteries, because a battery kept for the rare bad day is barely used.

Added to korrents 7 Sept 2026 · How quotes work · Something wrong? Tell us

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  Data centres will end up net suppliers of power to their communities, because a solar plant big enough to keep the machines running spills most of what it makes.

  Data centres end up net power suppliers only because they are built the way Handmer says high-capex loads should be built: overbuild the array rather than buy batteries for the rare bad day. The spilled 75% that becomes the neighbourhood’s power is that overbuild.

Shared subject first, then similar wording. They may agree or disagree.

• A data centre powered by solar and batteries alone needs an array so oversized that the design is not worth building. AVAustin Vernon18 Apr 2024solarbatteries
• Battery storage is becoming the defining transformative energy technology of the second half of the 2020s, as solar and wind were of the first half. BMBill McKibben13 Aug 2026solarbatteries
• Below about a thousand dollars a kilowatt of capital cost, the right way to run a plant is intermittently on raw solar with no batteries at all. CHCasey Handmer9 Nov 2024solarbatteries
• Cheap clean energy has broken the old trade-off between raising living standards and cutting environmental harm. CHCasey Handmer11 Oct 2023solarbatteries
• China scaled solar and batteries when America refused to because the CCP got scared of climate change. NSNoah Smith14 Sept 2026solarbatteries

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