[Jolla]

Have a buddy with some solar panels on his place in Northern California, 95 hot and sunny in the very long summer - other than a couple of hours at high noon they don’t produce

[GraceG]

[ Have a buddy with some solar panels on his place in Northern California, 95 hot and sunny in the very long summer - other than a couple of hours at high noon they don’t produce ]

Solar only will work on large scale when you can point a solar array at the sun 24/7 .... the only place that can happen is in SPACE....

The only way to make it work is to setup robotic manufacturing on the moon to refine lunar soil to make solar cells then use a EM/Mass driver to deliver the manufactured cargo into orbit around the earth then beam the power back down to earth.

Until this is done, solar energy is always going to be unreliable and only for niche applications and never a backbone energy production method.

[1FreeAmerican]

Really? As an electrical contractor I’ve installed 1000’s of panels and watched them producing in the rain. Not sure what your buddy’s issue might be though.

[familyop]

"Have a buddy with some solar panels on his place in Northern California, 95 hot and sunny in the very long summer - other than a couple of hours at high noon they don’t produce"

That's all I had for power for over six years on the Rockies. Installed the small PV solar power plant myself without spending much at all. Worked fine for necessities, conveniences (lights and appliances) and the power for the wireless antenna (22 miles to the nearest repeater), router and computer for posting here during those years.

[familyop]

Maybe your buddy needs a MidNite solar charge controller. It won’t make the system charge batteries at night, but properly installed and configured, it will do a great job of charging the batteries. ...unless, of course, it’s a grid-tied system without batteries.