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Comment by ctdonath | Hacker News Reader

I’m focusing on solar-only solutions.

Once you introduce sourcing as cheap & reliable as fossil fuels back into the equations, dropping solar entirely becomes a rational solution as the frequency of solar “incidents” becomes apparent and non-FF mitigation costs soar. I find most people don’t grasp how unreliable solar is.

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Small-scale alcohol fuel production is an option. Grow sugar beets and make moonshine. It's still solar power. (No pun intended.) The molecules of alcohol are made of air and water and power from the sun.

Where do you live ?

You are making very bold claims about solar being unreliable, but I'd completely expect reliability of solar to vary significant from one location to another.

Southeast USA. On the whole a good place for solar. I’m trying to impress on people the many fiddly little obstructions that add up to significant reductions, and that despite prolonged good periods there are poor exposure times that fast burn thru stored energy and require substantial collectors to recharge in time for the next weather event.

If you're intent on using solar anyway then I don't see how having a fallback generator would compel you to just give up on the solar. How often do you have to repair or replace panels?

It’s just plain easier & cheaper to run FFs than solar. About the only serious disadvantage is noise.

This is very misguided - anyone in serious remote area operates renewables with FF backup, because FF is expensive and delivery difficult and unreliable. If you ever been to remote lighthouse or similar, youd realise logitistics in delivering tonns of FF is not something you can take for grantes.

Those 200 KG of solar panels will save you many metric tons of oil over their lifetime

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