In every game of Factorio I've played I didn't realize just how many solar panels I'd needed until I was hitting my power limits and in desperate need of more. The problem being that manufacturing these takes... power.
In other words, once you make one, you have a permanent power increase. Your power can grow exponentially if you just focus on building and placing panels. That makes them the absolute best power source in the game. Not the most compact, though. But that doesn't matter since the map is infinite and there are no transmission losses.
Reality is not as forgiving. We'll need more panels. Way more :) Even more if we start doing things like fuel synthesis. But we should.
I has always bugged me that we use dirty power during summer to... power ACs! We have all this extra energy literally falling from the sky. Which is the whole reason why we want to get rid of it. Air conditioning doesn't actually require that much power to run with proper insulation. People have been able to power large RV air conditioning with solar alone.
Yeah, Jerry Pournelle used to say on this topic, "it's raining soup, and we're too stupid to hold out a bowl."
Well, now we're at least holding out a few soup spoons, and making some more every year.
Of course, you’d have to subsidize it because basic economics won’t make it work.
this might be mitigated if you tile something that can self expand, but even then you'll have to AFK or just have this going on for hours while you don't have access to the power you're trying to generated.
i end up scaling coal as far as i can and then rushing nuclear. nuclear is also a grind but at least you have to place them less frequently.