Solar is by far the cheapest form of energy by a significant margin. It is already at the point where it makes sense to put it everywhere, and have concentrated large scale generation.

For solar to win, we need to solve energy storage, or perhaps the energy distribution problem. There is no amount of solar which will give you power 24 hours in a day in a single location.

Energy storage is the best short term solution. If we can capture peak solar generation and move that energy to the peak demand period, we can have a serious discussion about moving away from coal for baseload generation. It won’t be needed during the day, and the demand periods covered by storage.

However, for solar to really win, we need to think bigger with our energy distribution networks. Think of a global scale distribution network, like an internet for electricity.

If you can send an IP packet from your computer across the world, why not energy?

With a sufficiently large interconnected global scale network of renewable generators, energy storage becomes less important. We don’t need gas pipelines, we need longitudinal and latitudinal HV distribution networks.