What better investment opportunity? Again, what else are you going to spend the money on that gives you non-polluting 24/7 power output rain or shine?
> Why in the world would you need that much storage?
You ask and answer yourself in the very next sentence:
> Obviously Finland + solar aren't 100% compatible given the latitude
> fairly extensive modeling shows a route to 99% renewable Australia with only 5 hours storage:
There are always geographies that have advantageous positions for electrical generation. Iceland has geothermal, Norway hydro, etc. This does not mean you can generalize.
> Change the mix to favor wind resources and you could likely achieve the same in Finland with some modest investments in transmission infrastructure.
Nah. Just like solar wind is highly variable. Just this week wind production varied between 55 MW and 3,8 GW.
Peak deman is about 15 GW. Subtracing 4 GW of nuclear and 2 GW of hydro, what are you going to do, overbuild current wind capacity 160x?
> We would be in a better and cheaper world if we had built a nuclear-first grid 30 years ago -- but we didn't -- and it just doesn't make sense to try to do so now when much cheaper options exist.
I'm still at a loss off what those better options are.
What better thing can I buy for $15B that gives me access to 1,6GW of generation capability 24/7?