With enough batteries they might get through the night, but seasonal shortages are much harder to handle that way.
I bet a carbon tax on data centers would be popular if the Democrats get back in.
Put another way if you want to store power say 1GWh for the worst month, well a solar panel provides a lot of power over even the worst month. 20MW of solar panel averaging even 40MWh/day * 30 days = 1.2GWh and cost way less than 1GWh of batteries.
Near the arctic circle Wind fill the same niche.
Nothing in my post suggests 1GWh of storage is cheap.
What do you mean? Long periods of calm weather during cold temperatures is not unheard of in Finland and does cause issues at times due to amount of wind energy that has been built in recent times.
Beyond that wind for each location is somewhat seasonal so if you’re doing this for winter energy you pick areas with better wind in winter.
If you’re proposing seasonal storage as a viable option then cutting total storage needs by 90% (to handle a 10 day lull vs 90 day gap) is inherently cheaper.
Hell traditional hydro is well suited for such situations as annual output and storage is limited but nontrivial. Doubling output for 10 days isn’t nearly as problematic as trying to cover a 90 day shortfall.
That can help on overcast days, or the middle of winter when days are shorter, but you still need battery capacity to run for stretches when there is no sun producing energy.
For residential its often recommended to have 3 days of storage capacity + the option for a backup generator. I'm not sure what the recommendation is for industrial projects, but I expect they would still need a backup generator. If they already have to put in a generator to handle the full load of the server farm, and they have cheap local gas, why bother with the solar? At a minimum you have both, but the generator (or power from a contracted gap generator) is a given.
A common misconception you don’t need to hit 100%, you need enough energy to make it either from that day or from prior days.
At grid scale daily production is never 0 and it’s never 100%. You can guarantee a surplus all 365 days a year, it’s just a cost vs benefit function, that’s however different from always fully charging your energy storage. If hypothetically the minimum was 99.9% of nighttime needs the odds you cover that gap the next day is extremely high to the point where a little extra storage makes sense vs aiming for 100% every day.
So now you’re just trying to optimize something for minimum cost. Utilities do this all the time with traditional generation you have random equipment failures and shifting seasonal demand. Thus they optimize maintenance schedules around seasonal demand etc.
Regardless, that buffer doesn't make a big difference in the topic here. My panel regularly show 0Wh on rainy days, PR effectively 0 as they may be getting only a few percent of real capacity.
How do you propose industrial scale would allow a series of arrays could both not be oversized on sunny days and cover usage on cludy days?
If I'm misunderstanding your argument I apologize. I just don't see how a data center could possibly be okay with having only a single day worth of storage and generation without having backup power scaled to cover their full usage demands.
> could both not be oversized on sunny days and cover usage on cludy days?
That isn’t a problem that’s worth trying to solve. Grid solar power is so cheap you can waste 70% over a year (even more on sunny days) and in many areas still be paying less than coal per kWh.
Ultimately the grid doesn’t care about being oversized for specific days. There’s a wild difference in demand on sunny day in the summer vs a day that’s 70f. When it was 70f in the 1970’s they didn’t go out and destroy nuclear reactors or coal plants because they are unnecessary in May. That’s valuable infrastructure even when not in current use.
The only metric grid operators care about is does this grid design need the demand and what does it cost. Peaking power plants exist to fit edge case demands even if not used for months at a time, “peaking solar” isn’t a term anyone uses but solar + batteries can fit that niche.
Given the state of the power grid in Texas, this could be the most important consideration. Why? Texas is not connected to the national power grid, and only electricity from plants operating in Texas is available. The last winter and summer, demands on the grid have severely stressed, as reported in many places. In 2021 there as a state-wide crisis and almost a complete failure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Texas_power_crisis