Scaling: as it relates to Solar Power

Scaling:

For those that are familiar with Enterprise Software, this is a familiar term. But how does it apply to Solar Power you might ask?

What is meant by "Scaling" is the ability or lack of ability of a system, solution or process to increase in size, speed or distribution.

An advantage of Solar Power as an energy source is that it's a very Scalable technology or set of technologies. Solar can be as small and local as powering up an R/V or a backpack electronics charger or it can be as large as a multi-gigawatt utility scale solar farm.

I want one of these too.





Soooooo.....what this means is that Solar Power can be made available to many different applications, places, budgets, etc.. This is a very different situation than Nuclear (or as our last president liked to call it "Nucular") or coal fired power. Wind is also less "scalable" than Solar but not as much so as the aforementioned. Nuke plants only come in one size/cost option. HUGE! Likewise, Coal Plants are either large or huge as well. I'll defer to another post to tralk about advantages and disadvantages of all of the above as compared to Solar.