What does a balanced grid look like, for you? I’m not arguing in bad faith I’m giving my opinion. One that’s based on the last decade of my career working as a mechanical engineer in the generation space. Are currently active plants viable or should they be shut down?

Is your stance we should not have a diverse grid? Because that’s the only point I’ve really made this whole time. The more methods we have to produce electricity and the more redundancy the better. Currently active nuclear plants produce the cheapest power. Building new is more expensive, sure. That doesn’t mean we abandon the tech and soley focus on one solution.

But it doesn’t need to be one or the other. The more diverse the grid the better. I’ll also say again, cost on both sides is mostly artificial anyway.

I don’t believe a decentralized grid is a good thing in most situations. In fact I think that’s extremely dangerous. So, we likely won’t find common ground there. I wont waste time trying to convince you otherwise.

The crux of your point seems to be that renewables should be the majority (excluding nuclear) and fuel based systems (including nuclear) should be the minority. If we take nuclear out of the equation I agree with you. I’m not anti renewables, I’ve spent my career working in various forms of generation, including oil, gas, comb cycle and hydro. My stance is that they all have a place, even gas and oil but especially nuclear.

Side note, the ethics of mining could be pointed at heavily for the current state of battery and solar pannel tech as well.

Exactly, this is an engineering problem. You’re talking it like it’s an accounting one. Reliability, emergency use, redundancy, generating potential and universal scalability are the most important factors. Cost is a completely separate issue governed by separate factors, many of which are 100% artificial.

In your world, is “tomorrow’s energy system” exclusively solar/hydro?

Not really addressing what I said at all. But hey, the words sound good if you’re ignorant on the subject.

Approaching this problem like it has one perfect solution is pure ignorance.